AcilioN: A chance to prove something

After Gambit had dropped out last-minute, Tricked were invited to DreamHack Open Tours and put in Group B among G2, HellRaisers, and Envy.

The Danes started their journey in Tours with a shocking upset against G2, who barely had a say in the match as Tricked came out victorious at 16-7.

After their first match, Asger "⁠AcilioN⁠" Larsen sat down with us to talk about the upset, as well as the team's expectations and practice given they had been invited only three days ago.

Let's start with you learning about coming here only a few days ago, replacing Gambit, talk to me about accepting that invitation and whether you even managed to put in any practice towards this event.

I think we had a lot of practice during the three months we have been together, because we are a new team, and Tricked is not a known organization that gets a lot of spots and invites. So, of course we have played a lot of officials, but we didn't have that many tournaments, so we had a lot of practice time.

Getting this invite was a huge deal for us and for the organization, because the organization has never been to a big event before other than Copenhagen Games like two weeks ago. We are really happy that we got that invite, because we think we have been playing really well and we just wanna match up against the best teams and see how we do.

Talking about matching up against the best teams, beating G2 is a huge deal obviously, how did you pull off that upset on Inferno?

Hard to say, maybe they had an off-day or we just played well. I think when we play our game and play to our potential and without pressure, without being nervous and stuff like that, I think the core of me, HUNDEN, and Friis, we have been playing together for so long and played back in myXMG.

And we have all been on different teams and learned differently about the game, so we all have something we can put into our game plan, I have something I know is good, Friis has something from Heroic that he thinks is good, and HUNDEN is our in-game leader and he also has a lot of things and always tries to make new stuff all the time. I think when we play with all that together, we are a good team if we can overcome being new and inexperienced.

You talked about the core of you three, what about the guys that are newer to the scene, b0RUP and es3tag, what are their roles and how do they mesh together with the more experienced players?

I feel like they mix perfectly with me, Friis, and HUNDEN, because they are a bit more passive than we are in-game. In-game it's us three who are saying what we should do in the round, and they're more passive and not saying a lot, but that's really good because we have a lot of that, we don't need more. They are passive and they do their roles perfectly, it's good to play with them.

Now that you beat G2, what do you expect from the tournament going forward, how far can you go?

When we came into the tournament, of course we had the invite only like three days ago, so when we got the invite, we just thought like "this is our chance to prove something", to get an upset or two. I know we can play well, but of course we are a bit inexperienced. We are just here to play, we have nothing to lose, so we will just do our best. If we win, it's good, but if we don't, it's fine. But of course we wanna win.

Your next match-up will be either HellRaisers or EnVyUs, is there any preference whatsoever?

To be honest, I feel like those two teams mesh really well, they are on the same level I would say. EnVyUs is a bit more individual than HellRaisers, but no, no preference to be honest.