Summer Showdown: Oakland

September 08 2018

We meet again, Cloud 9.

Your swole brothers might have caught us off guard last time. Lightning won’t strike twice. Time to prove that brains really do beat braun.





Season Breakdown



Admittedly, our season started out a bit rough. A couple of Vlad picks here, a few losses to lower tier teams there, and our post MSI mental funk weren’t helping. Then there was the meta. OOF. A meta so crazy it benched Rekkles, because, as Doublelift put it, “his top laner could do his job better than he could.” This meta was an absolute yikes at first. But once we got the hang of what champs were still viable, it was smooth sailing. Especially after Rift Rivals.

Sure, Rift Rivals counts for little more than bragging rights and position of a regional trophy. But for us, Rift Rivals also gave the squad valuable international experience while showing us the things we needed to work on. Namely mental, a problem we had thought solved.



Our mental went completely boom at MSI. Bouncing back from that, the squad worked hard to turn their mental dissonance into what very well may be the most anticipated will-they-won’t-they bromance ever to touch the Rift!

Make no mistake, this was all by design. From the moment Steve signed our player’s future on the dotted line we had Championships and Worlds in our sights. And we only needed 5 players to get there!

The Deal With the Finals



“Cloud 9 lost the offseason.”

That’s what everyone said about our Finals opponent at the beginning of the year. Reddit crucified them, Twitter memed them, and the community as a whole thought they had lost their minds. Hell, they ended last split in 5th and began this one in sole possession of 10th. But that is not the team we are facing this weekend. This team will prove to be a challenging opponent, even though they need a 7 man squad to stand a chance.

We’ve been honing our skills all year to make Worlds. And we have. By making Finals we became the first NA team to qualify for Worlds 2018. We worked hard to get and keep 1st place all split. Sure, everybody loves a comeback story. But I think our fans that have stuck with us from the days of curse until now agree. Ours is a much better story.

The squad and Steve made a promise this year. We’re going to worlds. That promise has been kept, but no point in stopping short of a winning season. Time to rewrite the story to “from C-10th to C-you in the Gauntlet.” You can keep your Swole Brothers and your memes, we’ll be taking the trophy on our way to Korea.





Writer // Sarah Enders