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‘Superteam’ Liquid lives up the off-season hype, drubs TSM in NA LCS opener

TL members celebrating their win against defending champions Team SoloMid on Sunday. LoL eSports.

By Ozzy Alaba

MANILA -- What an impressive way to kick off the new season for the newly-entitled North American “superteam”.

Team Liquid lives up their built off-season hype as they kickstart their 2018 NA LCS Spring Split title bid on a high note after drubbing the defending North American champions Team SoloMid at the NA LCS Battle Arena in California on Sunday (Philippine time).

Liquid, a relegation team in the two splits of 2017 Season fully displayed the arsenal of their star-studded revamped roster as they leaned to the poke power of Yiliang Peng’s Tristana in the final ticks to clinch the important W.

Peng, who got a perfect 5/0/5 KDA also got support from his team as former World champion Jung Eon-young’s Gangplank and Eugene Park’s Malzahar stepped up huge, combining for a 15.0 KDA ratio at the end.

Peng’s bot lane partner Kim Joo-sung and US-based Filipino jungler Jake Puchero also contributed a lot, dishing out 9 assists respectively, resulting to an 81% kill participation in the 28-minute skirmish.

As inscribed in the tradition of competitive play, the two squads started the said game slowly.

Both teams were carefully contesting for the gold advantage in the first nine minutes, not until a gank by Park picked off TSM’s top laner Kevin Yarnell, playing as Gnar for a first blood.

Even though TL claimed the First Blood gold, the gold margin remained tight until the 13th minute, when they got 3 kills In a bot lane clash and the First Tower gold, ballooning their edge to 2000 gold in the same minute bracket.

TL then extended their perimeter in the 24th minute as they slained TSM’s sophomore jungler Mike Yeung and got the Baron Nashor and the 8000-gold advantage uncontested.

It just didn’t stop there. TL continued to surge at their base as they killed three of their adversaries to finally put an end in the 28th minute mark.

Meanwhile, TSM skipper Søren Bjerg had a decent performance on Ryze, scoring the lone kill for his team.

TL will try to maintain their undefeated record against the new franchise 100 Thieves on Sunday (Philippine time) while TSM tries to bounce back from its loss on the same day against newcomer OpTic Gaming.

Follow him on Twitter: @History4Lyf