Pre-Cph Games: natu, Pimp, semphis

We caught up with Finnish Curse squad's Joona "natu" Leppänen, Kory "semphis" Friesen from American Quantic Gaming and Western Wolves' Jacob "Pimp" Winneche.

With Copenhagen Games looming just around the corner and Quantic Gaming set to start their campaign in the on-site qualifier already on Thursday, it's time to find out how these teams have prepared for the event.

Curse are yet to attend an international event in 2013 and Western Wolves are fresh off a second place finish at Mad Catz Invitational, and both will be seeking to make an impact as they take the stage on Friday.

CS:GO will play a much larger role at Copenhagen Games this year 

Kicking off this one will be Quantic Gaming's Kory "semphis" Friesen. Friesen led his team to a third place finish at ESWC 2012 and an ESEA championship in November, but are only attending their third CS:GO event.

Sean "sgares" Gares' departure forced the team to miss RyuLAN in January but now with Carey "frozt" Kertenian integrated to the team they are looking to prove they are still among the best CS:GO teams around.

How has your preparation for Copenhagen Games been? Have you bootcamped or simply practiced online? Have you faced any issues? How prepared do you feel as a team?

Quantic semphis: Our preparation for CPH Games is probably the best Ive had before any event ever, we are boot camping at DSRACK and besides two computers over heating the first day which they fixed really quickly it has been smooth sailing. The guy's at DSRACK are really nice and we have been here since the 22nd playing almost 13 hours a day without any breaks besides food vs the best teams in the world so I think we have learned a lot by finally being able to play teams that have strats for once.

How important is Copenhagen Games to your team as an event? It has the most prize money since DreamHack Winter and just about every top team attending, including the North Americans. Does it being BYOC take any of the prestige away in your opinion?

Quantic semphis: This event is very important and we are taking is the more serious than any event we have attended so far hence the boot camp and long hours we are putting in. I don't think the BYOC aspect detracts from the prestige that much but when you are at a LAN event you do want the same fps and monitors as the other players you're playing, coming from NA we obviously can't bring our computers so we are at a bit of a disadvantage to players who can bring there NASA comps from home. 

With almost all top teams present, who do you think will finish in the top four besides NiP? Is there any team in particular who isn't getting enough attention or who has been impressing you in practice?

Quantic semphis:We haven't played every top team that's attending since tech labs was this weekend during a large majority of our practice time but the most obvious choices would have to be VeryGames, ESC, and virtus pro but you also have to take into account Navi and fnatic who are practicing a lot and will gain ground fast.

Do you like the format of Copenhagen Games (best-of-three groups, best-of-three upper- and best-of-one lower bracket)? What would you change? Do you think it forces teams to play too much?

Quantic semphis: I like the format it always gives you a chance to redeem yourself and you can't really get 'gayed' out of groups nearly as easily without it blatantly being your fault. I don't mind playing cs that much it will probably be less than what we have played while boot camping.

semphis representing his team Area51 in Paris for ESWC 

Which one thing do you think can make the biggest difference in how your team performs this week? Does your team e.g. rely on someone to have good matches a lot? Are you very reliant on pistol round wins? Anything similar besides "hitting your shots" or "being lucky"?

Quantic semphis: We are the type of team that if we win both pistols I think we can beat anyone in the world but you can't always rely on that so I would say making sure we don't get picked off and run our strats like we did in practice is the main thing we have to do early deaths hurt us more than other teams from what I've seen in prac. 

You've only attended one event since ESWC and you haven't played internationally in almost five months. Do you think being so detached is a weakness because you aren't used to other teams' playing styles, or an advantage because they aren't used to yours, and you've seen them play in demos etc?

Quantic semphis: I don't think not attending event's is that big of a deal if you have a boot camp like we did I think it's more of an issue for a team like Cursed NA because they are arriving a day before the event with no practice vs the variety of European teams playing styles. With the boot camp the teams we play will have seen our playing style but it may give us a slight edge in terms of them not being very familiar with how we play.

Since your 3rd place finish at ESWC it has been tough to rank you compared to Europeans due to your absence at tournaments. How do you think you currently rank up? How do you expect to do this week?

