What Happened to Cloud9... (In the Preseason)

Roster Formation all right let's talk about let's go to the start which we've spoke it's been spoken about many times how did the roster happen but it wasn't these two so it was Jake and whiy how did the team happen so it was this it was actually this so this is what the team that I was joining was supposed to to be it supposed to be this team um what happened so one one night in the UK I got a phone call from Jordan he wakes me up uh oh it must have been 2 a.m. he's like get online now I think we're making the C9 roster okay I come on I'm like what the [ __ ] going on he's like okay what players do you think we can get for such and such an amount right I'm not going to say amounts toas I was like uh I think this guy will be good I think this guy would be good I said we 100% need to get this kid like we definitely have to get him and Sentinels wise I think the guy the best guy we can get in short notice right now is whiy so that's kind of how this team happened I didn't know anything about Jake really other than watching him play um never worked with him never spoke to him I'd never worked with Eric um but obviously he was good so Jordan was going to be the igl it was something me and zelus have spoke about since V1 where looking back we I've wanted him to become an igl for ages so this is what was supposed to happen it was supposed to be it was supposed to be us and then I'm like okay roster's done what's going on how are we getting the roster so MCE was trying to make a roster but he was taking too long he missed out on a player or two that he wanted um he was taking too long to make the roster basically and then we made this roster in a day it's like looking at the rosters compared I think it was a it was a no-brainer to be honest um but we'll never know uh MC what works wonders with younger players so maybe his roster would have been [ __ ] insane no one no one will no one will ever know it's something that gets questioned but yeah so I'm like okay Rost is done I'll go to bed I go to bed I got a phone call at 6: a.m. okay what's going on Jordan's like you need to get online shit's going down so okay I'll go online he's got a [ __ ] offer from Sentinels I'm like okay well [ __ ] you're going to you're going to have to go like even I said said to him like you you have to you have to go to Sentinels you would be stupid not to you could have done this last year you chose C9 you went for the r like go get the bag bro like go go go do what you need to do and then it was like okay what do I then then at that point I was like do I even want to be here cuz I was in F I was only I was only joining for Jordan I was the the only reason I was joining was elus um I didn't even know VI was to call my had a life at home my life was going pretty good uh I was moving in was so it was my life my life was good so I was like I don't even know what I join um I was like okay what igl's can I get yeah me inv me invited my friends so what igls could I could I get um and the only one that I wanted to get really in such short notice again was was vanity like there was no one else that I really wanted to worked well with them last time with friends it just it made sense and we wanted to work together again so I said okay let's let's phone let's phone vanity see if vanity wants to come and we can [ __ ] run it back and we can see what happens so we get vanity whip is whippy come on you know this um Jake Jake and zepper already solidified on the roster before you had to say about it um me zelus zeper were all in a call doing the roster the other roster that they were going to get wouldn't have had it wouldn't have had zepper it wouldn't have had GE zelus and it wouldn't have had Leaf um so me zelus and Z were in a call making making the team and Jake was was dead as well but he didn't have like a huge say on what was going on uh and obviously Eric wanted to work with ant as well and then we just went from there so that was it that was the roster done and then we move on any questions around the roster before I move on taking whippy and oxy from G2 why not Shaz uh I don't think me and Shaz worked well together listen system it's not just you and here but yeah I don't I don't think me and Sh worked well together so uh I didn't want to I didn't want to do that nothing against them we I just go off for a drink with them we can talk no by Blood I just think me and me and bity worked better so they went to to this event which was just for fun um so we'll just we'll just ignore this event um I didn't go to this TEN Global Invitational so I flew straight to Korea to start to go straight to this event which was actually insane we played our first game then we played DRX and yeah Buzz was absolutely destroying us absolutely [ __ ] on us and this is the first game where oxy really show like wow uh yeah these are the first onet matches so we were we were looking at we were looking at it we had a good we had a good read on the meta 2 but I won't I won't talk much about these games but beating DRX felt really nice like to beat a team like that even if it's a offseason event for me the first thing it felt felt really nice yeah it was like um it was all best of ones you played everyone in your group and then the playoffs like first started here fourth and third started