Photo Credit: HLTV
When the dust settled on Boston after an explosive, full three game series between FaZe Clan and Cloud9, the American fans had cause to celebrate. Cloud9 had barely edged out their opponents in a close double Overtime victory on the final, decider map. With the win, this marks the first time that a North American team has ever won a CS:GO major.
Map 1 Mirage
Mirage began with Cloud9 starting on the Terrorist side and kicking things off immediately with the pistol round win and a strong 9-6 lead. Despite losing the second side pistol round, a force buy on Round 17 saw the Americans devastate the FaZe full buy and go on to take a huge lead at 12-7. However, managed to completely pull back and even pull ahead 15-12 winning a stunning eight rounds in a row. Cloud9’s last ditch effort was enough to put two more rounds on the board to put the score at 15-14 for FaZe, but the last round ended with a successful B rush from FaZe.
Map 2 Overpass
Without letting Mirage sit on their minds, Cloud9 began Overpass with a vengeance, taking eight rounds in a row to lead 8-0 before FaZe finally put their first round on the board. The great start allowed Cloud9 to finish the half 12-3 for a solid performance on the CT side of Overpass. From there, they were able to quickly secure match point at 15-4 and were looking to close out the map when FaZe began to mount a small comeback of their own, winning six rounds in a row to bring their own score to double digits. Still, Cloud9 were finally able to close out the map to bring it to the decider, Inferno.
Map 3 Inferno
Inferno has traditionally been a CT sided map, and things looked good for Cloud9 on their Terrorist side when they grabbed seven rounds for a score of 7-8 at halftime. However, they were never able to establish a solid enough streak of rounds and FaZe took a commanding 15-11 lead and four match points. With their backs against the wall, Cloud9 put up a stellar defense with Stewie2k killing four FaZe players by himself on the very last round to take the game to Overtime. Cloud9 continued their streak, putting up three rounds on the first half of the first Overtime to take their first three match points of the map. However, FaZe managed to pull back and win three rounds of their own to send the map to the second Overtime. At this point, Cloud9 managed to win two precious T-side rounds and finally close out the map with two more round wins on their CT rounds to win the map and the major.