Although it’s just the pre-season for the League of Legends Championship Series, the LCS 2022 Lock In tournament has already produced quality moments and gameplay from the action that took place over the weekend. Here are the lessons we learned from Week 1.
Fudge can play mid lane
As one of the more shocking roster moves in the offseason leading up to the start of the LCS 2022 season, Cloud9 announced that Ibrahim “Fudge” Allami would be making the role swap from top lane to mid lane. With a different laning philosophy and champion pool, the role swap isn’t easy on paper. So far, Fudge has shown that it will end up paying off.
Through the first weekend of the LCS 2022 Lock In tournament, Fudge played three games at the mid lane position. Two of those were on Viktor, who is as traditional a mid lane AP mage as you can get. In Fudge’s first professional games on Viktor, Cloud9 won both.
Fudge went a combined 12/3/16 in his two Viktor games, as C9 rolled over TSM’s Academy roster and Golden Guardians respectively.
Bjergsen still can too
In the other major shock of the LCS offseason, legendary mid laner Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg decided to come out of retirement after a year absence where he was the head coach for TSM. After being away from the professional stage as a player for an extended period of time, questions arose whether or not Bjergsen would still be able to play mid lane at an elite level. Spectators got a glimpse at his potential during his first two games in the LCS 2022 Lock In tournament on Team Liquid.
In his two games played, one on Corki and the other on Viktor, Bjergsen performed well. In TL’s close loss against Evil Geniuses, Bjergsen still managed to dish out 759 damage per minute, according to Oracle’s Elixir. This showed that even though he only went 3/2/5 on Viktor, the KDA didn’t tell the full story. In his game against Counter Logic Gaming on Corki though, the KDA did in fact tell the full story. A clean statline of 5/0/8 propelled TL to a 1-1 week and Bjergsen still has ample time to get back to his peak form.
EG showed up as expected
Many LCS teams competing in the LCS 2022 Lock In tournament are not fielding their full rosters due to issues surrounding COVID-19. As a result, many teams are fielding academy players or in some cases, full academy rosters. But one team that does have its full team is EG. With already high expectations heading into the 2022 season, EG were heralded as one of the favorites to at least win the LCS 2022 Lock In tournament. Through Week 1 they clearly look like one of the best teams.
EG had three games on their Week 1 slate. Two of them were against the lower-end Immortals and CLG squads and EG made quick work against both teams. But it was their opening match against TL that turned heads. TL, despite playing with a substitute support in their match against EG, came into the 2022 season as the favorite to win the LCS after revamping their roster. But in a very close back and forth match, EG made the clutch plays to secure the victory and helped solidify not only their record but their place among the LCS elite, at least for the time being.
