OpTic took down mousesports pretty comfortably in the first match of the second day of ELEAGUE playoffs, winning Train 16-7 and Cache 16-11.

Following the match, we talked to Tarik "⁠tarik⁠" Celik to learn what the expectations were coming into the match, Oscar "⁠mixwell⁠" Cañellas's AWPing and the secret to their force-buy success.

On Train we won some crazy rounds, I know mixwell had a 3K with the AWP that was a big round for us. Also, 2v2's, post-plant situations, we played them well, we were hitting our shots. Everything was going for us really. So winning those close rounds was big for us I think. One of the rounds we lost was an eco round where we screwed up, they walked up white halls, boosted and flanked one of us. They won that eco, so it could've been even better for us. Our T side was really good, we just got the ball rolling quick.

We were gonna pick either Train or Cobble. I wasn't there so I'm not sure how the veto went but we talked about it before the game. As far as them picking Cache we were kinda expecting them because they beat us recently, I think it was 16-10, they had a great game against us. I would say we were prepared to play Cache against them, we also expected Dust2 from mouz, but they didn't pick that. It worked out okay.

Were you happy with how the veto went? You got Train, I'm presuming you were happy about that, but what about the other two maps?

We knew mousesports is a good team, we knew anything is possible. They have sick players, they have NiKo - you never know what he is going to do, he can go off in any match. But we also knew that we have a good chance of beating them, they haven't been too crazy lately but we are kinda up and down as well. So it was a hard match to predict in my opinion. I feel that we just showed up today and played better Counter-Strike. Mixwell and RUSH played insane and that was pretty helpful for our game.

Let's just start with your expectations coming into the match. Mousesports have that firepower in a few very good players, what were you as a team expecting coming against them?



tarik confirmed that they are trying to build around mixwell's AWPing

You had a bit of a struggle on the CT side. Was there anything special that they were doing that was hard for you to counter?

I don't now, on the CT side it wasn't necessarily that we couldn't counter them, it was just that they were playing pretty slow and were waiting the map out and we couldn't really do anything on the start of the rounds. They started shooting well so it just came down to us using our nades and stopping their hits. But I think we played fine on the CT side.

You moved on to Cache, their pick, and they started pretty well, had a 6-4 score but then you came back and closed out the half 9-6 as CT. What was the switch in that moment?



They were going A a lot, whatever adjustment mixwell and RUSH made over there they just started shutting it down. I think I had to retake A one time, and the one time we retook it was with mixwell, but we didn't have a kit so we couldn't defuse. They just started shutting it down on A and we won the half 9-6.

It was good honestly good by our A players, every time that I rotated they were all dead, the two of them would get like four or five kills so it was really easy for me at B.

Another thing that was going in your favor on Cache was the force buy rounds. You lost both pistols and then won the second rounds, was there anything special that you were doing to win those rounds or was it more down to their mistakes and your headshots?

Well I'm sure they made some mistakes but our team in general has alway been really good on force rounds. It's probably very tilting to them, they win the pistol and they think they are 3-0 and they get eco'd, on both halfs. That's probably pretty bad for their mentality and that probably helped us a lot. But I just feel like our pistols are really random and I'm sure they had a slip-up here and there and we hit a crazy shots so it worked out in our favor. That were good rounds for us.

One thing that has been discussed about your team a lot has been the AWPing situation. A few months back there was the talk that mixwell wasn't going to primary AWP so no one knew who was going to pick it up. At the moment it seems like he is the main AWP still, but maybe not in the same capacity? Can you talk me through the AWPing situation in your team?

Before we were trying out the system where mixwell wasn't our main AWPer and we had me, mixwell and NAF and anyone could AWP at any given time. But then we decided it would be better and it would be more structured if we had a main AWPer and we think mixwell would be the best in that role.

We are trying to work him in that system, but it's also important that if he doesn't want to AWP or he doesn't feel comfortable that round or whatever he can throw it over to me or NAF. And we can obviously double-AWP on like Dust2 T side and on CT sides you can use the double AWP on whatever map. So we are trying to work him into the system as a main AWP but we are also trying to play with his comforts and what he wants to do to make it easier on him.

Moving on to the semi-finals it's going to be either FaZe or Virtus.pro. Any thoughts on the teams?

Yeah FaZe and Virtus.pro are definitely two really strong teams and it's going to be hard to beat them but I think anything is possible if we show up during game day and play our game - I think we could do damage. I think it would be pretty sick if we played FaZe because there is that whole Faze - OpTic rivalry from Call of Duty so there is a lot of beef. I think it would be awesome if we got to do that on TBS.