Ninjas in the Major: NiP qualify for IEM Rio over Cloud9

Ninjas in Pyjamas have booked the second IEM Rio Major spot up for grabs in the Europe Regional Major Ranking (RMR) A tournament following a nail-biter 2-1 victory against Cloud9.

NiP arrived in this series as heavy underdogs considering that they recently changed in-game comms to English, gave the in-game leadership duties to new player Aleksi “Aleksib” Virolainen, and made star rifler Fredrik “REZ” Sterner the primary AWPer instead of Patrick “es3tag” Hansen all after a disappointing performance in ESL Pro League season 16 during September, but they outclassed C9 thanks to impressive individual showings from Hampus Poser, REZ, and Ludvig “Brollan” Brolin.

The international team now led by Aleksib won 16-9 on Mirage and saw C9 tie the series after a 16-11 loss on Inferno. The series headed to the decider Vertigo and NiP prevailed thanks to the performance of their star players, most notably REZ, who went on to finish with 28 frags and help NiP comeback and win by 16-14 despite C9’s best efforts.

This victory over C9 put NiP in the Legends Stage of IEM Rio Major alongside FaZe Clan. This means that both of these teams will get to skip the Challengers Stage, where 16 Challengers and Contenders teams in total try to make the Legends Stage after a battle in a Swiss system stage.

C9, on the other hand, will have a couple of more chances to qualify for IEM Rio Major, starting tomorrow when they’ll play a best-of-three advancement series in the 2-1 pool. There are six IEM Rio Majors spots up for grabs in the Europe RMR A.