EPT
I’m sitting there with EliGE from Team Liquid, who just won their second match in a row against Fnatic, in the swiss-system rounds, and have made their way to the semifinals. So first can you walk me through that last match, how did it feel, and especially how did you handle Fnatic starting their comeback?
So we basically knew how they’re going to play just because we already played the first match against them on Dust 2. We knew how they’re gonna adjust. In the very beginning of the second match on Dust 2, the first couple of rounds we’re playing the exact same way as the other match, and then as soon as they take their time-out, it was the same exact time they took their other timeout on the other map and we knew exactly how they’re gonna adjust, and they did the same exact thing that we were expecting so we just countered that and we knew what to do going forward. We all knew that we could win on Dust 2 again, we were really confident on it.
It seemed like you had a very specific way to deal with them, especially with the aggressive CT side, that they couldn’t seem to handle. Then they started to come back, expecting it and shutting it down. And it came down to that round, right after you gambled on a catwalk push with the sole AK you had and it failed, where they played really passive. Did you think that the constant aggression was the key here?
Well, the first time it was a really good thing for us to just push up mid like that in my opinion. If Pimp didn’t die there and if he got a little luckier with not dying or had someone smoke lower, some better way to support the whole thing so we could fall back... We knew we could fall back after getting a pick if we got one, but we got all the way back to cat safe and sound except for Pimp who just got one shot by Olofmeister from lower, and then the rest of the round just played out similarly to how you’d expect. But actually after that, we were saving and I was the one with an AK so I was just thinking that they probably wouldn’t expect it again because they’re gonna know we’ll be low on money. But they were just holding forever and I just got punished. It’s just a risk that didn’t pay off. It’s just how CS is sometimes, you have to take risks when you’re ecoing.
Going back to your whole run in the tournament so far, did you expect things to pan out like that? Like for example your first match against Na’Vi, did you get into that match with a confident mindset?
We were confident going against Na’Vi. We thought that we had a map pool that could counter theirs. We knew it was probably going to be Mirage, but the only problem with that is that S1mple changed to the secondary AWP role so he’s gonna be playing cat instead, where the only demo of them with that roster playing on Mirage was against TyLoo at StarSeries, and that’s with S1mple playing connector instead. So we didn’t really know how to prepare for it really. So that was one of the biggest challenges for that.
Mirage was our strongest map from practice coming into this tournament and we had some really unexpected results with how both of them went down. With Na’Vi I think it was just a bunch of individual mistakes, just from us not being warmed up, it was the first match of the tournament, first time on LAN with this lineup. Against VP, they play a really outlandish style that we never played against, and it just completely ruined our... mojo I guess you would say, from how we normally use to play Mirage. And we took way too long to adjust. We know what we would need to adjust if we play them again, we talked about it. We know what we need to do. But in the moment we just took too long to adjust on CT side. We started adjusting at 10-2 or something, and it was just unrecoverable at that point.
It’s your very first LAN since Cologne. In the meantime there’s been the off-season, there’s been a lot of changes with teams, like Fnatic, Godsent, Na’Vi, etc. Was it something that made it hard to prepare for this tournament? The fact that many teams took a break, that you didn’t see a lot of them.
Well this whole tournament in general has been really hard for preparations because of the swiss system. We don’t really know who we’re playing, we don’t know when we’re playing, we don’t know what map we’re playing, up until maybe 20 minutes before. So actually what we did before this tournament is, we all assigned people homework just to do analysis on these teams, on the maps that we thought we’re gonna play.
We did the vetoes beforehand at the bootcamp, right before we left. We all watched demos and we had something to bring to practice, to the tournament. We just sent everything via email so right before the matches, as soon as we find out what’s it’s gonna be, we just got out those papers and we’re just like “okay this is how they play this is how we’re gonna counter it”. Like I said before the only thing that was really hard was because of Na’Vi. They only played one match on the map that we thought we were going to play against them. And yeah, that’s it.
You said that you didn’t really know who you’re playing next during the tournament. When you found out that you’re playing Fnatic a second time, were you happy about it or did you think it’d be hard again? What was the mentality going into the second match against them?
Honestly, all of us didn’t really think too much of the matchup in general, of the way we’ll play against them. We were more concerned about the timing of it because we didn’t have any time to eat anything for the afternoon, so we’re all just kind of… hungry going into the match, really [laughs]. So we’re not really thinking about that.
