birdfromsky: "We are for sure one of the best tier-two teams"

As ECSTATIC march upward in the world rankings, with no sign of slowing down, HLTV takes a look at one of the hottest teams in tier-two right now.

"I think we are for sure one of the best tier-two teams, if not the best. We are winning most of our games against the other teams in the top 20-30, so the results speak for themselves, in my opinion."

Confident words from Thomas "⁠birdfromsky⁠" Due-Frederiksen, but as he suggests, they are justified. His team, previously known as Lyngby Vikings, have experienced a meteoric rise in recent months, just now reaching the core's peak ranking of #20.

Along the way they have taken some impressive scalps, besting the likes of Extra Salt, MAD Lions, ENCE, and most impressively Entropiq in best-of-three play in recent months. Those victories have contributed to them earning a plethora of achievements at tier-two events, including first place at Funspark ULTI Regional Series 3, second at the following Funspark ULTI event, first in the Malta Vibes Knockout Series 3, second at Pinnacle Fall Series 2, and first at Pinnacle Fall Series 3, with the last victory also earning them a coveted spot at LAN Sweet LAN 2022.

It is interesting then that it was mostly opportunity that brought the initial core together, according to birdfromsky.

In the beginning of the year, me and raalz built up an international team. It was going okay for a while, but we had so many players in and out and I wanted to play with Daffu again for a long time, but since he didn't want to speak English (laughs) we couldn’t get him before we could play in a Danish lineup. maNkz, who I also played with in the past, got benched in Flames and suddenly we saw the opportunity to talk Danish and we took a bit of a gamble on Danish AWPers, since the market at that point wasn’t that interesting.

Building a Danish lineup has its pros and cons, but it seems that coming from such a strong and well-developed scene is ultimately worth it in the in-game leader's eyes.

I think in general it's a good thing to have a strong scene. If you perform well, there is the possibility of getting up to an even higher level or creating a strong Danish lineup. However, I as an IGL have it a bit harder, since it's often the star players/AWPers who get picked up, which puts you in a worse position if you have to find new good players.

I am glad that we have so many organisations, since I remember the beginning of the Danish scene when there was a lot of roster shuffling in the teams under tier-one. Now everyone is under contracts with buyouts etc., so if you actually lose a player, you can go buy another decent player.

With the core of birdfromsky, Jakob "⁠Daffu⁠" Schildt and Marcus "⁠maNkz⁠" Kjeldsen, alongside Rasmus "⁠raalz⁠" Steensborg and a rotating cast of AWPers including the likes of Theis "⁠J3nsyy⁠" Jensen and Kristoffer "⁠Kristou⁠" Aamand, the team saw modest success initially with decent placings at regional events but struggled to get much done in tier-two tournaments with stronger fields. It was clear changes were needed to push the team to the next level, and those changes came in the player break in August, with the additions of Dion "⁠FASHR⁠" Derksen and Adam "⁠WolfY⁠" Andersson.

The motivation for bringing FASHR in was my idea. We mainly looked at Danish players and tried to build Danish, but when multiple people went to other teams, I said that I didn’t want to rebuild in a Danish team with new players who need to learn from scratch. Therefore, I insisted that I wanted to play with FASHR again, since he is just overall a nice teammate and at the same time not the worst CS player ever seen (laughs).

WolfY was a gamble. We knew he was coming back from NA and I watched some VODs and it wasn't impressive, since we were looking for an AWPer and he rarely had AWP in the VODs I saw, but then he started streaming FPL-C and the communication was really good and we decided to give him a try and later on signed him.

WolfY was most definitely a gamble, a relatively unknown player who has bounced around between the EU and NA scenes. With a dual American/Swedish nationality, an American flag next to his name on HLTV, whilst playing on a Danish team, the player seems to be somewhat of an enigma. Fortunately, he was on hand to explain a little bit about his backstory.

I guess I can finally settle this since I have seen a lot of speculation around this subject (laughs). My parents are Swedish, but me and my siblings are actually born in the US, Florida to be exact. When me and my twin brother were 8 we moved to Sweden due to a separation between our parents and my mother wanted to move back to Sweden, so she took us with her.

Coming to Sweden I actually knew zero when it came to the language and it took me around three years to become fluent. CS-wise I started here and have played in EU for the majority of my career, I did go to North America at the end of 2019 for about a year and a half and played CS, but with COVID hitting and VALORANT coming out, the scene took a big blow and I never really found the success that I wanted to, so I ended up going back to EU because I still wanted to play CS:GO and not swap to VALORANT like most people had done in the region. In the end, though, I am happy with the way things ended up and I am looking forward to the future!