18:39 - Quantic SEMPHIS YOUR OVERLORD: I think it's tough to rank anyone but VG or NIP right now and every team is looking to claim that 3rd spot, personally I think we are capable of top 5 at every lan we go to but everyone has got a lot better than when we played at ESWC so it will be a lot harder this time around. Everyone is expecting top3 and not getting that would be disapointing.

Quantic semphis: I think it's tough to rank anyone but VG or NIP right now and every team is looking to claim that 3rd spot, personally I think we are capable of top 5 at every lan we go to but everyone has got a lot better than when we played at ESWC so it will be a lot harder this time around. Everyone is expecting top3 and not getting that would be disappointing.

Next up is Joona "natu" Leppänen from Team Curse, who just like Quantic are yet to attend an international event in 2013 and have gone through a roster change earlier this year.

Niko "naSu" Kovanen departed the squad at the end of December and his replacement Timi "aslak" Verkkoperä only lasted just under two months before Jesse "KHRN" Grandell replaced him.

Curse haven't been very active in online leagues, not taking part in SLTV StarSeries V nor being able to qualify for RaidCall EMS One or ESEA Invite Season 13 finals.

That of course only makes Copenhagen Games more interesting for Curse, who are looking to prove they can still hang with the best. Read on to find out what Leppänen has to say.

How has your preparation for Copenhagen Games been? Have you bootcamped or simply practiced online? Have you faced any issues? How prepared do you feel as a team?

Curse natu: Our preparation has been quite solid I would say. Ever since KHRN joined us we have been practicing as much as our schedules have let us plus some more. Basically I think we've had to start from scratch, we dumped most of our original "playbook" and readjusted things for the most part. We have mostly been practicing online but had a weekend long bootcamp last weekend to get pumped up for the upcoming tournament. We haven't faced that many issues I think, we've constantly been getting better as days have gone past. How this hard work is going to pay off is a matter of multiple small details going right or wrong. We feel as prepared as we could be with the time frame we've had I think.

How important is Copenhagen Games to your team as an event? It has the most prize money since DreamHack Winter and just about every top team attending, including the North Americans. Does it being BYOC take any of the prestige away in your opinion?

Curse natu: Well I have never ever been a fan of BYOC, simply because computer games are...surprisingly...heavily influenced with the hardware you're running on. We have absolutely no idea what kind of rental PC's we're getting for example, so in that sense people that actually have the opportunity to take their own computers with have an advantage at least to begin with. I've always thought that being able to adjust to another computer and environment has been a big part of doing well at tournaments, so partially that aspect is not there in a BYOC. Still, no matter what, in most cases best teams will be up there on top of the rankings come Saturday night. We might see some typical BYOC surprises though. It always happens. Hope we don't get to be a part of one ;)

Regardless, this is the first big event in 2013 with basically all of the top teams attending - so definitely this is of high importance to us.

With almost all top teams present, who do you think will finish in the top four besides NiP? Is there any team in particular who isn't getting enough attention or who has been impressing you in practice?

Curse natu: CS:GO is still in such a young stage in my opinion that it's extremely hard to make predictions beyond a couple of teams. But I'm sure teams like Na'Vi (regardless of their TECHLABS results) and Virtus Pro have a good chance of being up there. Especially Na'Vi is slowly getting up to speed with this new game and we've already seen glimpses of what to expect in the future. If all the stars are aligned correctly for them I'm sure they have a solid chance of breaking top4. VeryGames has been the only team in practice I can honestly say has been ridiculously good. How that translates over to this tournament I'm curious to see.   I'll give my wildcard to Fnatic, not based on any knowledge but mere speculation, to have a shot at making it far in the tournament.

Curse's veteran natu in December at THOR Open 

Do you like the format of Copenhagen Games (best-of-three groups, best-of-three upper- and best-of-one lower bracket)? What would you change? Do you think it forces teams to play too much?

Curse natu: I think it does force teams to play too much yeah, Bo3's can be very straining between equal teams. Probably the logic in this is to have as accurate results as possible and minimize randomness.  Slow starters and the top teams will obviously benefit from this.

