The most highly-anticipated VALORANT Game Changers match ever delivered a classic showdown between Cloud9 White and G2 Gozen today, filled with highlights and trash talk to close out an exciting day one of the VCT Game Changers Championship.
On Ascent, G2 claimed the pistol, but C9 answered right back with a thrifty round, prompting meL to pop up out of her chair and taunt G2 with “that’s how you anti-eco.” The first half was a close, back-and-forth affair that ended in a 6-6 tie. But once C9 switched to defense, they took over, only dropping a single round with Jazzyk1ns putting on a terrific battle-Sage performance.
G2 looked poised to strike back on Breeze with a 4-0 start to their attacking side. And even though C9 recovered, Juliano hit the NA titans with the Reyna diff to notch 16 first-half kills and propel G2 to a 7-5 lead. Just like C9 did on map one, G2 hit a new level on defense, holding C9 to just one round in the second half and handing the queens of NA their worst defeat on a map ever, 13-6.
G2 broke out one of their promised “weird picks” on Pearl, putting juliano on Yoru, and the top team from EMEA looked so prepared for Pearl with perfect rotates and flanks on attack. After a dominant 9-3 half for G2, mimi drove the dagger through C9 with a one-vs-four retake in their bonus round, leading to a shockingly one-sided 13-3 win for G2 on Pearl.
Coming into today’s match, both teams had made sizable claims to being the world’s best Game Changers teams. Both C9 White and G2 have respectively dominated the scenes in North America and EMEA, with only a handful of map losses between the two teams combined. Both teams were looking forward to this meeting, with a plethora of trash talk taking place during the pre-event press conference.
Despite the result today, it’s very possible that the two teams could meet again later in the bracket, potentially even in the grand final. G2 move on to the upper bracket final, while C9 have no more room for mistakes in the lower bracket.
