flamie: "AVANGAR's problem was that they were a bit scared to win; all they need is confidence"

We sat down with Egor "⁠flamie⁠" Vasilyev at IEM Katowice after Natus Vincere secured a place in the playoffs, discussing the team's communication and expectations going forward.

The CIS powerhouse Natus Vincere went through the New Legends stage in fairly convincing fashion, with a 3-1 record, losing to their nemesis Liquid and beating G2, Vitality, and AVANGAR.

In an interview, flamie commented on the team atmosphere, which he is happy about, and gave props to AVANGAR, who he thinks need more time and confidence to secure deeper tournament runs.

I want to start with your game against Vitality, you played that one very well, 39 kills in the double overtime that you managed to close out in the end. That was still pretty early in the group stage, but how did that game go?

When the score was 14-8 for us, we did some mistakes, we didn't check Shadow and the guy killed us. Two or three rounds later we did the same thing and he killed us again (laughs). Those were some bad mistakes from us which could've cost us the game. But in overtime, we did a comeback from match point two times, one time it was even 3v5 so we had some luck as well. We are happy that we had good communication, we didn't fight after we were leading 14-8 and they came back, the communication was still good. We were trying to win the game and everything went well.

Later on, you played against AVANGAR, a CIS side, kind of up and coming. In the end, they didn't go through to the playoffs, but they had some impressive games, what do you think about them as a team? Where is their ceiling?

I think they are a top15 team, maybe even top10. Their main problem was that they were a bit scared to win, you know? It was their first chance to qualify for the playoffs of a Major. They are good players, all five, a good team, they need to just to find their consistency in big tournaments, they need to alleviate the pressure and they will play great. Because, in practice, or in some less important games, they are playing much better than they played against us and ENCE. I still think they are a good team, and I don't think they need changes, all they need is confidence.

You suffered another defeat to Liquid, 2-0 again, what was that game like? Is there a bit of frustration about not being able to beat them?

To be honest, this game wasn't... We knew it was the group stage still and we wanted to play without any pressure and try to win. On Mirage, we were really close and we could've won it if we didn't do some mistakes, and on Dust2, they won both pistols and the first buy round, when we were CT, they won a 2v5 or 2v4, it was down to some bad communication by us. After that, they took control of the economy and won 16-9, but I guess the game wasn't as one-sided as it was before, in Odense. So I'm happy with how we played, we will look at our mistakes and I hope that next time, if we meet them in the semis perhaps—that is the only way we could play with this bracket—, then I hope we will find the key to beating them.

Overall, it seems like you are kind of happy with how you performed in the first stage? Give me your thoughts on what you managed to do so far.

We didn't have bootcamp because of personal matters, electronic will become a father soon and it could've happened while we were at a bootcamp, so it would be hard to get to Moscow fast. We decided to play online, but we had good preparation. I'm happy with how we played in this tournament, a lot of people thought that we were not in good form after the ICE Challenge and that we would not pass the group stage, but we came and we didn't play with big pressure, we just played our own game. It was hard, but we managed to qualify and I still think we have a good chance here.