Which one thing do you think can make the biggest difference in how your team performs this week? Does your team e.g. rely on someone to have good matches a lot? Are you very reliant on pistol round wins? Anything similar besides "hitting your shots" or "being lucky"?

Curse natu: In my opinion CS matches are won in metagame. Small details, midround decisions by players and how we simply execute 4on5's and 3on5's after the initial tactic is going to make us or break us. Obviously we have a beast of an AWPer in allu so he can single-handedly win us games by going nuts, but I think end of the day how we perform as a unit and how we cope with potential early deficits is where it's at. I certainly hope we can get our pistol rounds together, as they haven't been our forte online at least.

You haven't attended any events since THOR Open. With Jesse "KHRN" Grandell now having had adequate time to get adjusted to the team, how good do you think Curse is right now? How would you compare your team to that of THOR Open? What kind of issues are you still dealing with?

Curse natu: Jesse is a great player who I think over time will win a lot of fans with how he can pop heads. Integrating him into our team has been rather painless and playingstylewise he's been a good fit. Nasu brought a lot to the table for sure, things that are irreplaceable but instead of trying to replace what he brought - we try to benefit from other qualities Jesse brings into this team. The game has gone forward the past couple of months again so looking at how we played back in December, I think overall we will definitely be better. How it compares to how we compared to other teams back then? Who knows. The future will tell us that answer. So far I have no complaints what so ever.

Your organization's American team will also be present at the event. Does this add any motivation for you to do better than them? Your team was definitely considered better in late 2012, but your inactivity hasn't helped your case so far this year.

Curse natu: I don't think we honestly care. We are not going there to prove anyone but ourselves that we are the real deal and that's that. If we manage to be better than our North American counterparts, sure - it's an added bonus - but not something we will be thinking going in. I think we have all the necessary qualities to reproduce results we had few months back.

Last but certainly not least we have Jacob "Pimp" Winneche, whom we recently completed a lengthy interview with, from Western Wolves, formerly known as Anexis.

His Danish squad most recently surprised people in Vienna by defeating VeryGames twice en route to a second place finish at 2013's first international CS:GO tournament.

Since then they went through an organization switch as Sam "RattlesnK" Gawn's Overrated Individuals became Anexis' CS:GO team, but Winneche & co landed in Western Wolves.

Now they are headed to Copenhagen to prove that their second place finish a month ago wasn't a fluke, and while competition is tougher this weekend, they are ready to prove they are the real deal.

How has your preparation for Copenhagen Games been? Have you bootcamped or simply practiced online? Have you faced any issues? How prepared do you feel as a team?

Western Wolves Pimp: Well I don’t know where to start really… Since our trip to Vienna we have faced the amount of issues you should face in 10 years. Almost everyone on the team have at some point been so sick that they could not practice. Two players computers have crashed, while a third's has ran with 60-100 fps. I can easily say that this have been the worst preparation in my whole CS:S/CS:GO time. It is frustrating to watch everyone else start power praccing, when the only thing you self can do is play some deathmach and play some gathers. Eight days ago everyone was fit to fight, so we literally started practicing 8 days before the event. Also in those 8 days we have had to cancel due pc problems etc. I am sorry for all the teams time we might have wasted trying fixing our problem, but in the end I am more sorry about we are not as prepared as we would have liked to be. Shit happens, we hope the 6-7 days have been enough to find our old level of playing.

How important is Copenhagen Games to your team as an event? It has the most prize money since DreamHack Winter and just about every top team attending, including the North Americans. Does it being BYOC take any of the prestige away in your opinion?

Western Wolves Pimp: Copenhagen games is a event we all have been looking forward to in a while. Trough we have to say that after our teriable preparation we have sort of down priotaed it. We will do everything we can to win or make a good result, but should we fail and not play as some might expect us to do we just have to be cool with it. We know we can not expect to beat everyone we meet when most of our opponents are better prepared than us. Copenhagen games has always been a great event, and I am sure it will be another awesome event in the line! So many great teams, not a single “boring” match in the early groupstages, its perfect. Everyone can put up a good fight against everyone! I don’t think that fact that some play on their own pc’s take any of the prestige away. I would love to rent pc’s at the event, since I like playing on other and better pc’s than my own. In the end it is not the computer who tells us who is the better team.

