Cloud9's Vainglory team was built to win championships — and they did exactly that last month in London at the Spring Unified Western Championship, taking the first major live tournament since this roster formed near the start of the year .

But that success could not be assumed or assured in advance. Cloud9 faced an immense challenge in Team SoloMid, North America's longest-running Vainglory threat and the team's biggest scrim partner. And furthermore, putting together a team of superstars is no guarantee of excellence: Cloud9's previous roster was packed with talent and they couldn't find consistent form , which is precisely why they were broken up in favor of this squad.

As the team tells it, getting in sync was no small feat, and it required the players to reevaluate their past play styles and perhaps shelve their egos for the greater good. It also required them to place a lot of trust in their support staff, but that move was well-founded: preparation and clever draft selections helped drive their championship success. Now, can they do it again?

Finding their footing

"Coming together, we had high expectations to either win or place top in any tournaments," says team leader Gabe "Gabevizzle" Villarin, who plays the in-game Captain role, right after their big London win. "I think we just followed up the hype and proved everyone who supported us that they were right. It feels good."

Gabriel "Oldskool" Villamariona, the team's Carry, adds that "it feels amazing," echoing his teammate's excitement. He seems relieved to have finally won his first championship despite being a top Vainglory player for some time, and even Gabevizzle suggests that it's one of the reason he's so happy with the team victory: that they could collectively do it for Oldskool.

Gabevizzle leads the team during the championship © C.Beattie | ESL | eslgaming.com

But even if they seem content and cohesive as a unit in this moment, they suggest that the pairing wasn't a completely natural fit from the start. With Jungle specialist Joseph "iLoveJoseph" Samano as their third, it took some time for the team to learn each others' tendencies and get in sync over the course of the spring Vainglory 8 season.

"I don't think we gelled together very quickly. It took about five months," says Gabevizzle. Given the time they've been together as a team, that timeline suggests that they had only just gotten on the same page right in time for the championship. "It didn't start off smooth in the beginning," he adds. "We had a lot of problems — things we didn't know from each other, or trust from each other, because we hadn't really played as a full team."

Oldskool cites difficulties in bringing together their play styles, since they had come from very different teams in the past and never really played together. Gabevizzle calls his own style "a little bit more calculated" and says Oldskool is more aggressive, and they had to learn to find a balance between them.

Even so, the leader claims he won more of the arguments. "I felt like I was right most of the time, and pretty much forced Skool to listen to me," says Gabevizzle.

Making the connection

What ultimately smoothed over their conflicting play styles? Simply being together in person, they claim. Whatever barriers existed between them online were eased in the real world.

"Other than practicing a couple hours more than normal, just coming together helped our synergy tremendously. I think that I'm able to calm these guys down a lot quicker than when it's online," says Gabevizzle. Oldskool adds, "It's so much easier to just be honest with your teammates. They can see your expressions and everything, and they can feel what you're feeling. It's easier to talk to them."

Oldskool talks tactics between games © C.Beattie | ESL | eslgaming.com

According to Cloud9's Ian Huston, who transitioned from analyst to manager and helped assemble this roster for the organization, the team's in-person communication saw a drastic improvement at the event. It's what impressed him the most about their performance.

"While their in-game communication sometimes struggles, it was the best that it's ever been at the championship. This did wonders in keeping up their spirits and brought a previously unseen resilience to their games," says the manager. "Productivity was boosted with post-game reviews and VOD reviews being that much more accessible with everyone in the same room, instead of the usual issues in trying to coordinate it online."

Yet, the team was worried coming into the event. Cloud9 had planned an in-person boot camp for the squad before the championship, to help them find synergy, but the plans fell through. Even in the glow of their championship success, it still appeared to be a lingering point of contention.

iLoveJoseph gets ready for more dominant play © C.Beattie | ESL | eslgaming.com

"We were actually pretty upset when we heard the news," says iLoveJoseph about the canceled boot camp. Huston cuts in, eager to get away from the subject, saying, "Things didn't work out with the boot camp, but we made the most of it and are happy with the results." However, Gabevizzle dismisses the redirect, backing up his teammate by adding, "But still upset."