As for the game itself we were just thinking that we would be able to win, just because we’ve played them on Dust 2 before and we know what our mistakes were T side. We know how they’re gonna try to adjust and we thought that we could just… out-adjust them basically. So we actually thought that they weren’t going to be picking Dust 2, but they did again. We thought that they were gonna pick Train, but it didn’t go that way. They wanted a rematch on Dust 2 and… we had it.
Coming back to the format of the tournament. You said you don’t really know what to expect, but aside from that do you think it’s a better format than the GSL style groups, and how do you compare the two?
Us personally… I don’t like the format and some of my teammates don’t like the format. Maybe because it’s only eight teams and I think the swiss format is supposed to be with 16 teams or… any other number probably than eight, just because it doesn’t really make sense sometimes because… for our situation against Fnatic, it was a 2-1 team playing a 1-2 team, because there was only three 1-2 teams. So it was just kind of weird in general, but besides that, like, if they did have actually sixteen teams, and the format in general, I don’t really like it because, as for us, we are really a preparation heavy team. We like to know everything that the other teams do, and I think it really benefits us a lot. Like in Cologne, we knew everything that the other team was gonna do. We studied so much, we put a lot of work into it. We knew what we needed to do.
We know what we need to do in this tournament, we try to do the same type of preparation that we did in Cologne, which I said before with how we got homeworks and trying to have everything ready before the tournament even starts. You shouldn’t be trying to do stuff like two hours before, or during the night. Because sleep is really important when you’re in a big tournament. So I think I really prefer the GSL format just because we’re able to prepare, we know who we’re playing.
Also with the swiss format, how it is in the group stage at least, it’s going to be vetoed down to one map. Three vetoes from one team, two from the other, and then it’s decided for the last one. So you’re never going to have a best of three in the group stage, and there’s only… like you’re not going to be able to play your one map… Like usually if it’s a best of three, you got one ban, one ban, and then it’s pick, pick. So you get that one really comfortable map. But for this tournament, if the map pool is not deep enough for some teams, you’re not going to be able to play that one to three maps that you got to. You’re going to have to play that uncomfortable, kind of shaky, average map.
Understood. So tomorrow you’re going to play against either SK or Na’Vi [E/N: not yet decided at that time]. Na’Vi was a bit of a question mark going into New York after their bad showing at StarSeries but they’ve been good. SK are still considered kind of the best in the world even if a bit shaky. How do you feel going into this semifinals?
So I’m not really sure how the format works and how it’s decided when we’re gonna know who we’re playing, we might even find out tonight, or tomorrow morning. Hum… [laughs] that’s just the swiss system! That’s why I don’t really like it that much. But like I said, with Na’Vi we know what we need to fix with them, like as far as Mirage goes, we still have information on the other maps that we think that we’re gonna play against them. I think that when we played them it was more of us messing up than them doing something really good, whereas as far as us playing against VP, it was them playing super well and we didn’t know how to adjust until like super late.
Against SK I’m pretty excited to play against them because we haven’t played against them in a while and they kind of feel a little.. hum… they’re a little rusty, just because they didn’t have fer for about a month and they were playing with a standin. They only had a couple of weeks to prepare for this tournament with him, so I’m sure that a lot of the stuff has just been missing, or they’re still trying to rebuild old stuff. But I think we match up well against them, when we know what maps we’re going to play against them. So I feel really good about that.
Also, talking about the coaching rule, how are you adapting to it? Allegedly nitr0 has been doing the calling, and before peacemaker joined it seemed like this role was kind of a hot potato passed around in Liquid. Right now, how comfortable is the team as far as this role is concerned?
Right before the bootcamp I was the one calling online for a little bit, like a week or something. As soon as we got to the bootcamp we had nitr0 calling, and then peacemaker would be calling as well, just like calling a couple of rounds here and there during practice, just to make sure we’re practicing the right stuff or anything like that. And we’ve been trying to work on Nick’s [E/N: nitr0] calling the whole time during the bootcamp. We didn’t really switch off of that before that, but yeah we’ve just been doing that.
And it seemed to have been working out because you’re in the semifinals!
Yeah! [laughs]
Alright, thank you for your time and good luck for the matches tomorrow!
Thanks!
