LCS Championship: FlyQuest dominate C9 and qualify to Worlds

After Team Liquid taught 100 Thieves what a decent League of Legends team looks like, the #2 and #3 seed of the LCS were battling for a direct qualification spot and the chance to receive a lecture from Team Liquid. With 3 wins and a wintrade loss, Flyquest have set themselves ahead of an erratic Cloud9 team.

The first game was the only contested one of the entire series. Cloud9 pulled off creative plays and generated an early lead through a very strong first 20 minutes from Robert "Blaber" Huang, who found clever pathing routes to gank FLY's botlane when they walked back from base as well as out-farming Kacper "Inspired" Słoma. Philippe "VULCAN" Laflamme's roam set the tone for an efficient control over the map for C9.

However, once the midgame settled and 5v5s showed on the horizon, Cloud9 struggled to capitalize on their map control. Despite securing an initial victory around the Drake, they faltered by engaging in another 5v5 at Baron without key cooldowns. FlyQuest, with faster cooldowns, managed to turn the fight in their favor, despite previously losing engagements. After taking down the mid T1 at 28 minutes, Song "Quad" Su-hyeong's Smolder pick became the deciding factor, preventing C9 from making a comeback.

Until FLY decided to make a New York Jets reference and fumble a victory that was theirs for the taking. Images don't show the full story so we fully encourage you to go watch the VODs yourself. In the end, C9 use this massive blunder to claw back a victory that was long lost and start the BO5 with a leg advantage.

Game 2,3 and 4 saw FLY never being threatened by C9's actions. Despite being very passive, if not overly, FLY simply waited for one C9 mistake, which occurred at 25 minutes with Joseph Joon "Jojopyun" Pyun getting caught. Quad, once again on Smolder, backed by another Inspired's Ivern rolled over a C9 that had nothing going on the map while FLY stuck to an easy scaling gameplan.

Game 3 however was nothing to be proud of for both teams, as FlyQuest and Cloud9 seemed to have a gentleman agreement to change the gamemode to ARAM. With only 20 kills in 40 minutes and very few fights, the game echoed the dark ages of LCS NA. Despite having Amumu and Senna (in her 14.16-busted version), two champions arguably among the strongest in ARAM, C9 once again failed to play the map effectively. They handed FlyQuest a strong position around the dragon near the end of the game, and FLY, once again, capitalized on the opportunity and closed out the match.

FLY were then bored of waiting for C9 to be bad at League of Legends so they slammed a Jarvan IV for Inspired alongside Orianna and Alan "Busio" Cwalina's Rakan. After a well executed dive on the botlane, FLY simply maintained their lead until 20 minutes, playing for their two items spikes and securing every drake. One teamfight later, and FLY had won the game without dying once.

With this victory, they are thus qualified to Worlds and guaranteed a top 3 in the LCS Championship. On the other hand, C9 have shown their Spring Split demons are still with them and risk an early elimination. They now wait for 100vDIG's winner to play for a top 3 qualification match, alongside a ticket to Worlds.