Following FlipSid3's 2-1 victory over dignitas, we managed to get hold of Andrey "B1ad3" Gorodenskiy, the in-game leader of the CIS team, to hear more about the victory, WorldEdit's incosistencies and using smooya at iBUYPOWER Masters 2016.

After losing their opener to GODSENT, FlipSid3 managed to stay alive by knocking out one of the favorites of the tournament—Dignitas.

Following the victory, Andrey "⁠B1ad3⁠" Gorodenskiy gave us an in-depth interview, revealing what went wrong against GODSENT, what his expectations are from Denis "⁠electronic⁠" Sharipov and how he thinks the match against Kinguin will go.

Let's start with the first match that you played yesterday against GODSENT. You played train, a map you play a lot and you struggled mostly on the T side, something you struggled with in the past. What happened there, why couldn't you do anything on the Terrorist side?

Well, it was our first map of the tournament and we have a problem with it all the time. The main problem for the T side was too much mistakes on the CT side. We lost pistol where we were 4v2 and some gun rounds when they were pretty low money. They won a 2v3 when we were in very good positions to end the round. When we are losing such rounds it somehow influences our confidence and we feel like we are losing our match. That's why did some pretty stupid moves on the T side, first gun round we were again 4v3 and we knew where players are. We just didn't communicate properly what was the plan.

So I think the main problem of the T side was our bad communication, not enough confidence to close the round at some point. It's all about fast and proper thinking, good decision making during the round, like after one minute and after some exchanges. And we did that really bad.

Today you faced dignitas in the elimination match. They were one of the favorites and you managed to get a win, a pretty close 2-1. What changed, especially on Train where you beat them?

We watched out Train demo from yesterday and we saw that the score should've been like 13-2. We know that Train is our good map and we can win any team on it if we do everything properly. We saw that it wasn't [GODSENT] playing good, it was us losing the rounds. So we knew that against dignitas, if we play properly, without mistakes, we will win. Everybody was really motivated, after executions there was so much focus on everything, people were hungry for kills. We just played a very good T side and lost some stupid rounds as well. On CT side we were just playing our strats and what we prepared, we were trying to adapt to their rounds at some points and we closed out 16-14. We knew they were out of tactics on the end of the match on Train.

I wanted to ask you a bit about WorldEdit, for example on Train in the first rounds we saw him losing two AWP duels to cajunb, he had no impact, and in the next round he had an ace with the AWP. How does that inconsistency in his style of play affect your tactical style, does it hamper it a bit because you never know what you can expect from him?

I always expect our AWPer WorldEdit to hit his shots, because recently, in 2016 he started to play much, much, much better and sometimes he is insane and can do really good highlights and so on. But when he is not hitting his shots, when he is missing, somebody needs to step up instead of him. For example, wayLander did it on CT side of Nuke we were relying on a lot of stuff from our AWP. We were trying to pick with flash. We were trying to take the kills before they come to B site, to do as much of damage as we could before they come to B because when they do, they play really well.

So he was missing those shots and we were thinking like, the game is getting away from us somehow. At some point, wayLander did an amazing 4k and I'm pretty sure that if he didn't do this, we would've lost the match.

Your newest addition, electronic, you've had him for two months now in the team. What were your expectations getting him in FlipSid3 and how do you feel he is doing?

Expectations were really, really high because from what i saw he has too much knowledge and too much skill for such a young player with no experience. So expectations were really high and at this point he is doing really well. All he needs is more confidence and more proper decisions during the match. Because he has amazing skill, aim, all he needs is experience.

You didn't have him at iBUYPOWER and you used smooya as a replacement. How did you end up picking him, as it's a player no one really knows about? And he seemed like an AWP player from what we had on him and you already had WorldEdit, so what was the thinking behind it?

electronic didn't get a visa and we didn't have enough time to find another player. We would pick any CS player but at the same time was the CIS minor. We tried players who were not attending the CIS minor and they couldn't go also. We tried some foreign players, they said that they can't. We also tried HellRaisers players, Gambit players, all couldn't play even though they had a vacation in that period of time.

So we didn't have time at all, we needed a player with a visa, and I knew smooya from playing Rank S and he has a lot of potential, he only needs a good team with a good captian who could coach and he will improve incredibly fast. The plan was to play with two AWP's on CT side and T side because smooya is a player who is really agressive and he can do a lot of aggressive peeks, but the problem was the communication. After we won the pistol round against Cloud9, one guy came from the back of us, we didn't know it and he killed all of us. I think the problem was only the communication, even when we were playing against Echo Fox, I knew that if we were playing with electronic we would've win it easily. We just couldn't do proper things, it was too slow because he is speaking in English and we are trying to speak in Russian and then English with him… You know, it's always like you don't know how it's going to end up. Either it will be a disaster or it will be very good. This was a disaster.

You already have a Major spot and the third Major of the year has been moved to next year, you have a lot of time waiting for the next Major. How do you think that influenced you, as you didn't have to qualify and you have a lot of time to work, practice and get ready?

I think it's really good, because we were just about to change a player as we knew that we were not improving at all with shara. Moving the Major to January was great for us, we had time to play LAN's, online leagues, see what we can improve, what we can add, something new, some new strats - it was only a benefit for us.

Lastly, you have one more match in the group and you'll be playing against Kinguin. What do you think about them and how do you think the match will go?

