stark: "The pressure is on VP, not us, we expect to beat them"

x-kom have two matches behind them and are currently sitting in third place of Group B with a 1-3 score following matches against MOUZ and eXtatus, losing both maps to the former team.

stark talked all things x-kom at V4 Future Sports Festival

We caught up with Krzysztof "⁠stark⁠" Lewandrowski to find out more about the Poles' first experience among international competition and their matches so far. The 19-year-old also explained how the situation around Patryk "⁠Patitek⁠" Fabrowski, who caused the team to get disqualified from WESG Poland late last year due to a VAC ban, affected the team.

This is your first bigger event, what was your preparation like and what goals have you set, what are your expectations for V4?

We had a one-week bootcamp, we prepared just by playing a lot of praccs and we added some maps to our map pool. Our expectations are to go out of groups, we wanted to as many rounds as we could against mouz just to boost our confidence before the games with Virtus and eXtatus.

Speaking of mousesports, you ended up getting nine rounds on each map, were you happy with that considering that mentality?

Of course we weren't happy because we lost, but I think we threw many stupid rounds against mouz and I think they won mostly because of their experience. They know we're not as experienced as them, so they just outsmarted us in the end.

What about your match with eXtatus, did you come into it expecting to win? Can you tell me about what went wrong on Inferno?

We were expecting to win at least one map against eXtatus. We tied with them overall, so we're happy. On Inferno we got reset when we were leading like 4-2, in the second gunround we lost a 4v2, we got reset, and we just lost five or six more rounds in a row. It was hard to come back on the CT side.

What do you reckon decided Mirage, which ended up being a very closely contested map? Were there any key rounds that made the second map go your way?

I think the key round was the force round for us, I think it was like 13-11 or something like that, we won the force round and we broke their economy.

Virtus.pro have looked off recently to say the least, are you confident going into your last match of groups?

We are the underdogs at this tournament, it's our first big tournament, we don't have pressure on us, we can go out in groups, they can't. They made changes in their team, if they don't go out of groups it's going to be the third tournament where they didn't make playoffs. The pressure is on them, not us, we are expecting ourselves to beat them.

You beat AGO and Kinguin to make it to V4, two of your biggest rivals in the Polish scene, where do you think you currently stand among local competition?

I think we are a strong top-four team in Poland, but our problem right now is that we don't really play well against European teams. For some reason we play very well against Polish teams, I don't know what reasons are behind it.

With that in mind, what are your goals for the future?

We'd like to gain more experience in the European scene, play better against tier3-4 teams, and break out into the next tier.

I'd just like to go back to your setback that happened last year, when Patitek's VAC ban caused you to get disqualified from WESG Poland and you ended up releasing him, how did that affect the team's morale and motivation at the time?

We were sad after we got disqualified from WESG in that way, we were really demotivated to play. Then we played the biggest Polish LAN called the Polish Esport League, we beat AGO there and lost to Kinguin 2-1 in the final. We got our motivation back, but of course we had to kick Patitek because of his VAC ban. But I think ponczek filled his shoes very well and we don't really feel like we're missing Patitek.