League of Legends LCS Spring Playoff preview: TSM poised to crush the Echo Fox Cinderella story
My prediction of TSM beating Echo Fox 3-1 in the LCS spring split quarterfinals and why Echo Fox’s League of Legends Cinderella story is coming to an end.
TSM and Echo Fox are battling it out on Sunday for a spot in a LCS semifinal. Both League of Legends teams have been on a rampage lately, Echo Fox with a 4 game winning streak and TSM going 11-1 in their last 12 games.
Both teams also recently took a game off of the number one LCS regular season team, Team Liquid. In addition, Echo Fox was able to do something TSM could not do this split, and defeated Cloud 9 last week. It is hard to call this winning streak a “fluke” when they beat the top two ranked regular season teams.
Echo Fox has been drafting late-game scaling team compositions. The team weathers the early game storm in order to enable AD Carry Apollo “Apollo” Price and mid laner Kim “Fenix” Jae-hun to pop-off on late-game hyper carries.
In Echo Fox’s final game of the regular season against Counter Logic Gaming, Apollo was able to snag a pentakill on his new signature champion in League of Legends, Jinx. In order to try and counter this late-game strategy by Echo Fox, many teams have targeted Apollo through picks and bans. This strategy has been ineffective as Apollo has managed to pick up wins on three different League of Legends late-game AD carries in Kog’Maw, Xayah, and Jinx.
!["Aatrox.](https://blogoflegends.com/2019/03/27/league-of-legends-lcs-playoffs-tsm-fox/"https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/fetch/c_fill,g_auto,f_auto,h_389,w_590/https%3A%2F%2Fblogoflegends.com%2Ffiles%2F2018%2F12%2Faatrox-base-850x560.jpg")
!["Jinx.](https://blogoflegends.com/2019/03/27/league-of-legends-lcs-playoffs-tsm-fox/"https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/fetch/c_fill,g_auto,f_auto,h_389,w_590/https%3A%2F%2Fblogoflegends.com%2Ffiles%2F2019%2F02%2Fjinx-base-850x560.jpg")
!["Thresh.](https://blogoflegends.com/2019/03/27/league-of-legends-lcs-playoffs-tsm-fox/"https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/fetch/c_fill,g_auto,f_auto,h_389,w_590/https%3A%2F%2Fblogoflegends.com%2Ffiles%2F2019%2F02%2FThresh_0-850x560.jpg")
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<p>Echo Fox will be pumped up from its four-game winning streak and by having the chance to knock TSM out of playoffs. However, I am sure the team will be fired up as Zven and Bjergsen want to get revenge for the last spring playoff early exit. I expect both teams will be fired up and ready to fight for a semifinal slot in this LCS spring-split playoffs.</p>
<div class="next-slide slider"> <a class="next-slide-btn" style="background:#283b42" data-track="shortcode" data-track-action="next-slide-shortcode" href=https://blogoflegends.com/2019/03/27/league-of-legends-lcs-playoffs-tsm-fox/"#"> <span class="title">Next:</span> Pick & ban strategy </a>
</div><!—pageview_candidate—></p><hr id="pagebreak"><p><iframe src=https://blogoflegends.com/2019/03/27/league-of-legends-lcs-playoffs-tsm-fox/"https://www.youtube.com/embed/hMGMs3sLksA" height="315" width="560"></iframe></p>
<h3>Pick and Ban</h3>
<p>What I find most surprising about Echo Fox’s resurgence, is that other teams have been unable to gain leads in lane or effectively snowball these leads to victories versus Echo Fox. Both teams know Echo Fox’s style before even loading up the client. In other games, knowing your opponent’s strategy before the game starts is a huge advantage, but because Echo Fox is so good at it, they have been able to snuff out multiple attempts to thwart their style.</p>
<p>This is mostly because Echo Fox has a deep champ pool in every position on the map in late game champions. I do believe that Jinx and Vladimir are still must bans, as those two champions have been very effective for Echo Fox. It is still important, despite the risk of giving over strong meta champions, for Echo Fox to ban Ryze (a ban in the meta in the first place) and Kalista.</p>
<h3>Play your style</h3>
<p>I do believe it will a fun series to watch, especially since we have a good idea of what each team is going to try to draft/play. Echo Fox will be very strained in pick and ban to not only secure themselves a strong late-game team comp but also deny TSM a dive and split-push comps as well.</p>
<p>One caveat to my prediction is that TSM should not try to draft late-game champions or steal them away like other teams tried to do versus Echo Fox. Other teams have tried this over and over again in their last four games and it has not worked out well at all for them.</p>
<p>While TSM might still be able to win with this strategy it would be falling right into Echo Fox’s trap and would be trying to beat them at their own game. Echo Fox has shown that when other teams draft late-game against them, they just go even bigger and more over the top with champions such as Azir to cement them as the favorites in the late-game. I am not saying TSM cannot pick any scaling champions, but if they give up lane priority to do so that would be a huge mistake.</p>
<p>My prediction is that TSM will win the series 3-1 over Echo Fox in a fairly one-sided affair. I believe that the matchup is a mismatch in strategies and while Echo Fox would have had a much better chance of going on in the playoffs if they were versus FlyQuest or Golden Guardians, TSM will be the roadblock they cannot get past.</p>
<div class="fs-shortcode" data-type="StoryLink" data-theme="dark" data-text="LEC Playoffs Preview: Fnatic vs. Team Vitality" data-url="https://blogoflegends.com/2019/03/26/lec-playoffs-fnatic-vs-vitality/2/" data-call-to-action="Next"
> <div class="story-link-next"> <a class="story-link-next-btn" style="background:#283b42" data-track="shortcode" data-track-action="story-link-next-shortcode" href=https://blogoflegends.com/2019/03/27/league-of-legends-lcs-playoffs-tsm-fox/"https://blogoflegends.com/2019/03/26/lec-playoffs-fnatic-vs-vitality/2/"> <span class="call_to_action">Next:</span> LEC Playoffs Preview: Fnatic vs. Team Vitality </a> </div>
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<p>This series will be an interesting race between two boats going in completely opposite directions. Who will be more effective at playing their style? Unfortunately for Echo Fox, their playstyle is poorly matched up against TSM. If you disagree let me know in comments.</p>
<h5>Tune in Sunday March 31, 2019 at 12:00 PT on <a href=https://blogoflegends.com/2019/03/27/league-of-legends-lcs-playoffs-tsm-fox/"http://twitch.tv/riotgames">twitch.tv/riotgames to find out.</h5><!—pageview_candidate—>">
