Xyp9x: "NAVI are the clear favorites but the contenders for the top 4 are all up in the air"

Astralis will be looking to bounce back from a 9-12th place finish at IEM Winter on home soil at BLAST Premier World Final.

We caught up with Astralis stalwart Andreas "⁠Xyp9x⁠" Højsleth at the BLAST Premier World Final media day, where the Danes were going through the motions by posing for photographs and taking interviews ahead of the last tournament of 2021.

The hometown favorites will be looking to bounce back at the studio event after a poor showing at IEM Winter, where they went out in 9-12th place with losses to Ninjas in Pyjamas and Liquid with a single victory against MOUZ.

Leaving behind the blunder in Sweden Xyp9x and company will be fighting to put on a showing more akin to their BLAST Premier Fall Final third place finish, where they impressed in their maiden tournament with Benjamin "⁠blameF⁠" Bremer and Kristian "⁠k0nfig⁠" Wienecke.

The Danish squad will get their double bracket run going with a series against Vitality on Wednesday at 16:30 , a team they will hope to surprise after having a few days to rally and prepare for following the early exit in Stockholm.

You're playing your opening match at BLAST World Finals against Vitality, a dead team walking, but yet here they are fighting and winning IEM Winter. What do you make of this match-up?

On paper they're a dead team but they have a good bond and they just want to finish in style and do whatever it takes to win, which they did in Stockholm. Maybe sometimes once there is an end date on teams they tend to play looser or take more chances and that's what we're seeing with Vitality, and they're actually good at it.

They're playing their strength, we've played them a lot this season, it's a match-up in which we know a lot about them and they know a lot about us, but it plays to our advantage that we've had some time off before this tournament to practice and renew ourselves so hopefully we can get a bit of surprise back into the match-up against them.

You had a bit of a dip at IEM Winter after the BLAST Fall Finals, which seemed a bit linked perhaps to k0nfig's performance. How does that speak of how the team is working in that aspect?

I wouldn't say we were disappointing at IEM Winter, we were better at BLAST. We showed good potential at BLAST and I think that when you're a young team mistakes happen, the map pool isn't so deep, the strategies aren't so deep, and going from BLAST to IEM in Stockholm it made the difference that we didn't have practice to fix our mistakes and improve.

Hopefully it shows here that we had a week to practice and prepare for this tournament. I wouldn't say IEM Winter was bad, but it wasn't on the level with the BLAST performance. I think the preparation time played a big factor in that.

Where do you think you sit now, compared to other teams here? Obviously NAVI are the favorites now and you have a couple of competitors like Vitality and G2. Do you see yourselves in that pack?

A lot of teams have stand-ins, or they're dead teams, so this tournament is like a joker tournament, anyone can win it. Of course NAVI are the clear favorites but the contenders for the top 4 are all up in the air.

We need to find ourselves, we haven't had that much time to prepare but I think that once we get into 2022 and we get the snowball running and we get on with all of the things we want to do, it's just hard to implement a lot of new things when there's tournaments back-to-back. NAVI are clear favorites but other than that it's really open for anyone.

Talking a bit about looking ahead at 2022, we're in a bit of a silly season now with dead teams and changes happening. Is Astralis expected to keep this constellation of five players? We've seen gla1ve pick up the AWP, but is that sustainable long term?

I won't comment on roster changes or anything like that, it's not my job, but I believe in this team and we showed great potential at BLAST and we're just experimenting with a lot of things to see where we can improve. We'll settle in for the 2022 season and see where that goes but for now I'm happy to be on the team.

Back in the day gla1ve said it was important to have a strong AWPer in this meta and it seems that all teams are going in that direction. Is it important to have that natural AWPer?

I do feel it, I also think gla1ve has shown good potential with the AWP. It's too early to say if he'll want to master it and how, but I do think that having a good AWPer is very important in this meta.

The competition is rough in the AWP market, there are good AWP players and very few good dedicated AWPers so I think that AWP players in general are in high value in this era, so to say, so I think that the AWP is playing a significantly large role in this meta now.

Now that you've had a couple of events with this five, how are blameF and k0nfig fitting in. What adjustments have you been making and what's the conversation regarding the new players?

We started with 13 days of preparation before BLAST and we settled in on some positions, but I think they're easy to slide into our system and obviously we're making adjustments based on what they like. I don't feel like it's a big change, slotting them into the team, I think they fit very well and I think they have huge potential to bring us back to the top.

They're also fitting in very well socially, so I'm really happy with this change and the way the team is evolving every day. Every time we practice we get something out of it so I'd say it's going great with them.

It's the last event of the year, so looking back at 2021 there have been a lot of ups and downs for you guys, where do you see yourself now in relation to the beginning of the year?

I feel like 2021 started off poorly with just online tournaments and people were getting tired of it. We came to LAN and there was hope for arenas. We got a really good arena event in Copenhagen with fans and I feel like we ended the year on a good note in the scene, for us.

I feel like it's been really bumpy, we showed potential during the year but never really managed to get the ball rolling. I'm just looking forward to 2022.

What is it you're looking forward to the most and for this team in 2022?

It's hard to say now if we'll be able to get LANs again and all of that kind of stuff right now but I look forward to having arena events and being able to play in front of arenas with this lineup because I think that not only do we have... I won't say inexperienced players, but I'll say less experienced players in arenas, so if we can manage to put on a good showing in these arenas it would be amazing for these guys.

It's early to say, but I really hope we can be a top contender for titles and manage to win and hopefully get a second... well, not a second era. I'd say a second era but I think we already had two eras in Astralis, but a new era, I'd say.

With the competition being the way it is now, particularly NAVI working on establishing their own era, do you think you'll be able to contend that?

Right now NAVI is way ahead of any team, so for us it would be hard in the first part of the year to contend for their spot, but moving on later into the year I think we'll be able to manage to contend for it, or at least I hope so.