Photo Source: Twitter
With an impressive record so far, Lunatik Esports are a viable contender for placing as one of the top teams in North America. They are currently ranked within the top 20 in the world, 4th in North America according to our ranking system. With a roster that is filled to the brim with talent, there is a lot of great individual play from each member which can show especially on their CT sides. However, that’s not to say there isn’t great team play as well. With in game leader Damien “daps” Steele at the helm, Lunatik uses this individual talent to their advantage, implementing a distinctly free flowing, “pick and roll” style of play on their terrorist rounds. We have sat down with team captain Preston “Juv3nille” Dornon, and their star awper Shahzeb “ShahZam” Khan for an exclusive Q&A:
How did the Lunatik roster come together?
Juv3nille: We played together for the last season of ESEA. We went through some roster changes and ended up ending the season with Me, Daps, Naf, Monte, Wabbit. After the season, Wabbit took a break, so we picked up Fugly who we were going to play with before. After some time with those five people, Monte decided he wanted to go play with some old friends in Homeless, right before the season started. So we needed a fifth pretty quickly; we played the ESL one qualifier with Shahzam and it went pretty well, so we decided that was a good option.
What are your goals during these ESEA and CEVO seasons?
Juv3nille: The first goal, is to make the LAN part of the season in both leagues. If that happens, we will see what we can do, but it won't be easy. There are quite a few good teams invited this season and we need to play really well and not throw away any matches in order to make it.
Do you see any challenges for your team going forward?
Juv3nille: Just staying motivated and finding scrims in NA. Right now, it's actually pretty difficult to find good scrims, considering there are only eight invited teams, and some of them being less active than during the normal seasons for some reason. If we can stay motivated and keep a good practice schedule and listen and improve while we are playing, I'm pretty confident we can do really well.
What would you say differentiates your team from the others? What are your strengths?
Juv3nille: Our strengths would probably be our activeness and our individual skill. We have a lot of individual skill between Naf, Fugly and Shahz. All three of those guys can take over a match. We play more a pick style T side usually and because of this we are a bit more random in our playstyle and I think it can catch a few teams off guard. If we are hitting our shots, we can beat anyone. If we aren’t though, that's when we can run into trouble. It's sometimes a double edged sword.
ShahZaM: Like Juvey said, everyone on our team is really active in playing CSGO. Not just playing as a team, but playing alone or with each other in pugs and MM. Everyone on the team individually has a high skill ceiling, so we can focus more on the tactical side of things. Fugly, NAF, and Juvey are insane fraggers, Daps is a great in-game leader. Juvey also handles things really well with the team outside of game.
Do you all have any special pregame rituals to get yourselves in the competitive mindset?
ShahZaM: I wash my hands then I listen to good music.
Is NAF-FLY the next swag?
Juv3nille: Naf very easily could be the next swag if he cared and took the game as seriously as maybe he should. He is still really young and incredibly skilled, but I think he just doesn’t care enough or want the same things out of the game, as say, Swag does/did. Naf enjoys him some League of Legends. *laughs*
ShahZaM: NAF has insane raw talent at this game, even while being so young. I guess you could easily compare him to Swag, but I don’t think he has realized it for himself yet. If we can keep him on track throughout these seasons I know he will become a star player like Swag.
Juv3nille, how was your transition from Call of Duty to Counter-Strike?
My transition was really lucky in the way it happened. I came over during the late stages of the beta, thinking I could just play for some fun in a FPS game, while still raiding full time in World of Warcraft. We were between tiers, so it was a pretty slow time in WoW. I started playing with Themanw0w just ESEA pugging, we talked to michael3D and got him to come play with us. After getting together, we talked to a few other people we knew and Skadoodle said he was interested too. We all knew him from AVA and knew he was a insane scope. When we came over to this game, michael3d had played CS: Source a little bit, he told us it's really AWP heavy and you need two really good awps. I was the best NA awp in COD 4 and Skadoodle was the best awp in AVA World, so we thought it would work out really well. We finally ended up getting our fifth by grabbing Emong who we played with in COD 4 and decided to grab a few scrims. I would've never made it to invite and likely, never would've played the game, if I had to come over by myself. So I got really lucky, in my transition, for other CoD players coming over on their own, it would not be nearly as easy.
Has the recent pickup of Shahzam changed the way you strategize?
Juv3nile: Shahzam is a really quick and aggressive awp, so we are able to use him to get entries on both CT and T side. We are able to use him in many ways and he can always call his own number so to speak and just tell us what he is going to do and we can rely on him to get that pick the majority of the time.
Do you (all) have any other interests outside of gaming?
ShahZaM: I’m a big fan of many types of music, I love going to live shows as often as I can with my friends. I like to party too.
Is the NA scene underhyped?
Juv3nile: I think the NA scene may be a little underhyped, but it's probably fair. We don’t have the amount of LAN experience the EU scene has, even IBP/C9 are alot less lan experienced in GO, compared to the top EU teams. For the NA teams outside of those 2, the lan experience is insanely limited. The 3rd most experienced LAN team in GO, is probably XTS and even those guys have only attended overall as a team just three NA LANs. Thats it. If and when the NA LAN scene picks up, I think you will see alot more teams being able to compete vs IBP/C9 and internationally.
Do you have anything you want to say to your fans out there?
Juv3nile: I just want to say thank you to everyone who supports us, who watch our streams (www.twitch.tv/juv3niletv, www.twitch.tv/shahzam, www.twitch.tv/fuglyy) and follow our social medias and thanks to Lunatik for all they have done for us so far!
Roster
Jacob "Fugly" Medina
Damian "Daps" Steele
Preston "Juv3nille" Dornon
Michael "MiKnutty" Vitaterna
Keith "NAF-FLY" Markovic
Shahzeb "ShahZaM" Khan
