flamie: "We're playing well as a team, but it's more about the individual plays"

We spoke to Egor "⁠flamie⁠" Vasilyev about Natus Vincere's convincing win against BIG in the first quarter-final of the FACEIT Major.

Natus Vincere have shown up in fantastic form so far in the playoffs, defeating BIG 16-2 on Dust2 and 16-6 on Nuke, a surprising pick from the CIS-based side.

After the match, we caught up with flamie to ask him about the team's form and the one-sided match, as well as their thinking behind the veto process:

First of all, talk to me about the veto. It was a bit of a surprise that you ended up picking Nuke, what was the thinking there?

We discussed yesterday that we wanted to pick Nuke because BIG were probably thinking we were going to pick Overpass or Inferno and they'd be less prepared on Nuke because it wouldn't have been the third map if they vetoed it. They didn't expect it, I guess, I'm not sure, that's my point of view.

We know that we can play a good Nuke, a good T side, and we watched their game on Nuke and they didn't have any special rounds or anything. It was more about our confidence because we were more confident on Nuke than on Overpass or Inferno against them. So we decided to pick Nuke, Dust2 was obvious as their pick, and we did some good preparation.

Were you expecting them to anti-strat you and did that in any way affect your preparation for this match?

We knew they wouldn't prepare for Dust2 as they would prepare if they met Astralis, for example. They know we're not a good Dust2 team, but I think all our losses were like 14-16 or close, and we know we can play it better.

We practiced it for two days, we discussed what we were going to do if they do this and what we were going to do if they take long, for example. Everything worked and we won 16-2.

We saw your stars in great form, was that win more down to the individuals showing up or down to the added practice you've had on Dust2?

I think it's 50/50. When you play the CT side, it's more like an individual game with some team play, team flashes. When everyone in our team plays like that on Dust2 on the CT side, it was really nice play from everyone. We didn't expect to win 16-2, of course, but we played really well.

Did you expect Nuke to be that one-sided, as well?

No, because usually when teams lose the first map with that score, they usually play better on the second map as we saw at DreamHack Stockholm when North lost 0-16, then won the series, and then won 16-2 against Astralis and lost the second map. But we said that we just needed to keep playing like this and everything worked, as well.

Do you feel like you're in tournament-winning form? Is this where you start feeling like you will win this?

We're showing some good Counter-Strike right now and it's more like we are playing really well individually, everyone. Of course we are playing well as a team, as well, but right now it's more about the individual plays and that everything works. I'm excited for the semi-finals because I think it's going to be against MIBR and it will be a good match, for sure.

They're very experienced players, everyone on their team won a Major, so they know what it is, they know how to be on the stage, how to be calm, and they're a good team, as well. If it's compLexity, I won't be shocked, but I think it'll be MIBR. I won't say like others that we need to win, we want to win, we are ready, but we'll do everything step by step, and if we manage to win the semi-finals, we'll see what happens in the final.