Cloud9 Blue become first NA team into playoffs at VALORANT Champions

Cloud9 Blue became the first North American team to reach the VALORANT Champions playoffs after beating Korea’s Vision Strikers 2-1.

C9 made it out of a stacked Group D, dubbed by many as the group of death because it included Fnatic, Vision Strikers and FULL SENSE.

Instead of Sentinels leading the way for North America into the playoffs, it will be C9 -- and possibly Envy if they win their matchup later Tuesday -- representing NA’s last hope of winning Champions.

“Obviously we all watched Sentinels yesterday and that was kind of disheartening as an NA fan I’m sure,” Nathan “leaf” Orf said in a postmatch interview. “I’m expecting Envy to make it through, but you really never know. Nothing’s free, so feels good to at least be secured in our spot.”

Their matchup with Vision Strikers was a tight one that featured the Korean team mounting several comebacks despite C9 amassing some large leads.

C9 started the game with a commanding lead of 11-1 at halftime of Map 1. Vision Strikers, however, clawed their way back during the second half in what shaped up to be a very defensive map.

The 11 rounds C9 won in the first half were on defense. In the second half, Vision Strikers won nine of the first 10 rounds on defense. That made the score 12-10. C9 closed the map in Round 22 with a Anthony “vanity” Malaspina landing kill on a potential defuse for Vision Strikers in what turned out to be only the third offensive round win for either team.

Leaf had a tremendous map, going 26/16 in K/D with nine first kills on Jett.

The second map played out very differently as the two teams were tied 6-6 at the half with Vision Strikers starting out on offense. Vision Strikers pulled away with a strong defensive second half as they won the map 13-9.

Yu “BuZz” Byung-chul was the standout on the map with a 22/14 K/D including seven first kills on Raze.

Photo credit: Riot Games

With each team winning their map pick, the match came down to Map 3 on Breeze. Vision Strikers won the opening round on defense, but then C9 strung together six consecutive rounds to go up 6-1. They finished the half up 8-4.

Vision Strikers tightened things up in the second half. With C9 getting to within one round of winning the match, Vision Strikers pushed the score to 12-11. C9 ultimately pulled out the 13th round to win the map and the series.

Leaf said after the match that he thought Vision Strikers were “overrated.”

“Like they’re really good, but some of the things that they do is just too readable, and it’s like they really need to learn to be more flexible,” leaf said.

It has been a long and windy road for C9 to get to this spot. Early in the year, their star Tyson “TenZ” Ngo retired and then went on loan to Sentinels. During Stage 2 of the VALORANT Champions Tour, C9 finished third, just outside the cutoff line for qualifying for Masters: Reykjavík. After Sentinels’ win in Reykjavík, the team officially bought out TenZ from C9.

C9 failed to make it far during Stage 3 qualifiers for Masters: Berlin, but the team retooled ahead of the NA Last Chance Qualifier for Champions. They added in-game leader vanity, who had led Version1 to Reykajvík.

Leaf said vanity has made a difference for the team.

“We lacked like a true leader on our team, he said. “It was kind of hard to capitalize or fix our mistakes because we didn’t have a true leader in game.”

C9 will play Team Liquid in the quarterfinals. Team Liquid are one of the tournament favorites, but Leaf said the team is confident going up against them based on scrims they’ve played against the European team.

The C9-TL quarterfinal will take place Wednesday at approximately 3 p.m. ET.

Lead photo credit: Riot Games