With almost all top teams present, who do you think will finish in the top four besides NiP? Is there any team in particular who isn't getting enough attention or who has been impressing you in practice?

Western Wolves Pimp: The top four is almost impossible to predict. There is in my mind 8-10 teams that on their good day could perform a top 4 finish. Since everyone seems to be so exited on online results, and how teams perform there, I guess most have forgot the finish guys. They are a very skilled team, and have been surprisingly good in practice. The fact that they have not competed in only online leagues for a while, and only have practiced and sitting at a bootcamp is defiantly a strong card to have. It is imposibel to analyse them, since their last official match was in December. I could see them on a good day hit top 6 or might even more.

Do you like the format of Copenhagen Games (best-of-three groups, best-of-three upper- and best-of-one lower bracket)? What would you change? Do you think it forces teams to play too much?

Western Wolves Pimp: I love Copenhagen games for that format. I could not wisch any better format to be hornest. It is less random than bo1 group stages, so who ever wins the bo3 have been the better team. Teams can not complain playing to much, if they wanna win they have to play much and beat everyone. I don’t fansy results maded in a bo1 groupstage. I think the bo3 is waaay better to see who is acutely the better team. Also it eliminates a booring map veto, like ESWC were N! only played inferno to get their 4 the place.

Which one thing do you think can make the biggest difference in how your team performs this week? Does your team e.g. rely on someone to have good matches a lot? Are you very reliant on pistol round wins? Anything similar besides "hitting your shots" or "being lucky"?

Western Wolves Pimp: It depends on a lot of factors. We are a very laoud team, so if we are leading our winning a nice round people will hear it! We have to get our exitment sky high, because teams don’t like to be shouted at when they just lost a crusial round. It makes the loosing team focus on the wrong things, witch is good for os! Also I would say that Nico, me and Glaive have to step up our game. Glaive have to call in the same way he did in Vienna, and the same goes on for Nico. I should hopefully play a lot better, and not just be good in 2-3 matches.

Pimp in Vienna during their second place run

Do you think not being able to prepare for your group in advance as you did for Mad Catz (due to groups being announced a while in advance then) will hinder your chances at doing well? Will you prepare for certain teams specifically by watching their demos?

Western Wolves Pimp: We have prepared for the teams we fill not stand good to our game. I don’t think it is hind our chances for doing well at all. We know how we want to play against certain teams, and how to adjust our game. Maybe we are better than other teams to anti strat (Hi pasha :D) and use it more, I don’t know. It is not something that affect us at all.

Nico's AWPing was one of the keys to you winning your group in Vienna. Do you think he can continue where he left off in Vienna, with an even tougher field up against him in Copenhagen? How important is his play to your team, do you think you can do well even if he has an off day? How do you rank Nico's AWP in the world?

Western Wolves Pimp: Nico was insane at Vienna, just like we are used to at lan. He is not as good online as he is LAN, so I am sure that he will step up again at Copenhagen. Ofc. A team like ours with a good AWP like nico’s are affected if he have a off day. It goes on for each player, if he don’t fulfill he’s role, it affects our game. Nico is important, but not more than we cant play good with out him. We have players who can step up and win the game on their own, so it is not at problem if he have some matches were he is not playing that good.

Are there any local Danish teams participating in the on-site qualifier that the public should keep an eye on? Any specific players you think will impress/surprise fans?

Western Wolves Pimp: Well ofc. There is EyesONYOU witch are a decent team who could on a good day deal some damage. They have been bootcamping and power praccing almost a week by now, so they are well prepared I would say. The biggest outsider people might not now is Xapso(NP!). They have Berry and Snappi from 1.6 who defentialy is looking better than at HKLAN. Also they have 2 very talented players in form of Tabaco and Isenbo. Both players I have been playing with before, and admire their talent. Defiantly players you should watch out for!

This marks the end of our first batch of interviews heading into Copenhagen Games 2013, taking place in the Danish capital on March 28-30. You can expect more in the coming days.

HLTV.org will be on-site to provide you with full coverage of the 33,000€ CS:GO tournament, starting from tomorrow's qualifier with Quantic among others taking part.