Photo: TakeTV
Let's start from the beginning, how did you guys end up playing together?
Me and MSL had a lot of bad results with the old team so after five months we had to make some changes. Tenzki left for Copenhagen Wolves, so more than one player needed to be replaced. We got Acilion after Tenzki left, and we knew from the past that Friis and Smf were a very good combo.
We started to try out the team in the last DreamHack qualifier. We won it quite easily and afterwards we had a talk about creating a team and everyone wanted to give it a shot. Now everything works great, and we are trying to improve every single day.
All five players know each other from all the Danish events. We have been friends for a long time so we are enjoying every single tournament with each other.
Tell us how a regular day looks for you, how much time do you spend practicing and how does it affect your social lives?
It’s a little bit different for our team. I have a child, so some days we start at 20:00 but normally we starts at 19:00 with few strat talks and then the games starts at 20:00 to 23/24:00, depending on several factors.
It doesn’t affect my social life that much anymore, all my friends know what I'm doing and how I want to spend my time so they know when I want to go out and stuff. I want to use all my free time with my kid Mads, he is 1½ year old and we are spending a lot of time together before practice. Mads goes to sleep around 18:30, and after that we start practicing. We play around four to five times a week, and that’s very enjoyable with this team!
"Me and Msl had a lot of bad results with the old team so we had to make some changes."
How does your family and friends feel about your gaming career?
They are following all my tournaments when I’m not home. They also ask how it goes when they are visiting my family and I. My friends are missing me sometimes, but they know what my passion is, and they are very supportive and that’s good for me!
How much commitment does it take for some young players to climb their way up and become recognized at the scene?
When I was younger, it was back in the Counter-strike: Source days, I was watching every single demo from tournaments and played a lot of gathers. But it's hard to say, people improve in different ways. I learn a lot from demoes, and I'm using this knowledge a lot when I'm calling ingame.
Almost all of the players from your current line-up have experience playing in major tournaments and numerious other LAN events. How does this help in general, what do you learn from tournament to tournament?
Friis, Smf and MSL have been at three of the four majors, they are very calm when we go to these tournaments. Acilion was nervous before the groupstage at DreamHack, but after the tournament he learned that he just has to ask and stay close to the team and then we'd get out of every tournament with high heads.
As a team we got a lot of experience from DreamHack, and we were very calm and icecold in our heads for the Acer A-invitational, when we played teams like Planetkey, Penta and mousesports. We won lots of big rounds because we got more experienced as a team.
There was a recent roster change in the line up gathered around you. What do the players bring in terms of knowledge coming from other teams to this one?
It's mostly strategic insight, things that worked for the players in their previous teams. I think when a new team is being created, you do not take that much knowledge from players' past teams, just the strat part.
What’s your opinion about the VAC bans which have struck a few top players prior to DreamHack Winter and do you think that there will be more upsets when it comes to cheating among the pro players?
I have a good faith in every single pro player. I was very shocked when I saw sF and KQLY were banned. However, when you can earn this much money it is understandable that people want to get their share. KQLY must be the stupidest person on earth, and about Sf, I’m pretty sure he was already cheating back in the CSS days.
"KQLY must be the stupidest person on earth, and about sf, I’m pretty sure he was already cheating back in the CSS days."
I want to talk about Fnatic’s boost in their match against LDLC. What are your thoughts on it as a pro player, would you have consider it unfair if it was used in a game against you or rather as an innovation?
It was a huge bug on the map, Fnatic should have reported it to Valve a month before they used it. Furthemore, the boost on B was pixel walking, too, and LDLC and NiP also used that one. It’s hard to say, I can only say for the team that we would have asked the admin before the map was started.
Do you think that the recent CZ nerf will have a bigger impact now on the meta game and is there anything else what you would like to see changed in the game?
The CZ nerf should had happened way before Dreamhack! So many lost rounds because of that pistol. I don’t see the meta game for the terrorist changing that much, because of the new TEC-9. They should change the prize on the scout and remove the jump shots. It's still fucking hard to win “anti-eco” round when scout and tec-9 is part of the game.
The most questionable map in the current Valve pool is de_cobblestone, do you think that this map could be replaced now with a whole new revamped de_train, or should it stay among the official maps with a few more corrections?
They should not remove cobble, I enjoy playing new maps. It makes the game more fun for the spectators and hard for the teams to be prepared on new maps. The game is pretty CT-sided on many maps, so maybe they should go for season instant of nuke/inferno – that’s just me and my opinion.
"The CZ nerf should had happened way before Dreamhack!"
What is your opinion on coaches? Do they really make a big difference or do you feel that this position is a bit overrated?
I guess it’s a bit overrated. I know that Hellraisers changed their gamestyle a bit before Dreamhack but I'm pretty sure they could have found those changes by themselves and not because of blad3.
Recently we saw your team in action at the A-Split Invitational in Germany where you performed really well, finishing second. How did you like that event?
It was awesome to play the old system in the groupstage and play Bo3s against every single team. It was just a great event, the people behind it, “TakeTV”, were just awesome. The venue and everything else was great! The second place was just a good result for us. Beating Mouz in the opener was a huge confidence booster, and so was the win against Planetkey afterwards.
The playoffs were a bit harder, the opener was against PENTA. We won it quite easy 2-0, and then we played Virtus.PRO and lost the first map due to our own mistakes. That's something we have to work on for future events in 2015.
You were put up against two top eight teams from DH Winter, Virtus.pro and Penta Sports, and you showed that you can handle them pretty well. Does this boost your confidence?
It helps a lot with the confidence of the team but we knew from our practice that we could handle teams like Penta and Virtus, we just needed to show it at LAN events, and we finally did! I'm happy for the team's performance, now we just have to grow even more.
Only a week ago you parted your ways with myXMG and Reason Gaming helped you to attend the A-Split Invitational. Why did myXMG deny sending you there, given the fact that you stuck with the organization a while?
We could not find an agreement for 2015, and they were not coming back to us when we were asking for things. So it was time to say goodbye. We had to hope some sponsors could help us get into the A-Split Invitational, and an old friend from Reason came to our aid. We are so happy for Adam Blank's help! You are the best!!
Reason Gaming partnership was also short-lived, is there any reason behind it?
When we asked Reason Gaming to help us, it was just for the A-Split event.
Do these short stints with the two organizations hurt your chances of getting picked up by another?
I really hope they don't. We had to do this if we wanted to play the A-split tournament, so we did it for our own safety. We are just grateful that Reason wanted to help us with this event. Now we are back under unu.AiN, and we really want to get into a great sponsor and organization for 2015!
"We have proved that we can play against the best! The players just need to stay together, work it out together and keep being professional."
Could you tell me how hard it is to get picked up in CS:GO nowadays? What do players and teams need to bring to the table to convince sponsors?
It's hard to find a good home but I think it just got easier for us with the results we had at A-Split. I still have hopes that a good organization will contact us and give us a good offer. We have proved that we can play against the best! The players just need to stay together, work it out together and keep being professional.
Have you guys decided on any annual goals for 2015 yet?
Being at the majors would be a goal for us, the qualifiers are hard and I really hope they will be on lan this time and not online so you can't get into majors by ddosing the other teams. We're growing as a team, and if we keep going maybe we'll be top ten in the world. It's going to be hard, but I hope we can grow even more.
