hen1: "We knew about EnVy's A rush"

Tempo Storm started the event off with a bang, as they defeated Envy in the initial round of group D and will face Virtus.pro on day two for the first spot in the group.

We caught up with Henrique "⁠HEN1⁠" Teles and coach/in-game leader Luis "peacemaker" Tadeu, who helped us translate the interview and answered the last question, to talk about denying a comeback to Envy, what's ahead, their goals and more:

First of all, let's talk about EnVyUs before we get to the rest of the group - did you expect Cobblestone to come out considering it's likely one of your two best maps?

We kinda had an idea they would probably try Cobblestone, because after the last results with their current lineup it was their most played map, and they just won this week against G2. So we kind of knew that Cobble was a good option for them, so we came well prepared.

You had a great first half but then dropped off and EnVy started coming back, where did you have the biggest issues on CT side?

CT side on Cobblestone is usually very hard to play, some teams go four B and another team stacks A, and what happened was that we tried to focus too much on what they were doing instead of what we practiced this whole week. Then in the end, we paused the game and talked about what they were doing, but what we should've done was to play how we practiced to defeat them. And that worked well in the end.

What about Happy's flanks from drop zone? He does that all the time and everyone knows that, yet you had a rough time defending against him towards the beginning. Why weren't you able to adapt to that?

Drop zone is a very hard place to get frags on Cobble, all teams have that problem, you never know if you should have two guys there or one guy, or people on sites and let them have drop zone. Basically, what we did is that felps usually played there and we were trying different stuff instead of doing what we practiced. In the end we were focused too much on A sometimes, on platform sometimes, and when we did what we practiced and finished the game.

The round after 14-14, when they rushed A apps, did you see that coming or was it HEN1's individual play that won you the round and the game afterwards?

We watched a couple of demos from them and we knew that they had this tactic, and they were trying B all the time and it was working. At a certain point me and peacemaker said they will probably try something new, like that rush on A apps. They did it and me and SHOOWTiME did a setup for it and crushed them. But it was all watching demos, we knew they had this.

The next game is going to be against Virtus.pro, what are you expecting there, do you think they'll try their hand at Cobble after seeing you play now?

It doesn't really matter what map they want to play, if they wanna play Cobble against us again, for us it's fine, we just won it against one of the best teams in the world and we had a pretty good match against them in Katowice. We're really confident, if they wanna play Cobble, we'll play Cobble, or any other map. VP have always been really strong, they were in a slump before, but at the major they really showed the world what they're capable of, taking a map off LG, the champions. They seem to be back in form, so you can't underestimate them, we'll take the match really seriously, watch them, be prepared on maps we think they're gonna try to play against us, and just get ready for tomorrow.

Considering you had a pretty good result in Katowice, how have you pushed the goal here at Masters?

Since we're a new team and we obviously are super happy we went through the group in Katowice, and I think that's our main goal here as well. We need to go out of the groups and see what happens next, take match per match, take every oponent really seriously. We have to be good mentally, focused and of course, don't make mistakes. In Katowice we made mistakes against Na`Vi, had the game in our hands, made too many mistakes and we lost. This time, if we go out of the groups, we know what we have to do.

The last thing I want to ask about is naturally the ECS invites, FalleN has been pretty outspoken about you deserving that spot. What do you have to say about the whole situation?

Luis "peacemaker" Tadeau: I kinda don't like to talk about it, but I mean, it's very frustrating for us, we're really sad that we can't play one of the biggest tournaments ever in Counter-Strike with that prizepool. We honestly don't care too much about the money, we just want to play at a tournament like that. For us, every tournament is experience and we are a new team, so we have to play as many tournaments as possible. We were really sad that they didn't invite us, we were top 13 in the world. For us it didn't make sense, but they apologized to us later and said they were looking forward to us in Season 2. We hope to be there.