Flag-wise, even though I have lived in the EU for the majority of my life, I have always considered myself more American at heart? I don't know, I'm just born with that NA pride, I guess (laughs), but yes, the US will always be home for me and I just want to represent my country when I compete.

Despite gambling on a relatively unknown player, the improvement in the team was almost immediate, a strong run at the first Malta Vibes Knockout Series seeing them beat solid tier-two opposition in the form of AGO and SKADE; They were only stopped in the quarter-finals by an Entropiq side on the rise, who would go on to win the whole event. birdfromsky was confident that such an improvement would come.

I knew FASHR would deliver, since he already did it in our first international project, and he sure has. As I have said, WolfY was a bit of a gamble, but he has also put up some decent numbers.

The Danish IGL is most definitely correct about those two statements, as FASHR sits at a 1.16 rating for the past three months, with WolfY not far behind at 1.12.

This includes some impressive peaks, such as FASHR's 1.24 rating with +61 KD diff over 18 maps at Pinnacle Fall Series 2, with WolfY posting a 1.20 rating and a staggering +93 KD diff during the same tournament.

The biggest improvement has been firepower. In general, FASHR and WolfY are putting up numbers, which is giving the rest of us more freedom to play our role, which for me is being even more offensive, since often I will be traded, or from the other 2 getting in better lurk positions.

I think the main thing was actually playing together and playing as a team. In the beginning we had too many rounds which were based on solo plays compared to us winning as a team.

As the team captain mentions, not only has this roster seen firepower improve, but they have also steadily improved in a more tactical and strategic sense in the time they have been together, developing a playstyle of their own.

I think I would call us a multiple playstyle team. We for sure have one way we in general like to approach the game, but I think we are one of the few teams who actually practice multiple playstyles, so when we have some anti-strats, we know how we would like to approach the upcoming game both default and strat wise. Sometimes it goes really well and sometimes we have maybe lost a bit of our style by trying to anti-strat too much.

Role-wise, I would say it's me and FASHR who are in general the most offensive ones, while the rest still put pressure on the map and use the space we are giving them.

It hasn't all been plain sailing however, with particular disappointment coming in the form of failed qualifiers for IEM Fall and BLAST in September; opportunities that do not come around all too often. Instead of shrinking away from these failures, the team used them to spur themselves on to greater heights.

I know for a fact it was after a long and hard talk we started stepping up. I remember I had just been in surgery and I was so mad about multiple things, and basically I was just giving every person around the team a very offensive tone because I wasn’t happy. I wanted to win, and everyone didn’t deliver the job they were hired to do. At that point it was either that everyone stepped up and started working harder than any other team or we needed to find another roster.

At the same time I also made my first promise in CS:GO, which was that if people did step up and work hard that before 2022 we would be in the top 30. It only took a few weeks which surprised us all, but after that we just kept working harder than most people.

Hard work is a key phrase, particularly in tier-two. It is a circuit that is a tough grind, particularly considering the sheer number of officials that teams end up playing, and it is a factor that birdfromsky is very aware of.

We as a team want to play almost every tournament, and when you also win some matches, it just means even more officials and a hard time to get practice in. We do prioritise CS a lot, so we still get some practice in, but when you finally think you have a period of time to practice new stuff a new tournament comes up, and maybe we need to be better at saying no.

The work has paid off, however, as throughout the winter period ECSTATIC have gone from strength to strength, distinguishing themselves as one of the best teams outside of tier-one. Not only have they achieved an impressive resume of placings and series wins, they have also secured themselves a spot at an important LAN event. The qualification for LAN Sweet LAN was an important step for ECSTATIC, as it will give them an opportunity to prove themselves on a big stage against some of the biggest teams.

It means a lot. We wanted to win the Pinnacle Series before, but we played Entropiq in the final and that is a tough matchup, and in my opinion they play some really good CS. The relief was so high winning this one and not getting second again. This will be one of the first events probably for our team on LAN, so it's gonna be interesting to see if we are able to play up against some of the tier-one teams.

birdfromsky is satisfied with his team's work for the year, and understandably so. The goals have not yet been set for the roster moving into next year, but it's not hard to imagine that we may see another Danish core push for a spot in the top 10.

I think we have reached our main goal and more for 2021. Now we just want to finish the year with hopefully some wins in the bag and then we will reconsider 2022 goals in the player break. Maybe we can make it to the top 10, but for that to happen you have to do a Copenhagen Flames, which means you have to do really well at a big event and at the correct time.