chrisJ: "People are finding their place in the team"

MOUZ earned their place in the semi-final after first defeating North Academy with ease before dropping Train to Envy, where the European mixture only got three rounds on the CT side. Chris "⁠chrisJ⁠" de Jong & co. then sent home BIG following a one-sided series to go up against Gambit later today in the second semi-final.

chrisJ commented on the team's decision to skip ROG MASTERS in Malaysia

We got a hold of MOUZ' in-game leader for an interview about DreamHack Open Winter and their decision to skip ROG MASTERS, among other topics:

You had a lot of problems on the CT side of Train against EnVyUs in the winners' match, what happened there?

First of all I think they had a good plan, how to play against us, against our CT side. But what we feel also played a part in the loss or in how they could get rolling at least was that we were waiting for a long time for the match, obviously the game before was long between Na`Vi and Gambit.

The thing is, when you start on the CT side, sometimes you can just get overrun by the opponent. If we won the knife we would also have picked T side, even though maybe usually people would choose CT side on the map, when you're not really that warmed up the T side can just be a little bit easier. I don't want to take too much away from EnVyUs with that because they obviously had a good plan, they saw some weaknesses in our defense and they just abused it basically the whole half. We didn't have much of a chance, so props to them.

oskar was a bit off during the first couple of games before he caught up against BIG, was it just down to form, did he need some time to warm up?

Yeah, I guess it's just a warmup thing. It's hard to say sometimes with Tommy, I think it's hard to say for himself sometimes as well (laughs). Either he's really on fire and he's feeling the game and sometimes he's just not feeling it.

I think he had some issues with his mouse before the game, I don't know if it was a wrong driver, but sometimes a thing like that can just get into your head, it can affect your game. I think he's gonna be back for the next games, it was just a couple of off games.

Going into the semi-final, you have a bit of a history with Gambit over the past couple of months and you've had the upper hand, do you feel confident going into the series?

Yeah, we feel confident for sure. Like you said, we played them a few times, I actually only remember the match in Mykonos now when we beat them, and ROG EMEA, that didn't really matter that much but then again we still beat them.

We're feeling good against them, we like to play them, but obviously you have to keep in mind that they're playing well right now. I think they feel really good because they beat Na`Vi, it was mentally important for them. It's going to be difficult, but I'm excited to play that match.

Leading up to the rest of the year, you were supposed to have at least two events but skipped ROG MASTERS, can you get into that, what the reasoning was?

Well, we skipped ROG basically because it's so close to the ECS Finals and the thing is, Malaysia is just so far away from Mexico that we would have like a day at home, but you have to keep in mind that the timezone is totally different, it's way worse than going from Europe to America even.

We just felt like ECS is more important for us, some players on the team already feel bit tired from the traveling and from playing a lot at home, which I guess you might see in the form of some players, because some of us have played better. We're going to do a bootcamp instead, so we're going to take some more time to prepare for ECS and also for the Major.

Also, what was in the back in our heads is that, before the Major, we cannot bootcamp that long, the Major qualifier is right after New Year's. Okay, ASUS ROG is a lot of money, but it's not that prestigious sadly...

So it was just prioritizing...

Yeah, exactly, we prioritized ECS Finals and the Major qualifier.

It's been a while since you changed the lineup, STYKO is getting noticably better compared to the rough start he had when he joined, what changed? Have you just gotten more used to each other?

Well, I think with STYKO it wasn't necessarily so much about fitting into the team, I guess it plays a part as well, but he had some personal issues at the start when he joined, he broke up with his girlfriend and moved to another city. This for sure affected him mentally and obviously there was pressure, I mean he was replacing players in the team, he was expected to do well, to do better than them, right. That just didn't work so well at the beginning, but I think he's feeling confident now, he has his problems out of his head.

suNny at the beginning was playing really well, then he had a bit of a drop-off maybe, but he's finding his form again and I think the last games here have shown that. He started to play well again online as well, so I think people are finding their place in the team, the team is meshing well, people know what to do in certain rounds, so it's been working well. We're improving, but on the other hand we also feel we're not that ready yet on all of the maps, that's also why we're doing the extra bootcamp like I said before, we still feel like we have a lot to prepare, but we're getting there.