Having a Bard Time: Breaking Down CLG's Week 7 Teamcomp

Counter Logic Gaming is quickly looking to become one of the strongest teams in the NA LCS. As the sole team in North America to have taken a win from Immortals, and the killers of both Immortals', Huni's, and Reignover's winning streaks, CLG's strong macro play and innovative strategy may allow them to surpass their previous year's performance.

In this article, I'll be breaking down their teamcomp for their wins over both Immortals and Cloud 9. The core of each match's composition is Aphromoo's Bard and Xmithie's Udyr, with the majority of the team playing to stall or skirmish when ahead while Darshan is allowed to splitpush.

Match 1: IMT vs. CLG

In this matchup, CLG knew going in that in every Immortals match to this point had been based around two factors; Reignover and Huni dominating their respective opponents, and Pobelter and Adrian enhancing Wildturtle's naturally aggressive play.

The deciding factor of this match was Xmithie's Udyr, who managed to outjungle Reignover and snowball Darshan's powerful Fiora play. However, ignoring the impact of CLG's laners would be frankly dumb. Each laner performed as well as the team needed them to, with Huhi and Stixxay's primary role being to shove the waves and harrass lone IMT players without getting caught and forcing the splitpushing Darshan and Xmithie to retreat to mid. 

Aphromoo played an equally important role on his excellent Bard, utilizing Tempered Fate and Cosmic Binding to stall IMT and prevent them from diving the outnumbered midlane.

Champion-wise, this was essentially the perfect comp CLG could have wished for. All of their champions are extremely slippery, with abundant low-cooldown movespeed buffs, dashes, and blinks, allowing dangerous splitpushing to occur with minimal risk.

In retrospect, Immortals' decision of leaving Fiora open for Darshan and putting Huni on Quinn may have been their fatal mistake. While Darshan was able to replicate Saturday's results against Cloud 9 the following day on Jax, he lacks the brief immunity to all damage and CC that Fiora possesses as well as the rapid dashes, which would have allowed Huni to easily kite away from Jax's stun and turn CLG's strategy against them. Stixxay and Huhi were both placed on champions with rapid, utilitarian escapes as well as strong waveclear, though Immortals' combination of Lux and Gragas did allow them to catch out the two carries multiple times. Multiple questionable chases and engages by Immortals were wasted on Xmithie, further assisting CLG's goal of avoiding a teamfight.

 Match 2: C9 vs. CLG

CLG's teamcomp in this match was very similar, but due to C9's foreknowledge of CLG's strategy and champion picks, they attempted to counter the strategy by banning out Fiora, placing Balls on a safe, powerful waveclear champion, having Jensen steal LeBlanc to great effect, and placing Hai and Rush on initiator tanks. CLG dealt with this by placing Darshan on another powerful splitpusher in Jax, and placed Huhi on a less-safe midlaner, Corki. 

Aphromoo's Bard shone much brighter in this matchup, as Rush's Lee Sin was too strong to be shut down by Xmithie as Reignover's Gragas was, with Aphromoo single-handedly turning the game around by catching three members of C9 in his ultimate during a turret dive. Xmithie, to his credit, helped Darshan completely shut down Balls in the early to mid game, allowing him to splitpush much faster than he would have otherwise. Cloud 9's top tier shotcalling, however, allowed them to stay in the game and, though they were bleeding turrets, they managed to secure more Dragons and both Barons that were contested that game.

Rush demonstrated some of his best Lee Sin play yet, repeatedly diving into CLG and removing their carries from the fight with a well-placed Dragon's Rage, and Jensen's stolen LeBlanc pick outpaced Stixxay and Huhi's escapes, forcing CLG to adapt their strategy towards teamfighting. By repeatedly forcing teamfights, Cloud 9 nearly secured the game, but a single overcommitment after their second Baron nearly lost them the entire game outright.

 

Aphromoo placed his ultimate perfectly, zoning Sneaky and Balls away from the fight, placing Rush and Jensen into stasis, and leaving Hai defenseless as his ultimate wears off. Additionally, Darshan had begun to channel his teleport onto the turret before the ultimate, and as the turret was placed in stasis, Sneaky was unable to destroy the turret before the teleport could finish, allowing Huhi, Darshan, and Stixxay to clean up the entirety of Cloud 9, firmly placing the advantage back in the hands of CLG. Though Cloud 9 was able to play well as they fell behind, the combined pressure of Darshan and Xmithie's map presence and splitpushing ultimately lead to victory for CLG.

CLG's new strategy of playing around a similarly or superior teamfighting opponent with clever picks and strategy isn't necessarily new to the world of competitive League, but their execution of the strategy worked almost flawlessly against Immortals, and kept a small gold lead against Cloud 9 even when down half a dozen kills. CLG's history of strategic innovation is long, and I eagerly await more play from them on Summoner's Rift.

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