The fight for the two North American slots at Masters: Reykjavik began today with two teams advancing to the upper semifinals and two teams dropping to the lower bracket. Cloud9 Cloud9 North America Rank #9 Xeppaa Erick Bach runi Dylan Cade moose Kaleb Jayne vanity Anthony Malaspina OXY Francis Hoang survived an upset bid by Knights Knights Inactive and OpTic Gaming OpTic Gaming Inactive overcame XSET XSET Inactive to advance to the upper semifinals.

Cloud9 vs. Knights (2-1 C9)

The first series of the playoffs was the first seed of Group A - Cloud9 - taking on the fourth seed of Group B - Knights. Cloud9 had not lost a series since Valorant Champions in December. They ran back the same roster that made the quarterfinals of that event and had put together flawless runs of Knights VALORAMPAGE and the group stage of NA Challengers Stage 1. Knights on the other hand, only won two out of their five group stage matches and were looking to continue their underdog run after pulling off wins against Rise and NRG to qualify for the playoffs.

Knights picked Ascent first, which had been their best map by far. They were 22-2 since the beginning of the year on that map. However, both those losses came during the group stage. Cloud9 allowed this pick to come through since they had been undefeated on Ascent this year including a 13-4 win over The Guard The Guard Inactive JonahP Jonah Pulice trent Trent Cairns neT Michael Bernet valyn Jacob Batio tex Ian Botsch in their most recent match. Knights got out to a 3-1 lead on their attack, but struggled once Cloud9 started buying rifles. A couple of clutch rounds initiated by an aggressive push through mid by Joseph "ban" Seungmin Oh with the Operator brought the round differential to two at the half.

Another fast start gave Knights four rounds to start the second half, giving them the round lead, but Cloud9 persisted, striking back with four rounds of their own. Knights managed to force overtime after a round 21 timeout, as Cloud9 let the final rounds of regulation slip away from them.

mitch explained Cloud9's stumble at the end of the second half of Ascent as “(We were) kind of just playing too fast. We realized that really late in the game we were trying to just go into (executes) too [quickly] and we were kind of cut off from leaf…so we just decided to play slower rounds, wait out their (utility), and it worked out pretty great.”

C9's adaptations allowed them to get the two necessary overtime rounds for the map win, bringing Cloud9 within one map of advancing on in the upper bracket. While reflecting on the ending of Ascent in a post-match interview, Logan "skuba" Jenkins and Amgalan "Genghsta" Nemekhbayar both noted that overall, improper trading of kills between teams and sloppy play after the spike had been planted were the culprits for why they couldn't secure the first map. Despite this, ban was the standout player at the end of the map, topping the server with 28 kills and a 298 ACS.

Cloud9's map pick was Breeze, where they previously suffered a 13-8 defeat at the hands of the underdog Evil Geniuses Evil Geniuses North America Rank #29 Derrek Derrek Ha NaturE Nicholas Garrison supamen Phat Le Apoth Vincent Le jawgemo Alexander Mor . Cloud9 won the pistol and second round on their attack, but Erick "Xeppaa" Bach came up short in back-to-back 1v1 clutch situations to allow Knights to even up the scoreline at two apiece. An eighth round ace by ban helped sustain a five round streak from Knights as they brought seven rounds with them into the second half of the map. Knights won the second pistol, but a quadra kill by Nathan "leaf" Orf in an eco round kept Cloud9's hopes alive. However, their opponents quickly crushed those hopes with a dominant finish to win 13-8. Cloud9 struggled to hold any sort of map control, and the individual hero moments went overwhelmingly to Knights with eight triple kills to Cloud9's two.

ban made his presence felt all series, and this ace on Breeze was no different.

With a potential upset looming, Cloud9 went into the final map with confidence. They were undefeated on Haven this year, with their most recent performance being a dominant 13-2 showing against The Guard. Cloud9 got out to yet another slow start after losing their attacking pistol, while Knights retaliated by using a variation of stacks and group pushes to catch C9 off guard. Cloud9 eventually stabilized and took a 7-5 lead off of a 1v2 clutch from Mitch "mitch" Semago to close the half. mitch won another critical clutch to open Cloud9's defensive half, and Cloud9 ran away with a 13-6 victory.

ban put on a show with 61 kills, and he helped nullify the impact of Cloud9's duelist extraordinaire leaf with nine kills to two deaths in opening duels against the Cloud9 superstar. The double initiator duo of Xeppaa and Son "xeta" Seon-ho (손선호) provided just enough of a difference to pull Cloud9 across the line.

