Ahead of their playoff match against Astralis, Team Fiend took some time to talk to the journalists about their performance so far in the tournament, their preparations for the best-of-three playoffs, and the pressure of possibly clinching a Major spot.
Grady: How did you manage to perform so successfully in the group stage. What was the key to your good performance?
bubble: I would say that we were in on the same page and the first two games we were not on the same page. We had our talks and we talked about the mistakes, right after for the next three days everything was perfect. I guess that was the key.
Looking at how you guys got here, how does it feel to come through those Open Qualifiers and basically fight every step of the way and then exceed expectations and make it to the playoffs?
REDSTAR: It feels great. The open qualifier wasn’t hard, I think it was 12 teams qualifying to the main event, but the event itself, it feels great to be here and to actually qualify to the playoffs and have a chance to qualify to the major.
About the possibility of you going to the major, is there any extra pressure for you?
bubble: Let’s be honest, we came here without huge expectations, we were underdogs and we didn’t have good preparation before the tournament. I guess the pressure was more on the big organizations that set the goal to qualify for the major, I think that was one of the things caused FaZe to lose. As we can see, OG and Complexity don’t have any chance. We are trying to release any pressure and just play our game, because we have nothing to lose.
Would you say is the main difference between facing teams from tier-one and tier-two?
REDSTAR: Tier-two teams don’t have that construct kind of a game, while tier-one have everything planned. For me personally, it’s easier to face tier-one teams instead of tier-two, because tier-two could do everything in the match, they could push everywhere. I don’t think tier-one team would be allowed to do that because they have coaches and analysts and no one would let them do that.
bubble: Yeah. They’re not doing a lot of stupid things like pushing through the smoke or somebody just jumping like headless chicken or something.
I just wondering how you guys are preparing for your upcoming playoff match against Astralis?
bubble: We are not going to play our own game on their map pick, but we are going to try to add to our strategy book a lot of new things. For our pick, there’ll be just a few little changes. We have four days to prepare, so we will how the things are going to go.
