On October 30th in São Paulo; the boys in blue lifted their first trophy for a +$250k offline tournament. They didn’t just lift it in the name of Cloud9, but in the name of North America as well. A North American team hasn’t won a big international tournament in CS:GO. In fact, the region hasn’t won such a competition for Counter Strike in over ten years. Cloud9 was praised by the community for such an achievement and everyone thought one of two things: C9 can only improve as they move forward or they have just reached their peak. To know which point has more truth to it, it’s best to know how they got where they currently are, take a closer look at why they improved, and what can potentially be the downfall.

The Team Throughout the Year

The departure of seangares last year really hurt the team because it left a big hole for Cloud9 to cover up. No one on the team was really fit for the opening of in-game leader so going into 2016 it was obvious that C9 would pick up a new one, but that wasn’t what happened. At the beginning of January it was announced that Stewie2k would join their ranks and that’s when the criticism came. Everyone believed that what the team needed was a leader, not someone that everyone labelled as a pugstar. n0thing stepped up to take on the reigns of the team and his performance suffered immensely. Thus C9’s performance wasn’t at all impressive and they were often written off at the beginning of the year.

Two weeks after finishing in last place at MLG Columbus, freakazoid left the active roster and adreN was the stand-in as the team searched for a permanent fifth. A little over a week later, Slemmy joined the team to be the in-game leader. Not many people focused on how he was was a complete nobody because it was good news to finally have n0thing be relieved of the IGL burden. At the time I thought the pickup was okay, it wasn’t going to be enough to make C9 a great team again, but it was doing no harm. Soon after the pickup, Dreamhack Austin was to take place and it was the first showing this lineup had on LAN. They managed to get through to the semis over CLG in the decider of the group, but then fell to Tempo Storm in a three map series. Scoring wins over a dying CLG and top four at an eight team event with Selfless, Splyce, and NRG wasn’t an achievement though. On a side note, this was when they played 28 rounds of T side on mirage and managed to not win a single one.

Going into July, C9 wasn’t looking as bad as they did in the first quarter of the year. They qualified for the finals for ESL Pro League Season 3 and ECS Season 1, though they didn’t even get through the group stage of either, they did give Luminosity a run for their money in the group A winners’ match of ELEAGUE S1. It looked like the team was on the verge of improvement and they looked to qualify for the next major, but failed in the main qualifier with losses to Mouz, nV, and G2. Then came the Luminosity-SK scandal which brought on the disqualification of the Brazilians from ELEAGUE and so C9 was to replace them in the playoffs bracket. They then narrowly lost to Na’Vi and were quickly eliminated. With that came the unofficial off-season for the CS community and the rumors of autimatic joining C9 with Slemmy coaching rose and it was nothing less than a good move. Cloud9 waited until the end of the break to make the announcement, but in the end although they did pick up autimatic, Slemmy wasn’t going to coach.

After the pickup came Cloud9 slowly started to look like a better team with autimatic and Stewie being the main fraggers. N0thing was the consistent player trailing behind the duo and then there was shroud and Skadoodle. They even managed to reach top four at a $250K international event, but it was nothing more than an unimpressive run with only a BO3 win over FlipSid3 and getting smashed against the eventual winners, NiP. Their path did look shaky from there with the failure to qualify for New York and dropping out of ELEAGUE in the group stage. Then they managed to win the formerly mentioned event, ESL Pro League S4 Finals, before they traveled to iBUYPOWER Masters to qualify for IEM Oakland to hopefully prove themselves some more. Unfortunately, they were underwhelming in the group stage, losing their first three maps and were put in a too difficult position to advance. This is where we are now.

What Brought Improvement

Cloud9 started to improve once Slemmy joined the roster and the obvious reason that happened is because n0thing’s consistency was no longer hindered by the role he was playing. He was back in his element with Stewie being the play-maker for the team, but shroud and Skadoodle were still inconsistent and Slemmy individually didn’t do so well. It was clear that they needed more firepower, but there weren’t many places to look. Liquid was improving so they couldn’t take any of those players, CLG just lost their star players to other teams. TSM was the only top NA team that looked promising without any recent roster changes. That’s when autimatic came in.

Autimatic wasn’t even the best player on his former team. At the time I thought SicK was a better player and Twistzz would potentially surpass him. In TSM, autimatic was playing more of a lurk role which he wasn’t bad at, but he never really excelled at it either. He never managed to be efficient within his role on TSM and that caused him to kind of just be some off player that I never really noticed, until I saw his stats were consistently average. Most of the time staying between that second or third spot, but never at the top or the bottom of the board. On Cloud9 though he plays with Stewie2k as a bit of a pair storming on site. I’d compare the duo to k0nfig and Magisk, maybe not on the same micro level, but in the sense of how you would describe them. Stewie is your play-maker who is never afraid to force a fight and harasses you with his style of play. Autimatic would be the consistent rifler who knows how to position himself to gain advantages. I doubt he can go off as much as Magisk can, but still their style of play has it’s similarities. To add on to that, one of n0thing’s viewers asked him why C9 picked up autimatic during a stream. Jordan gave an explanation that they just needed a player that would be smart, could play well, and for the team. I thought that description fit autimatic really well.

