f0rest: "Would love to face VP early"

The Epsilon game didn't go exactly as planned for Patrik "⁠f0rest⁠" Lindberg's NiP, and we've caught up with him to figure out what went wrong against the Frenchmen, who changed leadership to Richard "⁠shox⁠" Papillon after Gfinity.

Soon afterwards the Swedes were up against HellRaisers on de_overpass, f0rest gave us his input on that match, as well as his predictions for group D and who he wants to meet in the later stages in the tournament:

You just got second place in the group stage, let's start with the Epsilon game on cobblestone, walk us through the match, what went wrong?

Patrik "⁠f0rest⁠" Lindberg: "Going into cobblestone, we started out as CT, we've been playing very good online on practice, so we felt pretty confident. We thought we were going to win the pistol round, but they were pretty much just outaiming us, they played a good pistol round. And the match just went on from there, they just outplayed us on the big site. On B, on the smaller site towards the CT spawn we played decent. They didn't do any specific tactics, they just went out, killed us and that was the round. That's pretty much how they won the T side 9-6.

Going into the T side, we knew we relied on the pistol round. We tried out one we had in mind, but it didn't work out as good, there were two guys who killed all five of us, same there, same story. They outaimed us pretty bad and that's something we need to work on."

Do you think it was also because of shox, who is now the in-game leader of Epsilon? Did that play a part in why you couldn't defend properly?

Patrik "⁠f0rest⁠" Lindberg: "Could be, we haven't played against them, we haven't seen a game on cobblestone with them, so we had no idea how they play. We just tried to focus on our game and hoped that it would work, but it didn't. You could see they were changing in-game leaders, because it was a different type of Epsilon playing today."

In what way different, can you elaborate on that?

Patrik "⁠f0rest⁠" Lindberg: "It felt like they played a bit more individual, they tried to rely more on the aim than actually use the smokes and flashes, they were just trying to outaim the opponent. They feel really confident going into duels and that's how they beat us."

Going over to the HellRaisers match for second place, it was another new map, can you tell us about that match?

Patrik "⁠f0rest⁠" Lindberg: "Going into overpass against HellRaisers, we had the same mindset going towards the Epsilon game, we felt very very confident on our CT side and we lost the pistol round once again. I think it was the fifth pistol round in a row we lost this tournament. We weren't too happy about that, but we managed to do some good ecos, managed to kill a lot of guys and we won the first gunround. We just kept going from there, they got two more gunrounds and we ended up 10-5.

Going into the T side, we had a few tactics up our sleeves and managed to take the pistol round - the first one - and managed to take the following two ecos. I think we had something like fourteen, fifteen rounds very early on, but then we felt a bit of pressure, because we were so close. We fell a bit short, they managed to catch up. At 15-10 we started to feel a bit nervous, but everyone was like "Calm down, calm down, it's only one more round, just focus on the things that worked during the T side". So we did that, and we managed to clinch out the last round."

How do you think group D with dignitas, Cloud9 and Titan will pan out?

Patrik "⁠f0rest⁠" Lindberg: "The last group, group D, with dignitas, Titan and Cloud9 is pretty much the toughest group out here at ESL One. My prediction is that Cloud9 are gonna win against dignitas, actually, I don't know why, it's just a feeling that I have, and Titan's gonna go out in the group."

Who would you rather face and who would you rather not face in the play-offs?

Patrik "⁠f0rest⁠" Lindberg: "I would love to face Virtus.pro early on in the tournament. I just wanna play against them, not in the final, early on, take them out and then I wanna play dignitas once more and beat them as well in the final, that would be the dream scenario."

Group B is now taking place with the match for first place between LDLC and Na`Vi, and afterwards the loser of the match will meet Copenhagen Wolves for the other spot in the playoffs.