BnTeT: "We're confident in our skill, but I'm not sure we're confident in our team play"

We caught up with Hansel "⁠BnTeT⁠" Ferdinand following TYLOO's overtime win over Gambit on the first day of the New Challengers stage.

The in-game leader discussed TYLOO's play in August, during which they attended all three notable international tournaments: IEM Shanghai, ZOTAC Cup Masters, and DreamHack Masters Stockholm.

We also talked to the Indonesian about the team's first match in London, in which they came back from a 10-14 deficit and picked up their win in overtime on Inferno.

You guys are seemingly the only team that did not take a break in August as you played at all three international tournaments, so how has that affected you?

Yeah, you're absolutely right, we don't have enough time to really practice, watch demos, make new stuff, fix all our mistakes and improve our communication because we have played a lot of tournaments. It means that we aren't perfect and our communication is loose, so we have to work on it to improve for the next time.

You went out early at ZOTAC Cup Masters, what happened in the match against Kinguin?

ZOTAC is one best-of-three, if we win we go to the next stage, if we lose it's GG. I especially thought we were going to win against Kinguin because I was confident about our team to play against Kinguin. But it doesn't mean I underestimated them because I watched some of their demos, but, at that time, we had communication issues in the game, we weren't on the same page as a team, so there were a lot of mistakes that shouldn't happen.

Communication has been a significant topic around TYLOO for a while - how comfortable does everyone feel with it now?

I don't think it's comfortable for us, especially me because I need to talk in three languages sometimes and I cannot focus on my game sometimes - just sometimes. Also, the Chinese guys sometimes don't understand what I say 100%, maybe they understand like 70%.

It's a big issue in our team, we've become better, but I'm not saying that it's already at a 100%. But it has become better since I joined TYLOO, of course, they're learning English, I'm learning some Chinese, but it's hard to make it 100% with everyone on the same page.

How do you look back at DreamHack Masters Stockholm, where you went out of the tournament after losing to Astralis and North?

We played the best Danish teams, we didn't expect to go to the playoffs. We just did our best, I remember that North countered us a lot, so it made me confused as an in-game leader, but we tried our best.

We won against Astralis on Mirage because I think everyone is on the same page on Mirage, everyone looked comfortable. I actually didn't expect we were going to win a map against Astralis, on the second and third map we got destroyed, but we've already learned from that.

What have you learned, then, going into this tournament and how does that tie into your expectations for the Major?

We're just fixing mistakes every time after tournaments, we gather as a team, we talk, we watch our demos, what we should do next if a situation happens so that we don't do the same mistakes.

But sometimes it happens, we keep doing the small mistakes because of what I said, we still have communication issues. After Stockholm, we just tried to take it as another experience to make it better next time. We didn't have enough time to really make it a 100% better for this Major.

Tell me about your confidence to make it through - TYLOO haven't made it to the next stage at past Majors, so what can you do to break that trend here?

All the players feel confident about their aim, their skill, but playing CS:GO is not about aim, it's about team play, team flashes, refrags... Right now, we feel confident about our skill, but I'm not sure we're 100% confident in our team play. But we're still working on that.

Here, in your first match against Gambit, you had quite a lot of problems getting into the T side, what were the struggles there?

In the game versus Gambit, I think the biggest problem was that, at first, we failed to fight for banana control. We kept losing it to them, we kept getting picked, so that's why I called DD to help me and Mo get banana control with three guys. And when we got banana control, from there on our momentum could change the round. But still, it wasn't perfect.

It seemed like you especially had problems dealing with mou...

mou is a really good AWPer, he always picked us, made us play 4v5 in the early beginning. I think we got picked because someone didn't throw a flash, a simple flash like flash mid in the default, someone didn't do that, and then mou killed us. But, overall, mou is a really good AWPer, when we went arch, he killed three of us, he was really important for Gambit.

More interviews from the FACEIT Major New Challengers Stage:

Day 1
Lekr0: "I think I learned the most about [in-game leading] from pronax back in the day"

Media Day:
stanislaw: "We have all the pieces to really do some damage"
B1ad3: "We still haven't found the perfect in-game leader"
crush: "We didn't play much [officially] because we wanted to find our game"
Hiko "American teams are dependent on the momentum they gain"
NEO: "byali wanted changes even before Snax told us [he was leaving]"
DavCost: "The main goal is to show who we are"