volt: "GamerLegion have a better plan for the future compared to what we had in ITB"

The Romanian-British rifler reveals all about replacing iM in GamerLegion.

The BLAST.tv Paris Major was a fairy tale not just for Sebastian "⁠volt⁠" Maloș in Into the Breach but his new side GamerLegion as well. Moving into the new season both teams will endeavour to prove that their playoff runs were no fluke, but they will have to do so in much-changed rosters.

Part of that shuffle included volt replacing compatriot Mihai "⁠iM⁠" Ivan in GamerLegion, a huge task for a player that did not even have all the star positions in Into the Breach. After an opening loss to Monte in Cologne we spoke with volt on that challenge, as well as his decision to leave for pastures new.

Maybe not the debut you'd have dreamed of, tell me what went wrong in the opener.

In the first map, Mirage, we started super cold. We knew what we had to do going into the game, but we still weren't doing everything as we've said before. There were still some gaps in the communication and we weren't as confident taking duels. Coming in at a later stage when they had already warmed up in the play-in, they had an advantage in some way, but we were just cold.

Tell me a little bit about your move to GamerLegion. What attracted you to to this project?

I feel like GamerLegion have a better plan for the future compared to what we had in ITB [Into the Breach]. I spoke to ash before when he asked me about joining the team and the way he talked me through how he wants things to work and everything, it kind of just influenced me.

What about ash as a coach? How different is he to Juve, have you noticed a difference? In the BLAST.tv documentary you can see how good he is at emotionally managing players, tell me what he's like.

First of all he is way more experienced. Juve is 20 years old, ash is 32. Age [and] experience play a big part I think. Being the oldest in the team, he's more of this father figure and I feel like he is giving me much much more help individually, one-on-one. Emotionally as well, like you said, he is trying to make sure everyone is in the game. Also he does things a bit more professionally, I don't know, there's much more structure to how he does things. It's hard to compare him to Juve because of this age gap. He's had more time.

Tell me about replacing iM. You've got the same flag as him on HLTV now, and a lot of his positions as well. Do you feel like the star? Was that a factor in joining?

I wouldn't say the positions were one of the things that made me want to join 100%, but for me, for example, I didn't really play all of these positions before. So there is a big part of me needing to adapt and learn how to play as well as I can in these positions and it's going to take time.

This is the first event and obviously filling in iM's shoes is not too easy if you look at the performance he ended with. I guess, people are going to look at me and just write GamerLegion off because one-to-one I look way weaker in comparison to iM, right? So I think it will take time, it is a bit hard for me now but with more practice I think it should get better.

It felt like a bit of a worst case scenario for GamerLegion, losing the two big pieces in siuhy and iM. How hungry is the team still, Major finalists but losing those pieces? What's it like inside the team?

It does feel like starting fresh in a way, they know what they've done before reaching the finals but they're not really continuing with that. They're looking at it as more of a new thing and a new start.

And nealaN as well, can you compare him to Thomas?

Thomas only just started IGLing in ITB, he didn't have experience. In a way, [laughs as nealaN walks past] nealaN has done it before so it feels more natural to play off of him, he has much more control over the team. It's more micro stuff as well; Thomas had his struggles in the role, of course it's not easy to just start IGLing out of nowhere. So I feel like nealaN has his style and he is also trying to adapt now, there's so much new stuff in this team. Like before this event we were just trying to get as many maps as possible to as high a standard.

You kind of mention the professional thing before with ash, is there more infrastructure in GamerLegion? How different is the support staff?

We have two coaches actually, we have ash and we have Bogdan as assistant coach. And, of course, if you have two coaches then they can spread out responsibilities. Bogdan, for example, he helps the players with individual stuff way more than ash would. ash focusses on the main team stuff, and then Bogdan is like small stuff and positions, grenades, that kind of thing.

But I mean, I feel like GamerLegion does have the edge as an organization over ITB, they have been around for much longer as well so they have the base set. And in terms of the coaching support, it is more professional in terms of having more set outside the server, things we do. Before with ITB, we didn't really look at the game in a way that was too technical, now here we are trying to focus on every single point of the game. So yeah, having two coaches is really good for that.

Final thing on Into the Breach. Do you think your form could have been sustainable? Does any part of you wish you could have had a bit longer with the UK core?

Now, I will never know. But the run we had in Paris, as great as it was, looking into the future it's hard to say if that is something that could be repeated. It was great and everything but, realistically it would have been tough going forward. Even though we had that run, in online things we played before it didn't go as great personally. Every team has it's issues, and for me it seemed like in this team, in the long run, [GamerLegion] would be more stable.