Kvik: "We didn't really practice Train a lot, we didn't think our Train was that good to play here"

We interviewed Aurimas "⁠Kvik⁠" Kvakšys after Winstrike picked up their second upset victory in a row with two wins on Train over fnatic and Ninjas in Pyjamas to go 2-1 so far in the New Challengers Stage.

The CIS-based team who advanced to the Major via the newly introduced Minor Play-In stage have been seeded in 15th place by the other teams, but despite an opening loss to NRG, they have surprised with two Train victories in a row over fnatic and Ninjas in Pyjamas on the back of dominant CT sides.

After Winstrike's third match in the New Challengers Stage, which put them into the 2-1 pool, one best-of-three win away from advancing, Kvik spoke to us about the team's strenghts on Train and discussed their map pool going into the series.

Your team was seeded as the 15th team here by your peers, what did you think about that, was that a fair assessment?

I guess it's fair because our results weren't that good and we are brand new team, so certainly the seed is okay, I guess. We expected to be from 10th to 13th, I guess, but 15th is okay, it's fair.

What did you make of the format that ESL introduced at this Major, as a team that is viewed as quite a heavy underdog by most?

I think the format is good. The Major is a big tournament where there should be the best teams in the playoffs, so if the underdogs are good, they are going to beat the good teams and go to the playoffs. The format is really good, I like it, I have no complaints about it.

Speaking of underdogs beating the good teams, after an opening loss to NRG you have upset the two Swedish teams with quite convincing wins on Train. What is it about your team and Train at Majors?

I laughed about it before, QB Fire's Train was good and me and Boombl4 are from there, so we kind of like this map. We didn't really practice this a lot, we didn't really expect to play it at the Major. We have it in our map pool, but we didn't think our Train was that good to play here. I don't know, everything is working for us, the T side is a little bit sloppy, I guess, but we are getting better every day. We just analyzed our mistakes against fnatic and played better today. Train is good for us, I don't know what everyone else is thinking about it.

You put up two big CT halves in those two wins, what do you think makes your CT side on Train so strong?

Everyone is just hitting their shots, playing their roles to perfection, just doing their stuff. We have a lot of combinations on our CT side and we try to vary them when we play, we try to keep changing it, we don't stay in one position for a long time, we just try to read the enemies, try to retake one spot and... everything just seems to be working. fnatic and NiP usually went to the site where we stacked, so we get the feeling of how we read the opponents, I guess, we just stack the site and that's it.

I know you have prepared a lot, even before the Minors, does that make you confident with your map pool now that you are going into the best-of-three portion of this stage?

Yeah, we have a good map pool and I think we even have better chances in BO3. We don't fear the BO3 format - again, the teams are really strong, so I guess it's going to be harder than a BO1, but I feel confident going into the BO3s.