Reign of Gaming

Pay*

I have seen the whole match from NA and EU and the best teams from now are the team who can adapt their strategy to the opponent team.

I.E if you play against TSM you should know you need to play very aggressive early with a split push(shen or teleport) strategy and never let them go to the late game. In teamfight they rely always on massive control ultymate and making them waste their ultymate by taking a Wukong and ultimate after their global engage make them usually completly lost every teamfight.

A team who play always the same way is a lost team on S3 because even a silver rated player like me know how are playing Gambits gaming, TSM or Azubu I.E. and if some team Challenger with perfect mechanics use their brain and analyze their play they know how to destroy them like Giants did the last week.

The outsiders NA team are not so far away from the top teams but they need to free their mind of the NA passive meta like Curse did and play more aggressive or more passive or temporize depends to what setup has the team in front of them.

While trying new things is great, the underdogs still have to be mechanically sound and still be able to do the basics of LoL, such as csing, not overextending, etc. If you remember in the S2 World Championships, the NA teams talked the most about "gimmick strats", but because they were so mechanically behind the other regions, our teams got stomped anyways. Clg and tsm got off to good starts against AZF, but as soon as the game stabilized, AZF's superior mechanics and fundamentals allowed them to crush both teams anyways.

But if everything is mechanically sound, I think innovation can really change the field and shift things into the underdog's, favor.

In college basketball, a lot of underdogs find an upset simply by changing the tempo of the game instead of a standard half-court set. VCU's HAVOC defense got them to the Final 4 and Butler's half-court physicality resulted in 2 straight National Championship appearances. Both teams had talent, but their system also helped big time in helping them beat more highly touted teams.

I think tricks and gimmicks can be a good thing to use especially to overcome a veteran team that has seen just about everything, but tricks and gimmicks rarely work twice. Even a team you didn't play probably heard about how you won with an all support strat and has something in mind if you try it on them.

In short you can win a game or two, but gimmicks rarely prevail all the way to the top spot. Even ap evelynn one of the greatest gimmicks in recent memory didn't help once azubu frost clicked the ban button on evelynn.

GIANTS try to win games, the other underdogs are just trying not to lose.  My take on the Crs V coL game was with both Hecarim and Ryze Crs knew they would win late game and coL let them get there. 

These 'tier 2' teams surely have the talent and mechanics to compete, they just need to plan and execute. The nice thing about LCS is that they will know who they play and on which side.  For example: if I'm on GGU I would circle the 2/27 game v TSM. TSM is purple so you KNOW they will lane swap, 3 man dive top, and then push all 3 outer turrets with 3 or 4. They should be able to come up with a game plan to counter this early mid aggression. If they line up and play standard (like everyone but GIANTS has been) they will keep losing.

I would like to just point out that AD Kennen was first used by GG (then Moscow 5) in a tournament over a year ago. It was just a bit ironic that Giants used GG's old innovation against them and won.

I think that in general, some of the old Empire/Moscow 5 strats have become so legendary that other teams replicated them over and over. Or everyone started playing Shyvana/Xin after Diamond showed their potential.

Also, props to Curse for looking so strong. People always mocked them, but with the addition of Voyboy they look really strong now.

Very interesting read.

I didn´t watch every single game yesterday but fortunately I was able to follow Curse vs compLexity. I was really, really impressed of coL (although rooting for Curse :D ). Getting early drake with jungle-Vi (+ shield by Lux and heal/armor by Soraka) was just ... wow! coL managed to get an early lead in gold by ~4k (I don´t know the true numbers) but in the end you could see that Curse had the better team management/play or experience (or both). After 2/3 teamfights + losing objectives coL´s lead was gone and their game was over.

Well, I have to admit that I (as a spectator) had the feeling that Curse would be on the brink of losing the game during the early stage of game. Surprisingly Curse was looking for teamfights although they were at a disadvantage of ~4k gold (?)...and they won most of them.

Gotta watch more LCS-Games!

"if these other teams want to compete with somewhat regularity, they need to change their approach."

Regularity. I think they should not try gimic tricks to try and win a best of one. If they wish to compete with the power house of teams they need to play agaisnt them in a fashion where they will keep playing, not to say they cant throw in random champions to throw the other team. Last week we saw synrda play in mid for example. The only way forward which will keep winning them games if to play better. If your winning by gimmic's your playing a repeative stratagy and spreading your selfs to thin.

I don't see how playing from the norm would make a team repetitive. As in all sports, teams get better by practice not by playing games. I understand playing the regular meta to see how one team might face against a better one, but when it comes to competition where winning is what is important then you do whatever you can do. A win is a win no matter how you play it.

What I will admit though is that it is not the best strategy to use for too long. I can agree with you that if a team plays gimmicky for too long they mind find themselves at a lower level then they did before.

New things are discovered by innovators  Often-times the ones who have nothing to lose are the ones with the most ability to innovate.

We see this with indy game developers and life in general. An indy game can try to experiment with new mechanics or story hooks that any other AAA titles would see as being "too risky". This is because the indy developer essentially has nowhere to go but up.  

So while we sit here guffawing that everything other than the meta is "gimmicky" those bottom-of-the-barrel teams should be trying to throw every strategy they can think of against the wall to see what sticks. 

If something does stick, is it gimmick? Or is it just a new meta? 

I think the author is correct in his thinking. These new teams can't play the same game that the big-boys have been playing for years and years. Maybe they should play standard against each other, but when they're up against the top 4, the little guys have to go big or go home.