League of Legends DFS: NA LCS - Sunday
To say that Saturday’s games were a ride would be an understatement. It was certainly the most entertaining day of the season in LCS so far and if you’re new to the scene through DFS, it gives you an idea of the type of crazy games the North American region has to offer. Every player on Team Liquid hit the 10KA bonus on DraftKings and the entire team was the key to success in GPPs.
Sunday is League’s first chance of the year to take center stage with the January Jam contest Jugger’Maw. Sadly, the $10,000 GPP filled somewhere around 24 hours before Rift-off. Hopefully that kind of early contest fill furthers the call for larger League of Legends contests on DraftKings. The $3, $5000 GPP did overlay on Saturday, but with an entry limit of just five, it’s fair to call 1413 entries a success. It would have hit cap with even an entry limit of 10.
Coincidentally or not, today’s slate is one of the toughest so far. Echo Fox and Renegades are genuine bottom feeders as of now, but all eight other teams have had their moments and should continue to going forward.
Odds & Matchups
Team Impulse (+119) vs. Team Liquid (-144)
Team SoloMid (-135) vs. NRG eSports (+111)
Cloud9 (-180) vs. Team Dignitas (+147)
Immortals (-476) vs. Echo Fox (+352)
Counter Logic Gaming (-275) vs. Renegades (+218)
Top
Hauntzer, TSM ($6,200) – A fantasy output of 11.76 wasn’t what we were looking for against Cloud9, especially while Hauntzer’s teammates were all much more successful, but a deeper look proves that this wasn’t a function of poor play. TSM was in control of the game for much of it which left Haunzter alone in the bottom lane to farm and push objectives while Doublelift slayed C9ers at will. This is something that simply comes with every single top laner. Some will be more involved than others over the course of the season and statistics like Kill Participation and damage dealt to champions can give us a better idea of who that may be, yet ultimately they are island laners and will all sometimes have poor fantasy games even when teammates have big games. Don’t be afraid to go back to Hauntzer at this price, I will be.
Darshan, CLG ($7,000) – CLG’s win over Echo Fox was the lone snoozer of the day. The utter domination of every corner of the map meant they had no need to risk team fights and amassed a gold lead of over 10,000 just 22 minutes into the game. Darshan was a bit of an exception as he seemed eager to want to fight whenever possible on the duel capable Fiora. His game line of 1/1/1 was disappointing end result, but the idea that Darshan seemed genuinely interested in outplaying and scoring kills against the weak opposition is intriguing. His KDA and overall statistics this season are surprisingly poor and while I can’t pretend to know if he pays attention to statistics, it is as least possible. Whether that’s a stab in the dark is somewhat irrelevant in any case as Renegades are even wosre than Echo Fox and have somehow managed to die 75 times in just five games.
Jungle
Rush, C9 ($6,000) – One of only two junglers who currently have a higher than 20% total damage share on their respective teams, Rush is exclusively playing high damage, mobile junglers. To date he has played Graves, Nidalee twice, Elise and Lee Sin. If you’re unfamiliar with League of Legends, this is the champion pool of a jungler who intends to make plays early and often. A KP of under 70% for Rush seems highly likely to rise and assuming C9 sticks with Hai, wins against teams like Dignitas will be expected of them.
Dardoch, TL ($5,800) – I’m not convinced Dardoch’s Rookie of the Week performance from last week won’t just be repeated every single week for the rest of the season. Whatever former Liquid jungler IWillDominate has been teaching the young player is working as despite only playing in four games this season, he leads all junglers in kills. An 88.9% KP also leads the way. Liquid are still finding their footing after early season roster movement and that’s resulted in Dardoch being underpriced several times already. Impulse provide a legitimate challenge for Dardoch and Liquid, but box score success at this price is likely even in a loss.
Mid
Bjergsen, TSM ($7,200) – Not only is Bjerg not the $8,000 I’ve been mentioning, DraftKings’ apparent respect for NRG has him as the 5th highest priced mid laner. I remain unsold on NRG at this point in the season. They were just beat down to the tune of 20 kills by Liquid and have still only beaten the two last place teams in North America. TSM on the other hand was barely tested by C9 even with Hai in the lineup, ultimately dispatching them for an under 30 minute win. This price is simply too low for an elite player against a team that as of yet has proven exactly nothing.
HuHi, CLG ($7,900) – Even after the sleepwalk of a win over Echo Fox, HuHi is still the only mid laner in the top five in kills in the NA LCS. His 10.8 CSD@10 won’t be challenged by Alex Ichetovkin no matter how hard his name wants to be the the same as the fellow Russian hockey star’s. Salaries are slightly easier to work on this slate, so we have no reason to not consider paying up at mid lane.
ADC
Apollo, DIG ($7,000) – If we’re taking a stand somewhere in these five games, it should be this one. The Cloud9 that reached split finals no longer exists and this current team is a game to game question mark. C9 may even decide to give Bunny FuFuu another chance here and we know how that has gone. I’ve seen no actual confirmation that Hai will play Sunday, so it is possible and is something to watch for, even if unlikely. There is very little to statistically like about Apollo, who has the worst @10 numbers among ADCs, but the state of C9 is enough to entice me in GPPs.
Doublelift, TSM ($7,600) – Price aside, the different between Doublelift and WildTurtle in these matchups comes down to determining what type of risk you would rather take. With Doublelift there is significant downside in a possible loss to NRG, while with WildTurtle there is a chance for Immortals to win in similar fashion against Echo Fox as CLG did. It’s extremely close, but I’ll take the $1,300 and higher upside against NRG.
Team
The favorite: Counter Logic Gaming ($5,000) – Renegades are the worst team in the league. Echo Fox is bad, too, but using substitutes at multiple positions and deserves at least some benefit of the doubt.
The upset: Team Dignitas ($3,700) – There’s not as much confidence with this as there was with Liquid yesterday, but Cloud9 really isn’t very good. A little less Billy and a little more Boss from BillyBoss would go a long way.