FalleN: "felps has a special skillset"

SK have won their first match in Las Vegas, sending TYLOO into the elimination match with ease on Cobblestone.

Gabriel "⁠FalleN⁠" Toledo was our next interviewee at DreamHack, with whom we went over the addition of João "⁠felps⁠" Vasconcellos, as well as the team's map pool considering Dust2 was replaced by Inferno.

The obvious first topic here is felps coming into the team, there were was a lot of discussion about how he's going to be used in SK, how do you think you were able to accommodate him in the system since you started playing with him after the Major?

I think it's a little too early to say, but right now we have to figure out how to change our system. Not too much, but little bit, because felps is a special player, he has a special skillset that most of the players don't have, he can play around smokes, he can be aggressive when people don't expect it. We wanna use those things, but at the same time we don't want to compromise our style, we know it works. We're trying to figure out how to adjust both things.

Another thing is that felps is not used to the role he's playing with us, it's a different thing, in Immortals and other teams he was playing with, he was always going in the front, making his own plays, trying to do some impact in the game. There are a lot of maps where he's still doing that, but on other maps he's lurking and doing something different than he's used to. So I think it's more about him adjusting to us as well. But so far it has been perfect, although we can't really say from only playing against North American teams, I think we have to put him to a test on LANs. We're looking forward to this tournament, but we're looking even more forward to Katowice, because we're gonna have a very good preparation and a bootcamp in Europe before the tournament, so that's gonna give us a little more room to practice more.

With that in mind, what kind of goals have you set for yourselves here?

I think the goal is winning, I think we have the talent, we have the people necessary to win a tournament, we have put a lot of work to come here prepared. Of course, I can't say everything is perfect, because there are some maps we still need to work on, there are some maps we're trying to adjust and maybe surprise some teams in Katowice, but I think we're on the right path. The most important thing for me is that everyone needs to have the same mentality, and we have the material necessary to win tournaments, now we just need to put it forward and have the synergy between the players.

Talking about the maps, even before the Major you stopped playing Nuke, and it didn't seem like you were too keen on playing Cobblestone with fox either, so how does it look now, especially seeing as one of your better maps Dust2 was removed for Inferno?

Yeah, I can't say too much, but of course we're looking forward for Inferno again, a lot of teams have been playing it so far, a couple of matches just happened and that's good. We're one of those teams that are trying to put a lot of work in if there's a new map, we will try to play our best on it. Only time will tell if we're good on it or not, let's see. About Nuke, we're gonna try to prepare ourselves for the next tournament, Katowice, there will be enough time at the bootcamp. It's very bad if you don't play one map, of course some teams had great success doing that, like Na`Vi banning Cache every time, but we want to have a seven-map pool, and we will try to get as close to it as we can.

What do you think about the new map overall, there have been a lot of changes that made the map much less constricted, do you think this will make the T side easier?

I think the map is pretty good right now, the fact they put a skybox between A and B and you can't throw the smokes there anymore is pretty good, I think this balanced the map a little bit. Both sites are way more open right now, so if you're on the T side you can really find people without having to chase as much. That makes our lives easier as Terrorists.

Of course we're at a stage where we're trying to learn, learn nades, trying to adapt some strats that we knew worked in the past. It's hard to say, because we only played against NA teams, and meanwhile there's 15-20 good teams playing in Europe and they can play a very different Inferno than we are. So it's very early to say how this map should be played, I think we have to wait a little more. But we're gonna try, we have some stuff up our sleeves, we'll see what it takes to win Inferno nowadays.

When we saw Nuke coming into the map pool, it took quite a long time before it actually came into play more often, will Inferno have an easier time finding its way into competitive play?

Yeah, definitely, I think Inferno is way easier than Nuke. Nuke is the only map where you have one site on top of the other, so that makes things very different. Inferno is a map everyone used to love back in the days, and if you think about Nuke, when they removed it it was because a lot of people didn't like it. I feel like people don't really liked Nuke enough, in 1.6 people loved it because of the wallbangs and other things you could do, but in CS:GO I don't really even enjoy watching it to be honest, when some top teams are playing Nuke, I don't feel the desire to watch the match. Not only because we don't play the map, it's because I think it's quite boring, it's always the same stuff. I don't know, people have different opinions, I respect everyone. As you said, the map evolved, in the beginning no one wanted to play it and now you see a lot of matches on Nuke, maybe it's us being the incorrect ones on that one.

Let's talk about Dust2 as well, it's a map that's basically stayed the same throughout the history of Counter-Strike, be it CS:GO, Source or 1.6, what can really be improved there?

Dust2 is the face of Counter-Strike, a lot of people only play this map, I think a good percentage of players only play Dust2, so that's quite interesting, and I think they're gonna keep playing it even if we aren't anymore. But I think Dust2 was a good map, but it had the same problem other maps have, like Cobblestone, where you can expect the same kind of strategies happening, like A executes, some splits to B.

By the end of the last tournament, we started seeing a couple of different things on Dust2, so we started to see people adapting a little more, but I agree that it needed some changes. For us, it's sad, because we've been working hard to get it into our map pool, and now that we think it's decent and we're competitive on it, it's just not here anymore. But it's fine, we're gonna work on other maps.

What do you think about DreamHack changing the map pool this close to the tournament, is it hard for the teams to adapt this quickly?

No, you still have the veto, in group stage you have three vetos, so if you didn't have time to practice on it, you can veto it in the beginning. But I think as unified and as fast we are with the change, the better, if one tournament had Dust2 and another had Inferno, then suddenly we need to pracc eight maps, so the best thing to do is to change it as soon as you can so everyone changes together.