The bigger they are, the harder they fall. An old adage, but one that rang true again this week when last month's Pro League finalists C9 and FaZe had to play each other for the final major spot.
Both teams were disappointing in their RMR groups by bottling all their BO3s and going 2-3. Now I can hear some of you thinking: “Wait, but doesn’t that mean they’re out?” which is a valid question. Fortunately for the European teams, the Americas were so poor at the last major that they lost an RMR qualification spot straight to EU. Thus, the last-chance qualifiers were born.
In this last chance bracket, Cloud9 had to fight through B8 and BIG to earn their LCQ Final spot, whilst FaZe benefited from a high seeding and only needed to beat Aurora.
So, now we’ve established the background, we’ll finally talk about the game: and what a game it was. Nafany’s C9 boys started off with some absolute FIRE; the Ax1le & sh1ro combo was cooking harder than Marco Pierre White. They snowballed to a 14-5 lead, and many thought the game was over, which was naive of us. How could anyone forget that we’re dealing with FaZe?
So, in FaZe Clan fashion, they clutched the game completely unFaZed. They turned the tides despite giving C9 map point and carried their clutch into all four OT rounds.
If you’re C9, at this point, your mental must be broken. We already saw sh1ro break during C9’s game against ENCE, so none of this could have helped, which was pretty clear to see on Inferno. FaZe started on the hipster's favourite T-side and didn’t give C9 an inch of space; it was basically over before it started.
FaZe closed the game, won the series 2-0, and still made the major after all. Deserved because this line from Karrigan before the game was ice-cold.
Here’s an overview of all the qualified teams:
Legends stage
9-16. based on results from Challengers stage.
Challengers stage