On the 11th (KST), Cloud9 defeated Team Vitality and finished their second day at groups with a 1-1 score.

This game had brought back hope into the hearts of the NA fans. Cloud9 had started off the game as planned. Rotating towards the top side, Svenskeren gave a much needed kill to snowball his lead to the mid game.

Despite this, Team Vitality was not a team to just roll over. Fight after fight, the game went beyond 40 minutes with more than 20 kills on the board. Eventually, C9 was able to close out one of the closest games this group stage.

After the game, we got to meet with C9’s jungler, Svenskeren. Below are the interview responses.

¤ How do you feel about the win?

Uh...I think that game was definitely harder than it should have been. We started the game strong. Me and Licorice were able to kill the top laner. Not sure what really went wrong for us. Team Vitality did make a lot of good plays on us. If Jensen wasn’t able to stop them from doing Baron, the game would have ended right there. Yeah, it was a tough game.


¤ You played exceptionally in the early game but had difficulty during the later teamfights. Does Taliyah usually become difficult to play in the later stages on the game?

I think it is a mix of us not being able to set up our vision correctly, and us not being able to play through the side lanes. Vitality’s mid laner played really well. He just had constant side pressure against us. He kept picking us off.

It was especially hard for me that game due to the Jarvan and LeBlanc combo. I'm just super happy to win, but it was so hard (laughs).


¤ The game against Vitality was one of the highest kill games at groups. What made the game so exciting and bloody?

Any game with a Taliyah will result in a game with a lot of kills. On top of this, Vitality was not afraid to play aggressive. We saw how they played against Gen.G. Team Vitality just group as five and go go go. A lot of teams are going to be caught off guard on how aggressive they really are. Although we did get caught out a few times, we tried our best to respect them and play cautiously.


¤ What was going through your head when the fights kept going back and forth?

I kind of thought the game was lost when we traded Elder for Baron. They just started to siege us down, and we couldn’t get a fight started with the Elder buff. Vitality was able to stay back and constantly buff the waves.

Once the next Baron came up, we weren’t able to set up at all. They just had too much lane priority. I then got picked in the jungle. Vitality got Baron and rotated top. I just thought the game was doomed when they started sieging top inhib tower (laughs). But, when I saw one Galio Q do 60% of Jarvan’s health, I was like ‘Okay, we can win...PHEW, we can actually win” (laughs).


¤ What were some of the defining moments from that game?

One of the defining moments was when we got the second Elder. I don’t recall a single game when a team got two Elders. It is pretty neat what Riot implemented. But yeah...it doesn’t happen all the time. We were so surprised. We were like ‘Oh! It is the second Elder. If we get this, we can win the game!!! (laughs).


¤ In an interview with Bwipo, Bwipo stated that NA is struggling due to their lack of identity when it comes to playstyle while EU has already found it. What are your thoughts on this?

I think C9 is a lot different compared to other NA teams. A majority of the time, our goal is to practice synergistic champions. We don’t copy other people’s playstyles but dictate our style depending on what our champions want to do.

Reapered finds some champions that he think we are going to be good on. Even if a certain pick is very meta, Reapered will not tell us to play them if he believes we won’t be good at them. We play champions that suit our playstyle.


¤ C9 is 1-1 as of now. What will C9 need to do going forward?

First of all, we have Gen.G in our next match. If we are able to defeat them, we have a good chance at placing 2nd in groups. Obviously, our main goal is to keep improving. Worlds is an extremely long event. The teams that improve the fastest usually end up on top. We just need to keep moving forward.