The race for eighth – LCS Final Week Preview

Games Writer

Last Updated on 09/08/2024

It’s the LCS, nobody cares who’s top of the table – we only care about the bottom.

Alright, easy NA jokes aside, the top seven is settled, and with one playoff place left, all that’s left to play for at the top is seeding spots, so I thought I’d give you the real preview.

Who is the least terrible team in the LCS?

The case for CLG

Thought I’d start with the shortest one – CLG are pretty screwed in this race.

They do have to play FlyQuest, and beating them will give them a decent shot – but they need to win minimum 2/3 and then a tiebreaker if results go their way – and judging by the rest of the split, that seems unlikely.

They probably will beat TSM, though, cause that’s completely Counter Logic, after all. That’s about their best hope, though. Dignitas haven’t been great of recent but they’re a little bit more solid than CLG. CLG’s bot lane has been horrendous, and even Finn who looked good in Spring has gone massively downhill.

Unless… unless it’s truly Tanner time. Their one saving grace could be Damonte in the mid lane – with Dignitas’ mid laner being a question mark, PoE not particularly wanting to follow his roams and FlyQuest changing their mid laner again – maybe we could see Tanner take CLG to the heady heights of… 8th.

FAITH IN THE TANNER, LETS GOOOOOOOO pic.twitter.com/5hU9NZ4hXu

— DaMonte 👉😆👈 (@Damonte) July 13, 2021

The case for Golden Guardians

Golden Guardians might have a game to catch up on Flyquest with, but they’re maybe a little bit better than their record suggests.

I mean, not a lot better. But Ablazeolive has come to the boil and finally looks like the mid-laner that was tearing up… Academy. He’s picked up more kills than any other mid laner not named Jiizuke, and even managed to carry a game on Tahm Kench mid – he’s clearly the best part of this team.

Licorice has a chance to get revenge on FlyQuest, as not only do they meet on Friday night, but GG can steal that final playoff spot especially if they win. They need to pick up one more win than FQ to force a tiebreaker, or two more to take eighth.

100 Thieves are the second team they face, which is a problem for… obvious reasons, but also the fact that their best player is also a mid laner. So uh, good luck. IMT is a winnable game for GG though, and as long as they beat FQ there’s a decent chance they can get at least a tiebreaker.

Which all sounds really good!

Then you remember they lost to CLG last week, and wonder why you even bothered writing this all out.

And Ablazeolive doesn’t always flex on Tahm Kench either…

He goes down in a blaze of olives! 🔥 #LCS pic.twitter.com/Tu6NzU4rS8

— LCS (@LCSOfficial) July 25, 2021

The case for FlyQuest

The best case for FlyQuest is that these teams on average win a game about every four games, so purely numerically, the fact that FlyQuest are ahead already means they’ll probably stay there.

FQ play the other bottom three teams, so their fate is in their own hands – but the teams they play generally have a lot to play for, and losing those games is twice as bad. They lost three games in a row last week, and have now changed roster again, so they’re a complete… hmm, let’s say unknown quantity.