here second started here and then they played each other so beting these teams to me felt really good like I'd never really gone to a big event since Iceland and even though it was offseason it still felt like a big event we're in Korea we're playing against like the best teams um it was actually insane then we played the final and all I remember about this final was this map and vanity calling an absolute [ __ ] Master Class here like if I had the comms I would I would show you them but he micromanaged the [ __ ] out of everyone like he'd die he'd die and he would just tell everyone exactly what to do even here I'm pretty sure this is the round pretty sure this is the round so we go fast a Anon oxy die and I'm pretty sure here I'm pretty sure vanity here is calling absolutely everything he's telling him to open the door he's going to tell them to go A to B Ripple was Japan I am almost certain vanity called everything that happened here he said go back open this door the spike stay here cuz I I I need he told Omen to alter door I'm like 99% sure cuz I remember going okay we've won I remember here going yeah we've won I don't have to pause I don't have to do anything Vanity's in the zone like we've won this game any questions on this tourn you Bootcamp / Practice going ask but this felt really good like I know it's an offseason tournament but it was the first tournament that we played together it was the first tournament I was there um first tournament I'd won involment I think yeah no vanity was in Full full Flow State I wish I had the coms okay so then we boot camped then we boot camped yeah we boot camped here we went to Korea I can't remember the name of the place we stayed in I'm pretty sure Sentinels have just stayed in it but it was actually insane this was like the most insane thing I've ever been a part of was this boot camp it was so [ __ ] good and then going into the Red Bull of event as well holy [ __ ] well whippy was here for this whippy was in in Korea um and then we just boot camp we scrimmed like every single day we had like The Odd Couple of days off when we couldn't find scrims it was pretty hard to find scrims out here at this time CU it was offseason so we scrimming a lot of the same teams we scrimmed fpx a lot I can't were they called fpx they weren't called fpx at the time I can't remember what they were called what they called wolves we were playing the fpx maybe they were called fpx uh no some days we did five some days we did four it depends what we're working on working on on the day um and it really depended this this boot camp really depended on how many scrims you could get so like here we played two break two I mean never used to usually had a break we' usually do five or four straight then you've got one two and then some days only three Nippers of all team yeah I think so they franchising they were trying to get in franchise and they did have a team I don't have the results page still otherwise I would bring it up but we were losing we were losing pretty [ __ ] hard like we were losing for the face like the first like 10 days or so we were struggling like we wen't getting hammered but we were losing like 90% of the scrims we just couldn't win like these teams are so aggressive they were playing crazy comps like fpx were running Phoenix on um Phoenix on Sunset they were running some paper Rex were running like yoru breach on Breeze and we just didn't know we just didn't know what to do and our team chemistry just wasn't quite there yet when it came to scrimming like maybe winning this tournament May maybe like slacked off a little bit I'm not completely sure um how did you go about your scrims as you tried to build I mean you go about your scrims the same way you go about any making any team like you start your day you pick a couple of maps to play like you want to get you want to get the same map the same two maps I Tred to get the same two maps in a day so we would do like for me ideally you get on you do an hour an hour 30 maybe talking about what you want to do in the first two scrims uh so let's say with first two scams a split we talk about split it's if it's the first day we're just doing default right we're just talking about defaults the goals are defaults and what you want to do then you have your break but your break isn't a break you're then talking for one hour about the next two maps that you're going to play like maybe you're eating a little bit of food or a little bit of snack like banana whatever it is and let's say the next two scrims are on Haven then you want to talk about your defaults on Haven you go to your default have it all prepared would go over it um and then then you play your two Haven scrims and then you review the day and you talk about the day for an hour or two however long it takes and before all of that I would meet vanity in the morning and me and vanity would talk about the day and how we want the day to go and then the next day let's say you're playing split and Haven again the next day instead of focusing on defaults You' be focusing on maybe defaulting in a different way or how far did your defaults get you so maybe like let's say split uh [ __ ] there's no split here um split's the best example though that I want to make cuz that's the one that's in my head so split let's say let's say your split default