Airax: "When we're on LAN it's so easy, everybody is communicating so much detail"

HAVU's captain spoke about making the playoffs in Finland and their level on LAN vs. online.

HAVU have blown expectations out of the water at their home tournament in Espoo. The Finnish team had the advantage of not being in the group with heavy-hitters MOUZ and Complexity, but still faced stiff competition in GamerLegion, ENCE, and fnatic, even though the latter two teams recently made changes.

Their first game against ENCE went swimmingly as a poor veto from Lukas "⁠gla1ve⁠" Rossander's side banned two of the maps that the Finns have a 0% winrate on, and they capitalized upon that by taking a 13-6 win on Nuke. HAVU then emerged on top of an embattled three-map affair against GamerLegion to secure a spot in the arena and in front of their home crowd.

Read more

HAVU stun GamerLegion to reach Elisa Masters Espoo playoffs

HLTV spoke to HAVU's in-game leader Jussi "⁠Airax⁠" Airaksinen after the result, with the Finn explaining that Otto "⁠ottoNd⁠" Sihvo's previous high-level experience gave him a "good feeling" coming into both games. He also touched on how the series against GamerLegion went and discussed HAVU's poor run of results online, stating that the communication is much better on LAN and it feels easier to play.

Congratulations, how does it feel to make it to the arena to play in front of a home crowd?

Thank you, it feels really amazing, I just don’t know what to say, it feels really good. Before the games I had a good feeling because we have ottoNd, who has played a high level of Counter-Strike before, and always when we play a good team he plays out of his mind. So I had a really good feeling about these games.

To talk about the game itself, you had a really good T side on Ancient, you started really well. Why do you think your T side was so strong on that map?

I don’t know, we just landed the shots we needed and stayed calm.

They nearly made a comeback on Ancient, why do you think they were able to come back into the game?

We had a few miscommunications and a few times I didn’t have a smoke, so just small things. When the game was 11-10, I knew that they would not end the game on B site, so we stacked two rounds in a row on the A site and we won them. Before that I just knew it would happen.

So it was that key read that allowed you to get over the line?

Yeah.

What went wrong on Overpass, that map was not even close?

It’s not been a good map [for us], we have never been great on it and we just slept a few times in some situations. It was the first time here when we didn’t have that good communication, and maybe we thought we had won the game already or something.

On Nuke, you had to make a bit of a comeback of your own, the game didn’t start out too well for you. What was the atmosphere and feeling like in the team when you were quite far down, did you always believe you could make the comeback?

I don’t know about believing, but at least we didn’t… we had good momentum and hype still, even though we had a 4-8 T half. We had nice momentum when we won a few rounds, and sometimes on CT side calling is so easy.

You just get that feeling sometimes on CT side?

Yeah.

Online, especially recently, you’ve had a few struggles. Why do you think you’ve been able to play so much better here compared to online?

I don’t know how to answer. We had a bootcamp one month ago and we didn’t lose a single map in official games, we won like eight maps in a row, though of course they were pretty bad enemies. After that we played 2-3 weeks praccing at home and playing officials, and it was just the worst games from us ever.

When we are playing on LAN it’s just so easy, everybody is communicating so much more detail, it’s so easy.

Do you think it’s anything to do with the excitement of playing on LAN, and also playing against bigger teams? Does it allow you to step your game up?

Yeah of course, and I know that sLowi and ottoNd, who have played before on a high level, will have so much confidence and always play better when the enemies are high tier.

Last question and I will let you go: How excited are you to play in front of a home crowd in the arena?

(laughs) I don’t know what to say, it’s just super awesome.