North's IGL Mathias "⁠MSL⁠" Lauridsen talked about their style, map pool and facing NRG in a post-match interview.

After a narrow loss to mousesports in their StarSeries i-League S5 opener, the Danes recovered on day two, beating NRG. Even though the series went three maps, North looked comfortable as they secured one-sided wins on both Mirage and Nuke.

MSL feels more comfortable calling mid-round with kjaerbye and mertz in the team

Following the match, we interviewed MSL and heard about winning DreamHack Tours, the team's dynamic and the in-game leader adding more mid-round calling to his game.

I'll start with DreamHack Tours, going into the tournament, was there a lot of pressure on both you as a leader and the whole team, to perform there, to get the title?

Yeah, for sure, we have felt pressure for a lot of months because we have played poorly. At DreamHack Tours, we knew that the only good thing that we can do is to win. We talked about it and we didn't feel pressure except in the first game, but that was also the first LAN game in a long time. After that game we felt that everything was rolling and we didn't think so much about the pressure.

Looking at the stats of the tournament after, it seemed like you didn't have one player carrying, it was more of the whole team having a good performance. Is that something you envisioned with the team right now, not having one player to be the focal point but having a more team-oriented approach?

Yeah, right now we are playing very much with team play and together. Some people have good positions and should do really good, but everyone can step up, even me right now.

Talking about individual players, let's touch on mertz. When he came into the team he mentioned that tier 1 teams play "a lot smarter CS", how has his adaption to this level been, is there anything you noticed that he needed to change, that he improved in?

I think, for sure, that the peeks he took before were way easier against weaker opponents. Also, when you come in a team like ours you need to play in a system, which he probably didn't in the Academy. I think he is slowly transitioning, but I think he is doing really good and showing really promising skill. I think he is adapting, I'm trying to figure out ways he can get good peeks as T and CT. He's also coming up with some himself. I think we are getting there slowly, but he is really good.

Starting with this tournament, Dust2 against mousesports was the first map you played. You were in a big lead there and it got out of hand, what were the issues in closing out that map against mousesports?

First of all, we were not hitting our shots in the important rounds, I actually think I called pretty good on the T side, but it didn't work out. There were some times where we reacted to what they were doing [but we still didn't win], for example, we saw two guys long and we rushed short, and oskar just killed three guys or something. There was also one round when we split A and they had two guys standing in CT and one on A site, and if you are doing that and people are splitting you from both short and long, you should never win the round as a CT. But they did, and it was just the key rounds that really decided that we lost that game. They were also annoying on CT, pushing mid and shot a lot. So we learned a lot from that game and it will be even better on Dust2 in the future.

On Train, there was one round that, for m,e was interesting how you played it. You got an entry pick on ivy, there were two or three of you guys defaulting there, as normal, and straight after that, while it was around 1:20, you rush into B where ropz was playing defensive and you got the site, I think you got the round. Was there a specific read in that round that you figured out, or was it just playing a faster style of CS?

We actually lost that round, but there, because we got two kills fast we thought that they would go heavy outside, which they did. ropz was alone, but the problem was that we were not close enough and the bomb was in T connection, so kjaerbye got caught when they pushed ivy and connection. But it was just an adaption and a mid-round call from me, I have begun to mid-round call a lot more since we got the two new guys, because I feel comfortable now.

Talking about fast-paced rounds, the last map you played against NRG, Mirage, had a lot of fast-paced rounds on the T-side, something people don't normally associate with you. Was that also something you tried to do to kind of bully the NRG guys that were the underdogs in this situation?

Not really, it's just how we play, we have fast rounds and we have slow ones, but actually, the fast rounds were the ones we were losing. So we adapted and played slower, did defaults and mid-round calls well. We adapted really well and aizy had a great game.

Touching on the map pool, when Cobblestone got removed, I guess that it was an obvious pick for you guys to go into Dust2, but now you have the combination of Nuke that a lot of people don't play and Dust2 that is a new map, so you either get one or the other in every veto. Is that also something you had in mind when figuring out the map pool?