Cloud9 bounces back from their poor first week to take down Phoenix1 in the first series of Summer Split week two.

The first game in the series was all Cloud9 as they dominated the early game and methodically worked their way to victory in just 29 minutes taking inhibitors and objectives on their way to a perfect game.

Game two seemed to favor Phoenix1 a little more, at least early on, however, they never managed to turn their gold lead into objectives causing the game to stall until Cloud9 was able to pull off a few strong engages and win teamfights. P1’s lead quickly disintegrated leading to yet another C9 win.

This brings Cloud9 to 1-2 on the season while Phoenix1 falls to last place at 0-3.

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7:41 pm ET — P1 seem to be having some huge late game shot calling and warding issues with almost no vision and a couple lost duels. It’s hard not to feel like the choice of chilling smite for Meteos may have been a mistake based on the lack of wards on the map for P1.

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7:35 pm ET — The Gragas Thresh combo has made for some fantastic picks so far giving P1 a solid lead of about 2.5k gold at 26 minutes.

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7:23 pm ET — 15 minutes in and the game is fairly even with Cloud9 at a slight 1k lead thanks to being up one more kill ad a bit of farm.

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7:11 pm ET — Pick and Ban Game 2

Cloud9’s team comp is really really strong. On top of the high mobility and amazing crowd control, P1 has almost no way to get out of any of the engage of the team. If P1 are going to win they will need strong roams by Ryu early combined with great poke and siege in the middle game.

C9: Renekton, Zac, Cassiopeia, Xayah, Rakan

Bans: Shen, Leblanc, Caitlyn, Olaf, Syndra

P1: Jayce, Gragas, Taliyah, Kalista, Thresh

Bans: Galio, Kennen, Elise, Orianna, Zed

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7:00 pm ET — Meteos in, Inori out.

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6:46 pm ET — C9 close a perfect game one in just 29 minutes.

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6:44 pm ET — Not a lot to say at this point. C9 is up about 16k gold which puts them up a full core item ahead. They are closing the game slowly finishing up inhibitors before pushing into the base.

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6:36 pm ET — At the beginning of this I said that Contractz needed to have more of a presence and boy did he. He’s gotten every lane ahead and helped push through 3 towers for C9 all before 18 minutes. This brings C9 up to an 8k lead in gold.

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6:29 pm ET — Two solid ganks from Contractz leads to two kills for Cloud9 giving them an early lead.

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6:20 pm ET — Pick and Ban Game 1

Phoenix1 will be all about the picks while Cloud9 will need to force teamfights to take advantage of the J4 Kennen combo.

P1: Gragas, Kha’Zix Ahri, Xayah, Karma

Bans: Rakan, Elise, Leblanc, Taliyah, Lucian

Cloud9: Jarvan IV, Olaf, Orianna, Kennen, Thresh

Bans: Zac, Galio, Caitlyn, Syndra, Shen

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The opening match of NA LCS Summer Split week two was always going to be exciting. With Spring Split runner up Cloud9 taking on third place finisher Phoenix1 this series seemed like it would be the perfect place to take the measure of two of the league’s top teams. Instead, it’s a match up to determine last place in the league and see which team remains winless.

Cloud9 enter the series after losing their last four games. Though these games were against difficult opponents, CLG and TSM, Cloud9 struggled to keep up with either of them looking out of place in the games and constantly behind the pace of their opponent. With another week of practice they are sure to come out looking better in this series, particularly Spring’s Rookie of the Split jungler Juan “Contractz” Garcia who struggled to make his mark during the first week of play.

On the side of Phoenix1, the issue may lie in their focus. During the first week, against significantly easier teams than C9, they played mostly slow and grinding games with most lasting well over 35 minutes. In each of these matches they played entirely different team comps, never finding anything that quite worked. After a week of practice, they should come into this series more confident and prepared with a style in mind that could help them net their first win.

Rosters

Cloud9

• Eonyoung “Impact” Jeong and Ji “Ray” Won Jeon
• Juan “Contractz” Garcia
• Nicolaj Jensen
• Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi
• Andy “Smoothie” Ta

Phoenix1

• Derek “Zig” Shao
• Rami “Inori” Charagh, William “Meteos” Hartman
• Yoo “Ryu” Sang Wook
• Noh “Arrow” Dong-hyeon
• Jordan “Shady” Robison

HOW TO WATCH

The series will be a best-of-three and can be watched on Twitch and lolesports and should start at 6 p.m. ET/3 p.m. local time.