AdreN: "When we entered the arena for the first time, I saw the stage and said: 'this looks similar to Krakow'"

AVANGAR became the second semi-finalists of the StarLadder Major after taking down Vitality on the first day of the playofs. We spoke to Dauren "⁠AdreN⁠" Kystaubayev after the match to talk about their continued upset run in Berlin.

AVANGAR joined Renegades in the semi-finals with a 2-1 victory against Vitality with convincing victories on Mirage and Dust2 either side of the Frenchmen's success on Inferno.

After the series, AdreN talked about the lack of pressure on the team and their ability to stay focused despite a comeback attempt from their quarter-final opponents. He also touched on the upcoming semi-final matchup against the Australians, whom they beat during the New Legends Stage.

After you made the playoffs I talked to dastan, who said that pressure wasn't going to be on you but rather your opponents. So was that the case after all, did you feel any pressure today?

No, we didn't feel anything, we just focused on how we were going to play against Vitality. We knew that they are a strong team, but the important part was how we would head into this game mentally. I'm happy we managed to come in focused and win the series.

Tell me about Mirage, not really a strong suit of yours historically, but today you managed to make it look convincing at the start of the series.

We have had problems on Mirage, but when we had the four-day break we practiced a lot of Mirage, so we just figured out how we were going to play and focused on how to play against Vitality. We knew we had some pretty good rounds on the T side, but we weren't sure about the CT side, so we just focused on that in practice.

You had a good lead at the beginning of Inferno, but ended up dropping it towards the end of the first half, what happened?

We had a good start, but I think it was a lack of experience in the big matches, when you have a lead and you know that you're winning, we were unfocused after that, we made bad calls at the end of the first half. We felt like the game was going out of our hands and they started playing really well. On the CT side, we didn't stop a few rounds that we knew they were going to do and that's it.

Even though you were on low economy almost the entire way through, you kept up the pressure in the first half of Dust2, how did you manage to not let them back into it?

We've been pretty confident on Dust2, we knew how they play and we have a lot of setups to beat the teams that are playing that kind of defense. We read every movement that they made on the CT side. When we switched sides, there was the sick round by ZywOo, but I'm happy we did a great comeback after that, it didn't affect us, so that was cool. I like that, even though it's the first big stage for the guys, I'm happy we didn't tilt and took it seriously.

Facing Renegades in the semi-finals, after your run surely you are confident going into the next series?

Of course we are confident, but no team can be in the semi-finals without deserving it, so it's going to be a big match, it's going to be tough. I know nothing is going to be easy and we just need to focus on that.

A lot of parallels are being drawn to your PGL Major Krakow run, AVANGAR weren't even expected to make the playoffs and now you're in the semis proving everyone wrong, is this starting to feel a similar way?

Actually, when we entered the arena for the first time I saw the stage and said that 'yeah, this looks similar to Krakow.' Yeah, we felt pretty good going on stage, it didn't scare us, and it hyped us up.