Lucky: "It adds to our motivation"

Similar to before DreamHack Summer, we hope to interview a member from each team attending the $47,500 ESEA Finals event, taking place in Dallas on June 27-29.

First up is Vasconcelos from North American underdogs Netcode, who finished the regular season 11-5 with two wins over compLexity and one over iBUYPOWER.

How have you prepared for ESEA Invite Season 16 Global Finals, and do you feel ready for the event? How do you plan on spending the remaining time before the event kicks off?

Lucky: Since the regular season has ended, we’ve been spending most of our time dry running strats / scrimming against most of the North American teams (iBP, coL, OEF and XTS). In terms of preparation, we’ve done everything we can have at this point. Against the other North American teams, yes I feel ready but when it comes to playing against the European teams, then to some extent, we’re not ready. We’ve never played against any of the Euros, online or on LAN, so it will be a pretty tough playing against teams we’ve never faced before.

As for the remainder of our time before the event, we’ll be scrimming as much as we can, watching demos and deathmatching practically till our fingers bleed. 

Has the fact there are hardly tournaments in North America added to your motivation to prepare well for ESEA Finals, especially with four Europeans making the trip across the Atlantic? How big is the opportunity to get to play Europeans for you?

Lucky: It definitely adds to our motivation. With the recent announcement of ESL hosting a $250k tournament, we know that this LAN will show us how we match against the other teams. Since another North American team is able to attend, we’re striving to become the other representative for that tournament.

Playing the best teams in the world will help us drastically improve. Even if we lose, it’ll help us be able to pinpoint where we’re making our mistakes and develop our strats a little bit better. 

Since you have a better understanding of the North American scene, how do you think your continent will fare against Euros at the event? Is there anyone in particular you think may surprise one way or the other?

Lucky: I think iBuyPower has the highest chance of being able to beat the European teams. Last season they were able to take down Titan with a weaker lineup than they have now. If they are able to play well at this tournament, they will upset some of the teams. Now as for coL, they haven’t had the best season but they’re notorious for playing better on LAN than online so they can also show up some of the European teams there.

As for my team and OEF, it will be a tough road ahead of us. None of us have any experience playing against Europeans and for most of the OEF roster, its their first ever CS:GO LAN. However, I do feel that there is a chance for both of us to do really well.

Player	Age	FPR *
Steve "reltuC" Cutler	25	0.768
James "hazed" Cobb	25	0.759
Josh "jdm64" Marzano	24	0.757
Ricky "Lucky" Vascuncelos	19	0.738
Pujan "FNS" Mehta	22	0.629

* Due to not having statistics on Netcode, we used ESEA's regular season FPR instead

What do you make of your chances at ESEA? With the bracket published, we know you will play Virtus.pro in the first round, followed up OverGaming or iBUYPOWER. How do you expect to do in those match-ups?

Lucky: Against Virtus.pro, I’m not expecting to win. They are arguably the second best team in the world while we’re top four in North America, and that’s a pretty big difference. But our chance of winning against them isn’t 0% so I still think that there is a possibility of winning.

As for OverGaming and iBuyPower, I definitely think our chances of beating them are a lot higher than beating Virtus.pro. I don’t know what to expect against OverGaming but we’ve played against iBP a lot during the season so we know how they play. We know what to anticipate against iBP compared to OverGaming.

You beat iBP once and coL twice during the regular season. Do you think you have what it takes to also compete with both on LAN, or is this more of a learning experience for your team?

Lucky: Yes. Aside from NiP, these two are the two teams that I want to play against the most. Whenever someone thinks of the North American scene, they immediately think of iBP / coL and I want to change that. If we beat both of them on LAN, we’ll undoubtedly be the best team in North America and this opens up a lot more possibilities for us in the future.

Your team isn’t very well known in Europe. Can you briefly explain everyone’s role on the team to give our readers a better idea of what to expect when watching Netcode play?

Lucky:  Team Roles:
Lucky – Lurker
FNS – Ingame Leader
Cutler (reltuC) – Entry fragger
Hazed – Entry fragger
Jdm – AWPer

Our team has pretty standard roles much like the other teams. Cutler, at times, can pick up an AWP if we ever need him to. I mostly bait my teammates and lurk hoping to pick off any staggering enemies holding the other bombsite.

ESEA Invite Season 16 Global Finals will kick off on Friday, and before that we will release interviews with everyone, a viewer's guide as well as an official preview for the event.