Stewie2K: "Once we get on the same page we'll be able to really test the waters"

We took some time to talk to Jake "⁠Stewie2K⁠" Yip after MIBR swept Cloud9 to stay alive at ELEAGUE Premier. The Brazilian-American team will now face Liquid later today for a spot in the playoffs.

MIBR were on thin ice after losing their opening match to Liquid, but were then able to beat Cloud9, Stewie2K and Tarik "⁠tarik⁠" Celik's former team, to stay alive. Today, MIBR face Liquid at the ELEAGUE Studio once again, this time in a life or death match to make it out of the groups.

In the interview, Stewie2K touches upon several topics, from the team's leadership in and out of the game to tarik's signing and their matches in Atlanta, among others.

It used to be coldzera and FalleN were jumping in and out calling, even going map by map, have you settled with just FalleN calling?

Before tarik joined it was FalleN and cold discussing a lot of stuff outside of the game. When it comes to in-game, FalleN likes to have the leadership and he likes to go with his instincts and what he thinks is the right call to make. He usually doesn't like help from us unless we have really good suggestions, which he's okay with. Outside of the game, now, tarik is helping FalleN a lot with his in-game leading, giving him ideas, etc.

FalleN hasn't quite found his groove, he's struggling a bit with his confidence, and I think since tarik came it has gotten much better because tarik is helping him and every now and then cold will give a few tips or I'll give a few tips so we're trying to work collectively instead of just having a one guy "dictatorship" unless it's match time.

That ties in with the next question which is in regards to tarik's adaptation, how has the practice been going and what roles is he picking up?

I can see him struggling here and there, but I think it's common when joining a team like this. I can see him kind of following in my footsteps when I joined, having some of the same struggles, but it's not hard to adjust to the team after a little. You just have to make sure to play well individually and know what's coming. I think he's doing pretty well.

As far as his roles go, he's filling in boltz's shoes, but he's a more aggressive player and is more well rounded, so he can do more than boltz.

Where did the idea to bring him in come from? Was it you who said you could bring tarik on or was it someone's idea? How did that happen?

We were trying to pick up a player for boltz and we started thinking about the options. We're almost at the end of the season so there's not that much to pick from. There's nothing bad you can say about tarik as a teammate, and we wanted a good teammate. We wanted someone more vocal, more active as a player, someone who moves around more and can think for himself. Other than tarik there weren't many options with big buyouts and people under contract, but with tarik there was an easier way out since I came from Cloud9 as well.

Was it a very thought out or more of a last minute deal?

Instead of thinking about changing players over a long period of time, we just took a few days to think about it, to think about all the options, all the pros and cons of each player, and we tried to speed up the process. We figured that since I had a past with tarik, since we played well before and he's proven that he can play well on stage, and there's nothing bad about him, we'd just go with it.

Are you playing more by duos now than before?

It's a little bit like duos, but not really, we try to play collectively and we're trying to get to know each other better inside of the game and know what everyone's tendencies are, how everyone likes to play and react to try and get on the same page, because we're not on the same page right now and it's hard to play against teams like Liquid, FaZe, etc., so once we get on the same page we'll be able to really test the waters.

With tarik coming in and you saying he's more vocal, as another native English speaker has that made communication better?

For me, it's a lot more comfortable because I speak English and boltz's English was not the best. It was pretty bad at the start, but it got better, although tarik speaking English makes me feel more comfortable. Honestly, cold, fer, and FalleN's English is acceptable but not the best, so this makes me more comfortable in the game.

What was it that didn't let you show your best side against Liquid? Did you hit a block? It wasn't super one-sided but it wasn't horribly hard fought, either.

We actually watched the game over and we realized we make a lot of mistakes, even the little fundamental mistakes, we make those. We can't be making those mistakes against really good teams. We played really bad against Liquid, but watching it over, on top of that, we played poorly individually so the score looked really bad even though the rounds were really close, we just couldn't win rounds going in our favor, man advantages...

What is it you changed between the Liquid match and the Cloud9 match?

I think we came with a better mentality, individually. We came with force, we came with fire, and we played really well today. We were playing against our past team so we did want to prove something, me and tarik, and we just wanted to play our game and hoped for the best.

Speaking of playing your former team, how much of an extra motivation was it, or what rivalry is there?

There's no big rivalry, it's more of an individual thing. Not sure if tarik feels the same way, but for me, when you play your ex-team, you're going to want to beat them. It's nothing personal or anything like that, but it's hard to be too happy about the win because they're playing with two stand-ins so it doesn't feel like I'm playing the Cloud9 that we used to be before.

On Inferno, did you expect such a one-sided affair?

I don't think we really expected it, the big Deagle round by tarik gave us the 11-4 half, and if it weren't for that it would have been a really close half and the game could have changed. To be honest we were making the same mistakes, losing man advantages. I remember the first gun round they had, we were 5vs3 and lost the round. We can't be losing those rounds, so there are a lot of rounds you can say would change the game, but I think we were pretty confident overall.

Moving on to Cache, you again took the big lead but this time let Cloud9 make the big comeback to take it into overtime. What happened, what was going through your mind?

It's pretty common with MIBR that we do good on one side and the other side becomes a big struggle, but there are things we learned from this game that we can fix and see in the future how it will work. I think we're improving bit by bit when it comes to having a bad side and workings towards having both good sides.

You won all of the pistol rounds, did you prepare them particularly?

We prepared for the pistol rounds, we had a plan for each one of them and we executed well. We kind of failed to do it in practice but were able to finally fix it and when we did it in the match it worked out well.