valde: "A lot of anti-stratting and preparation went into [the Heroic game]"

As the last quarter-final concluded with North moving on with a convincing win over Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer's troops, the first phase of the ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier playoffs has finished and all semi-finalists are known.

valde and co. didn't underestimate Heroic

To get more insight into the inner workings of North, who are on a good run since the player break, we sat down with their new player and former HEROIC member, Valdemar "⁠valde⁠" Bjørn Vangså.

After the break, the first event you had was Malmő, you finished second, then you won Montreal and went through the group stage here. So, you've been having some pretty good results and the other top teams have been falling off a bit. Did you feel like this tournament could be the one that maybe propels you to even taking the number one spot?

Yea, for sure, ELEAGUE is one of the biggest events of the year so it's a really important event, because, obviously, all of the top teams are in attendance. It means a lot to us, because I think we've been having some pretty poor results online the past few weeks, we didn't manage to qualify for ECS which was a pretty big disappointment for us. But we played the online games just after we came home from a LAN journey and somehow we just can't get our game going when we get home and play those online games after we've been at events, so that is something that we need to work on.

But ELEAGUE is definitely a really important event and I think a good result here is gonna put you in the top 3 maybe, because you have Astralis, FaZe, G2, all those teams here, who you need to beat in order to become the champion. So it's definitely a top event for us.

Coming into the first match, against Heroic, your former team, and you lost to them online recently in the ECS Development League... So tell me about that matchup, was there a lot of rivalry and emotion, wanting to win this match?

I actually think it gets a bit overrated, when I play Heroic, personally, even though it's my former team, I don't feel any different actually, compared to when I play any other game. You always go into the game with a mindset that you want to win, but I think it wouldn't have mattered almost what team we played that day [in the ECS Dev. League] I think we would've lost. None of us hit our shots, the communication was really poor, nobody was taking decisions and stepping up when needed. So that was obviously a really disappointing result for us. I think, once we get to a LAN and we have time to prepare and we can make a proper game plan and stick to it, I think it shows who is the best team between us and Heroic at the moment.

Both you and Heroic avoid Cache, and here it didn't come into play, but you let it go through. So tell me a bit about the veto, what was the thinking there?

What we do on our team is that MSL, ruggah and cajun b, those three do all the vetos. So me, aizy and k0nfig don't have anything to say in the veto process. I'm actually not sure how the veto went because I didn't see it yet, but we discussed it in the hotel room yesterday and we knew that they were probably going to float Cache in the first ban rotation and then we were unsure if they would ban maybe Cobble or something else. We had a pretty good idea about what the map pool would be it was just going to be a matter of which order.

It actually ended up being Overpass, Mirage, Inferno which is exactly like we expected it. But I think we had the mindset that, if they wanted to float Cache, we would do so as well, because the old North team, before I joined, actually played a bit of Cache. I still think that, even though none of us play the map at the moment, that we would have the upper hand. But since they beat us 2-0 online, I think that they felt like they had to avoid Cache because they felt that they could beat us on the other maps. You always prefer to play a map that you can actually play and then lose, then play a map that you don't play at all and lose. Then it seems like too much of a gamble, I think.

Let's touch on the first map, that was Overpass. You had a 9-2 lead but then they won that eco and started getting some momentum...

We watched a lot of videos of them on Overpass, actually, I think that when I went to bed yesterday I just sat with my tablet and watched two or three demos of Mirage and Overpass and I think we came to the conclusion that they are doing a lot of similar stuff. So they have a few, 2-3 executes, and then they just like to run their default.

So we knew that, if we can shut their default down, they would probably go to the few tactics, good tactics that they have, and then we had some anti-stratting prepared for that. We knew that if we could mess up their default and then do the same with their executes before they get to run them, [that we would win the game]. And I think that it went into their head because we could feel that they didn't have an answer once we started to pick their strategies apart. I think it was actually kinda the same for Mirage, a lot of anti-stratting and preparation actually went into this game, that people might not see.

You secured that win, you are moving on to the semi-final, where FaZe is waiting, that's a team everybody is talking about now, what do you expect from the matchup?

I'm expecting a really tough matchup, we have to be on point individually if we want to compete with them. But I think we are maybe a better fundamental team, we have a better structure in my opinion and probably also better tactics. So it's a matter of holding our own individually and then being able to use this structure and these tactics to pick apart their gameplan. But it's obviously going to be a really tough game. And even though you are versus an eco, with FaZe you can never be safe because of the Deagles and so on. So it's going to be a really hard game, we are going to go home, to the hotel, and prepare like we did for Heroic.