B1ad3: "FaZe could be top three instead of us"

We're feeling good, starting again after three weeks break and it's just exciting to play again. We've played a lot of matches, which is good for us, so we're looking forward to more.

Competition is hard nowadays, Vitality and Spirit are the main contenders for us but other teams are building something new like Falcons, FaZe, Astralis, and G2.
So, at the moment, the season is just beginning and we are trying to understand what is best for us and what we can improve and build to outplay these teams.
I think we need to play more like Spirit and Vitality before the Major to understand our strategy.
But overall, we are happy with two semi-finals.

Our first final last year wasn't in the first three months of the year, so no I'm not worried.

I think Vitality have a honeymoon period, so they're kind of unstoppable, they're most likely better at the moment.
But it always depends on the day you play, one time we played Spirit and we beat them for a spot in semi-finals, and then we lost to them int the semi-final match. But this is still a good sign for us that we're playing better against Spirit than we did last year.
Like I said, it's always situational. When we practice against Vitality, sometimes we can be better in terms of understanding and working the map, but it depends on the day and the same goes for Spirit.
The more you play, the more you analyse and know your opponent, then you need to build new things. It's more about mind games. It depends how much you've played a team in a year and when you meet them, if we don't play Vitality much, then it's an unknown field for us, but after two more times it can be a different game.

I think FaZe can be a good contender, they could even be top three instead of us. Who knows? Maybe they can succeed more. But in terms of top five, FaZe is a good contender for this.
As for G2, I'm not sure that they're so stable, they are also building something new and they need some time. But I think they're still fight for the fifth position with other teams.

Well, I think it was a mistake that we didn't pick Dust2. We were thinking that it could be an easy guaranteed pick that they would expect, but the thing is that we didn't know a lot about the opponents.
We saw that they hadn't played Nuke with the new roster, and it's not an easy map to play, so we picked Nuke. We have a good T side, we could've been 8-4, but we did some unnecessary mistakes that shouldn't have happened considering our gameplan. Then they just outplayed us on their T side, they surprised us with how they played.
Overall, on the count that it was our first official LAN map for weeks, you need to get used to it again and the pressure and decision-making. Sometimes you need a few matches to get back on track.
After losing Nuke, I think we didn't prepare for Ancient as a third map, we thought it would be different, so we just played our stuff.
There's different factors. We hadn't played on LAN for a while, and you need to have enough energy both mentally and physically to be able to handle the situation if you're losing, sometimes that's hard for us.
When we lost Nuke and did some stupid mistakes, the pressure started to push us more and it caused more mistakes on Ancient. It was hard to play. But it's a good experience, it's a cold shower that even though you lose, you get benefits from it. And, if you manage to win and comeback, it's a again a good experience, because you know you were on the edge of losing.
It's important to start like this, and we were lucky it was SAW and not Spirit or Vitality, it was good for us to face them after a huge break because of the seeding. We knew that, no matter what, it wasn't our best game, it's always like this. When we lose to someone who is lower than us by seeding, it's always about us, it's not about the opponent. We know our potential, our strengths, so if we see something doesn't work, we just focus on that and how we fix it.
These kinds of games can happen to most teams nowadays. I think that the scene is very competitive, and you need to be very sharp every day or you will lose.

My take on it is that I don't see anything crucial, nothing special is happening if people are arguing during the game. Everyone is under pressure, everyone is competing and wants to come with their full force to achieve the same goal.
People care, when they argue, it shows they care. If they don't argue, it usually means that they don't care. Obviously you can control this and still care, but for us, it's a natural process.
Nobody is perfect, and if it happens, it's like bad weather happens and soon it will be sunny. Even with the clouds, the sun is still above them.
Overall, if it does happen, it happens in the game, and it's fine. We just go to the next round and fix it. It wasn't something huge when we played.
They just put something on stream that is a very rare situation, it was cut out of most of the rounds and one singular situation from a whole BO3. It didn't show the reality, they should show the next round and the round after, too.
Also, sometimes people can misunderstand what is happening, so for me, it's not a problem at all. It's so minor that after the game we can instantly forget about it.

I think knowledge of Counter-Strike. Counter-Strike isn't about copying or repeating rounds, there's a lot more to do it. You need to control macros, rotations, you need to understand everything that is happening on the map in every second. It's all knowledge.

Good, it's our second event in a row so we'll get more in shape at this one and then be ready for the next one.
For us, it's more a case of getting as many points as possible before the Major invites. We want to get top six so we have more time to prepare and can get to a later stage of the Major. That's goal number one, let's say.
In terms of big goals, we already have trophies, but if we want something more, then Cologne, Katowice, Majors, they should all be there. We were trying to show our best in Katowice, and the next ones will be the Major and Cologne. Between that, we're also thinking about the Intel Grand Slam, so we're focusing on things we haven't achieved yet.
Considering all of that, we need to show our best now to have the best chance at the Major. We need Stage 2, we need all the time to prepare, so we need more points. We're using EPL and BLAST Open to get as many points as possible.