The third day of the 2019 League of Legends World Championship day began with the LCS’s Clutch Gaming taking on the LCL’s Unicorns of Love. The two teams already clashed on day one, with UoL taking an upset win over CG. Today’s match saw the same outcome.
In the picks and bans phase, Unicorns of Love went for a winning draft. Besides banning Skarner as Lira’s comfort pick, the team picked Heimerdinger and Fiddlesticks as its bottom lane duo, likely to use Fiddlesticks’ CC options to better enable burst damage from Heimerdinger.
Regardless of UoL’s stronger drafting phase, CG started the game in dominant fashion. The team evaded Kirill “AHaHaCiK” Skvortsov’s red and blue buffs, putting his Qiyana at a disadvantage.
Nam “Lira” Tae-yoo, playing as Lee Sin, then easily took first blood under UoL’s mid lane tower. He continued roaming through UoL’s jungle, and set Clutch up for a strong early game. Eight minutes in, Clutch Gaming took its first Dragon.
Unicorns of Love take control over Clutch Gaming in League Worlds 2019
However, as the game progressed, CG started feeling too secure in their lead. UoL’s strong teamwork shined when they outplayed CG in a mid lane two-on-two fight, and went on to win a team fight for the Rift Herald with their Kayle-Fiddlesticks combo. After, they were able to easily secure the second Dragon.
About 16 minutes in, Edward “Edward” Abgaryan engaged in a fight under CG’s mid lane tower with Fiddlesticks’ ultimate. In a disappointing turn, as the spell channeled, his game crashed and the match was paused.
Once unpaused, UoL were visibly dominating the Rift but had no significant gold lead. That started to change 26 minutes into the game when they utilized their composition’s AOE damage to effortlessly win a teamfight. Just like that, the snowball started rolling. UoL then took the Baron and CG’s top lane inhibitor.
CG couldn’t contest the second Baron of the game if they wanted to protect their freshly respawned inhibitor, but that Baron buff gave UoL the extra strength they needed to close the game. CG simply had no answer to UoL’s synergy.
Both CG and UoL will be fighting the Australian team MAMMOTH later in the day. If UoL wins the match, the team moves on to the World’s knockout stage as the group’s first-seed. However, with the group’s current standings, there might be tiebreakers.
