The LTA North conference has found its top two representatives to the Cross Conference playoffs stage: 100 Thieves and Cloud9. Today, the two teams expected to lose — by near consensus — prevailed over 2024's most dominant rosters. And, in the end, the purported weaker of the two claimed the LTAN's first seed to Sao Paulo, for the Cross Conference.

Last year, Team Liquid and FlyQuest, who won the Spring and Summer splits respectively, seemed a cut above the rest of the LCS competition. Coming into the inaugural LTA split, things were expected to be the same — FLY was rumored to be in especially strong form, with most players agreeing that they were the best team in the region.

Much like the LTA Sul matches earlier the same day, though, the reigning top two were sent to the lower bracket, faltering at the last hurdle before the cross-conference playoffs.

Quid back in MVP form

In the nail-biter opening game, an absurd First Blood outplay by Lim "Quid" Hyeon-seung against Um "UmTi" Sung-hyeon set the tone for the rest of the series — UmTi struggled to gain a foothold in any of the games, while Quid set the pace and dominated in all three. The first game was a back-and-forth affair, with both teams trading blows around the map until picks on Jeong "Impact" Eon-young and UmTi allowed 100T to claim the Atakhan buff and close out the game.

After a game-defining performance on Jayce, Quid seemed to level up even further on Sylas in game two. This time, the early game dominance that Team Liquid became infamous for last year was completely overrun — with an 8k gold lead, 100T looked unstoppable at 33 minutes. If they had chosen to take the Baron, they likely would've easily closed out a 2-0. Instead, Quid led the team over a single bridge too far, throwing their lead and allowing Team Liquid to steal the game.

In game 3, Team Liquid made the surprising choice to put Impact on Ambessa and UmTi on Zyra, both archetypal opposites of the characters they're known to dominate with. 100T also chose to mix things up, putting Quid on Viktor — a traditional control mage instead of the impactful melee champions he's known for. Ian Victor "FBI" Huang and Bill "Eyla" Nguyen were in incredible form throughout, playing their roles to near-perfection in teamfights — in game three, Eyla took over the game on Elise.

In a way, 100T's mechanically talented teamfighting carries were Team Liquid's kryptonite — though TL's veteran roster is undeniably talented, teamfights are considered their biggest weakness. With 100T in this form, they look like real contenders to be the LTA representative to the First Stand tournament in Korea.

"C9 is back" — Zven

Their first game against Cloud9 looked like another day at the office for FlyQuest. They were openly considered the incumbent best team by nearly everyone, and they proved it — with a composition built around Song "Quad" Su-hyeong's signature Cassiopeia, FLY took a clean first win. With superior laning and consistent mechanical outplays, FlyQuest's game one performance made it look like the series was already over.

Game two was the exact opposite. Fahad "Massu" Abdulmalek got to play Kai'Sa, the champion that earned him international fame at Worlds last year, and Gabriël "Bwipo" Rau was able to counterpick Park "Thanatos" Seung-gyu's Rumble with a pocket Galio. Despite that, C9 dominated the game. Jesper "Zven" Svenningsen and Thanatos went deathless and Lee "Loki" Sang-min consistently found ideal angles on Yone. Robert "Blaber" Huang was the most notable change, though — after getting completely outpaced in the first game, where he went 0/7 on Vi, his Sejuani seemed unstoppable in Game 2.

In Game 3, Kacper "Inspired" Słoma picked his iconic Ivern — of the nine stage games he'd played on the champion, he'd only ever lost one. Cloud9 knocked that winrate down. Blaber's Wukong netted C9 an early advantage, and Bwipo's Urgot faltered against Camille — but it was a triple kill by Loki's Taliyah at 24 minutes that broke the game open. FLY fought valiantly, but C9 closed out the series and looked ahead to their seeding match against 100 Thieves.

An anticlimactic finish

The final match of the day was a Bo1 to determine the seeding order between 100T and C9, an end-of-day matchup that almost no one saw coming. Other than the title of "Regular Season Champions," though, this game wasn't set to be too consequential — with the LTAS top two seeds already decided, these teams would likely be playing for the right to face Pain Gaming or LOUD.

PAIN, the reigning CBLOL champions, looked much weaker than the best LCS teams at Worlds last year; both teams would've likely been confident regardless of their first-round opponents in Sao Paulo. Perhaps for that reason, the game began with a 5v5 mid lane fight where 100T earned two kills. With highlight plays from Quid's Ambessa, the game was a clean stomp from there.

After six games, many of them back-and-forth thrillers, 100 Thieves claimed the first seed to the LTA Cross Conference stage in a game that looked more like a scrim than a professional game. Now, both 100T and C9 will look forward to the playoffs, vying for the chance to represent the LTA at the First Stand tournament in Korea.