JDC was once a part of the MOUZ NXT team that dominated the WePlay Academy League for the first seasons of its existence.
A couple of years removed from that, and after having spells with both the MOUZ main team and for 00NATION, he now finds himself on what is essentially Germany's national team in Counter-Strike, BIG.
Ahead of BIG's LAN debut at ESL Pro League Season 19, we spoke to JDC about his time in MOUZ, whether he is now ready for tier one, and the aims of this new look, all German BIG team.
Let's start by going back a bit rather than jumping into the present. What did you learn from your first foray into tier one CS with MOUZ?
The biggest thing I learned is that you need extreme confidence in yourself and what you do.
And that team chemistry is extremely important for the game. You need to have a very strong bond between the team. I also learned that you need to put in the extra work in order to compete in the best tournaments and win against the best. Basically, you need to be sharp at every moment of every day.
You first played for the main team as a stand-in before properly replacing NBK- not long after, looking back, do you think you were ready for tier one at the time or did it take some adjusting to get used to it?
I thought I was ready [laughs]. Me personally, I didn't have the complete roles I wanted to have and filled in a lot of NBK-'s, even though they didn't match on all of the maps.
But I still think that by the end of it, it was more down to me doing a lot of things wrong rather than the roles.
I think I was at a point where I thought about things at a different level, I approached things with a different mentality than I do nowadays. I went into tier-one and I was like 'yeah, it's tier one this is where the best players are at and it's such an honour to be here'.
But I completely forgot that I worked up to that level myself and I was now one of those players and had that capability to turn games around myself.
So, I think I wasn't ready, actually.
In that sense, is that where returning to tier-two outside of an academy system has helped your development?
Yeah, I think that the benching in MOUZ was one of the best things that could have happened to me in terms of my career. Maybe it wasn't in terms of reputation because your name gets a bit hurt and the headlines are that I failed my job in MOUZ.
But overall in terms of improvement, I think I managed to achieve better things on 00NATION. Joining them at that time was the perfect fit for me.
I went away from a lurking-anchor kind of style and became more of a star to second-star player who was more in the active part of the game both on CT and T side. I also started mid-round calling a little bit too.
It has been a wild role change and a wild ride, but it has been very nice for me.
Are those the roles you would've liked to have on MOUZ, or is that a development you had while you were on 00NATION? Do you think things would have gone differently with MOUZ if you had those roles at the time?
Preferably, yes, I would've had those roles in MOUZ already, I always knew that my strength is being in the action and moving around as opposed to being a more static player.
I think it would have gone better for me, but as I said, with the mentality I had at the time, it still wouldn't have been as good as it could have been.
There are a couple of players on BIG that came through their academy system, and you yourself came through MOUZ's academy. What does the academy system offer to the players in it that they aren't getting if they go through the regular tier three, tier two route?
I think that especially if you're on an academy team that works with the main team, it's a really good thing because you get knowledge that you wouldn't get from anywhere else.
The main thing that really helped, though, was the WePlay Academy League LANs. Getting the stage experience, playing at a LAN, to be able to feel that professional environment that you wouldn't be getting playing in tier two where 99% of tournaments are online, to just get that experience was a big factor.
As well, you just have a different kind of playing field to prove yourself on. Of course, tier-two is looked at, but people are only looking at the exceptional players coming up. The donk-level player.
But when you're in WePlay and the academy system there's more focus on the talents there and the organisations have a bigger eye on more players as opposed to just the insane carry players.
Jumping ahead to the present: You've had this time in tier-two where you've had all these role developments, but how has the mental side of your game developed? How are you looking at it now that you're coming back into tier one, which differs from the first time with MOUZ?
I think I'm at a peak both mentally and in-game. I think that all the roles I've got in BIG now are very suited to me, but I'm also just in a very different chapter of my life now.
At the time of MOUZ I was still living at home and I was still just getting started. Even though I was already 22 and that's later than others, in a fair sense, I was still living on my own and not doing all of my own things.
At the end of MOUZ after I got benched I started taking more responsibility for my life, going outside more, moving out with my girlfriend. Just building more responsibility in general and creating a more mature approach to life.
I think mentally I just needed to gain my confidence back, and 00NATION helped me greatly with that because I was performing very well in that team.
The roster made it happen and everyone was giving me the space I wanted. birdfromsky, the IGL, he helped me find my strengths and use them, and so did the coach, pita. The whole team was amazing, I'll always give them credit.
I think I'm ready now for tier one, and I don't think I can get better mentally, only in-game.
With that then, despite being part of MOUZ previously which is also a German organisation, you're now on BIG which is considered to be 'the' German organisation; what does it mean to you to be a part of the team?
It's a very personal thing because I have the chance to represent Germany in a way. MOUZ has always been a German organisation and I loved my stay there and supported them with all my heart. But it's different to being a national roster.
