k0nfig: "We need some success, for our own game and for our fans, because it has been a downhill road so far"

After OpTic thrashed BIG, 16-2, Kristian "⁠k0nfig⁠" Wienecke took some time to talk to HLTV.org about the situation in the Danish squad.

k0nfig and his OpTic teammates made quick work of BIG in the first match of day 2, winning 16-2 on Inferno to even out their record at StarSeries Season 6, making it 1-1 ahead of the third round of matches in Kiev.

In the following interview, k0nfig talks about changing players, changing continents, losing to North, beating BIG, and what the team needs to get back on track and show that the OpTic project is one whose course can be straightened out.

Let's go ahead and start with the roster move, bringing niko on, tell me how that has affected the dynamic of the team.

I think it made us more stable because he's a very good individual player and has a lot of experience from holding sites alone, whereas gade was kind of new at it, and new in the pro scene, so it feels like we're more stable now on both CT and T sides. He's also really good at talking in-game and telling people what to do and so on. I'd say it doesn't necessarily feel better, but different.

Would you say you're more comfortable with him on now, or would you say you're adapting? Has it been easy or is there stuff still to work out?

We have the same problem as before, which is that we destroy teams in practice but then we can't perform when it counts in the official matches. That's what we need to fix, but regarding the switch I think it was really easy because they have similar positions. Snappi just went through what he has to do on the T sides, it was pretty easy.

You've been back home for a bit, you're starting to play MDL, walk me through the decision of coming back and how it has been going.

The plan was to avoid going to the USA for the Pro League season, hoping we could transfer the slot to the EU. If you have a lot of tournaments, you can't travel to the US, play tournaments, and be back home, you'll just end up on the road most of the year, so that was the plan. We were put in MDL, which is nice, we just need to win the matches instead of losing them (laughs).

How confident are you with the online matches? We've seen teams that can perform on LAN struggle in these online leagues before. How confident are you that you'll be back on top?

After our last win, and against FaZe on ECS in Mirage, too. We also showed what we can do on Overpass, so I'm confident at the moment.

Tell me about today's 16-2 thrashing against BIG. Were you expecting it to be such a one-sided affair?

I think the main thing was that we got a lot of rounds as CTs, but that we then round the second pistol round. If they would have won the second pistol round and the money control rolling, I think it could have been a very close match. We really didn't expect that the match would be as easy as it was, 16-2. We were just good today.

Yesterday was a bit harder, however, especially playing North and having the whole Danish rivalry going on. You know, valde even said it's about establishing hierarchy, sending a message that they're the second best Danish team. You started off alright but then deflated. Run me through it.

We got a really good start winning the pistol round, and then we got four in a row. We then fell apart on the B bombsite after they did some rushes and so on, which really scared us playing close Monster. That kind of screwed us, as we were rotating onto A all of the time, and using our nades too early...

I just think if we would have played the B site a bit differently we could have won that game. We lost every round on the T side, too, we couldn't even get a single one. When we played FaZe yesterday we only got one round, so we really need to fix our Overpass T side.

Move on to the atmosphere in the team. When OpTic just started there were some expectations set that were perhaps a bit higher than reality, and now you're having to work through everything. Where do you feel the team stands right now?

We're at a "we don't know" stage. We don't know who we can be good against, we don't know what kind of playstyle we want, we don't know how to approach games at the moment... Casper (ruggah) and Snappi are really different, so they're trying to do a mix, and what we need is to find that last piece of the puzzle that will make the game run smooth and make everyone feel confident and comfortable playing.

Everyone was hyped and ready to play against BIG right now, so it felt like we had the upper hand all of the time. Sometimes, when we play against teams that are really good it feels like we always have the lower hand, losing rounds we shouldn't, losing clutches, always unlucky... but this time it was different.

So you said you need to find the last piece of the puzzle. Do you know what that piece could be?

I think we need to tune the T side a little bit so that we don't have to always depend on how many rounds we get on the CT side. That's the problem right now, we build up our T sides really slow, and if we get started we can get rolling, but if we have a bad T side we just pray we win the second pistol round and can get some rounds and start rolling. I think figuring that out is the last piece of the puzzle.

Regarding this tournament, you started with a loss, now you evened it out with a win. What's the feeling regarding the rest of the event?

I hope we can win the next two matches and make top 8. We need some success, for our own game and for our fans, because it has been a downhill road so far. We went out early in every tournament we played, haven't made any playoffs, and what we need is to make it on stage and show what we can do, and we have to show it to ourselves, show that we actually are a good team because we have the players, we have the chemistry, we just need to show what we can do.

You have the players, you have the chemistry, what's the thing you need to make it all click?

The thing we need to make it click is knowing what we need to do at all times and figuring out what people like to do. We need to switch some roles around because when a new player comes in you change some roles and make new CT setups and I think that's what we need. I hope that's what we need.