To expand on Stewie’s story, no one thought that he would have much success playing with Cloud9. Back in January, when he was first picked up, almost everyone’s opinion on him had a negative connotation to it. Calling him a pugstar and criticizing his risky style of play. It was all reasonable criticism though. Stewie was inexperienced, his style didn’t seem viable in a professional setting, was somewhat labelled as a toxic player. It was reasonable to think that this addition wasn’t going to help. Fast-forwarding to now, Stewie is the most skilled player on the team and he is mainly calling for the team. He isn’t the typical IGL that takes complete control, but he calls most of the time according to his teammates. The growth of Stewie throughout the year is one of the best for 2016. Back in January he was only known as a pug star, but now he is a top player in North America. With his ability to make plays it is always dangerous to play against a player like him and it keeps his opponents on their toes.

Eclipsed by autimatic’s and Stewie’s performance is the impact Shroud and n0thing have started to have. Jordan has really picked up his slack from earlier in the year and is having many good games. His play has flown under the radar for most people but he is currently the second highest rated player on LAN in the past three months for C9. This can be due to not having to call for the team anymore, which was never a role that fit a character like n0thing. He is now playing better and because he has put himself in the position of leadership he knows how to play for the team now. Shroud probably had his best LAN performance I’ve seen in a while at São Paulo. He always checked out during big games. In the final, but lately he has started to have more impact and that’s really difference maker since he has been criticized all year for under-performing and just not playing like he’s supposed to.

Skadoodle has started to improve a lot since the beginning of the year. Starting out in 2016 he was pretty much absent from the server and he was no longer that amazing awper we had seen last year, but now he is better. Every now and then we get glimpses of what he is capable of, glimpses of Summer 2015, but I don’t think I’m alone in saying that he won’t ever reach that level again. For now though, Cloud9 doesn’t need him to go off with players like Stewie and autimatic, but wouldn’t it be great to see him reach that level again.

The Imminent Downfall

At the moment Cloud9 has players that have the potential of being on an elite team, but unfortunately, potential and capability are two different things on the landscape of competition. And that right there is what I think will be the difference between C9 winning tournaments and just losing out early. Their players have the talent and have shown a level of skill that could compete for big tournaments, but it’s almost like they just can’t keep it up. You can’t call yourself fit if you only lived the healthy lifestyle for one week. Just like that, you can’t call yourself a true champion if you only won once.

This is where the argument of Cloud9 peaking comes into play. Yes they achieved a lot at ESL Pro League Finals, but if you also watched them at IEM then you once again see the inconsistency that top North American teams are plagued with. The MVP in Brazil was autimatic and at IEM he had sub-70 ADR in the first three games and only showed up like he did for the Pro League Finals in the final map they played against Heroic. For a player regarded as the consistent player for C9, you can’t go from a 1.31 event rating to a .93 event rating. Also, it should be mentioned that Cloud9 faced better opponents at IEM for the most part.

Another example of inconsistency is shown when you step back and take a look at the last three big events Cloud9 has attended: ELEAGUE S2, ESL Pro League Finals, IEM Oakland. At ELEAGUE C9 failed to even beat mousesports for first place in the group. I understand losing to FaZe because they instantly looked better at ELEAGUE, but mouz for the most part didn’t. The only player who really showed up for them was chrisJ and NiKo just played at his normal level. In hindsight, C9 didn’t get through a group with a team that just announced their roster change a day before the event, a team whose name is ironic because they looked dead here, and a team that is so unpredictable and not even in a good way. They might as well have been given a free ticket to the playoffs, but that would’ve only been a case if they were a top team. Skip to Brazil and there is nothing more I can say about their performance aside from how great it was. Then comes IEM and again, Cloud9’s results were worse than expected. Understandable to say that they wouldn’t make it to playoffs due to the other teams in the group, but to not win against at least one of FaZe, SK, or NiP came as a surprise to me. Hopefully after explaining, you’d see this pattern of Cloud9: under-performing, performing super well, then not living up to the expectations again. Consistency is the issue with this team because without any real tactical prowess they depend solely on whether the good players can hit their shots from tournament to tournament. Is it possible to be an elite team without any serious tactics? Yes, but to reiterate the point I had at the beginning of this section, the players on C9 just aren’t capable of that just yet.

After a very turbulent year for Cloud9 they still may not have an already established in-game leader, but in the end they never really needed one to improve, just someone who was capable to take on the role without taking too hard of a hit on their performance. Cloud9 have dug themselves out of the hole they were in and now it’s time for the hard part. To find their footing and climb to the very top.

Photo Credit: ESL, HLTV.org, ELEAGUE