Match commentary and interviews from the floor courtesy of RheingoldRiver

The last match of the day, between Team DoubleBuff and Azure Cats, was perhaps the most hyped match of the day.  If Azure Cats won then bigfatlp would go on to fight his old team CLG, but, as many people pointed out, DoubleBuff was a strong team that could not be discounted.  It showed that, too, with a first blood given over to Flappy Bearfish's Twitch in botlane.  But Azure Cats refused to be cowed by that lead and, in fact, Demunlul and Obituarist came back even before hitting level 6 with a double kill onto Demunlul's Tristana.  This lead, combined with a gank from Draguner's Hecarim onto DoubleBuff's botlane at 14 minutes and dragon, could not be turned around by DoubleBuff—both Tristana and bigfatlp's Zed were too much damage for DoubleBuff to deal with.  After both successful teamfights, pick-offs, and a baron, Azure Cats forced its way down the toplane, diving DoubleBuff and winning the fight thanks to Tristana's huge dps and Zed's black cleaver.  They pushed the nexus at 34 minutes, looking to shut down any rumors that DoubleBuff could rival them.

After its success in game 1, Azure Cats went confidently into the game 2.  With bigfatlp on Zed in the midlane again, Azure Cats secured first blood in toplane, taking the first turret of the game in its 2v1 botlane also at about 5 minutes.  DoubleBuff's chance to come back seemed to be a dragon attempt after losing a fight at its blue buff, but Azure Cats was able to steal away the dragon and win the ensuing fight, snowballing its already notable lead.  Azure Cats continued to dominate the game, picking up a second dragon and then even Baron at 20 minutes, showing that it was the team that it had been hyped to be and closing out the 2-0 series with a 12-3 final score, moving on to face CLG on Sunday.

Rhein: Congratulations on your victory over Team DoubleBuff.

Demunlul: Thank you.

Before the games, a lot of people were talking about how good Azure Cats was, and then others said we shouldn't count out Team DoubleBuff.  What did you think the result of today was going to be?

I was pretty sure we would win.  Obviously, you should be confident every game you go into, so we were pretty unsurprised at the outcome.  We thought maybe they might take a game, but that definitely did not happen.

How much were you able to actually find out about your opponents prior to the match?

All we knew was what we knew before they stopped scrimming us.  They didn't have spectatable games or anything, so all we knew was a couple champions they played before, what they did in solo queue, and what they played last night.  They actually played a couple ranked 5s games, so we got to see what they were running there, so I don't know why they did that.

Was it similar to what they pulled out today?

Yeah, it was similar.  They ran pretty much everything they would have played, and some of what they did play.

Do you think that having that advantage helped a lot?

I'd say it didn't really show us any champions they didn't play, because the only champion we weren't 100% about was Zac.  It was because we didn't see them play it, but we expected it because Zac's really strong right now.

You played Tristana and Varus today.  How much was that what you wanted to play compared to what was good for your team?

Varus is mainly a champion we put in team comps.  I don't necessarily enjoy playing it, but I play it for the team.  Tristana I definitely enjoy playing.  She's one of my favorites right now because she fits so well into the meta and her late game is probably the strongest.  The only other AD that can really match hers is Kog'maw, in terms of damage and range.

What's your favorite AD Carry?

My favorite overall is Vayne.  She definitely still works right now, but we just grew accustomed to doing Trist over her because Trist definitely out-carries Vayne late game in a lot of different scenarios.  Basically the only advantage Vayne has is her stealth late game, and her damage is about the same as Tristana's if not even less.

What do you think about the recent change to Vayne's condemn?  Do you think that made her overpowered maybe in solo queue?  Or was that a change she needed?

I thought she was pretty overpowered before the change, just my personal opinion.  Definitely in solo queue, maybe not in ranked 5s or a tournament setting.  But the condemn change definitely helped her, and I like it.  Same with Tristana, with her E.  It was a change that could be needed, but she's in a good spot right now.

I don't know too much about your support Obituarist.  What's his play style, and how do you mesh together as a botlane?

We didn't really know anything about him either before we picked him up.  We were just looking for a last-second support, and he was recommended to us by some people.  That was about two days before the roster lock; I can't remember which month, around March or April.  We were rushing to get a support.  We played with him a couple games, and we tried out me going as support actually, and the first few games with nothinghere it went okay but I didn't really feel like going to the support role, so we just picked up a support, and Obituarist was our first choice, really the first one we tried so we didn't even bother trying out any other people.  His play style tends to be really aggressive.  He likes to play Blitzcrank and stuff like that.  We haven't run it in a real tournament yet, though.  We mostly just put him on Sona, stuff that can go aggressive but is okay at defensive.

You were Tristana-Sona in the first game, and you were able to come back from Twitch getting a first blood.  Is that just the power of Tristana-Sona, or were you able to outplay?

First blood didn't bother us too much.  It was a Shen gank, so all pressure was off other lanes.  We definitely could have played it a lot better, but in terms of it putting us behind, it didn't really.  They tried to fight us at level 5, Twitch was 3/4 HP.  I just jumped on him and straight-up killed him when I was 6, and we got a double kill on them botlane.  So the first blood definitely did not affect the team or us at all.

On Sunday, you're going to be fighting against CLG, and Doublelift is sort of "the" ADC within the North American scene.  Are you nervous?

Not really nervous.  I've played him personally a couple times in a tournament setting.  We played him at regionals actually, a couple months back, on Team Legion.  Definitely look forward to playing CLG; it should be a really interesting set of games.

What do you think the result of the series is going to be?

We're definitely aiming for 3-0.  I predict a 2-3 or something along those lines.  The games are gonna be really close because CLG definitely doesn't want to lose its spot, and we definitely want its spot.

How much of an advantage is it going to give you that you've been able to watch them, and they've only gotten to see your games today?

We definitely know pretty much everything they're gonna run, but we haven't seen them ever since they lost in the playoffs, so we don't know if they're gonna run something different or not, though we're pretty sure they're gonna stick to their standard protect-Doublelift stuff.

Have you shown everything yet, or do you have any secret strats you're planning on using against CLG?

Champion-wise, we haven't shown everything yet.  We showed our Zed, which is kind of unfortunate, but we're pretty confident. Jiji can play just about everything, so we have a lot of different comps set around not just Zed.  We have quite a few comps in specific, and strats level 1 in specific.  We didn't show much level 1 at all.

Any final shoutouts?

Shoutout to my friends at home, my sister who plays, I'm sure she's watching.  Shoutout to my teammates for playing really well.

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