Calyx: "We reminded ourselves that we need to play our game, only our game"

After failing to secure a win on Overpass, their own map pick, Space Soldiers bounced back on Inferno and Cache to secure a 2-1 for the series, moving on to the upper-bracket final.

Calyx stepped up for his side in the series against EnVyUs

With some help from Canpolat "⁠hardstyle⁠" Yıldıran who acted as the translator, we interviewed Buğra "⁠Calyx⁠" Arkın, who revealed the secret to winning the next match, which would secure them a Main Qualifier spot.

After you finished your game yesterday and you knew you were going to play EnVyUs, what were your feelings like, what were you expecting from this game?

When I play against EnVy I always feel comfortable, and we already prepared for them, so we just played our game.

Tell me about the veto, it seemed like an obvious pick to go for Overpass for you, did everything else go as you expected in the veto?

Our map was obvious since yesterday, and also we knew that they were going to pick Inferno. I'm just surprised about Cache because we were expecting Cobblestone instead of Cache. So when I heard it was Cache, the feeling was super good.

On your map pick, you couldn't close it out in the end, tell me what went wrong, what were the issues on Overpass?

Actually, we started really well on our map, but in the middle of the game, we started making small mistakes which they used against us. And then we had serious communication problems between us which caused us to lose several rounds, one by one. We couldn't manage to come back from that point.

Also on the first map, XANTARES had a rare off-game. Was that something you commented on? What are your thoughts why that happened?

I think everything was OK for him, he just couldn't land his shots as he does normally. I think that made him a little bit upset and he couldn't recover.

Moving on to the second map, Inferno, it seemed like EnVyUs had it in their hands to close out the series. What do you think were the keys things you did right to get that map win?

After the first map we went outside and talked about the issues on Overpass and we just reminded ourselves that we need to play our game, only our game and forget about what they are doing, what they are going to do, their rotates and stuff. We refreshed our minds and did our own thing. We almost played it perfectly, we made just two mistakes on the entire map, which is good for us. And at that point, we really wanted to finish the game.

You took that momentum into Cache, you had a great start, 7-0, not even losing many men. Did you feel that EnVyUs was a bit tilted after losing their map pick, so you had such a great time against them early-on on Cache?

I think they titled a bit after Inferno, we just played our game on Cache. But at the beginning of Cache, we were feeling super good because we won Inferno and the next map is going to be Cache. We know our weak sides and our strong sides on that map. I'm not going to say that it was easy but we were prepared for them on Cache.

MAJ3R has been much improved in the statistics area, what do you think that is down to. As an in-game leader, he is getting key kills, clutching, like against OpTic where he was playing very well, and in the last map here as well. Has anything changed in his game, what do you see as his teammate?

As a team, we have really high respect towards MAJ3R because we all know that he is playing this game for a long time, since 1.6. At the beginning of this game, when he started playing with us, his aim wasn't that good actually. But we knew that his game sense and game knowledge were on point. Day by day, he improved his aim as well and combined with his game knowledge, I think he will be reaching his level in the near future.

Now you have just one more BO3 to win to get to the Major Qualifier, that is obviously the goal. Do you feel a bit of pressure to close it out now, either positive or negative?

We are feeling super positive about the next match. We are going to watch [OpTic - AGO] and I personally think we can close this out and we will get a spot at the Major Main Qualifier. As a negative thing, we are still making small mistakes. Those are really small mistakes, but they are still happening. We will try to fix this by talking to each other in the meantime.

And for me, I think that if we kill our opponents, we will win the game. (laughs)