right and then your defaults get you to this area so we have all of this on our defaults and we were successfully getting it we were getting to let's say we would get into this area and this area on attack and maybe we would get into this area so like the absolute Basics right we're taking this we're taking mid we're getting into these holes but then when we get to here let's say on the first day we're struggling when we have so step one is here this is step two and we're struggling on step two we don't know what to do like what do we do on step two so the second day will be okay what do we do on step two we get in this area all the time our defaults are working we need some executes so from from here we can do we can sit behind the the wall that's here the Viper wall and we can have a nade ready for here we can have a flash going through and we want to go through the wall so here we want to go through the wall we're going to Sky flash we're going to nade and we're going to take this area and then step three is we're going to take the site so we're then going to we're then going to split so then we need to make a split so we need to make a a an execute and it's the same for Mid we're get into this area what do we do on step two where do we want to go like do we want to go back leave a lake so I don't know we'll have a strategy called we'll have a strategy called SpongeBob SquarePants which means we leave one ler here and then we go back and we for poop this or we'll have [ __ ] a stke called Superman and then we will yeah the V will be going on YouTube um then St called Superman where we sending two or three to split up here with two back here and we're doing a two three split so that that's the second day and then the third day maybe you run everything again and then maybe the fourth day you literally play solely to win like maybe I'm using my pauses as attack pauses rather than just pausing all the time to talk about what we're going to do um it's the same for defense so on defense like day one you're just doing the absolute Basics one one one one whatever you're just doing like a default right then day two you're doing like okay what did we struggle with so we need to do our a players need to talk about two hold on ramp or they need to do a cipher cage here and my sky is here my Cipher's here when they're hit an a my my Cipher is going to pop his own cage my sky is going to come through it that's their plan that's what they want to do my sky guy's going to flash and come through Cipher is going to swing here Sky's going to run through here like stuff like that like they have talks with their their teammates and we make some setups and then also day two or day three maybe we have maybe we want to practice playing aggressive on defense so we're doing B main takes so we have Ray sky and alen take B main then we leave the alond here and we have two here and then we make this site strong or we do one here one here two on a a strong we have alien four on B like that kind of stuff we practice playing aggro or we have an aggro aake where we just want to punish the cipher l so we'll practice that for the day and then again on the on the last day the performance day it's everything comes together and we play to win and we use we use our pauses as like tactical pauses and we play it like a like a match so to speak that's kind of what you focus on in practice and how we tried to focus in boot camp as well but yeah boot camp was going it was it was going let's just say it was going for the first 10 days it was a struggle and then we were like so me and my manager we sat down I went for a walk with vanity I went for a walk with vanity oh no I SW sat down I sat down with the manager me and a manag just spoke we like okay what's what's what's actually going wrong here um and then I had a couple of one on of the players went for a walk with vanity spoke about a lot of things then we came back and we had a team meeting and we just said okay these things are going wrong um we feel like we're not putting as much effort into the scrims as we could we could be putting a lot more effort in basically focusing on actually practicing our things and playing to win rather than just like getting a little tilted maybe here and there I know Jakey was having a specific time with um Tilton for instance the chemistry between a couple of the players was a little bit off so we just aired out everything I don't want to go into too much detail but we just air out everything but the one I remember the big the big change came from Jakey I'd hat about Jakey and I'd hat how good he was and how much of a good team is he wasn't really doing that at the time and then he changed he changed he became like the the the the great teammate that he can which was um a really big change I think with him he was a little bit worried about working with an and how we worked got went about things I think in the other team like he had Jordan to lean on Jordan zelus would ease him through things he was like his his big brother and he'd help him and now like in the second season Jordan had gone so it was like what do we what do we do and we just a everything else and we spoke about absolutely every every single issue that we thought we would have we sat down we just spoke about them which I think is super important in a team you have