NBK-: "A top four in Cologne would make us confident for the Major"

With a narrow win over FlipSid3 on Nuke at the end of day three, G2 became the second team to go 3-0 in the Swiss format and joined MOUZ in the team list for PGL Major Krakow.

A top four finish in Cologne would make G2 confident ahead of the Major

After the day came to a close, we sat down with Nathan "⁠NBK-⁠" Schmitt to discuss the Nuke encounter with Andrey "⁠B1ad3⁠" Gorodenskiy and company, and G2's plans for ESL One Cologne and preparation for the Major.

Against FlipSid3 in this last match, you had a great start to the match on the CT side but then dropped off, what happened towards the end of the first half?

There was the crucial round where it's Benny Hill and I'm just running behind the bomb and I just cannot catch him, so that was the first key round that we lost, and from there that's the strength of FlipSid3 when they start winning rounds. With their gameplan, they can just twist it completely, and that's the huge strength that B1ad3 has, he can just play a standard game with smokes and flashes and then play anywhere on the map, with people lurking everywhere.

That's very, very hard to play against, because on CT you have to cover several places, and that's where B1ad3's leadership and the whole FlipSid3 team is used to play that playstyle, so when you enter their game and what they want to do, that's where you're going to have trouble.

Switching over to the T side, with how close it ended up being, did your decision in the third round, when you lost the pistol and went on a full eco to buy up early, break the half after all?

Again, we didn't want to enter their game in the sense that they were controlling the economy, the pace of the game, etc., and we just wanted to break them. That's something we did a lot in practice, trying to adapt and change and break the metagame, because we know that we can just take AK's, Galil's, kevlars, two flashes and work with it. That completely surprised them, I guess, and we just went raw against them. That was basically it, it gave us four or five rounds in a row when their economy was very shaky. 

Touching on a tiny little detail, on B1ad3's knife on shox, I know that, historically, shox has been quite vocal about these things, does he still feel that way, did it annoy him in at that point?

That's the thing you don't really know (laughs), at least he doesn't show anything, I don't know if it still hurts him, so that's the good part. On the other hand, it's just something that apEX used to do as well, it's a very strong thing to do on that map, and so, affecting him, I don't know, I think he's stronger than that, mentally. It's not a humiliating knife, it's more of a tactical thing, and that was well played by B1ad3...

I imagine you're pretty happy about closing this out 3-0 and avoiding the tough rounds later on...

For sure, we came here with the objective of qualifying, 3-0 is just a bonus where facing Immortals, Cloud9, and FlipSid3 that are three very strong teams and winning over all three of them makes us more confident coming into Cologne and the Major for the best-of-one format, so we know we can turn up and do it.

Even though you went 3-0, the matches were very close, is there something you've learned at the qualifier and maybe have to work on before you go to Cologne?

Win more pistol rounds! (laughs) That's the most important thing, the only pistol rounds we won were when we were stacked, and if teams know about that, we're going to get countered and it's going to be even harder to win them. We have to really get better in those rounds, aside from that we kept composure throughout the three games no matter what happened.

We're not really concerned, even though when you're down 13-15 against Immortals or when FlipSid3 is starting to come back, you have that question "What do we need to do to win?" and the answer is generally "stop thinking." And that's something we generally need to try doing a bit more and realize it a bit earlier so that teams cannot come back and put pressure on us. Learning to adapt more as a team, being a bit more blunt when needed, stop thinking, playing the basics, and the other team is going to out-think themselves.

Now that you've qualified, you have Cologne coming up, where do you want to be by the time the Major rolls around? What kind of placing in Germany would make you confident ahead of the Major?

Regarding all the teams that are there, I think a top four in Cologne would make us very confident moving forward into the Major. Our main objective is going to be to take it game by game, map by map, and try to play our best. It's always the most important thing, if you play at your best and you feel that you couldn't really do much, or because you lacked preparation or something, you got outplayed, there is not really much to think about.

You can come back and analyze and see why you were blocked, and for instance when we lost at ECS against FaZe in what was a pretty clear 2-0, we couldn't take anything from that game, because we were not playing up to our standards, we were tilting and not playing together. The most important is going to be to play at our best and then top four would make us very confident, knowing all the best teams except for Astralis are going to be there.

Is there going to be any special preparation in the week after Cologne?

It's hard to say, because Cologne is going to be the real test for us to know what we'll work on exactly. We're most likely going to play more maps, more Nukes, more Cobbles that we haven't played much in this qualifier and in practice because teams tried to dodge them, and then just fixing all the small mistakes.

It's going to be very important to come into Cologne and then prepare for the Major with very confident players, that's what's going to make the difference, if you have five players that are very confident that know what they have to do and want to do what they're doing, that's when your team is going to perform at their best. And that's what we need, we're still talking about some stuff, some players are still trying to understand why some stuff happened, whereas some people have to bait for others, the positioning, that kind of stuff, we need to be extremely clear on that, regardless of the map or side.