Magisk: "Making history is always fun"

Our last interview of the day was with Emil "⁠Magisk⁠" Reif, who touched on the 16-0 win over MIBR and Dust2 in general.

Astralis made CS history by securing the first 16-0 victory at a Major, earning a spot in the playoffs with a thrashing of MIBR. With this, Astralis finished the New Legends Stage with a 3W-1L record, the same as the New Challengers Stage.

In our talk with Magisk we touched on their loss to North on Dust2 at DreamHack Masters Stockholm and how fixing their issues from that game helped them win today.

Give me your initial thoughts about beating MIBR now, 16-0, and being through to the playoffs?

I mean we are really happy, of course, no one goes into a match expecting to win 16-0, but we kind of knew it was going to be Dust2 or Inferno. We knew it was going to be one of those maps and we felt they might go for Dust2 because when we have been playing them on Inferno, I think they had the feeling that they didn't have a good chance on the map, especially because we've been practicing against them a few times on it, that has been going pretty well for us.

Also, I think that they saw the match against Team Liquid was a day off for us on the CT side and if we just had a few more CT rounds we would've won that game as well. So I think that it was just us being us really well prepared on Dust2, we had really good ideas every round about what they are going to do and we kind of expected it before it even happened. I think that was one of the reasons why we were able to win so many rounds, sixteen in a row.

Does it feel to have the first 16-0 in the history of the Majors? Making a piece of history for yourself?

It is pretty nice, but I mean, for us, it doesn't really matter if we win 16-0 or 16-14, just the fact that we made it into top eight is more than enough for us to be happy about the win. But of course, it gives a bit more confidence when you win 16-0. Overall, it was a good game for us and, of course, making history is always fun.

At the beginning of the tournament I talked to flamie and he said that Dust2 feels random, to him at least, that a lot of teams don't know how to play it yet or that it isn't established. And we've seen a lot of these weird results where you beat someone 16-1 and then you lose 16-0, stuff like that happening in Stockholm and here a bit as well. Is there something about the map that makes it snowball-ish, in a way?

I think it is in the meta right now that it is really important to be able to contest Long as CT, if you are not able to contest it at all you will have a really hard time, Long control is really important. Especially if people will abuse it and take it every round, if you are not able to shut them down. That is one of the things we've been focusing on a lot before this Major, especially after the game against North where you could definitely see that they were just abusing Long every round and were just winning because of that. And also because they were playing some good individual CS. But that has been very important to us to focus on and I think that is what every team is focusing on right now.

Find a good way to take control of long because when you have it you can do so much more around the map as CT, you don't have to be locked down, you can't be pushed from short and long at the same time, stuff like that. I don't know, it is not random in my opinion. If you are really good team at playing it you won't lose 16-0. Still, the rounds were a bit more close than it looked like, of course, they had a few rounds they should've won, but yeah.

At this tournament we've seen device shy away from the T-side AWPing, can you give me some thoughts on that, why isn't he playing it at all, it seems?

I mean, I think it depends a lot on the map, to be honest. On Inferno, you don't really have many good duels as a T-side AWPer, it is more you running into the crosshair of another CT AWPer. I think it is more about him wanting to trade-kill us and be able to go with us as a group. And we like to do some fast stuff once in a while, therefore the AWP is not really the best weapon for that. I think it is more how the playstyle is on the map and what he thinks is the best for the team, but also for him in those situations.

As an example, on Nuke, the AWP can be really good on the T side and be able to get good picks around the map. Mirage as well is a good map to play T side AWP. But Inferno and maps where you play a lot fast-paced and you have to be able to trade-kill all the time, it is really difficult to do it with an AWP.

Closing thoughts on going into the playoffs, obviously, you are going into the BO3 stage, that should suit you guys. A couple of teams have already qualified so you know a couple of teams you could potentially get. So give me a bit about that, how are you playing right now?

It is only going to benefit us, playing BO3s now. We have a great map pool and we can play almost any map against any team. That is going to be really good for us. We feel confident but we also know that we have to be good on the day, if we want to keep going in this tournament because many teams are playing good now. CS nowadays is about making the least amount of mistakes and playing well as a team. I think everyone is so good as a team and if you make a lot of mistakes you will lose because of that. So that is definitely something we are focusing on, don't make stupid mistakes, don't take unnecessary peeks, if you go for a fast play and you want to do something you bring someone with you so he can try and trade you. So yeah, it is going to be good to play BO3s and I'm looking forward to it, it is going to be amazing. I missed the last Major so I'm just really excited to finally be back in the top eight.

More interviews from the New Legends stage:

Day 4
shox: "We've got three to four maps we're definitely okay with playing"
s1mple: "I don't want to be a bad guy, there is no point"
tabseN: "I feel like we can 100% win this tournament"

Day 3
NAF: "When we got to overtime I was so pissed off; I'm like 'F*** this, I'm going to buy an AWP"
dephh: "We proved we can't just play Inferno, we have other maps up our sleeves"
STYKO: "[My new role] feels like I'm going to school every day, trying to understand a new subject"

Day 2
YNk: "This game was just so hard because mousesports saved so much"
Edward: "If you feel calm during the whole game, the comeback is real, always"
nitr0: "I'm hoping we get Astralis, we can definitely put up a good show and a good fight"
Xizt: "Every loss is going to take a toll on your confidence, we had to slowly build it up again"
LEGIJA: "Before the Major, we said 'We will not practice to make Legends, we're here to f****** win'"

Day 1
Xyp9x: "Against Na`Vi and especially on Inferno, it's all mind games"
REZ: "Not playing the Minor means a lot to me, I have played so many"

Media Day
JW: "We considered twist after the early StarLadder exit; he wasn’t really interested"
jmqa: "After the last Major, our practice wasn't great, we didn't have good conditions"
flamie: "We still want to play Dust2 because no one is playing it well"
SmithZz: "We aren't completely ready at the moment, but we are getting there"
RUSH: "Hopefully, after the Major, our ranking will reflect how we actually are as a team"