ImpressioN: "I think our players have improved leaps and bounds [since TWC]"

BOOT-d[S] have been keeping a fairly stable roster for some time now, but have never attended a big international event. That is going to change soon, as the Singaporean squad has already arrived in Europe and are set to attend DreamHack Masters Malmö after finishing first at the regional qualifier.

ImpressioN and his squad will have a short bootcamp in Copenhagen before DreamHack

The team, that is now under the coaching of Harley "⁠dsn⁠" Örwall, have a tough task ahead of them, being placed in a group with SK, Cloud9 and North but are set to do their best in Sweden.

In a pre-Malmö interview, Anthony "⁠ImpressioN⁠" Lim talked about the joy of winning the qualifier and the feeling the team had after it, but also touched on some of their struggles, such as the CSL 2017 Summer Season event.

Let's start with the qualifier that was held in June, that got you a place at DreamHack Masters Malmö. You took down Grayhound, ViCi and finally TyLoo - how did you feel going into those matches, did you think that you would finally earn a spot at a big international event then?

Hello, first of all thank you for having me! It’s my pleasure to be able to provide some insight into our team on HLTV.org.

When we played the closed qualifier after having qualified from the SEA Open Qualifier, we were the massive underdogs in the series that we played. Having just benched one of our ex-members Alexandre "alecks" Salle, we had to basically play the qualifier on a week’s worth of practice. I think that we approached that qualifier with a different mentality, going into the games as the underdogs with nothing to lose. We played it round by round, map by map and eventually we earned the spot for DreamHack Masters Malmö.

Securing that win meant that your squad would attend its first event outside the APAC region. How did that impact the atmosphere in the team, the practice and the official matches since then?

We had a good streak of official wins after the DreamHack qualifiers, we felt like we were undefeatable and having finally achieved the placement of being Asia’s top team felt amazing.

But as time went on we realized there was some things within the team that we had to fix for the long run so we worked really hard, trying out various different methods of approaching the game. It’s kinda hard because every team in Asia is eyeing to take us down in officials so sometimes we do let it slip, but to be completely honest it’s just a learning process that we have to be able to adjust properly to if we ever want to stand a chance on the International stage.

B.O.O.T-dream[S]cape players made their first European LAN appearances at TWC 2015 and 2016, representing the Singapore national team, and that is where most of the wider CS:GO audience has last saw your players perform. How much do you think you guys evolved and improved since those events?

TWC 2015, for me personally, was a horrible event. I was nervous and honestly out of my mind afraid of the players outside of my region, having no prior LAN experience outside of Asia. I honestly think though the takeaway of those events was the experience we brought home with us. Despite not having favourable results, the experience of facing top players from the "Western" regions is always a impeccable way to improve yourself individually.

However TWC 2016’s format resulted in a better LAN experience for 4 out of 5 of our current players. I was unfortunately unable to attend it due to Military Service in Singapore but honestly at the end of the day I think our team’s players have improved leaps and bounds individually thanks to exposure and experience gained during TWC.

Everyone except ImpressioN was present at last year's TWC 2016

When did dsn switch from coaching the Chinese B.O.O.T squad to coaching you, and how is cooperating with such an experienced player working out for you? What does he add to the team?

Harley hopped on board with us sometime during June when we were scheduled to have our gaming house up and running in Singapore. He has such amazing aptitude for the game due to being a multiple time world champion during the 1.6 era and his working attitude as a coach is priceless. Having him with us adds confidence and structure to our play, knowing that right behind us is someone who has seen it and done it all. Also he adds a lot of fun and humor to our team (you know what I mean Harley).

You have recently attended the CS:GO Super League 2017 Summer LAN in China, finishing 3rd and not securing a spot for the season's LAN finals, which seems like a disappointment after qualifying for DH Masters Malmö. What went wrong for you at that event?

CSL was quite a let-down for us as a team. To be completely honest, we sometimes have issues when we can’t get our game going and that unfortunately happened during the matches there. And like how I previously mentioned, we let it slip.

Any LAN event is always a good experience for us, and having played CSL prior to DreamHack allows us a buffer to fix our issues prior to the premier level event.

Talking about preparation for Malmö, how has that been going and what have you been focusing on?

Being the first team that qualified for Malmö, we didn’t know at that point of time which teams we were going to be up against so we focused a lot on improving ourselves both individually and as a team. There is a clear line between the quality of practice we get as compared to teams outside of Asia though. So having known our strengths and weaknesses and working on it for the past couple of weeks.

I hope that the game that we bring to the table will be sufficient for the matches to come. Now that we’re bootcamping in Copenhagen prior to DreamHack, at least we’ll get some practice against teams in Europe to see how well we can fare against the very best in CS:GO.

Coming into the event in Sweden, what are your expectations and goals for the tournament, being placed in a group with SK, Cloud9 and North?

Our goals is to get as far as we can in the tournament and we honestly have no expectations coming into it as the ultimate underdogs from Asia. Personally I’ll do my best and encourage my team to do so as well, but ultimately we’re just really excited to be here and happy to be able to compete against some of the very best teams in the world.