Cloud9 have made it to another major after narrowly defeating Renegades 2-0 (de_mirage 16-14, de_cache 19-16).

The first two rounds of de_mirage were split between Renegades and Cloud9, with the latter starting as Counter-Terrorists and responding to a pistol loss with a strong message in the forcebuy.

That allowed them to take an early 4-1 lead before Yaman "⁠yam⁠" Ergenekon's double opening kill set Renegades up for 4-4 as Cloud9 tried to go on the agressive. Mike "⁠shroud⁠" Grzesiek then picked up an important double on the B bombsite for two rounds in the bag, but three kills from Justin "⁠jks⁠" Savage pulled it back to a one-round difference.

Another forcebuy victory, this time with much better equipment, shut down Renegades early as they conceded all remaining rounds, in the last of which shroud delivered a quick quad-kill in B halls.



shroud delivered another great performance on de_mirage

Three kills by Ryan "⁠freakazoid⁠" Abadir in their Terrorist-side pistol round put Cloud9 up on 13-5, but they couldn't close it out in the early stages. The Australians won eight of the following nine rounds easily, apart from a 1-on-1 clutch by jks, but a split A and an A smoke-off strategy versus a double-AWP setup won Cloud9 two of the last three rounds for 16-14.

Switching over to de_cache, Tyler "⁠Skadoodle⁠" Latham's quad-kill heroics were not enough to grab the initial pistol round, while Renegades secured two rounds as CT before dropping three in a row following the first gunround.

yam, Karlo "⁠USTILO⁠" Pivac and jks all delivered important plays in three out of four gunrounds afterwards, with the youngest winning a 1-on-3 in one of them. At 7-4 their agressive play backfired horribly as they met shroud in door, and freakazoid's triple in another round pushed the game to 7-7.

USTILO's lonesome triple on the A bombsite helped them get a one-round lead towards the end, which they immediately lost as the same player couldn't turn a close situation around in the pistol round.



USTILO has proven to be a good addition, but Renegades came up short in the end

Close battles ended up with the game sitting at a tie yet again, this time 10-10, as Australians pushed on for more, and got it, for 13-11. Agressive play in A main allowed freakazoid to open up the round, and combined with a great retake on the B bombsite Cloud9 clawed back to make it even once more.

What happened afterwards could only be described as craziness, as three gunrounds in a row it ended up with a player winning a crucial 1-on-2. jks, shroud and freakazoid all shined as the game went into overtime after a shoddy buy by Renegades. There it was mostly all Cloud9 however, who put their foot down and won four out of five rounds to become the fourth North American team to advance to the MLG major.

MLG Columbus 2016 Main Qualifier Best of 3 Cloud9 Matchpage 2 0 Renegades 16 Mirage 14 19 Cache 16

Cloud9 K - D +/- ADR Rating 2.0 Jordan 'n0thing' Gilbertn0thing 52 - 43 +9 92.1 1.26 Ryan 'freakazoid' Abadirfreakazoid 48 - 51 -3 81.6 1.16 Jake 'Stewie2K' YipStewie2K 46 - 39 +7 71.4 1.13 Mike 'shroud' Grzesiekshroud 49 - 41 +8 75.2 1.07 Tyler 'Skadoodle' LathamSkadoodle 40 - 37 +3 64.2 0.96 Renegades K - D +/- ADR Rating 2.0 Justin 'jks' Savagejks 41 - 41 0 69.6 1.04 Karlo 'USTILO' PivacUSTILO 46 - 47 -1 79.4 1.02 Aaron 'AZR' WardAZR 42 - 45 -3 74.9 1.01 Yaman 'yam' Ergenekonyam 45 - 46 -1 67.2 0.95 Chad 'SPUNJ' BurchillSPUNJ 36 - 56 -20 77.8 0.82

As Cloud9 snatched the last MLG Columbus 2016 spot, the full team list for the major is following: