We finally have a brand new winner of the Halo Infinite first tournamentThis is Cloud9, who beat eUnited in the grand finale of the HCS Kickoff Major in Raleigh.
This team of North American origin conquered the first great Halo Infinite tournament, and took $ 140,000 USD after winning with authority a series of 5 maps.
The grand finale of the Kickoff Major was the longest match of the tournament.
Instead of being a best-of-5 (Bo5), like the rest of the playoffs, it was a best-of-7 (Bo7) series; eUnited was coming from the lower bracket and had to win 2 series in a row to lift the trophy, but that’s not what happened.
As Cloud9, immediately took the lead with a dominant Oddball win at Streets.
Both teams slowly contested a Slayer round at Recharge, which was very close from start to finish. The Cloud9 simply slipped away to buy time and ended up winning 46-45, thanks to Renegade’s strong performance and a couple of kills from Echo in the final seconds.
This team again gained a quick advantage of more than 60 points of Strongholds in Live Fire and although eUnited closed the gap, Cloud9 again separated thanks to a perfect rotation, after that, their rivals were never able to reach them again.
And is that eUnited needed to win at least 4 maps in a row starting with CTF in Aquarius, just to force another series. The team managed to capture a couple of flags to secure their first grand final map, but Cloud9 dashed all their hopes, winning another round of Slayer at Bazaar and clinching victory.
Getting to the point of lifting the Kickoff Major trophy was a relatively easy task for the Cloud9 players, as in this tournament, they achieved a perfect 7-0 record and only lost 6 maps.
Yes OK Steller, Eco Y Renegade have lifted many trophies together over the years, this was the first official victory of Penguin.