Hiko: "We didn't expect to win nuke"

Cloud9 went out of the tournament after a winning a one-sided de_nuke and losing two extremely close maps, and Spencer "⁠Hiko⁠" Martin told us what he thought about the match.

Moreover, he said what his point of view on de_cobblestone was, the new acquisition of Mike "⁠shroud⁠" Grzesiek, which teams surprised and which teams didn't deliver according to him.

Yesterday you went out from the tournament after what was a very entertaining quarter-final against NiP, what can you tell us about the first map, NiP's pick?

Spencer "⁠Hiko⁠" Martin: "Well, they picked nuke and I think both of the teams knew exactly what the other team is gonna pick. We went in expecting nuke and we knew we were gonna pick dust2 and they knew we were gonna pick dust2 as well. Going into nuke, our logic behind it was: NiP has been known to be good on nuke since the beginning of GO, so it seems like most teams don't wanna play them on nuke, which means probably they haven't practiced it that much, so they haven't changed anything. We were able to kinda use that to our advantage, we knew how they played and we countered it. We were able to go up pretty big and shut them out on nuke. I don't think anybody expected us to win on nuke, we didn't expect to win on nuke. But it worked for us."

Next up was dust2, it was really close, 16-14, and there were a lot of close rounds, can you tell us what happened from your point of view?

Spencer "⁠Hiko⁠" Martin: "In the CT pistol we actually played four towards A in the beginning and they were going A, they just happened to kill everybody. What I remember about that round is going out mid door, GeT_RiGhT surprised me and I flicked to him really fast and I one-shotted him, it was a cool shot. But everything kinda went wrong starting from the pistol round. I think NiP got a lot more rounds than we expected them to get, we usually have a strong CT side. We're usually able to shut down the mid-B, but I think like three or four times I got killed through a smoke on B, semphis got singled out and Jordan got stuck behind the smoke on CT spawn. All throughout that half they kept winning rounds that we should've won, but it was just unfortunate."

The third map was cobblestone, we know that you didn't have too much time practicing it since you had a hectic bootcamp, what were you expecting going into the last map?

Spencer "⁠Hiko⁠" Martin: "That was literally our first time ever playing it, we played it for five rounds against one of the teams here in practice, and we ended up leaving five rounds in. So that was our first time ever playing T side and really trying things on CT. Early in the half Jordan and shroud were trying to boost near where the CTs drop down and Sean was trying to get to the back of B alone, but finally we were able to figure out exactly what we needed to do. I think it was 7-3, we came back and ended up winning the half 8-7. The CT side was really odd for us, again, we've never really seen anything, we just watched how Epsilon played and tried to mimic them.

Going into T side, we didn't really even load the map once on T side, so we were thinking like "OK, maybe we'll try to do what NiP does against Epsilon and what they did back to us or what Epsilon did back to NiP". We tried it as best as we can, obviously there was one round where friberg was in the site with a CZ and we had no idea that spot even existed. And that very last round f0rest had a MAG in the back of the site and he was just able to kill everybody. It just kinda sucks that we didn't have enough time to prepare on cobble, honestly I think if we played cobble even one time through a full scrim, we probably would've won that game."

There were a few times when you didn't even have enough time to plant the bomb anymore and obviously the map is really big, what do you think about the map itself? Do you think the fact that you cannot really rotate properly makes the map unplayable? 

Spencer "⁠Hiko⁠" Martin: "It is very big, especially if you have a guy playing in the back of the B bombsite near the toilet area. If you get stuck there when the bomb is planted, by the time you get to A, you only have like ten seconds left to actually defuse the bomb. The rotations are really hard and at the same time, if you don't get a guy in the back of B, it's very hard to even hold B at all. It really comes down to who's winning the close battles and it seems like retaking is impossible, because if you're trying to retake B, there really is only one entrance to get through. If you're trying to retake A, there's the connector and balcony, there's really nowhere else. If they have smokes and nades, it's almost impossible to try to retake, I don't really like cobble at all."

This is your first LAN tournament with shroud, what do you think about him afterwards? Do you think you will adjust his roles a bit?

Spencer "⁠Hiko⁠" Martin: "I think shroud - with time and more experience under his belt - would be one of the best players probably in the game. He has an insane aim and he has a lot of control over his pressure and how he plays, and that's very useful, especially for a person who's so new into the scene. I mean, it's not his first LAN, but it's one of his first LANs with a real team and we're in Germany, it's his first time ever travelling internationally. I think we're all very pleased with how he played and we might try to tighten up where he actually plays specifically. In general we're very happy with how he played."

Obviously you didn't spend too much time bootcamping and it was a really hectic one, but do you think skipping Gfinity helped you with your preparation? Did you use that time to get to know the teams better?

Spencer "⁠Hiko⁠" Martin: "Actually, we wanted to go to Gfinity, I reached out to get a spot and they didn't let us have it. The weekend of Gfinity was when our compLexity contracts ended, so there really was no time even if we got a spot. Signing Cloud9, having everyone have that extra little of motivation with the new organisation going into this tournament really helped. Obviously Cloud9 is amazing to have been able to pull a bootcamp together in like three days. Obviously they weren't able to get the complete perfect setup, but for them to pull everything together, flights, hotels, everything in like three days, I think it's amazing. I've never seen an organisation act that quickly and obviously huge support from Logitech to be able to get us out here. I don't think not going to Gfinity hurt us, we actually probably benefited from it."

Who surprised you at this event? What teams do you think didn't deliver what you expected?

Spencer "⁠Hiko⁠" Martin: "I'll start with the team I thought didn't surprise, and everyone would probably say Titan. I kinda feel bad for Titan, they probably shouldn't have lost to us in that first game we played them and then I guess they weren't happy with how the veto system worked out against dignitas. I don't think they wanted to play nuke against them. So unfortunate for them, I would've liked to see them go far, we're pretty good friends with them and they do have a unique style of play that everyone wants to see more. Titan definitely was the team that didn't do as good as everyone thought they would. The team that did pretty well is still LDLC, I don't think anyone expected them to go this far and they won the first map against NiP, we might see fnatic versus LDLC in the final, which nobody would've predicted."

Do you think we will see that final? Do you expect LDLC to clinch it? What about both possibilities of the final?

Spencer "⁠Hiko⁠" Martin: "The second map is nuke, after playing them yesterday  you don't really know what to expect, they could win and they could just get ran over. LDLC has a few really solid players that could go off and win. If it's LDLC fnatic final, I would kinda hope LDLC wins. Just keep it different teams winning all the majors, that would be the best."

There will most likely be no time for us to interview either fnatic or the winner of LDLC/NiP prior to the grand final, but you can expect an interview with the winner of the tournament.