k0nfig: "valde helped us a lot with Train"

With two victories, a 16-10 over Cloud9 and a 2-1 over SK, North secured the first place in group A and a spot in the quarter finals that will be held on Saturday.

SK are great at finding holes in defaults, k0nfig says

To hear more about North and their upset over the Brazilians, we talked to Kristian "⁠k0nfig⁠" Wienecke shortly after the game ended.

Let's start with the first game you played here, against Cloud9, the first LAN game you played with valde. How did it go from your perspective, adding the new player and having him in the team?

I think MSL changed his tactics to have a bit more structure, so we are locked on certain things we do and I think valde brings a lot, we are more comfortable on our CT side and our T side as well. And I think that is about it, there is a player change and then we have to get the honeymoon phase, which we have right now, I think. But I hope the honeymoon phase will keep going on.

The game you had today was against SK. Tell me about the preparation coming into the game, what was the feeling like? 

Me, aizy and valde, we don't know anything about the preparation, it's only ruggah and MSL that do it, and then they give us a quick talk before the game. And they do the veto so we don't know what the maps are going to be, so we just play. That is the thing.

I think our preparation was good and I think it was better than all the other times we tried it. This is a new format we are trying and I think we knew what they were going to do but on Cobblestone we just got wrecked, everyone. We had bad money and a really bad start, I think that broke us a little bit.

The first game went their way, but after that it was Train. And that was a map you didn't play since DreamHack Winter last year. Tell me about the decision, has that been something you've been trying out now with valde, playing more Train?

valde helped us a lot with Train, he played it in Heroic and he played it in SK before. So he knew some normal things to do, setups and standards and stuff like that. And MSL... hates Train. He's always hated Train. I think maybe he will like it a little bit after the win vs SK. I think that was about it, trying new stuff. Because Cache didn't work out so good so we tried Train instead. And apparently, it worked out.

On that map, you had a good start, a 5-1 lead, but then they started clawing back the rounds. Can you tell me a bit about that second part of the first half on Train?

I think I got timed in alley when they pushed randomly when we were CT, and then they kind of broke our economy a little bit because cajun just bought an AWP and I bought an M4 with every nade, and I didn't use anything. So the utility buying and the AWP buying kind of ruined us because it was a surprise round. I think that was about it because we thought everything was under control on Train.

The last map was Inferno, and there you ran away with the lead pretty early. In the end, there was a good comeback attempt from SK, was it a bit scary seeing them rack up all the rounds and you getting reset all the time?

It's a little bit scary because SK is so good at anti-stratting. They find these small holes in standards, like when you are going back from A apps to throw a smoke to arch, someone pushes apps and kills you in the back and stuff like that. But they were doing good anti-stratting, that was about it.

We had the opportunity to close out the game if we won the CT gun round but we were just kind of suprised, they surprised me and MSL on B one round, the rest of the team got surprised on A... It was kind of back and forth. And they were really good at changing up which way they were going to go all the time. And trying to do splits... that didn't work out so good. I don't know what to say, we're just so happy with a win versus SK now that they have been rivals to us for so long and we had a hard time playing against them with magisk. And now valde... he's strong.

MSL mentioned that you won your only game against SK using valde back at ECS S2, when he was standing in. So is he the lucky charm?

I think... if kio is the problem, valde is the solution. (laughs)

Anything else you want to give your thoughts on, about the rest of the tournament?

Actually, I'm a bit sad that Virtus.pro went out because I thought they would going to do better, but I spoke to TaZ yesterday and he said that things happen for a reason. So I think they were just unlucky in some tournaments, but they will come back stronger. They say it every time. I think they will come back.