I think that if we play against them as we did against dignitas we will beat them. Because, we have a good tactical platform, we have a lot of variations of what we can do, we can adapt and so on. Also, as I said before, one of the more important things is to make correct decisions during the round. I think dignitas is much better in this aspect than Kinguin so it will be easier for us. Right now, we are always trying to work on decision making during the round and we improved it a lot, it's on another level now. I think that will help us against Kinguin a lot.

Let's start with the first match that you played yesterday against GODSENT. You played train, a map you play a lot and you struggled mostly on the T side, something you struggled with in the past. What happened there, why couldn't you do anything on the Terrorist side?



Well, it was our first map of the tournament and we have a problem with it all the time. The main problem for the T side was too many mistakes on the CT side. We lost pistol where we were 4v2 and some gun rounds when they were pretty low money. They won a 2v3 when we were in very good positions to end the round. When we are losing such rounds it somehow influences our confidence and we feel like we are losing our match. That's why we did some pretty stupid moves on the T side, first gun round we were again 4v3 and we knew where players are. We just didn't communicate properly what the plan was. So I think the main problem of the T side was our bad communication, not enough confidence to close the rounds at some point. It's all about fast and proper thinking, good decision making during the round, like after one minute and after some exchanges. And we did that really bad.



Today you faced dignitas in the elimination match. They were one of the favorites and you managed to get a win, a pretty close 2-1. What changed, especially on Train where you beat them? We watched out Train demo from yesterday and we saw that the score should've been like 13-2. We know that Train is our good map and we can win any team on it if we do everything properly. We saw that it wasn't [GODSENT] playing good, it was us losing the rounds. So we knew that against dignitas, if we play properly, without mistakes, we will win. Everybody was really motivated, after executions, there was so much focus on everything, people were hungry for kills. We just played a very good T side and lost some stupid rounds as well. On CT side we were just playing our strats and what we prepared, we were trying to adapt to their rounds at some points and we closed out 16-14. We knew they were out of tactics on the end of the match on Train.



I wanted to ask you a bit about WorldEdit, for example on Train in the first rounds we saw him losing two AWP duels to cajunb, he had no impact, and in the next round he had an ace with the AWP. How does that inconsistency in his style of play affect your tactical style, does it hamper it a bit because you never know what you can expect from him? I always expect our AWPer WorldEdit to hit his shots, because recently, in 2016 he started to play much, much, much better and sometimes he is insane and can do really good highlights and so on. But when he is not hitting his shots, when he is missing, somebody needs to step up instead of him. For example, wayLander did it on CT side of Nuke we were relying on a lot of stuff from our AWP. We were trying to pick with flash. We were trying to take the kills before they come to B site, to do as much of damage as we could before they come to B because when they do, they play really well. So he was missing those shots and we were thinking like, the game is getting away from us somehow. At some point, wayLander did an amazing 4k and I'm pretty sure that if he didn't do this, we would've lost the match.



B1ad3 feels that wayLander's plays saved the last map against dignitas

Your newest addition, electronic, you've had him for two months now in the team. What were your expectations getting him in FlipSid3 and how do you feel he is doing? Expectations were really, really high because from what I saw he has too much knowledge and too much skill for such a young player with no experience. So expectations were really high and at this point he is doing really well. All he needs is more confidence and more proper decisions during the match. Because he has amazing skill, aim, all he needs is more experience.



You didn't have him at iBUYPOWER and you used smooya as a replacement. How did you end up picking him, as it's a player no one really knows about? And he seemed like an AWP player from what we had on him and you already had WorldEdit, so what was the thinking behind it? electronic didn't get a visa and we didn't have enough time to find another player. We would pick any CS player but at the same time was the CIS minor. We tried players who were not attending the CIS minor and they couldn't go also. We tried some foreign players, they said that they can't. We also tried HellRaisers players, Gambit players, all couldn't play even though they had a vacation in that period of time. So we didn't have time at all, we needed a player with a visa, and I knew smooya from playing Rank S and he has a lot of potential, he only needs a good team with a good captain who could coach and he will improve incredibly fast. The plan was to play with two AWP's on CT side and T side because smooya is a player who is really aggressive and he can do a lot of aggressive peeks, but the problem was the communication. After we won the pistol round against Cloud9, one guy came from the back of us, we didn't know it and he killed all of us. I think the problem was only the communication, even when we were playing against Echo Fox, I knew that if we were playing with electronic we would've won it easily. We just couldn't do proper things, it was too slow because he is speaking in English and we are trying to speak in Russian and then English with him… You know, it's always like - you don't know how it's going to end up. Either it will be a disaster or it will be very good. This was a disaster. You already have a Major spot and the third Major of the year has been moved to next year, you have a lot of time waiting for the next Major. How do you think that influenced you, as you didn't have to qualify and you have a lot of time to work, practice and get ready? I think it's really good, because we were just about to change a player as we knew that we were not improving at all with shara. Moving the Major to January was great for us, we had time to play LAN's, online leagues, see what we can improve, what we can add, something new, some new strats - it was only a benefit for us. Lastly, you have one more match in the group and you'll be playing against Kinguin. What do you think about them and how do you think the match will go? I think that if we play against them as we did against dignitas we will beat them. Because, we have a good tactical platform, we have a lot of variations of what we can do, we can adapt and so on. Also, as I said before, one of the more important things is to make correct decisions during the round. I think dignitas is much better in this aspect than Kinguin so it will be easier for us. Right now, we are always trying to work on decision making during the round and we improved it a lot, it's on another level now. I think that will help us against Kinguin a lot.

Professeur writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter.