mousesports suffered a defeat to Immortals in their first match at DreamHack Open Summer, losing to the Brazilian side 16-6 on Cobblestone. The European mixture managed to recover in the second match, a BO3 against Singularity but still struggled to close out the big leads they had on both Nuke and Mirage.

chrisJ's switch to the rifle helped denis' game

In a talk with Denis "⁠denis⁠" Howell, we learned about how their current roster fits together role wise, what happened in the match against Immortals and how what changed in his individual game.

Let's start with the tournaments you had before this, you had two playoff finishes from two events. How were you feeling with that, were you happy with the results or did you think something could've been better?

In general, of course, we are happy that we reached the playoffs of both tournaments. It was a bit unlucky that we faced two of the best teams, probably, instantly in the playoffs. G2 in tours and SK at the ESL Pro League finals. Overall we played pretty well I think against the evenly matched teams, those that are on the same level as we are.

And then against G2 and SK, we probably overall lacked a bit on our CT side, we played not so good together, against SK we lost some stupid clutches we shouldn't have lost, for example on Mirage the 3v1 and 4v2. So yeah, overall we played pretty well, but we still did some rookie mistakes that a new team, or not so experienced players are doing and I think that that was the biggest difference maker that lead to us not going further in the end.

At this tournament, the first match was against Immortals. It started off pretty tight, it was around 5-5 and then they just ran away with the match. Immortals themselves weren't sure how it ended up being so simple, how did it look from your perspective?

I think we had a decent gameplan, we also executed it pretty well, but on the crucial rounds, like one round when it was 5-5 and we did a B execute, boltz killed two through the smoke there and we obviously lost that round. Then there was another round when it was a reset round for them we did an A execute and the guy close to matrix killed me ChrisJ while blind, so that round was also gone. I mean, maybe we win those rounds, maybe we don't but after that, it was over. Also, as CT we did some mistakes, I did a pretty crucial one in the anti-eco, after we won the pistol. On B there were some positional mistakes, and that cost us the game in the end.



The next game was Singularity, the match was pretty close. Did they catch you off guard, did they positively surprise you at all? Did you have any experience playing them before, in practices or stuff like that?

As far as I can remember, we never played them in a practice or an official game. I mean, we didn't underestimate them, they won Copenhagen Games and they didn't play badly against SK on the first day. We didn't know what to expect but we just played our game, in the end, it got close because we had some trouble communicating and we did some weird mistakes again as CT. The communication was why the game was closer than it should have been.

Talking about you, in particular, comparing 2016 and 2017 you've improved a lot. It is a different roster, but what is the biggest difference for you personally?

The biggest difference is that in the 2016 lineup I had many positions and roles which I didn't really like, for example on Mirage as CT playing A. And most of the times, because we had chrisJ as an AWPer and Spiidi and loWel are both not so aggressive players, I was the guy that was, most of the time, running in front. For example, if there was a smoke, I was going in front, even suiciding for my teammates, and that ended up so I didn't have so much confidence in myself anymore.

For example, in comparison to the 2015 lineup with gob b or in PENTA back then. I had a different level of confidence, which I am getting to now again. So I think the biggest difference is that I now have some other roles and positions, and I have chrisJ as a rifler who is also an aggressive player, who runs with me in front and sometimes I tradefrag him, sometimes he tradefrags me. To sum it up, all of that gave me more confidence and I think that is why I am playing much better now. Also, I focused more on my individual game, and that's basically it.

How is the in-game leading been working out for mousesports? At the beginning it was Spiidi calling, now it's chrisJ...

At first, the plan was that Spiidi should be calling, but he wasn't comfortable with doing it in English so we decided that, since chrisJ is the oldest guy and probably the most experienced one, that he should be doing it. I mean, the coach is helping Chris, I am helping him with mid round calling, adding stuff, for example on Mirage mid I'm coordinating the players, on other maps as well. And everyone is calling when they see something, they take the opening, make the call and the rest adapt.

This is ropz's third notable LAN, tell me a bit about him. How has he been improving, have you been helping him to develop as a team player and a LAN player?

ropz is a really good player, the fact that he didn't play on a real team before was really helpful to us because he came in and he pretty much adapted to us. We saw what his game style is like, he is more of a passive player, he is thinking about every situation many times through before he takes an action.

Basically, he was fitting NiKo's former role really good, like the player that is on the other side of the map. I mean, NiKo was an aggressive player, he took every duel on the other side of the map and ropz is more passive, which suits us more because then on the "main attack" we can have more team play, and that game style fits us more than our past game style. Now with ropz, if we pressure a site, he pulls back instead of taking a duel before us.