After the first week of play in the North American LCS Spring Split, there were only two teams that remained undefeated: the crowd favorite Team Immortals and Team NRG. Both teams got out of week one with a phenomenal record of 3-0, so the featured match of the day on Sunday was, of course, these two teams butting heads to break the tie and present a clear first place contender for the spring split.
To start out, during the banning phase team NRG chose to ban Elise, Lulu and Fiora. Team Immortals chose to ban Tahm Kench, Gangplank and the increasingly popular Graves. These bans were more or less just good bans, and not specifically targeting any one player’s champion pool. Finally, we get to the champion lineup for each team. Team NRG had Impact on Maokai in the top lane, Moon on Nidalee in the jungle, GBM on Varus in the mid lane, and Altec and Konkwon playing Corki and Alistar in the bottom lane. For team Immortals, Huni headed to top lane with Lissandra, Reignover on Rengar in the jungle, Pobelter taking Zed to the mid lane and WildTurtle and Adrian playing Lucian and Janna in the bot lane.
A quick look at the two teams clearly shows the strategies they are going to try and implement. With team NRG taking champions like Nidalee, Varus and Corki, they focused more on poking the Immortals down rather than trying to win a straight fight. The combined power of Nidalee’s and Varus’ q abilities could spell disaster for an enemy team that was hesitant to leap into the fray. Standing on the opposite side of the rift, team Immortals was trying to do the exact opposite. With the ability to engage with Lissandra as well as with Rengar, team Immortals was looking to make quick and efficient plays, killing team NRG’s carries before the poke could become relevant.
Getting right into the match, all things on the rift are relatively civil right up until about 8 and a half minutes into the match. At this point, the first team fight breaks out where team NRG is caught in the middle and Huni flash engages on his Lissandra to lay down a remarkable amount of CC, snaring and dealing quite a bit of damage to four of the five players on team NRG. The fight immediately erupts and WildTurtle comes in to clean up and quickly bursts down Moon and a precision placement of the culling lands WildTurtle another kill on Altec. Team Immortals walks away from the fight only having lost Pobelter in all the chaos, taking a two for one in kills and feeding the mean machine that is WildTurtle.
Coming back again to the mid lane just four minutes later, this time, Reignover takes the initiative and leaps onto Moon with a snare that quickly spells his death at the hands of WildTurtle, while at the same time Pobelter makes a play and turret dives Konkwon with his ultimate to secure another kill for team Immortals. This time, however, Immortals are caught off guard by Impact coming down from the top lane and flash rooting Huni underneath the turret to secure a kill for team NRG. While not exactly ideal for team NRG, the added gold from the kill helps to slow the crashing wave that Immortals is quickly becoming.
At around the mid game, Immortals makes a play that could be viewed as the tipping point for them in this game. Team NRG can be seen pushing down top lane with Impact and Altec while the other three members of the team come up through the red side jungle of team Immortals. Seeing an opportunity to catch team NRG unawares, Reignover flashes in and lands a snare on Impact while Huni teleports in behind team NRG to tie them up with CC as they try to escape the onslaught of damage coming from Pobelter and WildTurtle. After the dust settles, team NRG is left running away from the Immortals having lost Moon and Impact in the fight and the Immortals walk away satisfied with two kills and no losses.
The fights continue to be a little bit lopsided as WildTurtle just picks up kill after kill and increases his damage output exponentially. At the end of the game team, Immortals take down team NRG’s nexus in just under 34 minutes and secure their place at the top of the standings in the NA LCS Spring Split. You can check out the entire game below.
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