apEX: "It was hard after jdm's 1v5"

Envy' first match was a thriller, as they were up 15-7 but couldn't close out the match in regulation much thanks to Josh "⁠jdm64⁠" Marzano's 1v5 clutch. In the end, the Frenchmen were able to survive the first two overtimes and finished the third without losing a round.

In our next interview from the Major, Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire talked about the nail-biter and told us which teams he thinks will go on to do well:

We have to start at 15-7 when you couldn't turn eight match points into a win, what happened in the last eight rounds of regulation? Did the 1v5 clutch from jdm affect your morale?

Well, after that 1v5 from jdm, it was pretty hard for us - not that hard, but pretty hard in-game because they were more confident than before and they just didn't give up after the 1v5. They had good executes, we got wrecked almost every round after this, so it was really hard. They were just more confident than before.

In three overtimes I'm sure it takes a lot of innovation and improvisation, how did you come up with new things at the end?

So, basically, we were thinking about their own strategy, what was really hard for us to counter. They did B splits, even if we were three on B site, they just wrecked us a few times. We tried to think about how to counter this, and we found a few ways to do it, for example I played in the vent and didn't let them go to B through vents. We just tried to talk together and try our best to counter that strategy. The other strategy was with a lot of smokes, it was an innovation, we didn't see many strats like that before. But yeah, that was quite fun.

Is there anyone you want to avoid in the next round, perhaps apart from G2?

I don't know, it's a Major, so every team is prepared. As I saw on Twitter, everyone is more prepared than ever, bootcamps went really well and stuff like that, so I don't care who we'll face, we'll just give our best to beat them and have the 2-0. That's the main point.

Who do you think is going to be the dark horse from the lower-tier teams?

That's pretty hard, but... They're not a dark horse, but FaZe can surprise many teams. They seem more confident and prepared than ever. Astralis is going to be good, but they're not a dark horse. Except them, I don't see another team surprise, maybe Na`Vi because they played in the shadow for a few months, or one month. If they miss this Major, they're going to be really disappointed, so they're gonna do their best to do well here, even if they're not much of a dark horse but as they didn't participate in many events in the last month they kind of are.

Check out the other interviews we've conducted so far on day one of the ELEAGUE Major:

Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev: "Hope to show beautiful CS"

Janusz "⁠Snax⁠" Pogorzelski: "It's always close vs. OpTic"

Ricardo "⁠fox⁠" Pacheco: "We played 12-14 hours a day"

Richard "⁠shox⁠" Papillon: "FaZe can do pretty well here"

Abay "⁠HObbit⁠" Khassenov: "We prepared for everyone"