Cloud9 arrived at Haikou, Hainan, China as one of the favorites for the event, and have been living up to their name so far. The USA representatives suffered one loss in the first group stage to fnatic, but had already advanced to the next stage at that point, defeating SCARZ Absolute and The Onliners.

Cloud9 had a busy schedule recently

In the second, BO2 group stage, Cloud9 took a win over GODSENT, defeating the Swedes on Train and Cache fairly convincingly. Following the game, we sat down with William "⁠RUSH⁠" Wierzba to talk about their event so far.

I'll start with the last LAN you had, IEM Katowice, and the game you played against FaZe that decided how it ended for you. After the tournament finished and you guys went home, how did you assess that game?

Obviously, in the first map we lost pretty one-sidedly, 16-5 or something like that, so it wasn't going good for us and maybe some of us kind of got flashbacks to the old matches we played against them, such as in New York, Oakland, Cancun. In all these games we really got owned and we were like "we can't let this happen again". So we mentally reset and we won 16-13 on Cache and the third map was a really interesting one, it was almost a rematch of the grand final of the Major in a sense. There was a lot of clutches, it was 18-15 to 18-18 and, at that point, it was kind of disappointing because we won three clutches in a row, mine, Stew's and Tyler's, and we really thought that we got in the bag.

Maybe that is why we lost, maybe we got a little bit complacent, but I think they played great and deserved the win there. In the end, we thought it was a good game. We were sad, but at the same time we realized that we still have [what it takes to compete] versus FaZe.

Is there a rivalry between you guys developing nowadays, with the Major and now this very exciting playoff game?

I would say that there is only a rivalry as long as we keep on playing them close. I don't think they will consider us a rival if we just fall over like we did at StarLadder. There we lost 16-8, 16-1 or something, that can't happen if we want to consider ourselves a rival. Like I said, if we continue the close games like we did in Katowice, then I think yeah, it's a rivalry in the making.

You had only a couple of days at home after that and before WESG, what was the focus on during those few days?

It kind of sucked because we only had three or four days at home before we had to come back here to China, and we knew it was going to be a long travel day, so we wanted to take some time off. We only took one day off and then went back to practice, and we didn't have a lot of time to prepare for the online matches versus OpTic and Liquid.

Versus OpTic, we won the first map and we got smashed by them on the second map, which was unexpected since it was Mirage, a map we are usually really good on, and OpTic is a brand new team, they have never played against us before. We weren't necessarily jetlagged, but we weren't prepared for them to play that well - and they won. Against Liquid, I know that we were 15-8 up on the second map and we really should've closed it out, but we really threw hard and lost in Overtime. That's kind of disappointing because we would've been 3-3 and now we are 2-4.

It sucks, but we got a lot of the hard matches out of the way, we played SK, Liquid and OpTic already, so the only hard matches left are teams like NRG and maybe Luminosity. When we come back after this event we have four weeks at home, it's going to be a lot of EPL matches and ECS matches, so we will have time to prepare for these matches instead of just going straight into it after an event. So I think we will have a better record when we come back.

Is there anything special you do when preparing for online matches right now?

For the six matches we played in EPL, we just did preparation in terms of the veto, what we are strong on, what they are strong on, what's the best option for us. But I think that, normally, we would do more research on the team we are playing against and what's the most optimal strategy and stuff like that. Going forward we are going to do that against teams we play in EPL and ECS.

General feelings about WESG... there is obviously a big prize pool, so what was the thinking like coming here?

That is probably one of the main reasons we came here, because the level of competition is not extremely high, obviously there is SK, EnVyUs, BIG, Space Soldiers, fnatic, these are the teams that are the set teams, but everyone else is basically a PUG. And it's kind of interesting that you have to have one nationality, there is only a few teams in the world that have that.

I think the prize pool was a big driving force for us to come, if it was way less, I don't think we would've came. Maybe in the future WESG should look into having just one or two players from the same team per a roster, so they could have more of a PUG style and everyone would be on even ground, the preparation would be the same for each team.

Right now it's looking good for us, obviously we lost to fnatic which sucks. They outplayed us on Mirage, we didn't play that great either, and they are probably going to be our hardest opponent going forward because SK is eliminated, EnVyUs is eliminated, those two are some of the strongest teams here. Now that it's just fnatic, BIG, Space Soldiers left, I think that we have a good shot to win this.

You mentioned the teams here, the NA region competition here is not really on the level you would expect. Not even talking about tfull eams, obviously the mixed-team factor is there, but there are not even a lot of known players, high skilled players here. What do you think about that?

Looking at the online competition, there was practically zero competition at all. I'm not sure why, maybe because teams were more focused on practicing, Liquid, NRG didn't make any PUG teams to come here because they thought it wasn't worth it. Maybe they knew we would compete so it would be hard to beat us for a spot online, but even then, there were five or six slots and teams got through by just losing matches. So it's pretty absurd how it happened.

But as I said, if they change the format in the future so it's more PUG, having everyone on the same level, I think you will see more PUGs popping up with top-tier players instead of just having one team and then lower-tier players. And the lower-tier teams are here because they don't have a huge amount of tournaments to play and this is a big stage. Even if they lose, it's good experience for them, they play teams and get to be in a foreign country for free. So it's a no-brainer for, but I hope that, in the future, more top talent from NA will be at these events.

Let's touch on the game you played here against GODSENT, I think both maps had a similar flow, you start well, they start coming back on the second part of the first half, and then you close it out. Is there anything special they did, some adaptations or stuff like that that got them into the game?

On both maps, it seemed like they did the same thing and it would work. For example, they went inner on Train a lot because they knew that Stewie was alone there most rounds. And it's hard to play inner alone, so credit to Stewie for giving his all there. And then on Cache, they went B a couple of times and it reset our money. On both maps, they got a couple of rounds in a row, but we knew that if we win the next pistol that we are pretty much going to win. I think that we almost won all four pistols, that was also a huge driving factor to those wins. I'm sure that GODSENT was a little bit upset about that.