valde: "Our double AWP on Cobble gives us a lot of safety"

North have joined G2 in the winners' match of Group B after a three-mapper versus Liquid, who started off well by winning Inferno on the back of a strong CT side but ended up falling to the Danes after a fairly comfortable Mirage and Cobblestone.

"You always have your teammates to back you up," says valde in regards to his performance throughout the series

At the end of day one in St. Petersburg, we interviewed Valdemar "⁠valde⁠" Bjørn Vangså to find out what went wrong for North on the T side of Inferno and how they eventually closed out Cobblestone despite a 0-5 start on the second half. 

We also got his thoughts on the upcoming rematch of the DreamHack Masters Malmö final against G2 and why Inferno isn't a strong map for many teams.

First, tell me about Inferno in this match, such a poor start on the T side, where did it all go wrong?

I think we just got off to a really slow start, and when we eventually won a round we got money-fucked. So it was a really tough T side, but I think we're a pretty good CT side team as you saw on Cobble and Mirage as well, so we knew we could grind back, but when we finally got it into the 3v2 in the final round, we just couldn't hit our shots. I think would have been our game if we played a normal T side where we get at least five to eight rounds, but in the end it was the poor T side that cost us the game.

Touching on Inferno in general, not that many teams are willing to pick it, or when they do it backfires, it's more like a middle-of-the-pack map for most, has no-one really figured it out?

I think the reason why nobody picks it aside from a few teams is that the meta is shifting a lot, because it's a new map. I remember in the beginning people didn't know how to play against double AWPs on banana, but now every team has become so good at using utility the right way, so it's pretty much that if the Ts want banana, they'll get it eventually. They can just wait out the nades of the CTs and then they can molly car, molly the entrance, get the banana control. So it's a lot about reactive plays as CT, you have to do some flash peeks and some aggressive setups to make the Ts nervous.

Yeah, the Inferno pick is shaky at the moment, because I think the CT side might be a bit underpowered on this map particularly. We might see some changes in the future, because right now I feel like it's almost too difficult to be a CT, especially on the B bombsite. Once you lose banana and the entrance got widened, it's pretty much impossible to hold, because once you use all your nades, you get mollied out from pretty much all except for two spots, so the CTs have a lot of trouble, and you can see it across all teams including ourselves.

Today both teams, us and Liquid, had really good CT sides, but I think it was due to shakiness and nerves at the beginning of the T side, because normally we have a much stronger T side, so I don't really think our game showed our normal Inferno, I would say.

Going over to Mirage, it seemed like a very comfortable pick for you, as you got a very strong T side to start it off...

Yeah, for sure, I think Mirage and Cobble are our two best maps at the moment and I think we've shown really good Mirage games in the past couple of months. We had a Mirage game against FaZe at ELEAGUE that probably should have went our way in our opinion, so we feel really confident in the Mirage pick and I think we'd pick into any team right now.

On Cobblestone, there was a point in the game where it looked like it was slowly slipping away, particularly after the first five rounds of the second half. Was there anything specific that worked well after the 0-5 start?

I think it's our double AWP setup on the CT side. It gives us a lot of safety, so once we get money control and have money for the AWPs, we feel really confident in the way we play. We know that if we have B long and matrix control with the AWPs, it gives us a lot of time to react when they make a play. So let's say they retake B long, we'll just take drop instead, and if we're out-numbered, the AWPs can get a sneaky pick if they sneak forward.

I think the double AWP helps a lot, and we just know how to play in certain situations, so when we're against anti-ecos, we play a certain way... For example, when we lost the pistol round to ELiGE, the 1v2, when they have a lot of farm guns, we know that they'd probably like to do some fast-paced stuff. We were prepared for the B go that we shut down pretty early and that's really important going further in the game, because then they're going to be afraid to do it. Once we got the money, it was pretty much the double AWP setup that got us the map.

What about your performance, you had a rough start into the map and then you picked it up with the quad-kill on the CT side at some point.

I think we've always been pretty good at shutting down B, but I didn't have my best game. Fortunately, that's the great thing about playing on North, that you always have your teammates to back you up and I think k0nfig especially played a really good series overall. It's always nice when your teammates carry you through.

It's been a while since you joined up with North, do you feel like you've completed the adjustment period, are you completely comfortable with how the team plays or is there still some wiggle room that you need to fix?

Overall I feel really confident right now. I think we've got the roles pretty much set in stone, but there's room for improvement in our map pool, actually, because we've had a bit of a shaky online period when we lost to a number of teams that we probably shouldn't lose to. But regarding myself, I feel confident at the moment and I think we can beat any team if we hit our top level, so that's what we're aiming to do tomorrow against G2 as well.

Speaking about the game against G2, this group overall has a lot of rare match-ups, although you played the Frenchmen at your first tournament with North, how is it going to play out tomorrow? 

We lost a game to G2 in Malmö, it was our first tournament so we first of all we didn't have a lot of practice. And I remember we went straight from the semi-finals into the final, we had like a half an hour break, so we didn't have any time to prepare whatsoever. I think that hurt us a lot, actually, because we're a team that likes to prepare a lot, our coach and MSL watch a lot of demos and I'm also a guy who likes to sit in the hotel room at night and look through stuff that the opponent does, so I think it hurt us a lot that we didn't have time to prepare properly for that final.

But now we're going home and fortunately we're playing the last game tomorrow, so we can get some proper sleep and prepare. G2 is a really tough match-up and they looked really good against Astralis today, so it's going to be a tough game for sure, we also share a lot of maps like Cobble and Inferno, so it's going to be a really close game against G2. We'll have to do our best if we want to win.