It has been months since Henry Greer hung up his microphone as an analyst and caster of Counter-Strike to become the general manager of Cloud9.
The months have been a bit wild, with massive controversies resulting in some teams backing out of the professional league altogether, the largest cheating scandal ever publically reported, match-fixing allegations as players desperately hopping over to Valorant in the hopes that they won’t get caught, and a healthy amount of general toxicity and fury that punctuates esports in general.
Henry has been making his own waves, putting together a team that he has consistently referred to as ‘The Colossus‘ that hinges on stars from around the world in very specific roles, offering public details on pricing of the contracts (as well as length) to inform players precisely how much they are worth at the moment.
It’s been pretty radical, all things considered, but precisely how this star-studded team will manage under Henry Greer has yet to be seen; with Turkish AWPer ‘Woxic’ being picked up shortly after he left mousesports to Patrick ‘Es3tag’ Hansen coming out of Astralis (after a mind-blowing month of premier play), the roster is stacked to the gills.
Now, Flashpoint 2 groups have been announced and it officially confirms that Cloud9 has joined Flashpoint in Group C, along with other European-centric teams such as OG, Gen. G, and Virtus.Pro rounding out the foursome.
The first match that Cloud9 has with the new roster is currently scheduled to occur on December 11 against Virtus.Pro (#15) in a best of three format that should spell out precisely how coherent and dangerous Henry Greer’s brainchild is.
If it’s anything close to the hype that has slowly been generating with every announcement, we’re in for a massive treat with some ‘Jame time’ as Cloud9 will begin their run at the top of the seeds against some of the toughest opponents that Europe has to offer.
The top two teams of each group will continue onwards into double-elimination playoffs while teams that end third and fourth within the groups will receive another chance to qualify for bracket phase.
Some names are missing from the lineup that people would likely prefer seeing, such as Astralis; it’s rumored that a long-standing beef with Flashpoint frontman Duncan Shields is the primary reason that they are withholding from the tourney along with disputes over pay.
If Flashpoint isn’t your preferred flavor, we’ll see more Cloud9 in the coming months than we could possibly hope to track; here’s hoping we see the Colossus instead of the Colossal Fail.