On BIG we are waving the German flag and it's an honour to do so, I really appreciate the chance to be able to represent the country and having the chance to make German CS great again. We want to be the strongest German team there has ever been and I think that potentially, with the lineup we have, we can achieve that.
For me, it's just a new project where the goal is to find out how good a German team can actually be and how far we can push with a full national team.
What do you think it means to the fans for BIG to be entirely German again?
Well, I can't speak for the fans at all [laughs], but I think that they are very happy to have a full German representative that they can just point at.
I don't see it as something bad if you have international players mixed into a national lineup. But if you have four Germans and someone like XANTARES, there's always going to be those people that say it's an international roster and not a German roster.
I also think that in terms of language, now that the team is able to speak German, it's something that fans can associate with easier.
In terms of being the 'best German team there ever has been', have you guys spoken about what that actually means? There have been some very good results for BIG over the years but those have been dotted around over the years.
We want consistent progress towards being a playoff contender team, not an upset team. We want it to be looked at in the way that if we're in the playoffs, then it isn't a surprise that we're there, that it isn't a surprise if we beat a MOUZ or a G2.
We want it to be more along the lines of 'Okay, these guys are pretty good and they know how to play, they've found their groove now and are contenders for tournaments'.
BIG have always played a very tactical, methodical brand of CS that many teams don't adhere to anymore in the international meta. Is that something you've had to adapt to because of your history of being on international teams that are often regarded as being less tactical?
It's fairly different to that. Of course, I had to adapt to what they have in their system and all of their protocols and it's true that BIG are one of the teams that are different in that sense compared to international teams.
But one of the big reasons for signing me was to bring a different view into the team and bring the international side of CS into the BIG style of play as well. That way we can actually combine the best parts of both styles.
There's a lot of great things BIG have that amazed to see in terms of how they approach things that are very different to international Counter-Strike. But in some scenarios there are things that I bring into the team that are quite simple in a way, but because of that they're just not thought of by BIG.
Overall, the best thing is the fusion of both versions because it creates a team that is very balanced. I don't think there is a right or wrong in CS, I don't think you can have a style that works 100% of the time because in the end it comes down to the players and their individual choices. But if you have the ability to play the BIG style combined with the international style, then you can actually do a lot of damage.
Looking at the guy who has to put it all together: What are your thoughts of tabseN as a leader?
I really like tabseN, he's a pleasure to work with. He's a very hard-working guy and I've only ever met a few people that put that many hours into the game.
Actually, the whole coaching staff I have to give credit to, gob b and kakafu that recently joined and even DuDe our other assistant coach, everyone is putting in immense hours trying to optimise everything.
I think tabseN has a great leader personality. I think he understands what it means to be a leader, he takes responsibility, acknowledges mistakes, and is very open about it.
Overall I think there's still so much to learn and so much to gain. I said a while ago that CS is like a never-ending study, you're always learning something new about the game and I think that in this roster we have the pieces necessary to apply that knowledge.
What about syrsoN? He's one of the best AWPers in the world and it was a surprise when he initially left BIG, how do you think he's looking at it now that he's back with BIG?
I think that syrsoN is enjoying it a lot, he's finding his form after having to get used to the change to CS2.
I think he's having a lot of fun because our roster has pretty good chemistry and he said it himself to me that he's never enjoyed playing CS as much as he is now. And he's just enjoying his time trying to get to a peak level of form so that we have a good time playing together.
We spoke to tabseN a while ago and he said then that the previous BIG roster would be a long-term project; in this interview, you've already outlined the goals for this iteration of BIG, but have you spoken about a roadmap for when you'd like to achieve some of these things?
A certain roadmap isn't there, no. I think we have a very clear goal in terms of the fact that we have to be at the next Major, there is no debating that.
But for now, we just want to take things on a tournament-by-tournament basis. We're playing some online tournaments now, we have Pro League at the end of this month, so the current roadmap is to see the development.
We've played a couple of officials already. We played a tournament online that wasn't that good where we lost to Young Ninjas, but we were grooving in. We also played the BLAST Showdown where we lost to Spirit, but in my eyes, that's an acceptable loss because they just won Katowice and in my mind, it's like 'they're sharp, they're good, it's cool, respect where respect is due' [laughs].
For us, the real deal now will be Skyesports Masters, which will be the first stage of looking at how we've improved in the last month and what lessons we can take into our next steps. We can look at whether we are making silly mistakes still or whether our plays are now reliable and consistent.
From there, we can take it into the LAN at Pro League and that's where we have our first opportunity to show a real, good level. It's a tier one LAN against good opponents where we'll actually have a longer period of time. It won't just be a fluke, instead, it will be longer games that people can look at and see whether we know what we're doing or whether we need to change up some stuff [laughs].
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