Astralis started their journey at the Major on the wrong foot with a huge loss to mousesports on Cache where they only garnered two rounds in total.

On day two, the struggles continued in the first half of Train against North with just four rounds on the defence, but Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen & co. came back despite losing the following pistol round to win their second match 16-14 and advance to the 1-1 pool.

dupreeh led the way in Astralis' comeback against North

After the draw took place that pitted Astralis up against fnatic in tomorrow's third round, we talked to dupreeh about his new role as an AWPer and his team's matches at the tournament:

In your first match against mousesports, you got destroyed on the CT side of Cache, what happened?

Nothing happened, I guess, that's basically what I'm going to say (laughs). mousesports played super well, can't take anything away from them, we just didn't show up, we didn't hit our shots, communication was off, we probably shouldn't have played Cache... There's a few factors to it, but overall we just didn't show up and mousesports played better, so they fully deserved to win.

Did that come down to rustiness from the long break?

Well, yeah, maybe a little bit, but I don't want to put up excuses. Obviously, mousesports has been here for a week, playing the qualifier, they've been in the setup and all that, that could maybe give them a little bit of a bonus, but that's how it is. We come here as Legends and we are supposed to be as a Legend team as well, so we're also supposed to show up better, but they played better, so all kudos to those guys.

It kind of continued in the North match in the first half, where you only got four rounds on the CT side of Train, what kinds of issues did you face throughout the first half?

I think right now we mainly can't string rounds together, we win one round and then we just couldn't get the economy game going, I think three times we were just one round away from breaking their economy and they actually caught us off-guard by forcebuying when we thought they were ecoing. We overrotated quite a bit, we talked a bit after the game that we don't trust each other enough.

Instead of believing that the two guys on the inner bombsite will actually hold off the attack for a long enough time, then just two guys instantly rotate and that just makes them run out pop dog and instantly catch off the rotation. It's a mixture of not hitting your shots and not believing enough in your teammates, so I think we're going to have a talk about that tomorrow with our sports psychologist and we'll see what happens from there.

What was the key to the comeback on the T side?

Everything started out by winning the forcebuy round, Kjaerbye did some really insane Deagles, which was really important. From there on it was a mixture of everything, me hitting my AWP shots, gla1ve making some good calls, device doing good lurking in the alley, good reads in general, and just playing really strict, not giving away weapons... We played really good Counter-Strike, that's why we won.

Can you go over one round close to the end where Kjaerbye and gla1ve were in a 2v3 situation and Kjaerbye went around the whole map? Was that his idea?

It was Kjaerbye himself, there was not going to be anyone inside, they probably knew the bomb was down on the outer bombsite. Instead of going through CT connector, Kjaerbye decided to go all the way around and he actually catches the guy covering from behind. They were aware someone was going to come from behind, but he took the right route.

While Kjaerbye was actually running inside, I was typing in team chat "That's the winning play right there" (laughs), that's quite funny. We just hit our shots in our situation and we probably shouldn't have won that round either, but we did and that's just how Counter-Strike is sometimes, you win rounds you're not supposed to win.

You mentioned hitting your AWP shots on the T side, but you also had a few opening kills on the CT side and generally seemed on point. Do you feel comfortable in your new role?

It's a mix of both things, I've been really working on it lately, hitting the nobrain shots, the shots that you are supposed to hit every time. It's getting better and better and obviously I'm working on - I see this as a learning curve all the time, when I play the AWP, that's what I like playing it right now, a new role. Even if I die, I feel like I learned something, if I kill someone, I feel like I learned something. I keep improving, I feel.

It's all about locking down positions, positioning yourself correctly and getting away after the first kill, and that's something I'm still trying to learn. It really varies a lot from what team we're playing, how we position ourselves as CT as well, but I definitely feel like I have a stronger T AWP than I have as CT on Train. I have a lot of ideas, I keep asking for boosts, I keep asking for plays we can make, so that's probably why I feel like I'm most confident on that side.

Is it generally easier for you to play on T side, considering on the CT side it's a lot more about the positioning and being able to change angles?

In general, I feel like I am a better CT AWPer, because what I've been doing as a secondary. But obviously, as CT, I also want to progress a little bit - I'm not going to reveal too much - into a specific style that is going to help my team a lot. And I'm still working on finding the key for success for that one, so we'll see when I unlock my true potential.

Thoughts on the fnatic matchup in the next round?

Yeah, we've played fnatic so much in practice going up to the event, so we kind of know what to expect. They've actually been super good in practice and we know each other really well. It's always great matches against fnatic, so it's going to be really tough. We could have gotten, on paper at least, an easier opponent, but then again this Major has been all over the place, so you can't really say who's the better opponent right now.

This win today was really important, especially because we made a really good comeback, the overall team spirit was really good, the mental help was really strong on this one. I really hope we can ride on this wave of success and that will carry us to the next stage of the tournament. And yeah, I just hope we're going to have a good match tomorrow.