Golden Guardians crashed into contention for second place with a win over Counter Logic Gaming in week five of the North American LCS.
Guardians star mid laner Son “Mickey” Young-min once again got his hands on Talon, a champion he can work magic with. Early skirmishes around the mid lane gave him a kill, and from there, he was off to the races. Mickey played the run-and-gun style he has become known for, constantly pushing side lanes and looking for picks.
The game was relatively even for the first 19 minutes, right up until Guardians looked to take down the Rift Herald. CLG took a fight around the objective, but their team composition couldn’t stand up to the area of effect damage from Matthew “Deftly” Chen’s Heimerdinger and Matthew “Matt” Elento’s Fiddlesticks. Immediately after taking the buff, the Guardians rushed down the Baron buff, and the game was all but finished.
CLG stalled out the game for a little while longer, but a pick onto jungler Kim “Reignover” Yeu-jin gave Golden Guardians the opening they needed to take the second Baron of the game. With it, they rolled through CLG’s base and took the victory.
CLG had been on a meteoric rise, jumping from the bottom of the table to first place. A large part of their success has been due to the bot lane of Trevor “Stixxay” Hayes and Vincent “Biofrost” Wang, but they were unable to get rolling against Guardians today. On the other side of the map, Reignover continued to be inconsistent for the team. While he has a 100-percent first blood rate through the first half of the split, he often mispositions in the mid to late game and loses his team the match.
For Guardians, their fifth win of the split officially gives them more victories than they collected in the spring. They’re now in a tie for second place, a far cry from their last-place finish last split.
They’ll be looking to continue their winning ways against Echo Fox tomorrow at 6pm CT, while CLG take on Team Liquid at 4pm CT.
