flamie: "We still have some nervousness we usually don't have in practice"

Natus Vincere's Egor "⁠flamie⁠" Vasilyev talked to HLTV.org after his team took down DreamEaters and joined the 1-1 pool at the StarLadder Major.

The Russian-Ukranian roster picked things up after the initial defeat they suffered to G2 in an overtime game on Overpass. On the same map, Natus Vincere looked confident against DreamEaters to bounce back in Berlin.

After the match, we spoke to flamie about the preparation, Andrey "⁠B1ad3⁠" Gorodenskiy's influence, Kirill "⁠Boombl4⁠" Mikhailov's role and the issues Natus Vincere still has to fix.

When did you get back together after the break and start practicing? And what was the focus of the practice?

We decided not to go to Chicago or BLAST LA so we started our vacation earlier than other teams. We also ended it earlier, one or two weeks before other teams came back. So we had good preparation, a lot of preparation before this tournament.

Talking about coming in early, is this something you did consciously to be in better form for the Major?

Yes, because we didn't have a lot of good results last couple of months so we decided to play more before, to be in good shape and maybe play even better here. So yeah, it was planned.

How much does B1ad3 have a say in these decisions, team-wide decisions?

We had a team chat with our psychologist and B1ad3 and we discussed it all together in a circle at ESL One Cologne, and we came to an agreement that we will go earlier. B1ad3 said that it was a good decision and we agreed with it.

It is always hard when you don't play a lot of official matches, but how happy are you with your individual form coming into this event?

As a team, I think we have pretty good individual form, but you know, practice is not the same as official games, we don't feel pressure on practice, we play much better. And here... Boombl4 played just maybe 10 maps for our new squad, he didn't play a lot of officials with us, he doesn't know how it is. Now it feels like from game to game we are starting to play better, but we still have some nervousness we usually don't have in practice. We need to fix this before the next match.

For you personally, how is it playing with Boombl4 and what he brings to the team?

He is very aggressive and he is a smart guy that tries to read the enemies and to do a push when they won't expect it. On the CT side, on some maps, I play with him and he likes to coordinate what we are going to do. If you feel the game, it is pretty easy to understand what he wants to do and how we need to play. I think he brings us more communication and he is a guy that can entry-frag, he is a guy that can go first and die, that is not very common in Counter-Strike now, not everyone wants to go first. I think he helps us a lot and brings some new firepower and new, young, fresh blood.

You mentioned that he coordinates the sites on the CT side, is that something that happens on all the maps, that he helps coordinate?

No, no, it is more that he can coordinate with players, sometimes if Zeus doesn't feel the game or doesn't have good calls, electronic or s1mple or Boombl4, everyone on the team can help. But Boombl4 likes to do it and he was an in-game leader in his old team so he knows how to do it. So sometimes he helps us.

I want to touch on the G2 game, it seemed like you were going to put the "Na`Vi always loses the first game" behind you but in the end, they managed to come back. So what was the issue?

To be honest, I don't know what really happened, we had an 8-2 lead and the game became really close. But we lost two pistols, they won both anti-force so that is six round and we didn't play well on the T side of Overpass but we were still leading 14-10 and lost. But as you said, the first game, I don't know what it is, maybe it is a curse, but we didn't play a good game to be honest. We tried to fix it today but maybe the opponent wasn't on the same level as G2, since G2 beat them on Overpass pretty easily. I think we still need to fix a lot of stuff because we don't play the game we play on practice.

At the beginning of the game against Dreameaters you started well, then lost the 1v4 to Krad and then there was a scary part of the game. Can you tell me about that 1v4, what happened?

To be honest, we had a miscommunication on our TeamSpeak, we thought he was on A because there was some smoke on A and we didn't expect him on B. He killed Boombl4 with his knife out and I was in a bad position, he peeked me, and then in the 1v2 we didn't have a defuse. But, you know, we didn't tilt too much, we just said it is okay, let's play more, but they crushed our economy, we didn't win the next round, we had to eco, and managed to take nine rounds. After that, on the T side, it was pretty good for us.

Closing thoughts, going forward in the Major, there are a lot of dangerous teams, some from the Challengers Stage, some Legends. How confident are you that you are going to get that first title for Na`Vi?

Right now I can't say anything because we are just 1-1, but of course, at every Major Na`Vi is a team that wants to win and we were in finals three times and we are experienced players, it wouldn't be a miracle if we managed to go to the final for example. But of course, we need to work a lot more now and discuss our mistakes, fix them, and we really want to win.