NBK-: "Trying to scrape off the ego"

Only a day before WESG Europe & CIS Regional Finals started, Envy went official with their not-so-well-kept secret, as Christophe "⁠SIXER⁠" Xia replaced Timothée "⁠DEVIL⁠" Démolon in the roster.

On the first day in Kiev, nV were able to secure three wins quite comfortably, and secured a place at the $1.5 million WESG Global Finals by taking down Astralis on a narrow Dust2.

Read below to see what Nathan "⁠NBK-⁠" Schmitt had to say on the lineup change and Envy' latest match at the regional finals:

You've recently been getting better and yet you went through a lineup change, what was the thinking behind the switch from DEVIL to SIXER? 

It's a very long story, but I'll explain this in short, we're gonna release a statement in both French and English about it pretty soon, about the whole change and why we did that. Basically, it's just that even though DEVIL was getting better in the end, it never felt like he really had his place among the five in and out of the game. We felt like he would be a much more versatile player, in the sense that he'd be able to fill in more roles, but it just didn't happen. We tried to make him go from a player you play around to a guy that supports the others. And so he couldn't adapt to that and then we tried to change things up. We just had problems making him work within the team and even though, like I said, he was getting a little better, the most important thing is that we need a five that is working within the same system. And that's not what was happening, so SIXER came in and straight off the bat he's filling the role like he wanted, he has very calm communication, supports people and tries to do whatever is needed for the win.

You seem to have such a good relationship with him already. You weren't at StarSeries and the team played with him instead, did that help with making that choice or was it already decided by then?

It was not decided by then, absolutely not. It took a long time for us to make that decision and be sure about it. SIXER came in kind of like a natural choice. I think a lot of people, even at HLTV, they forget who SIXER is. He was an absolute monster in 1.6, he's been playing longer than all of us even if he didn't reach all the top stages in CS:GO or even in 1.6. The guy has a lot of experience, he's very calm and he's able to walk around and fill in whatever is needed. If he has to go first he goes first, if he needs to clutch, support, flash, etc. That's why it feels great, that's why it came naturally to get him, especially with the issues we had with DEVIL. It's still new, we're still at the beginning so it's that great start and everything is going well, and this time both in and out of the game, so it feels great.

That sounds to me like you want to have a lot of versatility in the team overall, people being able to fill in multiple roles depending on the situation. Am I correct in assuming that?

Well, the versatile players, we call them support players, but I think that's a misconception by most people. A support player to me is not really supporting, he's just very versatile and is able to do whatever is needed. And that's where SIXER comes in, he has all that experience, he has played all the roles, even though it was at the lower level. He has to gain more experience at the top and assimilate to the way we play and how we're working as a team, but we have that basis where SIXER and me fill that in. With apEX we share the entry-fragging, depending on the map and who feels more comfortable. From there, we just try to build around kennyS more, because he's just an insane sniper, everyone knows that. We've been working on our game a lot, we split roles in the team, so Happy is leading on the T sides and I'm leading on the CT sides. We share roles and we have more time to work on them, everyone trusts each other to do things right. We're trying, in easy words, to scrape off the ego and being able to be more versatile and everyone being able to do more things. Even Happy now, he's sometimes — well not entry-fragging, I won't go that far (laughs) — more proactive. 

Lastly, the whole group was fairly comfortable aside from this last match versus Astralis. You came back from a 5-10 deficit, what happened on the second side?

Um, to be fair I don't really know! We're a decent team on Dust2, on the CT sides we lost against two forcebuys, so our CT side should've been a lot better. On T side I think we won almost all of the gunrounds, it was pretty sick how we played. After we won the pistol round the economy went our way, they won a buyround with only two alive so we just forced them on a double eco again. Yeah, we had a very good side, economically speaking, and we managed to win all the key rounds. One of those rounds was SIXER's four kills and the 1v2 in the end, that was probably the key round that helped us win. We were playing our game and won, it feels great to be able to do that!