Interviewer: Ragnarork
Editor:Yamato
CSS: FO-nTTaX
Graphics: DearDave
Photos: HLTV
So we basically knew how they’re going to play just because we already played the first match against them on Dust 2. We knew how they’re gonna adjust. In the very beginning of the second match on Dust 2, the first couple of rounds we’re playing the exact same way as the other match, and then as soon as they take their time-out, it was the same exact time they took their other timeout on the other map and we knew exactly how they’re gonna adjust, and they did the same exact thing that we were expecting so we just countered that and we knew what to do going forward. We all knew that we could win on Dust 2 again, we were really confident on it.
It seemed like you had a very specific way to deal with them, especially with the aggressive CT side, that they couldn’t seem to handle. Then they started to come back, expecting it and shutting it down. And it came down to that round, right after you gambled on a catwalk push with the sole AK you had and it failed, where they played really passive. Did you think that the constant aggression was the key here?
Well, the first time it was a really good thing for us to just push up mid like that in my opinion. If Pimp didn’t die there and if he got a little luckier with not dying or had someone smoke lower, some better way to support the whole thing so we could fall back... We knew we could fall back after getting a pick if we got one, but we got all the way back to cat safe and sound except for Pimp who just got one shot by Olofmeister from lower, and then the rest of the round just played out similarly to how you’d expect. But actually after that, we were saving and I was the one with an AK so I was just thinking that they probably wouldn’t expect it again because they’re gonna know we’ll be low on money. But they were just holding forever and I just got punished. It’s just a risk that didn’t pay off. It’s just how CS is sometimes, you have to take risks when you’re ecoing.
Going back to your whole run in the tournament so far, did you expect things to pan out like that? Like for example your first match against Na’Vi, did you get into that match with a confident mindset?
We were confident going against Na’Vi. We thought that we had a map pool that could counter theirs. We knew it was probably going to be Mirage, but the only problem with that is that S1mple changed to the secondary AWP role so he’s gonna be playing cat instead, where the only demo of them with that roster playing on Mirage was against TyLoo at StarSeries, and that’s with S1mple playing connector instead. So we didn’t really know how to prepare for it really. So that was one of the biggest challenges for that.
Mirage was our strongest map from practice coming into this tournament and we had some really unexpected results with how both of them went down. With Na’Vi I think it was just a bunch of individual mistakes, just from us not being warmed up, it was the first match of the tournament, first time on LAN with this lineup. Against VP, they play a really outlandish style that we never played against, and it just completely ruined our... mojo I guess you would say, from how we normally use to play Mirage. And we took way too long to adjust. We know what we would need to adjust if we play them again, we talked about it. We know what we need to do. But in the moment we just took too long to adjust on CT side. We started adjusting at 10-2 or something, and it was just unrecoverable at that point.
It’s your very first LAN since Cologne. In the meantime there’s been the off-season, there’s been a lot of changes with teams, like Fnatic, Godsent, Na’Vi, etc. Was it something that made it hard to prepare for this tournament? The fact that many teams took a break, that you didn’t see a lot of them.
Well this whole tournament in general has been really hard for preparations because of the swiss system. We don’t really know who we’re playing, we don’t know when we’re playing, we don’t know what map we’re playing, up until maybe 20 minutes before. So actually what we did before this tournament is, we all assigned people homework just to do analysis on these teams, on the maps that we thought we’re gonna play.
We did the vetoes beforehand at the bootcamp, right before we left. We all watched demos and we had something to bring to practice, to the tournament. We just sent everything via email so right before the matches, as soon as we find out what’s it’s gonna be, we just got out those papers and we’re just like “okay this is how they play this is how we’re gonna counter it”. Like I said before the only thing that was really hard was because of Na’Vi. They only played one match on the map that we thought we were going to play against them. And yeah, that’s it.
You said that you didn’t really know who you’re playing next during the tournament. When you found out that you’re playing Fnatic a second time, were you happy about it or did you think it’d be hard again? What was the mentality going into the second match against them?
Honestly, all of us didn’t really think too much of the matchup in general, of the way we’ll play against them. We were more concerned about the timing of it because we didn’t have any time to eat anything for the afternoon, so we’re all just kind of… hungry going into the match, really [laughs]. So we’re not really thinking about that.
As for the game itself we were just thinking that we would be able to win, just because we’ve played them on Dust 2 before and we know what our mistakes were T side. We know how they’re gonna try to adjust and we thought that we could just… out-adjust them basically. So we actually thought that they weren’t going to be picking Dust 2, but they did again. We thought that they were gonna pick Train, but it didn’t go that way. They wanted a rematch on Dust 2 and… we had it.
Coming back to the format of the tournament. You said you don’t really know what to expect, but aside from that do you think it’s a better format than the GSL style groups, and how do you compare the two?
Us personally… I don’t like the format and some of my teammates don’t like the format. Maybe because it’s only eight teams and I think the swiss format is supposed to be with 16 teams or… any other number probably than eight, just because it doesn’t really make sense sometimes because… for our situation against Fnatic, it was a 2-1 team playing a 1-2 team, because there was only three 1-2 teams. So it was just kind of weird in general, but besides that, like, if they did have actually sixteen teams, and the format in general, I don’t really like it because, as for us, we are really a preparation heavy team. We like to know everything that the other teams do, and I think it really benefits us a lot. Like in Cologne, we knew everything that the other team was gonna do. We studied so much, we put a lot of work into it. We knew what we needed to do.
We know what we need to do in this tournament, we try to do the same type of preparation that we did in Cologne, which I said before with how we got homeworks and trying to have everything ready before the tournament even starts. You shouldn’t be trying to do stuff like two hours before, or during the night. Because sleep is really important when you’re in a big tournament. So I think I really prefer the GSL format just because we’re able to prepare, we know who we’re playing.
Also with the swiss format, how it is in the group stage at least, it’s going to be vetoed down to one map. Three vetoes from one team, two from the other, and then it’s decided for the last one. So you’re never going to have a best of three in the group stage, and there’s only… like you’re not going to be able to play your one map… Like usually if it’s a best of three, you got one ban, one ban, and then it’s pick, pick. So you get that one really comfortable map. But for this tournament, if the map pool is not deep enough for some teams, you’re not going to be able to play that one to three maps that you got to. You’re going to have to play that uncomfortable, kind of shaky, average map.
Understood. So tomorrow you’re going to play against either SK or Na’Vi [E/N: not yet decided at that time]. Na’Vi was a bit of a question mark going into New York after their bad showing at StarSeries but they’ve been good. SK are still considered kind of the best in the world even if a bit shaky. How do you feel going into this semifinals?
So I’m not really sure how the format works and how it’s decided when we’re gonna know who we’re playing, we might even find out tonight, or tomorrow morning. Hum… [laughs] that’s just the swiss system! That’s why I don’t really like it that much. But like I said, with Na’Vi we know what we need to fix with them, like as far as Mirage goes, we still have information on the other maps that we think that we’re gonna play against them. I think that when we played them it was more of us messing up than them doing something really good, whereas as far as us playing against VP, it was them playing super well and we didn’t know how to adjust until like super late.
Against SK I’m pretty excited to play against them because we haven’t played against them in a while and they kind of feel a little.. hum… they’re a little rusty, just because they didn’t have fer for about a month and they were playing with a standin. They only had a couple of weeks to prepare for this tournament with him, so I’m sure that a lot of the stuff has just been missing, or they’re still trying to rebuild old stuff. But I think we match up well against them, when we know what maps we’re going to play against them. So I feel really good about that.
Also, talking about the coaching rule, how are you adapting to it? Allegedly nitr0 has been doing the calling, and before peacemaker joined it seemed like this role was kind of a hot potato passed around in Liquid. Right now, how comfortable is the team as far as this role is concerned?
Right before the bootcamp I was the one calling online for a little bit, like a week or something. As soon as we got to the bootcamp we had nitr0 calling, and then peacemaker would be calling as well, just like calling a couple of rounds here and there during practice, just to make sure we’re practicing the right stuff or anything like that. And we’ve been trying to work on Nick’s [E/N: nitr0] calling the whole time during the bootcamp. We didn’t really switch off of that before that, but yeah we’ve just been doing that.
And it seemed to have been working out because you’re in the semifinals!
Yeah! [laughs]
Alright, thank you for your time and good luck for the matches tomorrow!
Thanks!
Interviewer: Ragnarork
Editor:Yamato
CSS: FO-nTTaX
Graphics: DearDave
Photos: HLTV
