aizy: "It's hard to play your own game versus NiP, they can get in your head"

We spoke to Philip "⁠aizy⁠" Aistrup after North upset Liquid in the opening round of Group B at ECS Season 6 Finals.

We asked the Dane about North's second tournament with the new lineup, IEM Chicago, where they went out in the group stage after losses to Astralis and LDLC, as well as about the following two weeks during which the online leagues came to a close.

We then shifted our focus towards ECS, where North surprised Liquid on Nuke after coming back from a 2-8 deficit with a strong CT side, which means they will go up against Ninjas in Pyjamas at the end of day one in a match for a spot in the playoffs.

Going back to Chicago, you went out to LDLC at the end, so how would you evaluate the tournament for North?

I would say we have learned a lot from it, we started out by gambling Cache vs. NRG and it paid off in the end. Then we met Astralis, we made too many mistakes, and if you make too many mistakes against a team like Astralis, they're going to take advantage of them, so we got stomped there.

It got us a bit tilted, to be honest, but we had our heads high and thought we could probably beat LDLC, but they turned out to have a really good tournament. They really surprised us, I think we underestimated them a little bit, but they had a good run. It was a little bit disappointing, but, overall, we just learned a lot from that event.

You've played a couple of tournaments now and cadiaN mentioned how the online leagues hinder practice, so how has the evolution of this lineup been since all of that has ended?

Yeah, we just practiced a lot since it ended, taking advantage of having the time to practice now. We had to run our things through, which we couldn't do in the period where we had to play a lot of online matches, so being really confident with the tactics we do and stuff like that we do in practice. That's basically what we did in the time off.

Are you more confident with your map pool?

Yeah, of course. I think we're still in the learning process, we had a lot of online matches so the time to practice was minimal. It was hard for us to get everything straight in our playbook, but, yeah, I think we just had to make the best out of the situation. We're playing all seven maps and it's hard to be really good on all seven maps, but we're really going to try to have at least five or six really good maps for us.

Heading over to ECS and your win against Liquid, that's quite a big scalp, but it didn't look like you were going to have a chance at the start, you were down 2-8, so tell me about the comeback.

We had a really rough start, we kind of got caught off-guard by their offensive play as CT, destroying our plays when we had to do tactics, they just ran into us. I think we adapted pretty well and we ended up with a 6-9 half. We just slowed down in the beginning and then we had the game in our hands, we could start doing momentum stuff.

In the next-to-last round, you opted for a bait setup on ramp and a two-man setup on A as well, which ended up working perfectly, was that decision based on some read?

Yeah, we just had a really good CT side, and when you have a rolling CT side it's pretty easy to read your opponent. We just destroyed them on inner and we knew they probably wouldn't go outside because we destroyed them there, as well. So the only thing left was ramp, we just had a really good bait setup there and it worked out.

You're facing NiP later today, how do you feel about the rare matchup?

NiP has a playstyle that's... I wouldn't say random, but it's hard to just play your own game versus them. They can be in your head all of a sudden and you have to watch out for that. If we just keep our heads straight, that's pretty much it.