suNny: "Now I'm the guy who makes my team react on some maps"

After eliminating HEROIC in last place with a clear-cut 2-0, MOUZ headed into their deciding match with Gambit and kicked it off with a narrow win on Cobblestone.

On the second map, the European squad were down 0-10 on the defense but managed to grab three rounds before the end of the half to give themselves a chance to come back into the match. A dominant Terrorist side then yielded them another 16-14 win over the Kazakh-Russian team, as well as a place in the semi-finals.

suNny played a massive part in mousesports' win on Train

After the last match of the day, we got a hold of Miikka "⁠suNny⁠" Kemppi to talk about the decider and his new role in MOUZ:

Starting with the series against Gambit, coming into it, what were your feelings about the match-up beforehand considering you only just came off of a loss to them in Malmö?

Obviously, we didn't expect so much from Malmö, because it was our first event and we only had one week of practice before it. So it was basically more like FPL style and we seriously didn't have enough time to prepare, especially for opponents and so on.

My thoughts about this match were that we could win if we could play in our comfort zone, which is right now more like an FPL style than a structured team. I know that we have skilled enough players to beat even better teams, because right now, no one can basically prepare anything against us, because we're just unpredictable right now. We knew that we need to surprise our opponents and just get into afterplants, and then we have good enough players to clutch it out. So we were confident.

You had a pretty big lead on Cobblestone at the start, but it got quite close towards the end, what were the keys to closing out the first map?

We have had many good starts in the games, especially if we win T pistol, we can just roll 75% of the half and get a big lead, but then it's the lack of structure which can punch us in the face after that. When we do our moves, they opponents start adjusting to us better than we are to them and it's hard to make a perfect half even after a big lead, because we can't adapt so well yet.

We kept their economy really low on the whole second side, after they won their first round, they only had like one or two survivors each round after. We noticed that Gambit didn't play Cobblestone much with fitch yet, so after a timeout, we discussed that maybe we should play more on the rushes, because Gambit kept playing contact and playing more like action-based, for example they're pushing mid and drop the same time, like we just decided to play more passive setups and not go for aggressive fights. oskar is obviously different, because he's an aggressive AWPer, but yeah, we just discussed that we should play more passive and close it out that way.

Going over to Train, you had such a big deficit at the start, being down 0-10, how were you able to keep up the morale and come back from such a tough CT side?

When we were down 0-6, we talked about doing some aggressive moves to push them out of their comfort zone, because they just adjusted, they knew that for example, when we pushed alley, other areas of the map were clear, and we just kept believing we could do it.

We basically just spoke on TeamSpeak 'let's get at least three rounds and then we will win the game'. We knew that we could do the same on the T side as they did, because most of the teams, their own playstyle is a direct counter to their CT. There was nothing special, we just believed we could do it and then we fought round after round.

Touching your own play in the second half, you had so many entry kills from T main, playing aggressive often around that area, was this your idea, your confidence to just come out T main and get entries?

Actually, we switched positions with chrisJ, I was playing alley before and he was playing T main. But then we realized like one day before this event that it might be better, because I was in a lurking position before and in T main, it fits my playstyle. It was more or less me making the call when I go out and not anyone else. We had a game plan, but my part in this game plan is just my own decision making when I do this.

With Virtus.pro ahead of you, what do you make of the match-up for you now that they are up and down?

We're not having any expectations, we're obviously not going to underestimate them, because it has happened every year that they are in a slump for a couple of months and then the Virtus plow is coming out. We're just going into the game to play our own game and try to find the comfort zone for us, not trying to anti-strat or anything too much. There are no expectations or anything, it's a perfect example that the matches they played here weren't even tight, so it's going to be a good match for sure.

I already asked STYKO about this and I'd like to get your point of view as well, about you both coming into mousesports and adjusting to your roles, how much has your role changed, what does it look like now?

Like I said before, we changed roles with chrisJ on Train T side. We're kind of finding out what's good for us, because me and STYKO, even though PENTA didn't look so structured, we actually were, we had our own plans. We both come from structured teams and mouz is more of a looser-style team, and it's super hard in some positions, because for example oskar is a really aggressive player and in my previous team I was the playmaker in most of my positions, and I'm playing with him on a couple of maps as CT, so I'm trying to adjust to what he needs.

We want him to win the matches, so some roles are the same, but most of the time, I'm now like an entry fragger on some maps, so it's like the opposite of what I did before. Of course, I understand what I need to do, but it's still hard, especially because I don't have any routine on how tier one teams play in certain positions. We played a bit lower teams with PENTA and I was basically reacting to what my team did, and now I'm the guy who's making my team react on some maps, so it's hard in some positions, but I understand CS, so it's just a matter of time before I find my comfort zone in many roles.