It’s been a hectic weekend of women’s VALORANT with the qualifying rounds of the North American VCT Game Changers series coming to a conclusion. Eight teams are now qualified for the main event, and to the surprise of many, Cloud 9 White were the last team to earn their spot this time around.
The three-time defending champions haven’t had an easy weekend, and started off the tournament with a forfeit against Immortals after C9W arrived late to the scheduled match start. This sent the team down into the lower bracket, a position we have never seen them in before in Game Changers.
While C9W expectedly took down Gen.G Black 2-0 in their first match today, they met a much more fierce opponent in team Misfits Black.
Starting off on Misfits’ map pick, Fracture, the most enticing part of the map was the duel between MeL of C9W and Vernina of Misfits. MeL has one of the most stunning resumes in women’s VALORANT and consistently stands out on her team, especially when playing Chamber. But today, Vernina gave MeL a run for her money, winning the head-to-head mirror-match Chamber duel on several occasions and showing she too has refined her tactics on the agent.
Starting off on Misfits’ map pick, Fracture, the most enticing part of the map was the duel between MeL of C9W and Vernina of Misfits. MeL has one of the most stunning resumes in women’s VALORANT and consistently stands out on her team, especially when playing Chamber. But today, Vernina gave MeL a run for her money, winning the mirror-match Chamber duel on several occasions and showing she too has refined her tactics on the agent.
The first half of Fracture ended with a tied scoreline at six rounds a piece. Misfits were reading C9W’s strategy like few teams have before. The only time Misfits looked weak was during post-plant, because they were often committing ultimates to get on-site instead of saving them for once the spike went down.
C9W were able to win a few rounds off these executes, but where Misfits excelled was their ability to get kills to secure their rounds. Misfits took Fracture 13-10, with 11 of their round wins coming from out-fragging their opponents. Despite the entertaining Chamber matchup, Zoe was the star of this map, ending with a +11 rating.
Misfits had fallen to the lower bracket after a loss to Dignitas, a team that made it through both the Swiss and Closed Qualifiers with a perfect record. Moving on to Haven, the casters noted this was the closest we had ever seen C9W be to tournament elimination, with only one map to save their chances of moving to the main event.
Switching onto Haven, Jazzy swapped Neon for Raze and Bob, the newest member of C9W, locked in Fade. So far this Game Changers, Bob has fit seamlessly into C9W’s roster after replacing Annie. It was also clear the team had a lot of confidence in Bob; on multiple occasions she was the only member of the team who had a rifle, with the team opting to go for a hero-buy.
This strategy worked well for C9W and they were dominant on attack. The team was splicing up the map and executing strategies that allowed them to approach the sites with ease and flawlessly take up space.
Zoe gave Misfits some hope with three back-to-back bucky kills in round six, but once the sides switched Misfits had a hard time on defense and went down 13-4. Every member of C9W had a positive KDA on Haven.
Misfits struggled similarly on Bind, though Vernina showed her expertise on Chamber once again and was the best-performing player on the team. But MeL and Bob were just too strong and completely dominated the map in true C9W fashion.
Misfits lost Bind, 13-5, and were eliminated from Game Changers.
C9W will be moving on to the main event along with Dignitas, TSM X, Immortals, Shopify Rebellion, and free-agent teams Dart Monkeys, Ariana Grande Perfume, and Sanri-O’s. Notable absences from the main event include CLG Red, XSET, Version X, and Gen.G Black, who were all eliminated in the Closed Qualifier stage.
Game Changers NA continues on Wednesday, July 6 at 3pm.
