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TSM returns to the top of the LCS
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If Europe has its kings, then North America has its king, and his name is Bjergsen. Whispers of his fall had grown in the past few years. You’d hear people say he was just another mid laner, and you’d hear them say his playstyle was outdated, and you’d hear them say he washed. And, maybe, they were right then. In 2018. And in 2019. But here in 2020, you won’t hear anyone say that. You won’t hear so much as a murmur. He has lifted TSM back to the top after three years thanks to a nailbiter of a win over FlyQuest, and once again -- as has been the case six times before this -- TSM is your LCS champion.
TSM opened up the series by reminding us that they have one guy named Bjergsen and one other guy named Doublelift and that combined they have won 12 total LCS championships. That is a lot of winning, and coming all the way back from being immediately sent into the lower bracket means they’ve played more playoff games than they played regular season games. They rode the wave of momentum in a big way by completely crushing FLY in the first two games of the series.
Bjergsen immediately played his Zilean trump card in Game 1, which has become his grim reaper pick of sorts in that it always seems to be the lock to close out a series. And, well, you still can’t killean the Zilean -- another perfect Zilean game from Bjergsen brought him to 4-0 on the pick in the Playoffs (including three straight deathless games) and resulted in it being locked away for the remainder of the set. They then repeated the crushing performance in Game 2 -- through a power outage and all -- to make it look like we’d have a nice and quick day.
But, as famous college football announcer Lee Corso loves to say, not so fast my friends. FLY rebounded in a wild back-and-forth Game 3 thanks to better team fighting -- especially from WildTurtle -- despite Solo’s Gangplank being hard-camped in the early stages of the game (and mid game… and late game… he was ganked a lot this series). FLY continuously grouped and forced TSM’s split push to return to the fight, which they would then win.
The most difficult part about executing a split pushing comp, which TSM was constantly trying to do, is not necessarily what the split pushers do but rather what the rest of the team does. Generally they must exert enough pressure on the opposition without overextending. If you step too far forward, then you get engaged on and your split pushers are suddenly forced to group. FLY consistently punished TSM for slightly mispositioning, or they would force them to contest dragon soul over and over. This resulted in Doublelift especially being repeatedly killed in the mid and late stages of both Games 3 and 4 while his counterpart, WildTurtle, was able to take over the game thanks to FLY’s more traditional front-to-back compositions.
Game 4, like Game 3, saw FLY execute stronger team fighting compositions, which has been their bread and butter all year long. They group. They fight. They win the fight. IgNar’s Pantheon support pick finally paid off as it continuously pressured TSM’s immobile carries by either killing them or preventing them from having enough presence on the map. And so, suddenly, what had looked like it would be a dominant sweep from TSM turned into a 5-game slugfest that many analysts were predicting. And one that, like they suggested, was in FLY’s favor.
But that was all the favor they would receive going forward. All Playoffs long, Game 5 has played to the tune of TSM’s music. In do-or-die games, the adage in sports is to favor the team with the best player, and there is no player in the LCS greater than [Bjergsen][1]. Even in the losses in this series, he only died once a piece in each of those games, and as he has done throughout the playoffs, he would once again rise to the occasion.
TSM immediately invaded the top side at level 1 in an effort to kill Solo, and it would turn out to be foreshadowing how the rest of the game would play out. No matter what FLY did -- and they did some good things like double killing bot lane early -- TSM would answer by punishing top lane. TF ult is up? Kill Solo. TF ult is not up? Kill him anyway. TSM’s game plan and commitment to the execution meant that Broken Blade was enabled and put into a massive lead by the mid game, which also helped Spica secure a big jungle lead because he was able to invade and steal away camps. The resulting snowball meant that FLY’s strong efforts in the bot side would eventually be reversed -- it doesn’t matter how strong your ADC is if a fed Camille exists on the other side. You simply do not get to play League of Legends from there.
TSM moved Broken Blade around the map like a chess Queen and generated kill after kill to force FLY into a desperate situation. And FLY, to their credit, was able to bite back and trade punches here or there, but every time they did so, TSM’s strike would prove to be bigger and more devastating. And so, despite their best efforts to reverse sweep, their quest for the top of the LCS would end. It was a fantastic year for FlyQuest by all metrics -- branding, results, you name it, they did it -- and I hope they’ll be able to carry that momentum into Worlds as the #2 seed from the LCS.
For TSM, though, they return to the top of the perch after a three-year drought. The face of their franchise is in better form than maybe any other point of his career, and he’ll be taking his talents into a Worlds where the mid lane pool features the MVPs from the LCK, the LPL, and the LEC. It is one of the most stacked roles in Worlds history and for TSM faithful, there is no one you’d rather see anchoring mid than Bjergsen himself. The TSM chants can finally ring unironically once again as they can, once again, set their sights on a prize even bigger than the LCS.
[1]: https://twitter.com/Bjergsen/status/1302416258277625859
