The Cinderella Story — Miracle Run of Cloud 9
Hello everyone, if any of you have read my old post, I talked about the system of League of Legends’s competitive scene.
Alright, maybe not every one have read that before……But that is very simple, every season of LoL has two splits, spring and summer. Top 6 teams can go to playoffs, 7th place team can avoid relegation matches and 8th and 9th team got to play teams from Challenger series for their spot. 10th team will be auto-relegated and substituted by 1st place challenger team.
After summer playoff is done, teams will compete against each other for being the 3rd seed to World Championship Series, and the competition is called The Regional Qualifiers. In this event, the story of Cloud 9 begins. The message behind it is encouraging — It is not over until it was over, never give up and you will achieve something great eventually.
Time was Season 2015’s League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) Summer Split. Before the summer split starts, there is a bad news for fans of Team Cloud 9 (C9). Their Mid lane player and in-game leader, Hai “Hai” Lam, decided to retire from competitive scene and join the management staff.
In Hai’s retirement statement, he said the wrist injury is hurting him from playing, and it not only affect the team practice, but also his performance on stage.
Also, he said the team atmosphere is very low and the environment is bad, so he decided to leave the team so they can look for other talented players.
C9 has huge advantages in the free agent market;they are wealthy enough and they have more choices than other teams, due to the rules in LCS.
As other competitive sports, imported players are also allowed, and the limit is 2 players per team.
This is beneficial for C9 because they are a team that built with North America talents, so they can seek other good players worldwide.
C9 held the tryout session secretly and they have selected two finalists, including Eugene “Pobelter” Park and Nicolaj “Incarnati0n” Jensen. (he changed his in-game name to Jensen on 2016 LCS Spring Split)
Both of them are good players with nice mechanics and communication, they are also team-less (Park’s team just get relegated from LCS and Jensen just left his former team SK Gaming, as an assistant coach.)
C9 has very high expectations on Jensen because his performance in ranked games is spectacular since he is ranked 1 player in the Europe West server, which is the most competitive server in Europe region.
Also, most players in the community rated him one of the best mid lane players. Eventually, C9 has chosen Jensen as their new player while Park joined another North American team, Counter Logic Gaming (CLG).
C9 fans are excited because they might have an upgrade on their new roster and they are looking forward to claim the throne back from the Spring Split Champion, Team SoloMid (TSM).
However, things didn’t go as expected. With Jensen now in the team, the play style of C9 has drastically changed. Jensen is known as an aggressive player, so he needs more help to avoid troubles. This has bring tremendous pressure to the rest of the team, since with more resources going to Jensen, other players in the team are easier target for their opponents to take advantage on.
Also, ever since Hai left the team, the in-game leader and shot-caller role is now on C9’s Jungler, William “Meteos” Hartman’s back. The pressure is very immense and C9 was struggling very hard. By the halfway through the season, C9 is 3–6.
At week 6, there is another bad news for C9, which is Meteos decided to step down from the main roster.
In Meteos statement, he said “stepping down and let someone else to be the jungler is good for atmosphere.”
Everyone is curious about who C9 can acquire during the middle of the split. It turns out that Hai will come out from retirement and rejoin the team as jungler and some people in the community questioned Hai’s ability.
Even though Hai starts his career as jungler, he didn’t achieve much during his jungler era. And as most people expected, C9 lost both games convincingly.
With the result, that would be very hard for C9 to qualify for playoffs. By the end of the split, C9 can only contest 7th or 8th place. The difference between being 7th or 8th is so huge; 7th place will stay in the League without playing relegation matches. However C9 at the last week will have to play the 2nd place team, TSM, and they need to win the game. Even they won the match against TSM, C9 had to play a tiebreaker game against Team 8 to decide which team will be 7th. C9 won the game and ended the split with 7 wins 12 losses. This is the worst result C9 has ever got, but I am happy that they stayed alive.
With C9 locking in 7th place, they still has a chance to be the 3rd representative to Worlds because they had enough championship score from previous split. But they had to start at the bottom and need to win 3 Best of 5 series in a row.
Coming into the regional qualifier, almost everyone thinks that C9 will be knock out immediately. Even if C9 wins one series, next series will come up on the next day, so this is a very exhausting schedule.
The first opponent C9 faces is Gravity Gaming. C9 lost 2 games in a row with their unusual choices and decision-making. When everyone shakes their head and ready to leave the arena or turn off the live stream, C9 started to fight back and eventually they made a great comeback with a 3–2 reverse sweep.
People were amazed by C9’s strong mentality and execution on strategies, but there are stronger opponents waiting for them.
Their next opponent is Team Impulse (TiP). Even though TiP lose their mid laner, Xian “XiaoWeiXiao” Yu” due to account sharing, they are still considered a strong team because of their Korean Top-jungle duo, Yoon-jae “Rush” Lee and Eon-yeong “Impact” Jung. Synergy between them are incredible and they are regarded as best top-jungler combo in the LCS.
Once again, C9 is having trouble on their play. They lost 2 games in a row and placed themselves in a dangerous spot. As I feel like this is the end of all hope, C9 surprised me. They fought back and won 2 games in a row to tie the series with 2–2. TiP became nervous because all their lead is gone and they have to face C9 in a raised morale. TiP cannot handle the pressure and they lost the 5th game and C9 advances to finals to play Team Liquid. (TL)
TL is the strongest contender for sure. Their road in playoffs didn’t end as they expected, but still they are the 3rd place team. C9 might won the previous series due to them being more experienced, but TL, arguably, is a upgraded version over C9.
This is the real challenge for C9. I was worried since TL has that drive to win the whole thing.
The first game ended with C9 lost in a pretty “stomped” way, C9 looks so confused after their loss. But I am sure it is not over, they have pulled off strong comebacks twice in a row, one loss in the whole series would not bring them down.
After great opening in game 2, C9 is able to tie up the series. They know they can still make it to worlds, if they are careful enough. C9 has a good atmosphere in the team and everyone is following their leader Hai, so they are able to secure another win and leads the series.
Being 1–2 created immense pressure for players in TL. They are now back against the walls and there is no way back. At the 4th game, TL managed to maintain a very close status against C9. But seems like the pressure really gets to them, mistakes were made often, and they lost the series.
Everyone in the arena is excited. They jumped off from their seats and walk up to high-five the players. Who would have thought that the 7th place team can stay strong, pulled off two reverse sweep and a convincing 3–1 victory in 3 days?
That’s why I love to see C9 as a team. They came in to the league in a strong fashion, they have different styles than other teams, their strategies are creative and the executions are clean.
They also promote the power of teamwork and friendship. They are nice to people and each other. Even other teams are looking for talented players around the world, C9 has kept their roster for at least 2 years. To me, the message behind it is, “We don’t need the strongest players to form the strongest team”. During the history in competitive League, there were multiple super team, but most of them ended up getting nothing.
It’s just too hard to hate on C9. They are skillful, kind and have a strong mentality. They never give up at any stage during the season, even though the reality is cruel. They are delivering the message that, no matter what the challenges are, if you are dedicated enough, you will success eventually.
I am very sure C9’s miracle run will always be a great motivating story in the history of League of Legends.
TL;DR Video by the Score eSports
Thanks for reading! For the next blog, let’s talk about something fun! There are lots of catchphrase going on the eSports everyday, and some of them are turned into “memes”. If you are interested, stay tuned!