Even if something went awry that the players weren't quite ready to drop, Huston's point stands: They still made it happen, and both rapidly acclimated to and immediately benefitted from being together as a team. That not only won them the championship, but also bodes well for their continued success as a squad.

Taking down TSM

Cloud9 came into the Spring Unified Western Championship as North America's second seed, behind Team SoloMid, but looked dominant from the start. They made reasonably quick work of the third-seeded European team SK Gaming, winning the series 3-1, but their biggest challenge awaited with TSM on day three. And that's where the input from Cloud9 coach wailmer and analyst physiX really shined.

Team SoloMid took the first game, perhaps signaling an early surge of momentum that could leave Cloud9 scrambling, but Gabevizzle wasn't concerned. "I felt like it was a warmup. We played well, but we probably just didn't enjoy our draft as much for the first game against TSM," he suggests. "Other than that, we felt like we were playing really well and that we just needed to switch up something in the draft."

Team SoloMid provided Cloud9's biggest test © C.Beattie | ESL | eslgaming.com

Oldskool adds that they "were a little shaky in the beginning," but once they settled in, "the nerves cleared up and we were ready to take three in a row." More importantly, it's where they really started getting crafty with the draft, even surprising their most frequent scrim partner with unexpected hero picks.

With the second game, the team began banning Grumpjaw, a favored hero of TSM's VONC — the "priority was to shift VONC away from play-making heroes," explains physiX. And while they planned to put Cloud9's players onto their most comfortable players, including Adagio for Oldskool, Koshka and Taka for iLoveJoseph, and Adagio and Lyra for Gabevizzle, the need to throw off TSM's game brought an unexpected twist: melee fighter Rona for iLoveJoseph.

"We literally pulled Rona out of our ass," says Gabevizzle. "This guy has not played a single game of Rona, not one this whole season. And our analyst and coach said, 'Hey, this would help our draft if you learned this hero.' PhysiX told him the night before to play some games as Rona for the first time, and he did. We were like, 'Damn, we just lost that first game. We need to pull out something weird.' And it was the Rona pick."

"Theories on paper must evolve to match the evolving meta during a tournament. Several times we had to adapt our draft in response to what we saw teams run during the tournament," explains physiX. "This is how the idea of running Rona in the Jungle — a hero completely out of meta in North America — came about, and in large part was a deciding factor to our success."

Pairing that with putting Gabevizzle on Baptiste, a mystical new hero who can keep the TSM-picked hero Koshka in check, Cloud9 made quick work of their opponent in game two. And that momentum continued across three-straight wins, culminating in the thrilling game four finale detailed in our championship overview . TSM had a Kraken pushing into Cloud9's base, but just then, Cloud9 unleashed a blistering offensive assault, taking down VONC's Kestrel before finishing off BestChuckNA and FlashX. And then they sprinted into TSM's base and took out the opposing base turrets and Vain Crystal before the Kraken could finish their own.

It was the most exciting moment of the weekend, capping off the championship's biggest matchup — and when I spoke with iLoveJoseph hours after that semifinal win, it was still a blur to him. "It was kind of in the moment — I forgot what happened," he admits. "All I remember was running through the lane and getting those turrets. Winning with Koshka, late game … it felt amazing taking the series against TSM."

Gabevizzle believes that their late-game team composition put them at a disadvantage against TSM in the 27-minute match, but that once they got a jump on VONC, it was all over. "We got the catch on Kestral in the lane — she was really fast, but we were just able to catch up to her," he says. "And the second we got onto her, we knew it: We won the fight."

Guiding minds

While Gabevizzle, Oldskool and iLoveJoseph are the players you see on the stage and in the game, they all acknowledge how critical their support staff was in their victory.

"I would put definitely 70-80 percent [of our success] on our coach and analyst. They really helped with settling these guys down and getting us more together as a team, and our analyst physiX and coach wailmer did all of our drafts," explains Gabevizzle. "We just had to do the playing. They did all the drafting, and we weren't really worried about that."