to sit down and you have to talk about your problems and you have to come to a solution cuz everyone everyone in the team wants to win that's the end goal so yeah we fixed that and then bro everything just started clicking we started beating everyone and we were going into into the Red Bull hom ground pretty confident like everything changed in like these last couple last last week maybe two weeks everything changed I guess we could talk about my Thoughts on teammates thought on my teammates after it specifically I guess zepe and Jakey but I just spoke about Jakey a little bit but zepe really [ __ ] surprised me he maybe he didn't get enough credit for what he does but he reminds me of a lot a lot of zelus so since zelus zelus and leaf talk a lot so I'm ass Human without me being there I'm a human when leaf and zelus were in the team and didn't get to talk as much because they would do a lot of the talking since they were gone I needed someone to step up and be that second voice and be that guy who's going to help vanity which is another thing we spoke about in the team meeting and that was a big change from his losing that was a b big change from his losing the scrims to changing he became more of like the zela figure the mid-rounder the guy that could lean on vanity if Z if zepa spoke like you know he's in the zone you know he's talking and he really impressed me and still to this day really impresses me he gets a lot of he gets a lot of hate from the community but he brings a lot more to this team than anyone will ever know whippy still to me is one of the best Sentinels in America he just we needed a voice in the team that's why he went which I'll talk about why he got why he got caught and whatnot when I get to this area but I I still think whippi was [ __ ] insane redle H ground so whippi unfortunately didn't get a Visa which I don't think is completely his fault I don't know too much about it but just saying I don't think it was completely his fault he didn't get a Visa but there's always going to be Visa issues with someone who's from Russia so we get to the Red Bull hom ground event so we knew in we knew in Korea that Max most likely wasn't going to make it so we had to find someone and a few names got Redbull Homeground // Curry Becomes Sub through about but as soon as Curry's name got through about I Tri him in G2 I was like yeah [ __ ] it let's get curry curry can play anything he's [ __ ] good you have worked with him before he's vocal let's just get Curry to come only thing is curry had issues with confidence beforehand but then here he's got no reason to be worried yeah he his streaming create gave him confidence he it changed as a person and he also had no reason to be worried like just there's no pressure on you bro you're just coming to stand in just play your game have some fun you're get a free trip to Tokyo you get to say stay in stream after it and play in Asian ranked which is also [ __ ] amazing for your stream um it was a no-brainer but I will say from trialing him in G2 where I was also he was very close to joining I was actually I had faith in him that he could turn us around but going from Tri in G2 to the cry I seen here it was night and day it wasn't even close bro he changed so much um but you're getting to this Arena and comment to this I don't think I don't think I'll ever experience anything like this ever again maybe if I even made champs this year and Champs is in career maybe if I make it if I make a Champs and Champs in CA then maybe I'll experience something like this but this was so insane the stadium was sold out you if I walked out if I wanted to walk to McDonald's I'm getting stopped for pctures and signatures like it was so insane does that look good bro oxy is it's crazy since then and now I swear way oxy's grown up oxy's like a completely different person don't don't you guys are the okay going into this game let me let me see if my brain can think back to the veto but I don't think it can we didn't like split so that was gone we didn't like breeze so that was definitely gone did we like bind I think we like bind I can't remember I genely can't remember but I know we like Sunset we like descent we liked Lotus and we were okay on Haven I know we had struggles on Haven in practice because the same struggles we have to this day we didn't really have a breach player and we were running this which was working it was probably the best thing that was working for us but then we ended up like you'll see through the tournament like we were still finding ourselves we didn't have time to do every map but I think we changed this to fade at some point and then we went back we spoke about the game cuz we made a lot of mistakes I remember and I was like we have to watch this right now this game if I remember correctly we just ran it down B on defense like we really like we we went into it and we just said play with confidence how about you win meol I'll win us the G okay we played Zeta again I was really surprised we lost to these the first time to be honest and then I maybe we took it a bit lightly we were like oh yeah we're playing them we're going to win um we didn't try as hard maybe I'm not sure I know we made a lot of mistakes a lot something that happens as well is you play scrims and you get to a match and a lot more mistakes happen in a