With a comfortable Terrorist side and a big performance from Pavel "⁠hutji⁠" Lashkov, Vega Squadron grabbed their first win at the ELEAGUE Major, defeating North 16-10 on Overpass.

Vega's manager, Alex "Lk_" Lemeshev acted as a translator during our interview with hutji

We caught up with hutji after the match to find out more about some of the important round he was part of, such as his 1v2 at the beginning of the game and their mac-10 buy towards the end.

First of all, how was the team feeling going into a match against North, was that a good matchup for you?

We weren't too happy about the draw. It's not because of North but because we're at a Major, there are no weak teams. I was saying the same during the previous stage, but it is the Major, these teams are even stronger, there are no weak opponents.

We knew we were going to play Overpass. We believe it was kind of a surprise for them to play Overpass, I think they expected Inferno to be played and we were prepared for Overpass. We were reading them heavily, we did the preparation before the match and we knew what to expect, and it worked this way.

Can you go over the third round on the CT side, when you decided to forcebuy and you pulled off the 1v2? What was the thinking behind forcing in the third round rather than the second?

One of the options you have when you lose the pistol round is either do a forcebuy and then you have to take an eco in the third round, and we tried to do this in practice to do a full eco. I believe we only killed one guy, so the opponent doesn't usually expect you to buy in the third round.

I wouldn't say they were low on grenades, but they didn't get what you would consider a full buy. The clutch was a big morale boost for us, it didn't break the opponents' economy, but it was unexpected and losing a round like that can start making things complicated later in the half.

Considering there was a streak of about six rounds after that clutch, how satisfied were you with the half overall, getting eight rounds in the end?

I think it was a comfortable score for us even though we only got eight rounds, if you compared it to the G2 match when we got 12. It could have been more, but we decided to play with an AWP setup and I was playing with an AWP in B, which we never did in practice. I was unlucky with the timings, I was missing shots. But as we won the second pistol round and didn't lose the forcebuy, it was fine.

On the second half there was a particularly interesting buy towards the end when you decided to rush with Mac-10s and it nearly worked out, again thanks to big plays from you, what led the team to that decision?

The idea of the round is quite similar to our signature round on Inferno, where we push B with Mac-10s. The idea was to play a fast round to the A site through restrooms and in the beginning it wasn't looking that good, the first two coming out of balloons got killed, but I came out of nowhere and killed four and in the end it was a really close clutch, I believe k0nfig had only about 17 HP. If they were low on money, this round would have broken their economy, but they were still comfortable after this round. But still, as soon as you lose four guns against a low buy, it's not great.

You had a great game personally, was there anything special about it for you, was it just a good matchup?

That's what happened, I was lucky. It depends on the day, getting up with a good or a bad mood. If you can set yourself mentally for the game, anyone of us is ready for the opponent. It's just about getting the right feeling before the game.

This is your second Major and at the last one you went out in the group stage, what is going to be the goal for this one and what will it take to get there?

The goal for the event is to just show our best against those tier-one opponents, against all the top teams. It would be great to get through to the playoffs, it's just a dream for everyone but sometimes dreams come true, if you work hard and if you're ready for that. This time we'll see if it's that time or not.