The stacked Cloud9 dominated Paper Rex and limits Benkai's entertaining walkout count to just one at São Paulo.
Labeled as a clash of titans in the VCT LOCK//IN alpha bracket - it is a battle of two polar opposite playstyles between North America's superteam Cloud9 versus Singapore's eclectic Paper Rex (PRX).
The hype was real and on paper, it was the biggest match in the tournament thus far. But the script got quickly flipped when PRX chose the game's newest map, Lotus as map 1. It did not go too well for them.
Both C9 ad PRX locked in Chamber for their respective marksmen in yay and f0saken, while Jett was left out in the cold.
The match was looking spicy and up to expectation in the first half, where both teams were pulling trick after trick to win the rounds. It was chaotic but superbly entertaining.
And then. Xeppaa turned up.
The former CS:GO pro pulled through with a fantastic flank in round 7 and showed that he was indeed ice-cold and on fire at the same time. Xeppaa ended the round with an impressive 155 ADR (average damage per round) and yay, the El Diablo himself, scored a 48 percent headshot stat line with 154 ADR. C9 was able to claim Lotus 13 to 8 in a dominant fashion.
From the latest map (Lotus), we now moved to the second latest map in Pearl for map 2. C9 surprised everyone including their opponents with an unorthodox composition comprising of yay on Sage and Zellsis on Phoenix.
The North American squad was able to execute total map control from the get-go with this combination, and the massacre began. Every C9 player was heating up and trampled through the first half, securing round after round. It may sound weird now that yay was playing support, but it certainly worked wonders. As C9 cleaned up the first half 10-2.
PRX tried to reset and was seemingly on course to stage an epic comeback when they took round 13 and 14 consecutively. But ultimately, the NA superteam hunkered down and seal the deal without pulling any foolish C9 incident and sent the APAC representatives home. Thus keeping Benkai's signature walkout appearance to a single snail.
C9 advances to the next round where they will battle South Korea's very own DRX on Feb 18 at 11am CT.
Stay tuned to GosuGamers for more tournament coverage or check out our VCT LOCK//IN tournament hub.