match things that you don't see in scrims will happen people play differently uh what did we do so we ban split they baned Sun set we picked the sent cuz we just destroyed fennel on it Zeta picked bind which we previously banned so I guess they knew we were a little bit weak on it and then they banned Haven which I think was a bad move by them I don't know why they did this I think this was a really really bad ban by them we were going to change our comp but I know this was a really bad ban by them T9 sense 2025 yeah oh we were go we were good on bind I just remembered we we were good on bind we lost it against fanatic I think but we were running we were running double du list this is something I would still run today with these two cuz Eric's Rays is insane and oxy joru is [ __ ] insane as well and I think against a team like this where in my opinion we out skill them head to toe I don't think they'll win there double du list attack what we would do wait what am I doing bro we do him here we pretty much do viper here and we do these three over here and these three would just take hard control of this area and we would just send oxy showers on his own and he would just throw he would throw his TP so it lands here we'd send in the Clone and we just say bro go do what you want to do at showers like obviously he had his puffing he would throw this he would throw this and we'd send him on his own he'd cause yeah C but he would cause a little bit of chaos he he' get a kill get out he'd scare them off he'd get out but either way he would just TP back to us and if he got all of this for free we would then have the option cuz we would like be up here we would then have the option of TP into him we could also get control and we would leave brim here for like and we would go back we would take take hooker and then again we have the option of just going back and Sh popping he TPS last second as we sh pop he puts in his smokes we would do things like that but oxy was really [ __ ] strong on this comp because he could do all of this on his own on defense it was basically the same thing like oxy was so free we had like set things but the set things were also just giving him a lot of freedom so we would play like this or we'd play like this and oxy would you have a TP to here or you put a TP for himself on his sight he put a clone here if they're coming up long he double flash them and kill them if there's nothing long we would dog through the TP he would follow it he would come fight he would crunch he would TP out and he would come back I can't see I can't see now this is it this is a double flash long one more one more two more two more two more so you've got the Clone going out you've got his Flash coming they shoot the Clone cuz they think it's him you also have a sky flash going no he's fast bro there this kid I haven't seen anyone aim like him bro he's so Lotus we were naturally good on Lotus um I spoke about it but when I just watched us play DX and would um call really well cwell on the Fly it's a very defaulty map but yeah okay so we loaded into this game we're like wow see on raay I think our whole veto plan was to not play Jet Maps because Cena can't play anything but jet um I'm pretty sure that's the route we went down and yeah we loaded in we seen this we seen it we seen it we like yeah we're we're not losing this map there's no way our sunset's insane we should have two this game how we win Lotus is how we win haven is a miracle cuz we were horrible in this map look we changed we changed Sky to I think three I think that could be it line going to matter here not much at all vanity needs to be Johnny C he needs to hit the head the tap believe it yet there's the fault line he hugs against the wall vanity hides again just trying to buy time he forces him off the shots not connecting C that t down to 71 he swings across manity playing it to Perfection front us bro bun bunny bunny two one more get it what a transfer I feel like we were so confident we would win this and oxy destroyed de in showers if I remember we so confident we' win this map but we thought we'd lose Breeze we thought we'd win bind and just went Ros First lost the first map again as always is we should have won this if I remember pretty sure ANS called insane again on attack and then on defense we just flopped I remember we lost some close rounds and then Haven again again we just sucked we went back to the sky we run as we went back to the sky we just win with def fade probably over 40 we should have just played the fade but I still think we lose this map we we just [ __ ] sucked on Haven Actually I don't even think we were bad on Breeze I think we were okay in practice cuz we run in the harbor but we had so I don't think Jake liked playing the harbor and then they changed the map bro we were go we were we were good we were good cuz you didn't need um you didn't need Cipher I remember after after this tour after this tournament we were playing was it before or after I think before coming into this we were playing neon we were playing no we were playing neon instead of Jet and we were we were actually really [ __ ] I think we were doing neon we were doing gecko we were doing Harbor and we really I don't know if it was before or after this we were really [ __ ] good on the map um and then we got here and I think oxy