Cloud9 moved on to the upper bracket to face the winner of the day's second match. Knights put up a good fight but were relegated to the lower bracket where they will have to win four straight matches to qualify for the international LAN.

OpTic Gaming vs. XSET (2-1 OG)

The second matchup of the day was a battle of fan favorites featuring OpTic Gaming OpTic Gaming Inactive and XSET XSET Inactive . Before the group stage, the last time OpTic played was at VCT Champions 2021 where they were eliminated in the group stage as Envy. Following their change of branding, OpTic opened up the group stage with a surprise loss to Rise, but battled back to secure the second seed in Group B. XSET's revamped roster with Matthew "Cryocells" Panganiban entered the group stage with a flawless run through the open qualifiers as well as a first place finish at the Nerd Street Gamers Winter Championship Finals with the only blemish on their record being a loss to The Guard. In the group stage, XSET's only losses were to The Guard and Cloud9.

OpTic let Split through the first phase of map bans in a strange turn of events since they had only played it once since last September in a loss to X10 CRIT at Champions. They got the benefit of starting on the much favored defensive side, but XSET immediately leapt out to a 4-0 lead. Jimmy "Marved" Nguyen stuck a ninja defuse to get OpTic on the board, but XSET continuously exploited gaps in the defense for a dominant 10-2 halftime lead. OpTic won the second pistol, but XSET quickly cleaned up the map 13-4. Cryocells spearheaded XSET's efforts led the way with 25 kills in only 17 rounds and a monstrous 246 ADR. OpTic looked like a team that had not won a game of Split in 181 days as they were completely unprepared for XSET's innovative attacking setups.

OpTic found the other end of the pick-ban spectrum as Ascent had been banned in every match XSET played during the group stage. Both teams picked up the newly buffed Brimstone which had been played seldomly on Ascent in prior matches. XSET won the first two rounds, but OpTic looked much more comfortable on their map pick with seven rounds in a row. OpTic used their signature play of calling a timeout after a single round loss and closed their attacking half 8-4. XSET lost the second pistol, but started to find their momentum as they brought the game back to a one round deficit. Their attack started to lose steam, and OpTic were able to escape with a 13-9 victory. Victor "Victor" Wong turned a corner on his previous eight-kill performance on Split with 21 kills and a map leading 269 ACS on Ascent.

”That was the first time since the new meta shift that I actually felt outplayed” - dephh

Unlike the first two maps, Bind - the final map of the day - was a map that both teams were well practiced on. XSET came into the match undefeated on Bind this year with recent wins over Cloud9 and The Guard, while OpTic ended Sentinels' seven month undefeated streak on the map in a 13-2 beatdown. A Cryocells ace pushed XSET to a 4-0 lead on their defense, but OpTic returned with five in a row en route to a 6-6 score at the half. OpTic found their rhythm on their defensive half, only losing one round in a dominant performance that ended in a 13-7 map win. XSET were unable to uproot any of the defensive positions held by the OpTic players and rarely got the spike planted with favorable numbers.

Cryocells was a shining star for XSET the entire series.

Despite Cryocells posting a +25 kills to deaths differential across the series, XSET were unable to convert their initial dominance into a series win. The rest of his team managed to win only 35% of their opening duels. Jaccob "yay" Whiteaker was unusually quiet during this series compared to his previous performances by his standards, but Victor picked up the slack with seven triple kills.

OpTic will now face Cloud9 in the upper semifinals in a battle of North America's Masters 3 and Champions representatives. XSET dropped to the lower bracket where they will have to run the gauntlet to reach their first international event. They will match up against Knights

Looking Ahead

There are two games remaining in the first round of the playoffs and both will be played tomorrow.

Luminosity will attempt to hand the new Version1 roster their first series loss of the tournament, and The Guard vs. Sentinels will be a much anticipated matchup of North America's young blood up against the old legends.

Hudsen contributed to this story with interviews and co-writing/editing.