electroNic on Boombl4 primary AWPing: "It worked better than other options"

electroNic's Cloud9 team qualified for the Major with a 3-0 record.

Cloud9 became the first team to qualify for the PGL Copenhagen Major after traversing the European RMR B with a 3-0 record. The Russian team began their road with wins against PERA and Apeks before they finished the job with a 2-1 win against Vitality.

The squad, which has long been without a primary AWPer, opted for a switch before the RMR, with Kirill "⁠Boombl4⁠" Mikhailov taking over the role, meaning it was no longer shared between three players. That seemed to have given Cloud9 more stability, which Denis "⁠electroNic⁠" Sharipov hopes will continue in future tournaments.

After the win against Vitality, electroNic spoke to HLTV about Cloud9's AWP role, their slow start to the season, and their RMR campaign.

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You have qualified for the Major after going through the RMR 3-0. What are you feeling right now?

I'm feeling really happy because it was our goal to get through to the Major. We reached our goal, our minimum goal. I hope we will keep that focus in the Major so we can do some damage there.

You just beat Vitality, the number-two team in the world right now. What helped you put together such a dominant Anubis?

We won our pick, and they won theirs, so it was pretty balanced. There is nothing special to say. It's all about hitting our shots, that's why I think we won, and we also won a lot of clutches. These are the reasons.

ZywOo came into this game with a 2.73 average rating but didn't have as much impact against you guys. Did you specifically prepare for him?

No, we didn't specifically prepare anything for ZywOo. We never prepare anything specific for any player but for the team, the whole team. I don't think it's all about the statistics. We don't look into the statistics when we meet any player because we have a lot of experienced players who understand it's not about the stats in the game.

I also wanted to ask about the AWP role in your team. Before, a few different players picked the AWP up, but here at the RMR, it was only Boombl4. Is this the plan going forward?

We just tested something, and it worked better than other options, I will say. For now, we're doing it like this. We'll see in the future. I'm not going to say anything more because it's a bit of a secret, and I don't want to open everything outside of our box. For now, we are doing this, but maybe in the future we will change something. I'm not sure, so I'm not going to lie.

The start of this season, especially in Katowice, wasn't great for you. What changed from Katowice to the RMR?

The main thing that changed was our mentality. In our minds, we were devastated when we lost all those tournaments, and we just tried to get that battery back before the RMR. We discussed what went wrong and why we kept making stupid mistakes, and we just tried to be ourselves. We tried to play our game, as individuals at least, and it worked well here for us. Hopefully, we're going to keep that for the next tournaments.

Talking about the next tournaments, you have one month until the Major. What's your plan until then?

We want to get to the Major in the best shape we can. We will go on a bootcamp in some time, but I don't know exactly when it will be. But the plan is to prepare for the Major.