Cloud 9: A Cinderella Story

North American team Cloud9 left fans, casters and analysts speechless with them going from 7th place in the regular season to the 3rd and final seed at the world championship.

Cloud9 were able to reverse sweep their way through the regional gauntlet into a convincing 3-1 win against Team Liquid to secure their spot at the 2015 world championship. Many people doubted that they would even make the gauntlet as they were tied for 8th with Team8 and had to beat 2nd place team TSM. However, Cloud9 won against TSM after a massive team fight and then pulled out a tactical win against Team8 in the tiebreaker for 7th place. These two wins meant they didn’t have to survive being relegated and were kept in the running for worlds.

Cloud9 wasn’t always a lower-tier team. During their debut in season 3 they earned records for the longest winning streak (13) and most victories in one season split (25). And they earned a bye for the first round of the world championship with their 30-3(91% win rate) in the Summer split. They were then knocked out of the world championship by Europe’s first seed Fnatic.

Then came the preseason for season 4. Cloud9’s coach left to be replaced by Dan Dinh, brother of rival org TSM owner Andy Dinh. Also in the preseason came the Battle of the Atlantic where they would go up against Fnatic again in the finals. This time they go 2-0 against them in a best of 3 match and win the Battle of the Atlantic.

Once the NA LCS Spring split started Cloud9 won it again to secure a spot in the All Star event. Unfortunately for Cloud9, Mid laner and shotcaller, Hai’s lung collapsed. They were forced to find a replacement for the event. They still made it past group stages only losing to Korean powerhouse SK Telecom T1 K, but lost in the first bracket round to Chinese team OMG.

After All Stars ended the summer split began. Cloud9 was beaten by TSM in the finals. The first time Cloud9 had lost a split since beginning in NA. Their second place finish still meant they could go to the world championship that year and they were drawn into group D with European team Alliance, Korean team Najin White-Shield and brazillian wildcard team KaBum! e-Sports. Cloud9 went 4-2 in group stages and would have had to play a tiebreaker for second against Alliance but in the last game of group stages Alliance, after a perfect win against first in groups Najin, loses to the wildcard team. This upset knocked Alliance and Europe out of the 2014 World championship. Cloud9 goes up against Samsung Blue, a Korean favorite for the finals, in the quarterfinals. They fought hard but lost 3-1. Cloud9 was one of two western teams to take a game off the Korean or Chinese teams.

In the preseason to Season 5, Cloud9 was the NA team fan-voted to play in IEM San Jose where they won the tournament only dropping a single game to Alliance.

Because of this they auto-qualified to IEM Katowice. At IEM Katowice they failed to win a single game and finished tied for last place, after this they returned to the NA LCS Spring Split to finish second against TSM once again.

The summer split saw a change in Cloud9. Hai, mid laner and shotcaller for Cloud9, couldn’t play as well anymore because of wrist pains so he decided to step down and let young European talent Incarnation play for him. This was a massive change to Cloud9 as they held the record for the longest a team has gone without roster change and Cloud9 was also seen as the “True NA team,” as all the other teams had Korean/European imports, and now they were bringing in a European player. Fans were upset to see Hai leave but had to respect it, as it was his choice.

The summer split began and Cloud9 took a shaky win against TSM in their first game but after that they lost 7 and only won a game off TDK a team playing with 3 substitutes as they had visa problems. 2-7 the worst Cloud9 has ever done. This is when they had no choice but to bring Hai back in as their shot calling seemed to be their major downfall.

However, Hai didn’t return to the mid lane, he went to the jungle. Meteos, their jungler at the time, felt that he could no longer compete at a pro player level and stepped down to let Hai fill in. This led to them finishing 6-12 and 7th place, narrowly avoiding relegations and placing them into the gauntlet. Where they left the analyst desk speechless with their performance. Being down 0-2 in a best of 5 to come back and win 3-2 twice in one weekend is something no team has ever done before; Hai’s shot calling proves itself to be the best of the region once again.

Cloud9 will face off against European team Fnatic, Korean team Invictus gaming and Taiwan team AhQ E-sports in-group B. It wont be easy but Cloud9 is a team where they step up when it matters.