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It’s hard to imagine things going any better for G2 Esports than they did in game three of 2017 Rift Rivals, as they took down North America’s Cloud9 for Europe’s second win of the tournament.
G2 showed their hand early when they selected a composition that emphasized picks over everything else with Elise and Blitzcrank as the team’s most crucial elements. C9, on the other hand picked a team that would focus on teamfights to allow Tristana and Viktor to get their damage out on the entire G2 team.
The early game couldn’t have gone any better for G2, however, they struggled to find meaningful objectives, despite getting pick after pick from Alfonso “mithy” Rodriguez’s fantastic Blitzcrank hooks to help them grow their gold lead. This gave Cloud9 a small window to come back into the game, but it was a window they took full advantage of.
As the game moved into the mid and late stages, Cloud9 leaned on engages from Kled and Gragas, with huge burst from their carries catching G2 off-guard again and again, helping C9 come all the way back into the game, bringing a 7k gold deficit pre-20 minutes back to only 2k by 35 minutes.
Unfortunately for the North American side, attempting to come back from such a huge deficit means that any pick in the late game could mean the end of the game, and in this case, that pick happened to be a Blitzcrank hook onto Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi at nearly 40 minutes allowing G2 to take Baron and Elder Dragon — with five drakes taken already — helping give G2 the opening they needed to push down the C9 base and take the game for Europe.