Analyst physiX guided Cloud9's draft tactics © C.Beattie | ESL | eslgaming.com

According to Huston, wailmer reached out to Cloud9 when he saw the roster announcement and felt like he could help — and came with glowing recommendations from the community. Cloud9 brought him on to manage the team's macro and micro-play, whether he's devising totally new strategies or adapting proven tactics for this squad. Wailmer's individual drills have helped the players improve their mechanical skill, while his guidance has pushed them to remember how their in-game parts affect the greater success of the team.

It was also his decision to put iLoveJoseph on Rona in the TSM series, although he wasn't onsite at the Championship — physiX was there, popping up onstage between matches to guide the team's decisions along with input from the coach. Huston recruited her from the community as this roster came together, and she began utilizing Vainglory's alpha API to derive critical information to help the team get a jump on opponents.

"She quickly identified herself as a pioneer in the community for API technology," explains Huston. "Since then, she has adapted her technology for competitive use while inheriting the draft duties under the tutelage of wailmer."

Manager Ian Huston built this championship roster © C.Beattie | ESL | eslgaming.com

As analyst, physiX attends every online team practice, even when it's very late in the night on her end, and put in significant work for the championship to target deny opposing player picks or make the most of their own draft choices. Wailmer serves as the chief strategist while physiX "helped with the nitty-gritty iteration of draft possibilities once I grasped his ideas," she explains. They'll often draft against each other and role-play as the opponents, trying to understand how they would likely draft and respond in those situations.

"The exact method behind how we draft is something I would like to keep secret a little longer, but involves doing extensive research on the enemy team players and their play style, as well as iterating through draft trees on large spreadsheet," physiX says. With more than a million draft cases (if ignoring draft order), they really have to hone in on the most likely scenarios. And getting ready for the championship's last day alone required about seven hours of draft prep.

While the players had their own comfort picks for heroes, they quickly realized that it was better to defer to their support team and just focus on execution. "It always worked," says Gabevizzle about the draft strategy. "Whenever we were onstage with our analyst, she would say one thing and we would say another … [ultimately] I was like, 'Just trust her.'"

Ready for a run?

After the intensity of the Team SoloMid series, steamrolling GankStars in a 3-0 sweep felt like a victory lap for Cloud9. They had the momentum from the TSM win and clearly felt confident as a team, having defeated North America's best squad and asserted themselves as the new regional threat. GankStars had a better-than-expected run at the championship with their retooled lineup, but they weren't quite ready for Cloud9.

PhysiX says the team "improved and matured as players over the course of the season," with Oldskool earning MVP honors at the championship as North America's premier laner, while iLoveJoseph "set the meta in the Jungle role" with his performance. She saves her highest praise for Gabevizzle, however, saying that she and wailmer believe that "he is the No. 1 player in North America right now. His vision control, as well as Crucible blocks, were crucial to win the games against Team SoloMid."

Shining a light on their draft strategies and behind-the-scenes success isn't meant to take anything away from Cloud9's players and their in-game performances. Without those, they'd be nowhere. But it shows that high-level success in Vainglory requires more than just great mechanical play: it takes practice, planning and support. And with an organization like Cloud9, the team has to think about the larger operation and all the resources that come along. It's not just them out there, even if they're the ones putting all of that prep into execution.

"The team has improved significantly in finding that they are all part of a larger unit, but there is still a lot of work left before that goal is fully realized," asserts Huston. "I believe Vainglory, at least in North America, is entering an era where a team's overall synergy is more important than its individuals' play."

Cloud9 hoist their well-deserved trophy © C.Beattie | ESL | eslgaming.com

"Considering that the team has three players that are all individually great in their positions, this was initially a very foreign concept," he adds while praising the coaching influence of wailmer. "We are really starting to see magic happen when the team knows that they can rely on each other."

Still, according to physiX, there was an unseen letdown at the championship. "I had one large disappointment with the team however: We had agreed that if they won, they had to do Baptiste's walking animation onstage," she claims "They didn't do it! That would have been the cherry on top."

Maybe next time. If Cloud9 continues this level of play, there may be many more Vainglory championships ahead.