CEVO Final: After Match Interview - The First Map and More

The team at the winter edition of Gamersject during early 2011

I think it’s great they made it that far. I think our scene needs teams to show that with hard work and a bit of dedication you can beat anyone on the day. That’s what makes the game so entertaining and that’s what HWA have proven I feel. They had a difficult game against Herr and they pulled through with a win. So full credit to them.

The tournament has been packed full of shock results, such as seeing seasoned teams such as TCM losing out to Team Visualize. Do you think their recent line-up changes created this shock defeat? Surely their recent additions are more than a match for most opponents, but obviously this seems not to be the case.

I think that maybe TCM underestimated Visualize, while they may not admit it deep down the players probably went into the game thinking the game was won if they play normally, particularly on Citystreets. At the same time they’ve gone through a drastic overhaul with 3 changes and we can’t forget that. They’re still gelling and looking for ways to improve. Losing is important when you’re a new team; you learn from your mistakes and build on it.

As you went into the finals you must have been feeling similarly confident, but going into the match you lost out during the early knife round, how did this affect your momentum? Did it shake your previous confidence if that confidence ever existed?

We were confident yeah but we didn’t really know what to expect from HWA. Having never even really played them before we just did what we normally did and it worked. Very rarely do we take knife rounds seriously, most of the time we just try and gung-ho it. Generally speaking with every map we’re pretty comfortable with both sides, so letting the other team choose isn’t a big problem.

The first map, mp_citystreets, was pegged to play into HWA’s favour, proving in recent activity to a personal favourite. How were you feeling, especially after losing in the second knife round in a near team ace, forcing you onto the arguably harder side?

I actually didn’t realise it was a personal favourite of theirs. I assumed Crash was because they chose it. Either way you can do well on both sides if you play it right, I wouldn’t consider any side harder. Personally it’s how you adapt to your opponent and exposing their weaknesses. Finding the weaknesses is always the most difficult bit and can take a few rounds particularly if you start as Attack and they’ve got set nade strats. HWA didn’t seem to have that though.

You chose to start of aggressively, which quickly led to an early loss. You then swiftly switched to a mostly passive aggressive approach to the map, winning you the majority of the early rounds, was this a pre-planned strategy, or simply a confident adaptation?

We rarely have pre-planned strategies if I’m honest. I listen to a few streams and they discuss in-depth what kind of tactics we might be using when really they don’t exist. We try and adapt as we go but more importantly we try and work together in everything we do and during competitive matches’ communication is key there. If something is working we might switch it up unless we’re clearly exploiting a weakness in which case we’ll keep doing it until they realise. Thankfully HWA didn’t realise or just couldn’t handle our momentum.

Talking of exploiting weaknesses, we saw HWA giving away middle quite often, choosing to hold the outer extremities; do you think this was a vital flaw in their strategy? Or did you find the highly disciplined approach troublesome?

We tried to start slow and check what they were doing and they were absolutely disciplined on each bombsite. When we realised we could take middle quite easily we did abuse it for a couple of rounds because they didn't change up. Sitting back can work and for a long time it did on Citystreets, but we're talking years ago. Nowadays if you can control the middle area well, you'll win. At the same time, they could have maybe won a few more rounds on defence but Skeir was on fire and pulled us through with some exceptional play to give us the massive lead.

The first map ended in a confident 13-4 score line, what was running through your heads at this time? Blissful confidence or were you still worrying about what was still to come?

Honestly I think we've all played long enough to not be too over confident. At the same time it was getting pretty late that night so we really didn't want it to go to a 3rd map. So really we just wanted to finish as we'd had a long night of cod already! We also haven't been great lately on Crash so we tried to focus as best we could.

Obviously you had skier playing for you throughout the finals, a player usually not seen within your line-up. He played a very confident game, especially during the first map obliterating HWA at several crucial points, even winning the vital 13th round in a clutch situation. Do you think the result would have been the same if you had been playing with your regular run of players?

He’s an exceptional player and I think some people underestimate his abilities or just think he cheats which is a shame really. Having played with choobie in YYT they both knew what they were doing as the dual SMG partnership so that wasn’t too much of a problem.  Cozje is exceptional as well though and the advantage with him is that we have a deeper understanding of what he does. The team play is obviously better having been together for a while now as well. So we’re obviously more comfortable with our main 5 and that probably would have shown on Crash. But take nothing away from Skeir he was brilliant for us.