Cloud9’s newly acquired Counter-Strike: Global Offensive roster is wasting little time trying to make a statement to the rest of the North American scene, rendering the caster unable to believe what he saw during a DreamHack qualifier match.
Some of the best moments in CSGO require no explanation, but sometimes, that’s only because it’s impossible to provide any explanation at all.
The sudden rise of the new roster for Cloud9 is hard to explain as well, as the former mystery men of ATK have catapulted themselves into contention for the next great North American roster.
On January 12, Cloud 9 positioned themselves for another all-day qualification run, staring down an eight-team single-elimination tournament with a single spot at DreamHack Leipzig on the line. Awaiting them if they triumph are the new rosters of Virtus.Pro, Renegades and MAD Lions, the newly rebranded North, and others.
C9 started their qualifying run against Triumph, a relatively unproven US team that had to fight through the open qualifiers to make the closed qualifier tournament. Unfortunately for them, they struggled to triumph against the opponent, even with superior equipment.
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Ian ‘motm’ Hardy came flying out of double doors, laying out an unprepared player with a vicious Deagle headshot. That kill looked like it would only be a consolation prize for a lost round, but Josh ‘oSee’ Ohm doubled up with two more Deagle deaths.
“What in the world was that? Holy s**t that was incredible,” the caster remarked, before motm got his hands on an AK and hit a nutty shot through the smoke to clutch the round. The performance of the two C9 twenty-year-olds caused the caster’s pitch to skyrocket as the NA squad won.
The momentum of that round carried C9 into a strong first half lead, eventually taking the first map on Dust2 by a score of 16-10, and pushing themselves closer to yet another tournament qualification by taking the series 2-0 over Triumph.
With a 16-10 on Dust 2 & 16-11 on Overpass, #C9CSGO take the #C9WIN vs @TriumphGamingGG and advance to play vs @Complexity in ~1 hour! #GGWP pic.twitter.com/MBazxQUnKs
— Cloud9 (@Cloud9) January 12, 2020
After they signed their contracts, they went right to work proving themselves in the IEM Katowice NA qualifier, earning a spot at the IEM Championships without dropping a single series, and picking up wins over the new “NA juggernaut” in Complexity, and the established Brazilian veterans in MIBR.
They will meet Complexity again in the semifinals of the DreamHack Leipzig NA qualifier. With a victory over them, C9 would be one more series away from qualifying for their second major tournament in less than a week.