Spencer "Hiko" Martin gave us an exhausting interview about the entire change Liquid have undergone in the past two weeks, upsetting G2 in the opening round and taking Luminosity to a close result.

So far Liquid have lived up to expectations about their new, yet temporary lineup at ECS Season 1 Finals, as they defeated G2 one-sidedly in the first match and took Luminosity to a narrow Train.



Hiko gave us a detailed look into Liquid's lineup change

We spoke to Spencer "⁠Hiko⁠" Martin who gave us a detailed, behind-the-scenes look into the entire change and also talked about countering G2's strengths and how Liquid were able to make it close versus the Brazilians.

Let's start with the whole change that you went through, obviously jdm64 coming in with s1mple for the next two tournaments and then Pimp joining after the Major, how did it all come together? So after ELEAGUE - we obviously had a very poor showing there, going 0-8 - it was pretty apparent that using peacemaker as the in-game leader, we didn't really have much of a role for adreN at the time. We always kept him on the team because he was in-game leading, then he had the Major where he wasn't leading and played amazingly, so we tried that for a little bit more and it seemed like he went back to his old self. So there was no room on the roster for adreN anymore. koosta also, at the last two events he just didn't play very well, he had a really hard time finding how to impact the rounds, really hard time getting kills in general. It was definitely a team decision, we all agreed we needed to get rid of both of them. Then we were looking at who was available at the time, Pimp was definitely a free agent, I talked to him before he joined SK if he was interested and then it didn't seem like he wanted to move. And I reached out to him again and it seemed like he really wanted to, so that was a pretty easy pick for us. And jdm actually reached out to me, I actually don't think I said this in an interview yet, I respect him a lot, because he kind of realized, at least from what he said to me, that his team wasn't really going anywhere. He was tired of putting in the effort and not really having results, so he wanted to jump ship and to join a winning team. Obviously that's my mentality, so having another person on the team that's like that is really good to me. Liquid and CLG came to an agreement and then jdm joined our team. Then the question was, since Pimp couldn't play the Major with us, who could we use? We could use adreN again or we could use koosta, but that really wouldn't have been a good environment, so it was kind of my decision or my idea "What if we just brought back s1mple? He'll play a couple more events with us and that'll be it." I think at the very beginning some people on my team were a little hesitant to do it, but it was pretty obvious that that would've been the best option and it would've been the best thing for us to at least make it out of groups at the Major and do well at ECS. So what are, realistically, the expectations for ECS and the Major, considering not having the eventual lineup? At this event my expectations are probably lower than they will be for the Major, this is kind of like our first event, first official matches with this roster, first one with jdm even. So if we end up making it out of the groups and lose in the semi-finals, I wouldn't be too upset. Sure, making it to the finals would be amazing first time with this roster, but I think that might be unrealistic. And then obviously the Major is the important one for us. We all really want to make it out of groups, maybe make it to semi-finals, who knows, I think that'll be good. Here you first faced off against G2 on quite a one-sided Cobblestone, did you put any special effort in shutting down ScreaM and shox, who have been their key to success? I think my personal mentality, and my team and specifically peacemaker, was just like: "We need to shut down shox, if we shut down shox then G2 usually falls apart." That was my goal. I played drop on CT and T, so I knew I was always going to be against him. When we were on T side, it didn't seem like he was playing like he usually does, usually on their CT side shox plays really aggressively in drop and he tries to fight and get control, but he didn't really do that against me very often. So it was pretty easy to just take drop control and then split B, they didn't really have an answer for it. And then on CT side, we didn't play that many rounds, but I think one of the rounds we double-naded him and he died, another round we mollied him and he died, so he didn't really have anything he could do and the other players didn't really step up for his team. And we just overran them.



Liquid had a clear idea on how to counter G2

I spoke to FalleN and he said your match was actually harder for them than the NiP one, even though the score was the same, how did it go from your perspective? At one point they were winning like 12-5 and we came back. I don't think that score necessarily showed how close it was, I think it was much closer. We were getting a lot of early picks, a lot of clutch rounds and towards the end when we finally started catching up, we made a couple mistakes, s1mple died one round, the last round I didn't get the kill I should've got, so things happened that shouldn't have. I think the reason why he [FalleN] thinks it was so close is because we broke their economy over and over again. That's what got us back into the match itself, they would win a round and we won the next one, so they had no chance of building their economy. They caught us off-guard a couple of times by force-dropping AWPs and we got killed early. But yeah, overall I think it was a good showing from us, especially on a map like Train, where we've historically been pretty bad on. We're trying to widen our map pool, so we're not just a Dust2/Cache team, obviously. Why did you really go with Train in the end then as opposed to Dust2, is it because Luminosity started playing it more or you not being as confident on it? During practice we had worse results on Dust2 than we did on Train, so we felt like if our Train goes the same way as it did on practice, hey we can win this. Also, a couple of the guys don't really feel comfortable right now on Dust2, so it's definitely something we'll work on before the Major, because Dust2 and Cache have always been our top two maps. We'll see what happens and maybe even the other maps will start being stronger for us, which we can only hope. Your next match will be the decider against either NiP or G2, do you think NiP would be as easy to shut down? Do you have such a specific plan against them too or would you rather face G2 again? If I had to pick I'd rather play G2. NiP has always been the team, for the past four years, where it's just like "Oh, GeT_RiGhT is going off, you're gonna lose" or "f0rest is going off, you're gonna lose" or "pyth is going off, you're gonna lose". NiP have more explosive players and if they all come with their A day, I think their playstyle is a lot similar to ours, they might not be the most strategic team, but they have so much firepower that even without the best strategies they're gonna just bruteforce into a site and GeT_RiGhT always has the best timing, f0rest is always hitting his shots. I think I personally feel more comfortable against G2. How about going into best-of-three's, obviously best-of-one's favor you, or you're more comfortable on it rather, how do you see your chances in a series? It's definitely harder than a Bo1, but as I said, the main thing we really worked on at our bootcamp was to widen our map pool, so now that we're not just a Dust2 and Cache team, we can play Train or maybe play whatever other maps, so I think that's gonna be a big benefit for us going into the Bo3's. If they ban one of our maps then we don't just have one other map we're good at. Shoutouts to my mom!

We have also conducted a video interview with one of the first semi-finalists of ECS Season 1 Finals, Luminosity's Gabriel "⁠FalleN⁠" Toledo.