valde: "I owe gla1ve a lot"

After the roster change which sent Lukas "⁠gla1ve⁠" Rossander to Astralis, HEROIC attends ESWC 2016 with the 18-year-old youngster Nikolaj "⁠niko⁠" Kristensen. We talked to Valdemar "⁠valde⁠" Bjørn Vangså after their opening match victory to discuss the tournament and their new fifth.

I want to start off with gla1ve's departure. You guys lost him to Astralis but you can probably relate to his decision. What would you want to tell us about your time with him?

I had been playing with gla1ve for almost half a year before the move. He was the one who gave me the chance back when we were Copenhagen Wolves. I was basically an unknown player, I had almost never played official HLTV matches before. So, I've learned a lot from my time with him and I'll say that I owe him a lot. I fully understand and respect his decision to go to Astralis and I think pretty much every player would have done the same in his situation so I’m not angry or mad and I hope I'll play with him in the future.

You brought in niko to fill the fifth roster spot. Your team wanted to bring him as a stand-in for Northern Arena but didn't need him in the end so you obviously had your eyes on him for a while. What can you tell us about his playstyle and his fit with the team?

niko is a really aim-based player so he brings a lot of firepower to the team and he’s also really good at communicating compared to other players at his age and experience level. That’s one of the reasons we brought him in. He was a stand-in at Copenhagen Wolves back when even I hadn't played with them so Snappi and I know him from previous experiences. I think he brings a lot of firepower and we can maybe play a bit more aim heavy now that we have him.

How did you prepare for ESWC—your first event since the roster change? Did you have much time to prepare?

We had a bootcamp for three days before this event. Of course three days of bootcamp is not a lot but it's enough to get a decent map-pool. We played as much as we could, let’s see how far it gets us.

Your team just beat Overcome quite easily with a 16-1 final score. How do you think that match went?

We didn't know any of the opposing players and personally I've never seen them play before so you don't know what to expect from these matches. We played in China at PGL 2016 Summer and we were surprised how good some of the teams were. You shouldn't underestimate those unknown teams because they can aim well and surprise you if you're not ready for it. We play it round by round and obviously we’re better as a team and as individuals, so those games should be easy for us.

There are some decent teams here, including Epsilon and Space Soldiers who want the trophy. You guys are potentially going to reach the playoffs so how do you fare your chances?

Obviously there are a lot of good teams. In my opinion Space Soldiers, Epsilon, ALTERNATE aTTaX, and Gambit are some of the favorites. Before this event, I would have said anything else but a grand final run would be disappointing with gla1ve but now that he’s gone and we have niko, we don’t have those expectations. We'll just take it game by game and hopefully we can reach the final anyway.

I want to finish off with the Danish scene, specifically dignitas' rise and the roster changes of Astralis and your team. dignitas just took off so do you think you can compete with Astralis? Do you think the Danish competition will be challenging for you?

Yeah, of course. dignitas, for sure, is the #1 team in Denmark at the moment. Astralis is kind of hard to put my finger on as I haven't seen them play yet with the new roster. When we were Team X and when we started Heroic nobody had any expectations from us but we became arguably the best team in Denmark for a very brief period. So it's hard to say but with the right mindset and enough practice, we can challenge the Danish team and maybe contend for the number one spot in the future.

Anything you want to end before we end our interview?

I just want to give a shoutout to gla1ve. Thank you for the time we played together and I hope we can play in the future.

Keep your eyes peeled for more interviews from Paris as the day continues with group stage matches.

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