dennis: "Players like f0rest [and draken] need to be unchained"

Ninjas in Pyjamas started off IEM Katowice with a loss to North in the first round, getting off to a slow beginning on the CT side of Inferno, before beating ORDER comfortably in the lower bracket.

captionGoesHere

dennis wants a combination of a loose and structured style

The Swedes are done for the day, waiting for their next opponent in the lower bracket, which will be the loser of fnatic and G2, so we took the opportunity to interview Dennis "⁠dennis⁠" Edman.

The first thing we have to talk about is you coming into the team and taking over leadership, can you tell me your idea about how you will lead the team, what the philosophy is?

It's kind of like I want to keep being a fragger, but I also want to be an in-game leader. I want to loosen up the style a bit and not be so structured, but I also want to keep some structure that is hard to read. So kinda loose but structured, I would say. We've been playing for two or three weeks, it's not a very long time to prepare for an event like this, but we're doing our best, let's see where it takes us.

How is the rest of the team dealing with this style at the moment? They've had quite a solid structure and a lot of tactics ever since THREAT reinvented NiP, was it easy for them to come back to the looser style, or is it going to take more time for the players to get used to it?

I think for some of them it's going to be easy and for the others it's going to be harder, because players like f0rest need to be loose, they need to be unchained and just do whatever they like to do. We have a good AWPer who's very aggressive, he also needs to be able to do what he wants to do. It's going to take time, but I think we're doing a pretty good job so far, it's been going well in practice. With some time, we're going to become pretty good.

In your first match here you were never able to catch up to North after the slow start on the CT side of Inferno, what was the issue there?

I think we picked the wrong map, or we banned the wrong map, we weren't ready for their aggression even though we told each other to watch out for the aggression, we still didn't expect it. So it was just mistakes, bad communication and mistakes. We just played bad together and individually, we're going to be better from now on.

Did you see anything special from the guys in ORDER, who you beat in your second match here? What did you expect?

Not really, I mean they're a pretty new team, so we didn't expect much. We have a lot of experienced players and they don't have as much experience, so we just played kind of default, loose, tried to just outskill them, which worked. With some time, maybe they'll become good, I think they just need time.

Looking ahead, how do you feel about your chances further on at IEM and making it through to playoffs?

Honestly, I think we have a good shot, of course it depends on who we face next and if FaZe fail, I wouldn't really want to meet them, but I think we have a pretty good chance.