RheingoldRiver brings match reports and from the floor interviews at the Spring Playoffs

Match Report Two

The second set of the day was between CLG and Vulcun, the 4th- and 5th- seeded teams.  In Game 1, Vulcun revisited a strategy that had paid off very well in week 3 of the LCS against CLG: camp Doublelift.  This time, with Xmithie on Jarvan IV instead of Hecarim, Vulcun seemed to always have three people top to completely shut down Doublelift's Vayne.  First blood on Doublelift was secured by Vulcun due to an amazing hook coming out from Bloodwater's Thresh, and Zuna picked up a second kill onto Aphromoo off the Rocket Jump reset. 

For the next two games, CLG decided to pick up Thresh, rather than allow Bloodwater to have that pick again.  It worked out much better this game for CLG: they were able to get Doublelift into a 2v1 lane, so the constant pressure wasn't as possible, and Link ended up getting a lot of early gold on his Orianna, picking up first blood onto mancloud's Karthus in just a 1v1 in mid.  HotshotGG's Malphite exerted very strong map pressure, despite the fact that everyone on Vulcun flashed the Unstoppable Force an impressive number of times, and Link later picked up a triple kill.  CLG continued looking strong and were able to close out the game after destroying Vulcun at a failed Baron attempt by the blue team.

Game 3 started out much slower than the first two games, with first blood not until almost 10 minutes, picked up by Vulcun, and the first major fight not until 16 minutes at dragon, when the game absolutely exploded in Vulcun's favor.  Vulcun took the fight 4-1, with kills going to mancloud and Zuna, and then picked up the dragon afterwards.  Vulcun continued pushing towers and taking objectives, with only a single hiccup occurring at about 35 minutes in botlane, with Sona flashing under tower and ulting Orianna only to have CLG pick up 4 unanswered kills—but Vulcun didn't let this phase them, and they came back strong and took game 3, for the second upset of the day and a 100% win rate for purple side.

After the game, I interviewed Vulcun's jungler Xmithie.

Match Interview 2

Rhein: In the first game, your team seemed very focused on shutting out Doublelift.  How did that work out?

Xmithie: Before we started the game, we had our plan already.  We knew what we were going to do, and the role for me was to avoid wards at any time.  It wasn't even mostly for Doublelift, but we scouted them and then we knew where their wards were so we just tried to avoid those and then early gank.  And it worked out pretty well.

It almost seemed like you were hearkening back to your success against CLG when you almost ran a trilane against them as Hecarim.

It started out like that back when Muffinqt was our support.  He always said to gank Doublelift, and that's pretty much the game.

In the second game, you ended up playing Lee Sin.  You went for an early Sightstone and tank build.  When do you decide to do that build?

It's always my build to go tanky on Lee Sin.  There's only one time in a million that I would go all damage, maybe if I got all the kills.  But even still, you need to go tanky as Lee Sin.  If you're team's not doing enough damage, and if you're tanking and you die, that's not your fault; it's your AD's fault that he's not doing his job.

So you're relying on Zuna to do all the damage and being more utility and peel?

Yep, top and midlane, it doesn't matter where your damage comes from as long as you're the one tanking.  With Lee Sin you can make plays too, you can use your Q first then put a ward behind them and shield to that and then ult them into your team, and that's mostly what I do.  It didn't work out that game because our early game didn't work out that well because of some miscommunication and stuff.

In game 3, you sent your duo lane to midlane.  Did you expect CLG to send their duo lane mid?

Our main thing was to gank the one with the teleport, and that was toplane.  I thought they were going to put their teleport botlane, so I can just gank it over and over and have pressure in middle so that I can go to their jungle easily.  But they didn't do that, they just put their AD Carry bottom, and I think they got an early turret off that, and they made my midlane lose a lot of CS.  But we pressured them going middle, and we got an early turret off that and it worked pretty well.

So more of a strat to apply pressure across the map and less to shut down Doublelift?

Yeah, exactly.

The first major fight of that game was at dragon at about 16 minutes, and it went incredibly well for you.  How did that fight go so well?

In the beginning, I think Zuna got caught, and we were shouting "oh my god, this is over."  He somehow lived, and then Bloodwater, Sona, got a 5-man ulti, and I think that Zuna ulted Volibear and Malphite away from him, and then he got free autoattacks off over and over.  I went in after the Sona ult, and I trapped three of them, and Irelia and Diana were behind Doublelift and they one-shotted him.

Speaking of Sona ults, what went through your heads when Sona flash-ulted under the tower in botlane near the end of the game?

It was mainly a team call.  We saw Twitch and Thresh top, we thought that we could burst the Orianna faster, but when Sona flash-ulted Orianna, he didn't get Malphite, so Malphite ulted both Diana and Tristana, so they couldn't follow up, and that pretty much got us a four for none.  It was pretty bad for us, but we bounced back.

Were you able to maintain a positive air in your voice chat?

Between game 1 and 2 and 2 and 3, our coach went in and told us to not force anything.  I think we kind of forgot about that in the bottom, but I think we played almost perfect except for that in the bottom.

One more question about the games.  In the third game, were you just going for comfort picks?  Or what was your goal with that comp?

Yeah, it was mostly comfort picks, and really good champions that can just kill.  In the second game we shouldn't have picked Shen, because we wanted our top Sycho Sid to have a kill lane, so that we can always kill their toplane or pressure them.  And it worked when it was Irelia against Malphite because Irelia is good against Malphite, and it worked pretty good because everywhere he goes there's pressure.

So for the entire season, you've been playing Best of Ones, and now you had to play a Best of Three.  So how do your strats change for that?

We didn't really change our strat, we just evolved it.  If we win game 1, our bans in game 2 will be different because of what they picked.  It's just mostly just longer preparation for it.

Finally, congratulations on already qualifying for the summer split!  It must be a huge relief to have done that.

Yeah, it's pretty overwhelming.

But you are facing TSM tomorrow.  How are you preparing for that?

After celebrating, we're probably going to go to our whiteboard and try to outplay them like CLG.  Their play style is kind of different, they're more team-wide, whereas on CLG it's just Doublelift that has to carry, and we can win against them.

One last thing, you were talking about your stream before [the interview started].  You want to give a shoutout to it?

Sure.  You can follow my twitter @vulcun_xmithie.  It's with a 'U' not an 'A' in Vulcun, everyone always messes that up.  And my twitch is twitch.tv/xmithie, and I sometimes stream at midnight after our scrims.  I'd also like to shout out to Ali and Murti, our sponsors, PWR Clothing, NOS, and our manager Gnomesayin and our coach Kenma.

Be sure to look for the superb second day of LCS coverage by RheingoldRiver to get the lowdown on the best matches and the stories behind the games from the players themselves.

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