Sentinels bring it home at SEN City Classic 2025

The 2025 SEN City Classic was held from November 7 to 9, 2025 at the Sentinels’ headquarters in Los Angeles, with a prize pool of US$20,000. Four invited teams competed in this off-season event: Sentinels, ENVY, Cloud9, and Cubert Academy. The tournament used a round-robin group stage followed by a knockout playoffs, providing each organization a valuable chance to test roster dynamics ahead of the upcoming competitive cycle.

The format consisted of a single-round robin group stage where each team played the others in best-of-three matches. After this stage, the top three teams advanced to the playoff stage: the first-place team from groups secured a direct berth to the grand final, while the second and third seeds contested a semi-final qualification match. Both the qualification match and the grand final were played as best-of-three. This was the debut for Sentinels and C9 after they announced their rosters recently, and Cubert too had changes thanks to two of their players, Yassine “Reduxx” Aboulalazm and Mirel Braco “Kyu” Hrustemovic, moving up the ladder from the academy team to the main roster.

ENVY were also playing this event with a substitute, with Rahul “curry” Nemani stepping in to play with the team instead of their sentinel main Hunter “Inspire” Schline.

Group Stage: Sentinels Go Undefeated

In the group stage, Sentinels finished secured first place after finding 2-0 wins over C9 and Cubert, and a 2-1 win over ENVY. Their sentinel player Gabriel “cortezia” Cortez who had just joined them from MIBR. Meanwhile, ENVY placed second, winning against C9 and Cubert Academy in a close series, and one defeat, while Cubert Academy took third, beating C9 and leaving the latter without a win in the group stage.

Sentinels received the bye to the grand final after their group-stage dominance. Both ENVY and Cubert Academy played each other to decide who would face Sentinels in the final, while C9 unfortunately, due to their lack of wins, were eliminated early. Despite being 0-3, a lot of C9’s games were incredibly close, a good sign for their future, assuming the roster can build some synergy ahead of their VCT season in January.

Meanwhile, ENVY advanced to the final by defeating Cubert Academy 2-0 in the qualifying match on the final day of the event. They found pretty convincing wins on both maps, with canezerra dropping 56 kills and going +28 across both maps, with 7 first kills on Cypher and Jett.

In the grand final, Sentinels overcame ENVY 2-1 with an especially dominant map three: on Split, they found a 13-3 win to lift their first trophy as a roster. The hero in the grand final was definitely cortezia, who went +20 on the sentinel/controller role and found several impactful multi-kill rounds in not just the final but across the entire event. Reduxx was right behind him, with a +19 kill differential. In fact, four out of SEN’s five players had positive k/d ratios, while for ENVY, none of them hit that benchmark.

Debut Rosters and Overall Team Landscape

This event served as a litmus test for several organizations and their roster decisions. Sentinels showcased their fresh five-man starting roster composed of johnqt (IGL), Reduxx, cortezia, Kyu, and N4RRATE. Their performance suggested the rebuild has early promise with the perfect mix of a trophy-winning IGL, a proven sentinel player from this year, and young talent built up from SEN’s Academy project.

Cloud9 appeared with their new roster combination: Zellsis, penny, Xeppaa, v1c, OXY, making their first major appearance in this configuration. Despite their losses, this was Zellsis’ debut as the IGL and v1c, penny, and OXY were all in the top ten players performance-wise, and they all had brilliant rounds across the event. However, they will have to buck up before the competitive year starts and hopefully come back stronger during Americas Kickoff 2026 so they can achieve their goal of making internationals once again.

Team ENVY competed with a substitute and still made it to the grand final. However, with two of their players (canezerra and ion2x) not being eligible for VCT 2026 competition due to their young age, the team’s 2026 VCT roster is yet to be showcased. That said, the performance from them as a team was excellent this event.

it’s staying home pic.twitter.com/lFBWyszq99

— Sentinels (@Sentinels) November 9, 2025

What the Results of SEN City Classic 2025 Suggest

Sentinels’ strong performance suggests their revamped roster is already functioning at a high level, combining the flexibility of new entrants like Reduxx and Kyu with the experience of veterans like johnqt and talents like cortezia. For ENVY, their roster remains a question mark, with it being unknown who will play with them instead of canezerra and ion2x.

Meanwhile, Cloud9, despite finishing last, benefited from the practice at this event and will seek to strengthen chemistry and their game-closing ability ahead of next season, with Zellsis still finding his feet as an IGL. As for Cubert Academy, Zander and Kess, who are their stand-ins in place of Kyu and Reduxx, did have a good showing. However, their full roster remains to be seen as well.

The SEN City Classic 2025 may have been a smaller-scale North American off-season event, but its implications were far from small. Sentinels walked away as champions, but every team gained actionable insight into roster strength and preparation heading into the 2026 competitive cycle. This event confirmed that the off-season can be a proving ground, and for Sentinels, a statement of intent: that they’re ready to head back to their winning ways.