We had the chance to sit down with Astralis’ Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen ahead of the teams match against FaZe Clan which they took home 2-0 after two close maps. The Danish player discussed the teams form, Liquid, FaZe Clan, and more. Astralis will take on Liquid in their semifinals match.

VPesports: When I talked to xyp9x at the ELEAGUE Premier he informed me that you guys would be coming into DreamHack Stockholm a litter rusty but would be using itas a warmup for the Major, but after you guys got here to Major you still didn’t seem too on point after that compLexity game. Do you think you guys have now hit your stride or are still shaking some rust off this late in the game?

dupreeh: I think its a mix of both actually. I think we have certain areas of our game that work really well and certain parts that don’t. I feel like when it comes to team play, that’s where we play the best actually whereas the individual play can be a little shaky sometimes. We didn’t win Stockholm even though we feel like we should. North played really great but we still feel like we could’ve won the tournament. We did start slow and start warming up throughout the tournament. We lost there and had a good talk about what went wrong and what we need to improve for this tournament.

I still think we played fairly decent in the first stages of the tournament. We lost two games, both on overtime against NiP and Liquid. in games we could easily have won. The Liquid one was more impressive in my way of thinking because we were down so much and we actually started making the comeback and we just ran out of energy. So I believe that we’ve actually shown some pretty great things but also shown some weak signs but I still believe that we can still build ourselves up mentally and fix those things and actually do a really good job in this part of the tournament.

VPesports: Speaking of Liquid, you guys have seemingly always been their kryptonite. It always seems no matter how good they do they can’t beat Astralis. Do you think that win over you guys in the previous stage has made them more confident against you guys and will play a bigger role now that they’ve gotten that win?

dupreeh: Honestly, no. I think it might have made it worse. Like hands down, we played horrible as CT. We didn’t hit our shots, we played horrible, made bad decisions, had no economy. We played really great on terrorist side, we traded up, we played together as a team, we had some good individual performances. I think they’re going to think a lot more that we almost made that comeback than that they beat us 13-2. I think that’s the thing that’s going to stick to them. I think its to our own benefit that we were down that much and almost made that comeback.

But then I again I think Liquid has been improving since the player break. They didn’t attend DreamHack Stockholm which I believe they used for a boot camp instead. I think Liquid is such a good team in so many ways – they are really good tactically. I think if you put Astralis and Liquid next to each other they have very many similarities. Good individual players, good teamwork. I think its a really good matchup. In general, I think they’ve been improving but I think we have the upper edge.

VPesports: So Na’Vi and Astralis are considered by most to be the top two teams and Na’Vi has been performing really well but depend heavily on s1mple and electronic. Do you think Na’Vi can continue at this performance or do you think they will fall off because star power only lasts so long?

dupreeh: Thats the thing as you mentioned star power. If electonic and s1mple don’t show up, then I don’t think Na’Vi has that much to bring. Obviously they are a team that relies a lot on that. Flame can play really great as well but he is known to fade out of games more often than the other two are. I think Zeus is a really good in-game leader actually, he has a really good idea on how to have late game fakes and playing with rotation. I think he’s really good at that when they get in late game and can start moving everyone around playing off of rotation I think that’s when they strive.

I do think its necessary for s1mple and electronic to play well for them to win but then again they always seem to be showing up. I think they have 9 out of 10 games they show up, they’re both really consistent. I don’t know what it is with Na’Vi they seem to be having a lot of ups and downs. I think they have some internal problems on how the mood of the team is. I feel like if they get in a situation where they’re pressured and they don’t feel comfortable they start maybe being bitchy to each other and that will take some energy from them. But I do say Na’Vi is one of the contenders to take the title.

VPesports: When you look at the teams on paper, who is the most dangerous to Astralis?

dupreeh: Some would say FaZe Clan because they have really good individual players and can be so hard to play against. I would say FaZe Clan is probably the most dangerous opponent we got which we got in the quarterfinals but obviously, they had some issues in the team or else they wouldn’t change the in-game leader all the sudden. I think if you break them early in the game and you just play well as a team and you know what they’re doing and how to counter what they’re doing I feel like they start to become really clueless. It’s like they need to rely a lot on people hitting those shots and if they’re not then they automatically lose. But then again when they do hit their shots they can be really hard to play against. If we approach the game as a team and play the game as a team then we’ll have upper hand.

(Photo courtesy of FACEIT)