After Astralis' close series against G2 we sat down with Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen to talk about the significance of tournament victories, constraints on playbook development and the upper bracket semi-final.

Despite a difficult journey to Odense due to travel arrangements from the ECS Season 8 Finals, Astralis have secured playoffs participation, which could turn out to be a semi-final placement if the team recreates the grand final result demonstrated in Arlington against Liquid in the group B upper bracket final, scheduled to take place this evening at 19:10 .

dupreeh feels that Astralis need to step it up on home soil

After the team bested G2 in a close three-map affair, we spoke to dupreeh who opened up about motivation post-victories, the team's journey to Odense and broke down the close series against Nemanja "⁠nexa⁠" Isaković and his men.

Before we get into the matches that the team played in Odense, I wanted to discuss ECS, but specifically the motivational aspect of winning tournaments. Astralis has seen success after success - do you still get a boost coming out of tournament victories, or has that feeling numbed considering the long list of achievements the squad has?

I think when you look at it, playing events like this one in Odense, BLAST Copenhagen and obviously the Majors, those have a bigger place in our heart than other tournaments. I'm not saying that we don't appreciate the other ones, but playing in front of a home crowd and trying to prove to them that we can also show the same amount of skill that we do in other countries is really important to us. We're still very happy that we won, for example, in Beijing and Arlington, because it has been a while and winning back-to-back championships is always really great for the team's confidence. We want to be the best team in the world, which we have established now, so we can't really complain. I do think that we've started to feel that we need to perform a little bit better on home soil.

Schedule considered, can you recall the last time you as a team were able to get a decent stretch of practice and dedicate time to evolving the playbook?

The schedule has been very tight coming here from Arlington, then we're going to Bahrain, and have the Christmas holidays afterward. We had some time before China [IEM Beijing] to actually look into things, but that's probably the latest we've had time to adjust, and it will be the only thing we're going to have for the rest of the year because we're going into the Christmas break.

We had some time before China to actually look into things, but that's probably the latest we've had time to adjust, and it will be the only thing we're going to have for the rest of the year Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen

I think we don't have tournaments till mid or late-January, so we're going to have at least a couple of weeks before we go to a new tournament to get back in the flow and work on some new things.

On the topic of scheduling - yourself and Liquid were the last teams to make it to Odense since you were playing the finals back in Arlington. Could you explain that situation and give us an idea of how much time you had before the Renegades match?

Obviously we didn't have that much time, so we decided to leave Dallas the evening we won the championship. We flew to Heathrow [London], missed our flight there, and we had to wait five to six hours until we could actually get on a plane to Denmark. We hopped on a shuttle, got here to Odense at 1am I think. In some way, I think it favoured us that we didn't get here earlier because we probably would have gone to sleep a lot faster. The fact that we were on the move and had to be up, and went to bed late, helped us with the jetlag. That was good, but it's not optimal that you have to fly in and out and arrive less than 24 hours before you have to play a game. It wasn't optimal, but in this case, I think we were the lucky team compared to a team like Liquid that basically arrived way too late and had to reschedule their matches.

You just played out a series against G2 where you struggled quite a bit, but ultimately managed to pull it out in the end. Let's start with Dust2, where the team experienced difficulty on the T side, ultimately costing the first map. What were some of the specific issues that you ran into on the map?

It was a match that was really up and down for us. In terms of Dust2, we started out great. I think that maybe we played a bit to loose or maybe lost some rounds we shouldn't have lost, then we just entered a spiral where nothing seemed to work out for us. We kept making the wrong decisions in the wrong moments, and they seemed to have a very good idea of what type of strategy we want to run, so they had prepared for us on Dust2 pretty well, in my opinion.

The same thing I want to say about Inferno - they just seemed to have prepared and made a lot of right decisions in key moments, and that's how you win in Counter-Strike. In hindsight, we probably should have lost on Inferno, because we had economy problems and we had issues winning rounds we should win. We were losing big advantages, but it was really great to feel that once we got to overtime, it kind of reset the whole team, and we were like: "Ok, now we actually got to overtime, now we just have to win this one and we'll continue to the third". That's what we did.

G2 seemed to have prepared and made a lot of right decisions in key moments, and that's how you win in Counter-Strike Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen

On Train it was getting way too close. We lost some stupid rounds and I wouldn't say we played our best CS today. We had some struggles, but at the same time, I'm really impressed with how G2 have started working as a team. At the beginning you were maybe doubting the decision behind bringing in an international squad. They've only improved, and they kept putting pressure on us and they were really good at reading the game. It seems they had done their preparation and they played great. We came out on top, but it could have gone either way, honestly.

Train has been a very successful map for you lately, and you were quite close to losing a seven-map win streak to G2. Towards the end of the map you once more struggled on the T side. Could you analyse some of the issues and why the map turned out to so close?

I think Train is a map we've put time in to become better at, and in the past it was one of our really great maps, but once you get into the comfort zone on a map, you start leaving a little bit out and start working on others, you drop off, it's kind of how the map cycle goes for teams. We've put in a lot of time; I've personally had some issues playing on the outer bombsite, T connector and Popdog. I feel like I'm so limited in some ways, then the way that the game has developed in terms of the Krieg meta, you can't really take any straight-up duels against Terrorists anymore. It's just been really hard and frustrating, but I've tried to work out some new things and today I just got into my comfort zone and felt great on the map.