dupreeh: "It feels a little bit weird being on this side of the derby"

dupreeh gave his thoughts on a dramatic Danish derby victory over his old team, Astralis.

HEROIC are in a state of turmoil after the duo of Jakob "⁠jabbi⁠" Nygaard and Martin "⁠stavn⁠" Lund allegedly forced Casper "⁠cadiaN⁠" Møller out of the team, only to decide they preferred a move to Astralis to staying with HEROIC.

Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen is the veteran that HEROIC have turned to in their time of need and the 30-year-old Dane has answered the call magnificently, acting as their IGL during previous matches all whilst fragging out often as well.

Coming into BLAST Premier Fall Final HEROIC brought cadiaN back into the lineup for one last hurrah, and already the makeshift squad has earned a memorable win by eliminating bitter rivals Astralis in a dramatic 2-0 series.

dupreeh took some time out after said victory to talk about its significance with HLTV, what his time has been like in HEROIC, playing with cadiaN, and his future.

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Congratulations on the win, making it to the playoffs. This Danish derby, your former organization, maybe not as many players you used to play with, but at least one of them — tell me about what mentality you went into this match with, especially considering the situation Heroic is in?

The whole mentality was just to go out and do my best, that's always my mentality, even if I play against Astralis, Vitality, or whoever I end up facing. I think today we obviously played a lot better, but we also played a team that maybe isn't performing as well as Vitality do, so I think that comes into the equation as well. Today there was just a lot more fire. It's always like that when you play the Danish derbys, you always want to perform well and you also want to win, because that's something on the line.

I'm just glad we came out on top, and we just assured everyone on the team that we were gonna go here and make it count for the last one, or potentially last one, it's not the last one yet. It obviously feels really good, but it also feels a little bit weird being on this side of the derby when I've usually been playing for Astralis.

It seemed like you were lost on Vertigo at the beginning, but then you kicked into another gear and pulled off the comeback. What happened there?

I think we started off a little bit slow and we ended up losing a 1v4 to Buzz. That didn't really help the confidence in the team. It was kinda awkward, but no one got upset about it or frustrated, we just kept on going. We just lost a few more rounds, and then it just felt like we realized, we obviously knew with the new MR12 we needed to do something. I think people just started playing with a little bit more balls, taking the fights instead of relying so much on playing setups and with each other. We just wanted to go out there and prove that we can hit our shots. We just started to get rolling from there.

Maybe Astralis thought it was gonna be very easy, obviously being up 8-0, but I think we definitely won the mental game on that one, and then we just started snowballing from there, had some really good calls from cadiaN, everyone started hitting their shots, and ultimately we just had some of the luck going our way as well.

I noticed one specific round, I was standing in front of you, it was 11-11 on Overpass, where it was a 2v2 situation and sjuush ended it with two kills. I saw you were the one talking the most in that situation, can you tell me what you were talking about?

The situation got into our favor since we knew both rotated from CT at that point. I told the guys, 'You need to fall a little bit back, but you need to still stay close, because there's a good chance they might still have a smoke for the bomb, and if you fall all the way back and they have a smoke, there's a big chance they will just smoke defuse it.' The guys decided to play close together, and I said to cadiaN, he was the one hiding, I said, 'You have to go closer to the wall, otherwise when he swings he's gonna see you as well and you need to look down.' But sjuush killed both of them and they didn't even see cadiaN, so at that point sjuush just aimed them out and had a really good game.

I think I'm just used to the whole philosophy about the game that, when you're dead, you're not out of the round, you still help your teammates, you still contribute. I didn't have my best Overpass game on the T side at least, so for me, instead of being quiet and not trying to do anything, I'm just trying to be vocal about what's good to do and offering myself up, helping the team with the communication, which I've always done and I think is a really important part of the game.

What is the situation with you and Heroic? You've only committed until the end of the year. Is this a trial for both sides, are you looking at what their plans for the future are, can you explain that?

I think my future is really open, there's nothing really set in stone right now. I'm having a really good time in Heroic, and for me I'm just about wanting to show that I still want to play, I still want to compete and I wanna show that I've still got it, I guess. So I'm really enjoying my time here, and obviously we'll see what happens, with the Major coming up really close in Copenhagen, that's something I don't wanna miss out on. Whether that's gonna be with Heroic or it's gonna be with another team, I don't know yet right now, it's still up in the air, but the most important thing for me is that I'm having a good time playing, and I'm having a good time playing for Heroic, so we'll just take it from there.

You seem to be hitting a good stride and statistically you've been really consistent. What is that down to, is it CS2 just fitting you, is it this team, having less pressure, or what is it?

I think it's a mix of a lot of things. It's also been different having to play the online tournaments with Chr1zN and sirah from MOUZ NXT, where I had a lot more freedom in some sense, I could just use a lot of my experience there with the young guys. Now, playing with cadiaN, which obviously is a real in-game leader and he has a lot of say as well, and in that department it's a little bit different. It's also kinda hard that you need to always adapt because maybe I got really comfortable playing the other way, but now I need to adapt, I got a couple of different other roles, so we keep changing things up.

But overall I think it's just about having fun, and I think I'm enjoying the game, enjoying competing, enjoying playing, and that's always been my strength. If I'm having a good time, then I usually put up good numbers. It can obviously crack somewhere (chuckles), but overall it's about the mentality that you wanna keep improving and not feel done.

What do you think about cadiaN? You didn't play with him in the online tournaments, but now you got some experience with him. He's a very specific in-game leader and he has set up this very dynamic style and it seems like something that suits you. What are your thoughts on him and how he's leading?

I think we're having a good time. He's also been coming to me, when we were playing Vitality yesterday, he asked me if I saw something that he could do better, so I also think that he's trying to ask me for advice and ask me for my experience. I think we get something out of each other and it's definitely different in the way that he's an experienced in-game leader.

It's been really fun so far, but I also think it's been hard adapting to the way that he calls because you can definitely feel that the way cadiaN calls is how the old Heroic lineup functioned. We have different players now, but you can feel that TeSeS and sjuush are more used to his calling, and sometimes it gets in the way that they know exactly what to do, and we're like, 'Are we doing this, this, and this?' You could feel at the beginning that we had to adapt to the whole thing, but I think we've done a really good job right now to get on the same page as much as we can.

I think we assured each other that we don't have to play perfect CS. That's one of the keys for us, that we're going to make tons of mistakes because we're not used to playing together, and I think we just need to rely on being good teammates and helping each other. That can get us really far.