If you haven’t seen the match between Curse and Counter Logic Gaming that was on Day 1 of Week 3 of the North American LCS, you have to go back and watch it before reading this. The team composition that Team Curse ran was a “fast pushing” team composition, while Counter Logic Gaming had a late game composition. I’m certain Montecristo was watching this game and was probably thinking of the KT Bullets, as that team is notorious for their fast pushing compositions in the Korean scene.

Team Curse ran a Nunu in the jungle, with a Jinx as the AD Carry. Now, if you’re not familiar with Nunu’s or Jinx’s kit, it’s quite easy to see why Curse ran these picks. Nunu is actually pretty rare to see, even though it was always banned back in Season 3 after he was buffed. You really don’t see him all too often in the Korean scene either, but he is played a little. Back to the point I was making though. Nunu has a skill called Blood Boil that he can use on either himself or another champion that gives them more attack speed for a period of time. If you combo that with Jinx’s Q skill, which gives her attack speed stacks, you get major tower pushing potential, and Curse did just that this game.

After getting the top turret from lane swapping, Curse didn’t stop there. They rotated to the bottom lane and picked up Dragon which gave them even more gold. It seemed as though CLG couldn’t keep up with Curse’s rotations. While Doublelift did his signature move of farming bottom lane, Curse picked up the middle turret. Once again, Curse had disgustingly good rotations to pick up the last two turrets in the bottom lane before leaving the inhibitor turret. At this point, Curse was really only ahead by ~2k gold. But, CLG lost so much map pressure by not being able to read the rotations of Curse. You don’t win games by kills, but with objectives. Before 14:00 minutes into the game, Curse had nearly every single outer turret, besides the last top turret. If that’s not the definition of getting crushed, I don’t know what is. At this point, CLG was probably having some flashbacks of their previous game versus Curse where CLG completely dismantled Curse. CLG had zero deaths the entire game and just only focused on objectives the last time they played against Curse.

So you must be wondering how Curse managed to lose this game after having such a commanding lead. Well, let’s take a look at CLG’s team comp. Doublelift was playing one of his signature champions; Vayne. If you’ve ever played against a Vayne late game, you’ve probably witnessed how this champion can melt your entire team so easy. CLG also had Renekton and Shyvana who sort of fall off late game, but that is fine as long as they’re able to keep everyone off of Vayne while she shoots silver bolts in your face.

All in all, Curse had a great idea, and it really worked. Fast pushing compositions work wonders, but you need to win the game extremely early. CLG is renowned for their late gameplay, so you need to beat them before they get there. The game was full of flashy plays, like Zekent constantly throwing out his ultimate to blow back Link whenever he tried to initiate on them. You also can’t forget when Doublelift came to save Chauster when he had almost 100 HP left, and managed to get a triple kill out of it.

A great game by Curse, but CLG managed to take away the win!