device: "We wanted revenge"

Astralis managed to get a comfortable win over OpTic in the first match of group A at ECS, grabbing a spot in the winners match.

After their 16-7 Dust2 victory, we talked to Nicolai "⁠device⁠" Reedtz to hear his thoughts on the matchup and the map veto.

How was the mentality coming into this match vs OpTic, how were you feeling meeting them here in the first match after that loss?

It was a tough match, but we thought that we were improving as team and we actually feel that we were a better team, but not in the final. They were better than us, after rewatching the Overpass map together, we figured out that we should had never won that game, so we weren't that disappointed.

We looked into the vetos coming up to this best-of-one and figured out that we want to play either Nuke or Dust2, it was up to them as we were pretty prepared and we wanted to get revenge.

What is going on with your Overpass? You personally felt that that was your best map but now it is kinda going down. What do you think is the reason for that?

I feel it's a mix of confidence and some other things. I've been looking at heatmaps from the past 30 matches and some from the last year as well, and there are some things and some tendencies that I developed, and some things I'm not doing any more. So I'm playing to much the same, that's probably the reason I playing without that much confidence. It's tough for me, Overpass was my favorite map, and still is my favorite map to play. So I'm working on how to fix it as and individual and working with Kjaerbye on how to play the A site.

It ended up on Dust2, you said you were pretty happy, what were you expecting from OpTic on the map?

Our mentality going into the final of ELEAGUE was that we wanted to get in our comfort zone. We actually had a chance to pick Dust2 as the third map and we were considering and discussing it. In the end, we wanted to be in our comfort zone more and less play on their weak maps. Dust2 is one of their weak maps and that is why they didn't play it that much recently. Maybe it was a mistake that we didn't pick it in the finals but looking back we have a theory to rely on, that sometimes you have to put your opponents on their weaker maps instead of playing on your stronger ones.

The first half of the match seemed pretty tight, what was happening, it seemed like no one could get two rounds in a row?

It was so much chaos, I was a bit sad and frustrated with how the whole thing with the pause went. Because OpTic were really unluckly, after winning the first pistol round, apparently we were not live, I'm not sure if that was shown at all, but they won a pistol round at first. The match was restarted and we wanted to give the round to them but it wasn't possible unfortunately. Then we had the server crash at 3-3 in a round where they had a first kill.

Obviously both things killed their momentum and it's really frustrating, I can't imagine how it felt for them. I'd say that's probably the reason why there was so much chaos and it was so close. Because everyone was out of the game - into the game, all the time.

On the CT side you kind of crushed them, is that the side you are more confident on?

Usually Dust2 Is one of my strongest sides, has been for a long time as an AWPer. Dust2 has been a problem for us previously because we didn't have that well of a T side, but if we are able to get 8 or 9 rounds on the T side we can always pull it home. I feel the CT side is our strongest side on that map.

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