After the much-anticipated 100 Thieves roster began the new League of Legends Championship Series season with a loss against Team SoloMid yesterday, there was mixed confidence on how they’d do against Cloud9, a team that made it to the semifinals of the World Championship last year.
It quickly became evident today that even a team with two-time world champion Bae “Bang” Jun-sik wasn’t a match for Cloud9’s constant pressure. Cloud9’s dominance began in the mid lane. Yasin “Nisqy” Dincer picked Aatrox into Choi “Huhi” Jae-hyun’s Ryze and was able to secure first blood over 100 Thieves. After securing the first kill of the game, Nisqy continued to snowball and ultimately ended the game with six kills and no deaths.
100 Thieves didn’t just struggle against Nisqy, but also made crucial mistakes along the way. Huhi missed an important teamfight in the top lane in the beginning of the game after he mistakenly teleported to his own Nexus turret. Even Bang didn’t look comfortable facing Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi’s Ezreal. While Bang remained deathless in the game, he only managed to pick up one kill against Cloud9.
By 20 minutes, Cloud9 held a 7,000 gold lead over 100 Thieves and were able to quickly close the game out just over 25 minutes into the match. 100 Thieves, now sitting at 0-2, will have an opportunity to pick up their first win of the season next week against Team Liquid. But even that match doesn’t trend in 100 Thieves’ favor since Team Liquid are the defending 2018 NA LCS Summer Split champions—and they’ve looked strong to start the 2019 season, too.
