sdy: "We told BOROS: 'nafany plays con, you have two legs, go win'"

"We can take on anybody, that's our mentality and we're only looking forward," said a defiant sdy after Monte upset both ENCE and Cloud9.

The former Natus Vincere and Spirit player spoke to HLTV after a perfect first day at the Europe RMR B in Copenhagen as his team Monte took down ENCE and Cloud9 to get one win away from qualifying for the BLAST.tv Paris Major.

Viktor "⁠sdy⁠" Orudzhev talked about being "one with the game", Mohammad "⁠BOROS⁠" Malhas' strong showing, and the atmosphere in the team, citing "zero toxicity" as a reason for their success. Find out more about him and the team in the interview below.

Monte, tier two destroyers. Are you now tier one destroyers?

Too early to say, we still have one best-of-three. If we qualify, yeah.

One of the things that were very noticeable before coming here is that you have 139 maps played, a super grind. Tell me a bit about having so many online maps.

Basically it's an insane experience because the year before, I was in NAVI, and there it was like 60 maps or something over all of the year. When you play this much I feel like you don't even have to warm up because you and the game... One piece. You know, two pieces separate, but if you play this much then you introduce yourself into the game. Like a constructor, a LEGO, you know? It feels like that.

So you're one with the game now.

Yeah

Let's jump into what happened today. 2-0, two big upsets, dream start. Could you have expected such a great first day?

Of course if you don't expect it, it never comes, but we were ready for the games. We practiced a lot. We could practice more, but due to sickness from BOROS and me now, we didn't practice as much as we could. Maybe it would be better, but overall we were happy with the performance. The best thing is the mood in the team. It's the key factor because we have zero toxicity in the team, zero.

What's the secret for having such a good mood in the team?

First of all, good personalities, for sure, and we concentrate on that so that we support each other. Before the game I or the coach will tell them to try and be a team, to help each other, to throw the nades, flash, or whatever, and just help with words as well.

Tell me a little bit about coming to LAN with this team because it's a team that's maybe not so proven. You're the most experienced guy, so what did you expect out of yourself, the team, your teammates?

I'm not going to lie, I was a bit scared about how we would perform on LAN because we have four young players that didn't play that many big LANs, only local [ones], but it's surprisingly good, I can say. I didn't expect it at all, I was thinking it could be worse, so nice surprise.

Tell me about the two matches you played today. What were some standout moments that you noticed and helped you come out on top?

When we saw the match-up with ENCE we knew that we were going to play Ancient because it's their best map and they have no choice to not pick it, but their Ancient is kind of weak, to be honest. If you watch the demos and analyze it, it was a very good pick for us.

Against Cloud9 we didn't expect to be this much stronger than them on Mirage, but we have BOROS. I can say he headshots pretty well if he's in a good mood. Before the game we told him 'nafany plays con, you have two legs, go win.' He just ran in almost every round to kill him. That's it, that was the game plan basically.

Going back to the ENCE game, you started on the CT side and got a big lead, but then you struggled and it looked like they were going to come back. What did you need to close that out?

When we won the pistol and two more rounds, anti-force and anti-eco, we had a huge lead, like thirteen or fourteen rounds. Woro2k called something, but I stopped the call because I didn't want to show what we had since we had this huge lead, so we basically played default until we won. That's the reason we lost so many rounds, because we didn't show anything. We have a lot of things on Ancient that we can show, if an enemy wants to pick Ancient against us, then good luck.

Talking about the map pool, you guys are Anubis specialists, you have a 22-4 record. What's the decision to really drill that map and how does that affect your vetoes? I guess it gives you a lot of power.

We have two maps like this, Mirage and Anubis. So Anubis, the first time I saw it I really loved it and the team was already playing it well before I came. I was basically the last piece that they were missing on mid and it created it a masterpiece because we have good individuals who can open sites and on this map it's impossible to counter because if you have T advantage it's unwinnable as CT. 5vs4 is 100% T win. It's a T-sided map and we're a T-sided team, as I like to think, so for us it's the best option to play this map.

You had a dream start, 2-0, two upsets. Now you're going into the best-of-threes, a whole new ball game. How do you feel going into series play?

I think we like best-of-threes more than best-of-ones, at least online it was like that. We have big struggles in best-of-ones. Maybe slow starts, I don't know why, but overall I believe in our best-of-threes because we have Mirage, we have Anubis, we always have what to pick. So we can secure our map and our map pool is kind of deep. We can play six maps and we're fine with any.

After the wins today, do you feel like you can take on anybody?

We were thinking that even before, that we can take on anybody, that's our mentality and we're only looking forward.