The Danish squad had a comfortable DreamHack Masters Malmö group stage, defeating Renegades 16-3 before taking down Natus Vincere with a 2-0 in the winner's match of group B.

device doesn't want the graffiti trick to stay in the game

In a post-match interview, Nicolai "⁠device⁠" Reedtz touched on Astralis' Major performance, getting back in shape after the break and gave his opinion on the graffiti trick they used against Natus Vincere.

Let's talk about the end of the Major, the player break and then coming back into shape, into form. How has the period for you personally and as a team? What were you doing what were you focusing on?

I think looking back at the Major, obviously, we expected to do better, but we lost to a better team on the day. We went on a vacation with still satisfying results, we've had only top four placings with this lineup so I still think that we haven't really underperformed heavily yet.

Our focus going into the next season now is renewing a lot of the strategies and the focus for this tournament was also to get in shape individually. Because it's going be a really packed fall. All in all, we have a large, broad focus and we need to focus on almost everything because the player break makes everything a little bit sloppy. We didn't have the best practice leading up to this because of disease and a little bit of a failed bootcamp because of some people being sick, so we were not expecting that much, we feel like our tactics and our level still isn't at a level we want it to be.

In the offseason, a lot of teams changed players. How did you feel as a team, obviously sticking together, coming back to the scene with a lot of teams having new players, building new rosters that are seemingly exciting and have a lot of potential?

Yeah, I think that there are a lot of exciting rosters for all of the fans watching Counter-Strike. It's going to be fun to see who succeeds the most. I think our core in the team, our five man lineup is just really satisfied with how everything is going, obviously, we didn't do any changes.

I think that the one thing that is hard for us right now is getting a lot of information on how the new teams will play. Facing Na`Vi now, we actually mostly studied how Gambit played and not how Na`Vi played previously. So it's kind of hard to study your opponents when you are facing the ones with the new lineup. Or at least the ones that changed at least two players. Other than that I still believe we have a top 1 contender lineup.

Touching on this tournament, you started with the match against Renegades. You got a strong win (16-3), but in their next match, they showed that they are not that bad, obviously eliminating Virtus.pro from the tournament. Let's touch on that match first, how did the Renegades match go from your perspective?

Yeah, I think Renegades are not at all a bad team, I think they had a bad showing against us, it's more or less starting out the tournament, you either start really strong or you start really sloppy. And T side Train is a hard half to start with.

So yeah, we knew they were a great team, we watched a lot of their demos and we treated them like any other top10 team, so I think that is also why we went into the game and dominated it. As you also said, they showed some of their real strengths against Virtus.pro and I still believe they have a chance against Natus Vincere as well.

Talking about Natus Vincere, the match you just played. The first map was Overpass and there is that little detail that people picked up on, placing the graffiti on the smoke lineup spot. Let's talk about that first, how did you come up with that and what are your thoughts on it?

We were not sure whether or not we wanted to show it. It's really game breaking, you can do it on almost every map. You can choose one of the big graffitis and basically cover off all of the smoke lineups on a lot of maps.

I think it's obviously just something we used because we are a little bit unsure of our Overpass and I don't know if it worked, I'm going to watch it later, I think it worked in the first pistol round if I'm not mistaken. But yeah, I think it's also to put focus on it because I don't really want it to be in the game since it can interrupt and be abused too much.

The first map was pretty straightforward, the second one though, they started pretty strong but you managed to come back and close out the game. Let's touch on the second map, Mirage, the first half and the comeback. What was the feeling in the team?

I think it's in our nature to still believe in our practice and our tactics. So we were not that worried, being 5-0 down, we knew it was their map and we knew that we still had a whole playbook of tactics ready. I think, also, after that, we started hitting our shots a little bit more and got the momentum in the game. All in all, both Overpass and Mirage are good maps for us so we felt good going into the whole BO3, because we knew we had three of our strongest maps.

So now you have the playoff secured, close to home and all that. How do you feel going into the playoffs here in Malmö?

I still remember last year, when we lost in the groups, it was one of the hardest losses because it was the first time me, Xyp9x and dupreeh actually lost in a group stage. So I'm just really happy to get the possibility to play in front of my family that will be here and I know the other guys are feeling the same. That is giving us a little bit more of a spark, knowing that the whole fall we'll have most likely three tournaments ([DH Masters Malmö, BLAST, ESL Pro League S6 Finals]) with a lot of Danes.