Another LCS week brings together the cream of the crop in League of Legends from both the European and North American scenes with some interesting matchups and a lot of potential upsets in store. Read on for some hints on potential pickups for your ESL Fantasy teams.

For this week’s predictions, I’ll be looking at matchups first before taking a look at the players. Of course, there are good players who always bring good performances, but if a team isn’t going to have a solid week, even the best performance by a single player will bring in far less Fantasy points than the rest of the team achieving a straight 2-0.

Let’s take a look at the 16 matches heading our way this week.

Supa Hot matches in EU LCS

After a week of few surprises besides the triumph of Supa Hot Crew over Fnatic, we’re now heading into a week where only a few results could be considered set in stone already. All the big names have hard matches ahead, and picking your EU players this week could turn out to be harder than in previous ones. 

Alliance and SK Gaming will both face Fnatic this week. Judging from their current performance (4-4 after three weeks of EU LCS), it might be a good time to play against the Spring Split winners. However, you never know what xPeke and his team are up to. Keeping this somewhat shaky prediction in mind, the other matchups (SK vs. Copenhagen Wolves and Alliance vs. Gambit) don’t make calls on their outcomes much safer. Maybe SK are in an easier position facing the Wolves, who haven’t been baring their teeth at the other big teams in the same manner as Gambit so far.

The best shot for some more good performances is in the hands of Supa Hot Crew. Mr Rallez, Selfie and their teammates will be playing Millenium and ROCCAT. Both matches are looking good for SHC, with Millenium not really rediscovering their Super Week drive and ROCCAT still being far from their Spring Split performance. Picking up some of their players would be a reasonable decision as they might step up to the second or even first rank considering that both Alliance and SK Gaming have a harder week ahead.

However, if you rather go with the outsider, picking Gambit players could be the choice for you. While a win over Millenium wouldn’t surprise many, Genja and his teammates have the chance to make another top team struggle. With only three wins to their account and considering their general state of play right now, it’s not something that would come easy, but keeping in mind that two of those wins were against Fnatic and SK Gaming, this might be your chance to gamble and win big.

A tough week for Dignitas, Cloud 9 and Team SoloMid

After three weeks of LCS, the NA rankings are giving a decent impression of the current level of play. Curse, Evil Geniuses and compLexity have had a hard time adjusting their teams to the new season and their LCS opponents: all of them will have a difficult week ahead facing the top five.

For LMQ and CLG, this week shows a lot of potential. While LMQ could conquer the top of the rankings with their matches against EG and Curse, CLG could step up and get Seraph into his comfort zone in their upcoming matches against compLexity and EG. Having LMQ and CLG players on your roster this week isn’t a bad idea, but maximum points shouldn’t be expected as those matches could be done sooner rather than later.

Team Dignitas and TSM both have one match for points and one for glory coming up, with them due to face Curse or compLexity as well as Cloud 9. Dignitas have the luxury of playing Curse first while TSM will be taking on C9, giving them an idea of what C9 is up to this week. TSM have to find their play plan early on against C9, and will be playing compLexity second.

Picking up players from C9 could be considered the big gamble this week as the Spring Split champion is still not back on top form and has two big rivals ahead of them. Even though TSM’s performance is far from what everyone expected, both them and Dignitas are tough teams to play this split, and the outcome of the match against TSM could influence their second match a lot. However, if you’ve still got the faith in Link and his team, backing them this week could pay off for you.

Final thoughts on this week’s lineup

As previously said, Supa Hot Crew, LMQ and CLG are pretty safe bets this week. Depending on your budget, a team mixing these players should secure you a good glut of points as well as some additional money from the players’ value increasing.

• Top

  While Seraph has not yet brought the big plays, ending up with bad stats in most of the matches, the choice here is between Mimer and ackerman. Based on their teams’ performances, Mimer is more than just a cost-efficient alternative. While costing $350 less than ackerman, he only scored a little over 35 points less in total. For $845, Mimer is a good choice to head into this week with.

  Alternatives: If you believe in Dignitas taking down C9, ZionSpartan ($1,070) could be a pickup for you. He’s not on par with ackerman, but the next best choice from those teams having a harder week.

• Jungle

  The choice between NoName, Impaler and dexter is pretty dependent on your own personal preference. NoName’s performance was much like his team’s, and so paying the additional $240 compared with Impaler might be worth it. dexter is still worth $205 more, with one ESL Fantasy point less on average, but if you see him carrying this week, he still might be worth it.

  Alternatives: Do you think SK or Alliance are going to win over Fnatic? Svenskeren ($1,070) or Shook ($1,085) could be the choice for you as both of them are very close to NoName’s performance level and could potentially score big this week.

• Mid

  Link hasn’t played his best season so far, so you might want to leave him out of your considerations. Once again, it’s a question of how much budget you want to put into this position. XiaoWeiXiao is the fourth-best ESL Fantasy point scorer of the season, so spending $1,335 on him is something you might want to do. If not, Selfie, with six points less on average, is almost $400 cheaper. 

  Alternatives: Shiptur ($1,300) is still the best mid laner around, with a slight advantage over XiaoWeiXiao. If the matchup against C9 doesn’t bother you, he’s your man for mid lane.

• ADC

  Overall, it’s another straight “buy!” for LMQ’s Vasilii. On average, he is the third-best scoring player in ESL Fantasy, and deserves a spot on every team that can afford him. Doublelift has also worked his way up and is possibly an even better pick when you take CLG’s last games into account. Mr Rallez could also score a good amount of points once more, much like he did in week two.

  Alternatives: If matches against Fnatic and Gambit don’t scare you away from putting your money on Alliance, Tabzz ($1,305) is probably the best choice for you. He’s first in the ESL Fantasy ranking, and could once again carry his team to a victorious week.

• Support

  Another good potential acquisition is wewillfailer. The fifth-ranking support this season has played a good split so far, and could be one of the core players in SHC’s - and your - important week for just $930. For almost $200 more, you could upgrade to Mor, third-best support, who also looks to be having an easy week coming. Aphromoo would mean investing $1,165 while overall having slightly less points then wewillfailer, which is way too much when taking the match setup and recent performances into account.

  Alternatives: If you don’t mind the risk of facing Fnatic, both nRated ($1,145) and Nyph ($1,130) could be your support pick in this week. Both are almost the same price and bring almost the same amount of average points. The choice is yours!

Read some hints you want to take advantage of? Go to ESL Fantasy now and set up your winning team. Additionally, if you want to share your pickups and tips for this week, be sure to put them in the comments below!