Golden Guardians vs Cloud9

For our third match of the day we have a rather fascinating clash between Cloud9 and the Golden Guardians. Now, "fascinating" might not be the most apt description, but there's more than enough reason to tune in and watch these two teams compete.

Frankly speaking, no one's tuning in to see the Guardians compete. There's just not much to get excited for, generally speaking, as they lack both the firepower and the oomph to compete at the highest of levels. For the majority of LCS regulars, the only names that stand out are Hauntzer, Goldenglue, and Keith. Then again, these three names don't really instill you with much hype or confidence. They're all either underwhelming, or past their prime. Their TCL import jungler Closer certainly surprised a lot of people yesterday with a couple of great moves (against 100T Meteos, to boot), but it wasn't enough, and it certainly won't be enough today either.

Opposite them, we have Cloud9. To say that Cloud9 made the world take notice yesterday would be an understatement. Their draft was spectacular, they outplayed Liquid across the board, and looked like a bona fide titan in the making. They didn't skip a beat and their brand-new bottom lane duo performed incredibly well, all things considered. As a five-man unit, they were spectacular and gave Liquid no wiggle room. Now sure, the defending champions didn't play with their full line-up (with Broxa's visa issues still lingering in the air), but they should've still been able to mount an offensive and make this into a somewhat competitive affair. Such a thing, however, simply didn't happen. They were out of sync, meek and passive, without a solution for Cloud9's unrelenting aggression and teamfighting prowess.

On the Cloud9 side, this was an absolute masterclass. If you removed the name tags you probably wouldn't have guessed that they underwent any kind of change during the off-season. But this is a vastly different line-up, and yet it's every bit as dangerous and lethal as the one that came before it. If they had such an easy time with the defending champions, there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to repeat their incredible performance against a team like Golden Guardians.

Cloud9's spectacular start to the season took everyone by surprise. Now sure, they were bound to look good (if not great, even), but to dominate to such a degree in their very first outing (against Liquid of all teams) was certainly unexpected. Because of this, it's hard not to get excited for what's to come. If they maintain such a stellar level of play, there's no telling how high they could eventually climb.

Watching them compete and grow as a five-man unit will be an absolute must going forward.