said said he wanted to play Jet so we were like [ __ ] it if you want to play Jet and you're going to kill people on jet just play Jet I think but I cannot remember it was before or after this maybe it was Colombia that that happened um yeah we were actually good on Breeze and then they changed the map and they made Halls again so you had to play a cipher and it just made the [ __ ] the whole map [ __ ] again the map was already [ __ ] but at least you could play other comps and Superdom '23 Columbia then after this event bro I felt like we were just done like we were dead so from here so I'd personally I'll talk about my travel I'd gone from Europe to Korea to Japan to America to Colombia I was dead I was rot off like I was waking up I remember I was waking up when we got to Columbia I was waking up at 2:00 a.m. 3:00 a.m. and I'm putting in the group anyone up and every single person's awake we're all just awake at 3: 4:00 a.m. in the morning like no one could sleep jet lager just killed us so this event is kind of just a right off honestly I don't want to talk too much about it we lost to one of these I think it was Furia and one of their players or their coach waved at us and was trying to give it like you just [ __ ] won [ __ ] worlds and then they get [ __ ] on in Americas so that's that's karma for whoever that guy was I don't remember which one it was though but [ __ ] that guy and then I think after after this event the expectations of the team from me was I thought we were in a really good place I knew there was potential issues with whippy and Jake but I thought we were in a really good spot but I could see the issues already but it was hard to act on the issues when we've had such a good offseason everyone every other te every other analyst whatever in the world going into America's predictors like ninth eighth 10th like I don't know they had us they had us down in the dumps because of this um but yeah I I knew there was issues within the team like you could see them not like massive issues but you could see like there could be improvements here there could be improvements there um but I'll talk about that next time when I get to kick off I can talk about this event a little bit but this event again we just flew back into America we didn't PR we went straight to the event I said to the team I want to play deadlock on ice box we had nothing we literally had nothing I was like guys I think deadlock is insane on ice box I want to play deadlock and ice box and the team was like yeah sure let's go let's [ __ ] pick it we've never played play it we got there we picked it we played it um in every game and then we decided whether we like liked it or not we played it here with no Sentinel we were like okay we definitely need a [ __ ] killjoy so then we played the killjoy with it it was pretty good we should have won pretty much every time we played it but this is just a right off tournament for us we went there we played it get back into the groove bit of practice yeah we had rest we we after Columbia we had rest we didn't have rest year but after Colombia this was the 12th of November we took I think we took the whole time off I'm pretty sure we took the whole time off cuz we were exhausted we were exhausted here and that was the 12th the 11th and the plan was to take 2 weeks and then when we came back no one was really screamming the 12th we flew back so we took off here here we came back after the two weeks scrimmed this scrimmed up until the 5th as you can see even on this day like there's no scrims and then we just went [ __ ] it let's just go off until January and then we came back in January do you think jaky can play a T1 still uh yes I do I do think he could play tier one I think going to tier two will help him a lot um some of his issues were revolved around confidence um maybe a couple of issues outside the game but I lost I lost it oh my God but yeah he's a good player he can play he he can play to on still he just needs he he needs just go find himself again get it Penny I think Penny could definitely play tier one G2 we're close to picking up Penny this year instead of icy I think if G2 had pick Penny up they'd be in the same place I think Penny could definitely still play tier one we will not be getting Penny on this team I have oxy brother I love Penny but I have oxy what think you guys have to do to get off the playoff hump and make it to an international landan so for me this was the first time I'd made playoffs with a team cuz last year it wasn't me again I'll talk about this more when it gets to it but this is the first time I'd made playoffs with them so I know we played differently in this game I would say we played differently in this game I would say we played good in this game we played different in this played different in this but in this game I I think we played well I'll beon honest we played well in this playoff game and we should have qualified this should we should have won this map there was a couple of big mistakes that cost us but this is the first time on a map one throughout the whole [ __ ] year but I was like wow this is us we played [ __ ] well I think it just takes time and I think some things people don't realize is it [ __ ] hard to win in this game bro like every team can beat every team if is so hard to consistently win this game