shox: "Hoping for another top 1"

We caught up with VeryGames newest addition, Richard "shox" Papillon, whose individual skills helped the Frenchmen win RC EMS One Summer 2013.

Papillon played for VeryGames' domestic competitors for a long time, before he was finally swooped up by the French giant in the spring, following Kenny "kennyS" Schrub's departure.

Although originally met with some reservations, Papillon has proven to fit VeryGames well as the team won its only international LAN tournament so far, even if they avoided NiP in the process.

shox has put up big numbers for VG 

Since then his side has continued putting up impressive results by winning Mad Catz Invitational over fnatic, and most recently even taking their first ever map from their rivals in NiP.

Find out what Papillon thinks of VeryGames' current form, their preparation and opponents, NiP's psychological edge and more by continuing to read below.

How have you prepared for DreamHack Bucharest? Have you only practiced online or also bootcamped? How well prepared will you be in time for the event? Will we see you in tip top shape?

shox: We have bootcamped for around 10 days at the start of August, and then we had holidays for 1 week and started practicing again online. A few days after, we had the MFJV finals so it was a bit hard on our calendar to be honest. After the MFJV finals, we played like 7 hours a day to be ready for DH Bucharest, but we still have a lot of work. I can't say we won't be ready for DH Bucharest because we have had the time, even if everything is not perfect at the moment.

It's always hard to be 100% focused on the internet when playing. Especially when you have to be focused for more than 6 hours a day, but at LAN everything is different so I have no doubt that our team will do well.

There have been a lot of online matches in the past few weeks, do you think this has helped or damaged you coming into a big LAN event? Do you think being able to study other teams’ strats helps or will others studying you hurt you more? How much should we look into your recent performance as an indicator of current form?

shox: I think it's a bit of both, it helped us because in official matches you are always in constant real situations, and so therefore you directly see what works and what doesn't work, but on the other hand even if we saw these types of rounds - we really don't have much time to go work on these defaults.

I think many teams look at us more than NiP, because we have a more tactical game-play so it's easier to analyze. I have no fear about that because we have many secrets hidden up our sleeves ;). Studying other teams' strats is more often a problem for you inside a match because you always think they'll do that, and sometimes they just don't and you feel stupid, so we are not really focused on this as much as we used to be. What we only need is to be focused on our game and it will be enough to make good results.

Our recent performances are not bad, but are not really good I admit, but we know where to work to be better and that's the principal. Sometimes, tomorrow is totally different than yesterday because a lot of small details, you are never out until you are on the floor!

You've been placed in group C and will start off against Lemondogs, Refuse and Tessa. How do you expect to fare there? Do you see any upsets taking place in the other groups?

shox: We are the high-seed in our group stage so we have to finish first. But we don't have to be over confident, because Refuse and Lemondogs can be really strong opponents and if we don't play them at our full potential, we'll probably have bad surprises, I don't know anything about the Romanian teams, but we'll do our best to finish first of our group.

About the others, I'm interested to see CPH Wolves versus n!faculty, i think it can be a close game.

Will VeryGames finish on the highest podium in Bucharest? 

If you had a gun to your head and had to guess which placing you would end up at in Bucharest, what would you guess? What placing would you be happy ending up at? How do you think the top three will shape up? Who will surprise in the tournament, both positively and negatively?

shox: I'm clearly hoping for another top 1 finish, as we did at EMS and MadCatz, I know we can do it even if all big teams are here. I will be disappointed if we don't reach the top 1 anyways so I don't care about other results. For the top 3, I guess there will be NiP, CPH Wolves and us. CPH Wolves for positive surprise and fnatic for negative surprise.

Who in your team needs to play well in order for you to perform at your highest level? Which players from other teams do you think can turn some heads? Any up and coming stars to watch out for?

shox: To be on our highest level, we need to all play well. I mean that you don't have to have 30 kills in a match to be the best player on the team. We all have important roles in the team, and we need everyone to be at their best.

On other teams, players like GTR, f0rest, device, dupreeh, markeloff, edward, starix will have to carry their team.

Didn't see any up and coming stars, but we can have surprise for sure! I'm sad to not see cENTRYZ in any Swedish teams, I saw him playing at DreamHack Summer and he impressed me.

Excluding some of the recent online results, from an outsider's point of view it would seem like VeryGames is now the best it has ever been since the CS:GO switch. Would you agree? How big of a disappointment would it be if you were to once again fall short against NiP despite the kind of results you've been putting up in the last three months since you joined?

shox: I think today we can't be too hasty to say this, but I'd like to think we are. We still have to prove ourselves, that's my personal feeling. Of course if we have to fall short against NiP we'll be really disappointed, but on the other hand, we know we still have a lot of work and possibilities to be at our best so we don't have any fear about this. We are still not on our highest level.

Next up in our interview series will be Markus "pronax" Wallsten, the in-game leader of n!faculty, whose answers will go up tomorrow, followed up by a few more editions.