Cloud9’s performance at the IEM Katowice 2020 North America Closed Qualifier had been surprisingly good even though it was a debut performance with their new roster. The team had remained dominant throughout the upper brackets of the qualifiers and had even secured a map advantage for the best of five grand finals after besting Complexity in a best of three series.
The finals of the qualifiers had the upper bracket finalist Cloud9 clashing against the lower bracket finalist MIBR. The default map was scored in favor of Cloud9 in the best of five thanks to the map advantage that they had secured earlier. Having to drop the default map to Cloud9, the pressure on MIBR was intense to win the series for a chance at the IEM Katowice 2020 main event.
The first map that came into play was Train. The Terrorist side of MIBR took a half time lead of 8-7 even though train is a very Counter-Terrorist sided map. After half time and side change, the Brazilian defense traded rounds with the Americans offense but finally managed to come out on top with a 16-13 victory. The score was set 1-1, and the series moved on to the second map.
Overpass was the second map of the day. On their map of choice, the Cloud9 roster ran over MIBR’s CT side and took a massive lead of 12-3 in the first half. Comeback was a long gone dream for MIBR at that point of the game. The Americans maintained their control over the game even in the second half, losing only a single round to MIBR. In conclusion, Cloud9 took the map 16-4 and went 2-1 in the series.
The game went further into the third map which was Inferno. This was MIBR’s last stand and even though Cloud9 took the early rounds with dominating performances from its player, MIBR managed to go into the second half giving away only a single round advantage to Cloud9. The Brazilian front gave its best to secure the map by taking three round back to back after half time, but their efforts were cut loose by Cloud9 who came back into the game and took the map 16-12. Thus, Cloud9 took the series 3-1 against MIBR and managed to secure their spot at the IEM Katowice 2020 main event.
Now with the NA and Asia qualifier coming to its conclusion, we eagerly waiting to find out the teams which will make it through the EU and Oceania qualifiers and clash with the teams who have been invited or have qualified for the IEM Katowice 2020 showdown.
The current list of teams taking part in IEM Katowice 2020 are:
- Astralis
- mousesports
- fnatic
- Liquid
- Vitality
- Natus Vincere
- 100 Thieves
- Evil Geniuses
- NiP
- Virtus.Pro
- EU Qualifiers 1st slot: G2
- EU Qualifiers 2nd slot: FaZe
- Asia Qualifiers: ViCi
- North American Qualifiers: Cloud9
- EU Qualifiers 3rd Slot: TBD
- Oceania Qualifiers: TBD
