“Whoever comes out of the Americas LCQ will do well at Champs” C9 mCe talks about the Americas LCQ competition

Cloud9 are one of the best North Americas teams in VCT Americas and coming into the VCT Americas LCQ, they were the heavy favorites. With a second place finish in the regular season, C9 started the LCQ in the upper semifinals. They faced Sentinels in an intense best-of-three series. After their triumphant victory, Strafe had an opportunity to speak with Cloud9's Head Coach Mathew "mCe" Elmore. In an exclusive one on one interview, C9 mCe talks about the game win, dealing with playoffs exit and more. 

Q. Congratulations on the win. For a moment there it seemed like it might go out of hand but the guys came in clutch. What do you think about your team’s performance today?

C9 mCe: “I think they were playing pretty nervous at times right now. There’s times where we get out to a good start, we play at our level, but one thing goes wrong or someone misses a little shot, our nerves are coming in. But overall as long as we win, the rest of it doesn’t matter. So our overall performance was okay today but there was lot to be left desired”

Q. Pearl was amazing from Cloud9 and especially jakee, But when it came to Fracture, Sentinels answered back. Was there something they were doing that you had a hard time dealing with?

C9 mCe: “We play with a unique idea of how to play fracture. And if we don’t do it the way we are supposed to, like basically if we are skipping steps in what we are supposed to be doing it makes us very readable. And so they just came out, they hit a couple of shots and we weren’t paying attention to the steps for the comp so we looked really bad. We lost both pistols, it was over instantly. But it is an easy fix in my opinion, we just have to go back and outline it. Remind everyone about what we are supposed to be doing on the map”

Q. After the 8-4 half and a strong start to the second half, It felt like Split started to slip from Cloud9 and then you call a timeout. What did you say to your team that helped them close out the map?

C9 mCe: “That was more of a mental timeout because I heard different people’s voices kind of, like we made a call which wasn’t a bad call but just wasn’t the right call, Unfortunately one of the rookies made that call and it was a bad call, like they came out and we pretty much lost the round instantly. I could hear in his voice like oh man.

So I needed to take this, I just needed to reassure them that this is what we are going to do, we have a strat we have been practicing, switch to this, this and this. Then just telling them we can stack ult, we have got a huge lead, and use the ults if you think we can win the round. We just need to play together, we don’t need to make hero plays and do what we have been doing in the practice last two months”

Q. Obviously your players are young and thus very energetic. Does that make your job harder sometimes to control them and ensure they are disciplined?

C9 mCe: “They can get out of control sometimes, more so where like, they won’t stop in some rounds like if we have a 5v3 or a 5v2 and they have been really bad since I got here at backing off and winning the round the easy way. We always try to go for the flashy thing or the extra kill and things like that and that’s where the excitement kinda comes in.

For example if someone hits like three really nice shots or two really nice shots, they like to go for the third because everyone is so hyped up in the round so that comes back to bite us sometimes. But for the most part they are pretty easy to work with.”

Q. Despite the criticism of the roster moves, you had an amazing season. But the end wasn’t the desired one. What was the missing factor for Cloud9 that hindered a Masters Tokyo qualification?

C9 mCe: “We played a red hot EG team, we had a really bad first match. Our nerves and inexperience really came in. We obviously played the EG team that was playing with the house’s money, they have continued the form and nobody was going to beat them at that point.

In the NRG match, I just think we choked, we were right there in the end in map two and map three. In map three, there were a couple of rounds that were very unfortunate that didn’t go our way and they just pulled through. Crashies had a really good performance against us and we made too many mistakes down the stretch as an inexperienced team and just fell short. I think we would’ve done really fine in Tokyo but it really took a hit on our mental on that’s how we lost. We lost the match and it was brutal to deal with.”

Q. What did you focus on in terms of preparation before coming into the LCQ given there wasn’t much to improve with Cloud9?

C9 mCe: “We potentially were going to change the roster in terms of who we were playing with because LCQ we knew we just had to win two Bo3s, so we experimented playing with qpert and a lot of different compositions. It helped us learn other compositions as well. Unfortunately, towards the end I was like we are not getting a ton of value out of this that I need. I remember telling runi that I need you to keep playing the game and stay sharp because there is a chance we stop this, go back to what worked and change small simple things.

But because we were able to experiment with other comps, we had a really good understanding of what people can play against us. And then switching little things like an agent here, a comp there, some defaults, that's all we were focusing on.”

Q. One of the most interesting compositions we saw out of C9 was Phoenix on Pearl, do you think it is a viable composition?

C9 mCe: “I still think it is really good. Against single controller comps, it completely decimates them. The problem is we don’t have a really good Sage player so it’s like we can’t run that comp as well as the original five with Vanity and yay. But we played it in practice, we were playing Phoenix on Pearl before we decided to switch back which works well for us. I still think it is a really good pick, Paper Rex does an amazing job with it. I think it is really strong it's just it is a harder composition to play that people playing a Jett and doing it the easy way”

Q. Is there a chance we'd see Zellsis on a duelist again sometime?

C9 mCe: “Oh yeah, he plays Duelist for us on a couple of maps. We just haven’t seen them yet.”

Q. Who would you rather face KRU or Leviatan?

C9 mCe: “I would rather face Leviatan honestly. I think they are a little bit more like things that make sense. KRU has really good aim, they have really good little set strats but Keznit is a menace to deal with. Sometimes he feels like running through the smoke and catching people off-guard and KRU is in really good form right now so. If we could play Leviatan, we’d potentially prefer that but we are confident against both teams”

Q. Talking about being favorites, C9 is one of the favorites to win the LCQ. Which team do you think would pose the biggest threat for Cloud9?

C9 mCe: “I think whoever comes out of the Americas LCQ will do well at Champs. People might laugh at me but I think KRU is really good. If we end up losing to KRU or whoever makes it, they will end up representing our region really well too since they are in a red-hot form. The Americas is a strong region in general. Leviatan has been known for going on runs at International events. Any of these teams that come out will represent the region very well. Whoever comes out of the Americas LCQ I am pretty confident they’d do well at Champions''

Q. Any concluding comments, anything you want to add from your side?

C9 mCe: Just shout out to the fans, we could hear them out in the crowd. It’s been fun getting more and more. Obviously Sentinels are big time favorites to win matches so to hear as much support as we heard today. We really appreciate it”

Cloud9 faced red-hot KRU in the Upper Finals. After the intense best-of-three series, Cloud9 fell 1-2 to the eventual LCQ winners. Leviatan later eliminated Cloud9 from the VCT Americas LCQ. The tournament saw two LATAM team battling it out to secure Valorant Champions. You can follow the updates regarding the same on VCT NA twitter. 

Credits: Riot Games // VCT Americas 

You can also follow VCT Americas on Strafe.