C9’s ACHES turns his attention to eUnited after a crucial win against Mindfreak at CWL Dallas

After two consecutive top-20 placings at the past two Call of Duty World League events in February, Cloud9 worked tirelessly to get back to the form that produced a second-place finish at CWL Vegas in December. With Patrick “ACHES” Price, one of the winningest players in Call of Duty history, leading the team, Cloud9 went back to the drawing board in preparation for the CWL Dallas Open this weekend.

“As soon as we got back home [after Paris], we took a day or two off just to think about stuff,” ACHES said. “We really put an emphasis on how we wanted to play together as a team, because our teamwork was off. We focused on Hardpoint and were putting in 4pm-to-midnight hours almost every day.”

These long nights of practice and preparation have clearly paid off so far, as Cloud9 began CWL Dallas with a huge 3-2 win against Mindfreak, in this back-and-forth series against the best team from Australia.

Cloud9 won the first map, Retaliation Hardpoint, roughly 250-200, with Adam “Assault” Garcia putting up a tremendous performance of 38-19. After losing Crusher Search and Destroy and game three Uplink, Assault had another massive showing in the second Hardpoint to force a decisive game five.

The final map was Search and Destroy on Retaliation, which went down to the wire, but Cloud9 clutched up in round 11 to take the 6-5 map win, as well as the 3-2 series victory.

“Game five was non-stop back-and-forth,” ACHES said. “In round 11, we got double first blood and closed it out by trading kills to win.”

After this opening victory, Cloud9 is 1-0 at the top of Pool B, tied with eUnited, who also went to game five to defeat Millenium 3-2. Up next, Cloud9 will face off against the CWL Atlanta winners on main stage—and ACHES thinks this match could decide who wins the group.

“If we beat eUnited, it pretty much guarantees us the pool, especially if we beat them 3-0 or 3-1,” ACHES said. “That’s going to be a huge series for us, and we’re going to give it everything we’ve got.”

In Cloud9 and eUnited’s first series, both teams won 3-2, and won the same maps—the two Hardpoints and the final Search and Destroy. Keeping this in mind, ACHES knows that his team will have to compete with Atlanta’s MVP, Pierce “Gunless” Hillman, in order to take the series win.

“If we can shutdown Gunless and we can slay, we can definitely hang with them in Hardpoint,” ACHES said. “Other than that, I think we have the edge on them in Search and Destroy, so that’s something we’re definitely going to rely on. If we can sneak game one, win game two, and catch them off guard in Uplink, maybe we can take this series 3-0. If we can match them in slaying, we should be fine.”

With both teams getting off to a good start in Dallas, this series will definitely deliver some intense Call of Duty action. The main stage showdown between Cloud9 and eUnited is scheduled to start at 7:30pm ET (4:30pm PT). You can catch all the action on MLG.tv.