cadiaN: "Have an advantage in BO3"

Despite being lauded as one of the favorites for The World Championship 2016, Team Denmark failed to make a strong impression on day one after losing to Sweden and Turkey. 

To find out what went down and their thoughts about the tournament, we talked to Lukas "⁠gla1ve⁠" Rossander and Casper "⁠cadiaN⁠" Møller.

Let's start with the lineup: how did you decide upon these five players?

cadiaN: We came to the conclusion that this was the best lineup since dignitas and Astralis were at WESG. I was actually going to mix with glace and some other Heroic players to play that qualifier but we saw that this tournament and that one are at the same time, so we just canceled the qualification and decided to bring this lineup to the event.

I think this lineup gives us the best chance of winning with the players that are not at WESG. We have a lot of different roles, that is suitable for this kind of an environment, and the players are good at being adaptive and play good in positions they don't normally play. It didn't really make sense not to take three Heroic players since they are the third best Danish team.

There were some talks about niko from Tricked deserving a spot in this lineup, what are your thoughts about that?

cadiaN: Even though niko is getting a lot of kills and looks good in the stats, I don't know enough about him to know that he can safely play positions that he is not comfortable in. Obviously, he is a huge talent and I'm sure he will also get his chance one day.

So the first day is over, we are on day two now and you are 2-2 in groups. You didn't fullfil the expectations on the first day, can you tell me a bit about what happened, especially versus Sweden where you were 14-9 up but lost in the end?

gla1ve: It was tough for us, as it was the first time we actually played together, but we should've won that match because we were up so much. I think if I had some more entries and cadiaN just had a more solid game we would've won. Against Turkey, I don't know, they are a really solid team. Me and cadiaN could've stepped up in that game as well and then we could've won, or just get closer. I think we can step up, and show what we can do.

Since all the teams go through to the playoffs, the group serve as a pracitce to get things rolling. What do you think will happen when we reach the playoffs, what are your expectations for the tournament?

gla1ve: I think our expectation is to win the tournament, that is what we are aiming for. We know Turkey have been bootcamping for two weeks almost for this event and I think they are the favorites with us to win this. I hope we manage to not meet them before the finals, because I think that the best final would be against them.

cadiaN: Also, in terms of what will happen in the playoffs, I think that we will have an advantage over other teams in a best-of-three, because there is not a map we don't want to play, so we will ban the maps our opponents are good at.

gla1ve: This format is really good for us because we get to know each other a bit better and we get to play all seven maps or at least five maps and we get to see what are opponents best map is.

Outside of TWC, what next for you and your teams in the next weeks and months?

gla1ve: With Heroic we have Northern Arena and a local Danish event next week, NCS, where we will probably meet dignitas or Tricked in the final of the event. I hope we can show some good results as we've been in a slump in the last two weeks or three weeks and have not played on the level we should.

cadiaN: Heroic has those events and we will meet at ESWC as well at the end of this month and thats the next thing for Rogue. We'll go home after TWC and start practising, They've been in a slump, we've also not been playing so good, we've had a bad result at Northern Arena and we'll try to get back.

Professeur writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter.