I sat down with Rookie 
Centir to not only get an inside look at the success of the team but also learn more about his path to making it to his first S-Tier event.
Behind the scenes
Centir made his name in competitive Siege during Element Two on Osiris. He then played with the 
Standby stack in SI LCQ and the 2026 Challenger series, and earlier this year Cloud9 signed him for the NAL Kickoff. He explained how he got here.
I’ve grown as a player just by simply watching VODs over going to scrims every day with a goal I wanted to work on
Heading into Stage 2, Cloud9 added 
monk to an already young roster. With Centir and 
Ewzy, that makes Cloud9 the only NA team with three rookies. The new blood hasn’t fazed Centir or the team, which makes sense with veterans like 
Panba and 
Eddy.
Being the youngest team in the league doesn't really change much for us, The veteran experience from Panba and Eddy being able to learn from them has helped.
The roster built momentum by simply being a team. Cloud9 developed a culture of learning and improving, which led them to overhaul many of their strats on both attack and defense. One word sums up their success: consistency.
We all played a big part in our turnaround from stage 1 to now by mainly watching our VODs and consistently practicing and trying to all improve together. We changed a lot of our defensive and attack strats as well to help.
Centir was driven to compete at this level partly by the chance to face his brother, 
Surf. Each had come up through their own T3 and T2 journeys, so meeting in T1 meant a lot. Beating Surf for the first time in Stage 2 was special for the rookie. There was heartbreak too: 
Shopify Rebellion missed the Osaka major, so the brothers won’t meet on an international stage.
SR not making the major does suck; it would've been really nice to attend an event with my brother and potentially play each other and it does make me want to continue making events in hopes they qualify as well to eventually potentially get that opportunity of playing each other.
Playing against my brother has been a big thing I've wanted to do at a T1 level, stage 1 being the first time playing him didn't go our way but being able to bounce back in Stage 2 and beat them in the regular season did feel nice.
Centir came up through amateur competitive Siege, so I asked what advice he had for players in his position, especially support players, who have a harder time getting noticed by T1 teams. His answer, again, was consistency.
Grinding through T3 and T2 is a pretty rough journey for the average player; the best advice I can give is to keep grinding, playing the game whether it's scrims or anything else, and to try to improve yourself every day as a player try to learn as much as you can from others; watch pro league VODs. Watch what those players do and try to find out why.
What the numbers show
Cloud9 kept pushing the mark statistically. Stats don’t tell the whole story, but they highlight top teams. Of the ten NAL teams, including playoff rosters, Cloud9 was the best in entry, with 101 entry kills across groups and playoffs. Only 
M80 came close, with 100. Their +30 plus-minus was also the league’s best by far.
Cloud9 also had one of the deepest map pools in NA, playing eight of the nine maps. Only 
100 Thieves played all nine in Stage 2. Cloud9 never played Bank, banning it 11 times. They were also the NAL’s best Villa team, going 3-0 on it, the only flawless record on the map, including a statement win over DarkZero in the Stage 2 playoff upper-bracket semifinal.
Going into the major
Many wonder whether Cloud9’s run is real or a fluke. From what I’ve seen, the team has built a strong culture that lays the groundwork for real consistency and could be a recipe for success. The real test for this young, hot roster starts November 8 in Osaka, and I’m excited to see them compete on an international stage.
