With an impressive 2-0, the first winner of the Coke Zero European Challenger Series has been crowned.
Game 1 started out even in gold, but with a clear difference in lane advantage. K0u was able to get some early kills with his Kha'Zix, allowing him to snowball a little bit in the jungle. However, it was Freeze on Jinx who has getting way ahead in gold for NiP over Hjarnan. Eventually, the AD Carry getting stronger seems to more a better deal, as NiP were able to take map control away from C9E, getting towers successfully.
However, the Ninjas in Pyjamas made two big mistakes, both of which dealt with brushes. In separate occasions, one of them would keep facechecking when they had wards or abilities, and it allowed C9E to jump on them and win teamfight after teamfight. With a huge deficit though, it took a while, more than a hour's worth in fact, for Cloud 9 Eclipse to secure enough of an advantage to make the winning push. Nukeduck and Shacker on Lulu and Wukong respectively, were simply outscaled, even though it was such an effective combo. It was an intense match where just a couple of mistakes cost one team victory.
Game 2 started out quite similar to the start, with k0u once again getting snowballed, this time on Elise. While the gold was even, C9E was more funneled towards the jungler, wheres for NiP, the picks they got were spread evenly. The big change happened around the 17 minute mark around dragon, where C9E had better positioning and were able to dive outplay NiP, resulting in th 4-1 trade, plus the dragon and two outer turrets.
From that point, Cloud 9 Eclipse simply took their advantage and slowly pressed towards the Ninjas in Pyjamas, taking down the top and mid inhibitors with ease. A much faster game, NiP weren't able to bounce back due to the burst potential C9E had with their pick comp, the strong initiations from Shacker's Vi and Mithy's Leona insufficient. With a 30 minute surrender, Hjarnan and his team becomes the first ever European Challenger Series Champions.
