reck: "It's just fun, anchoring a site and making it yours"

The American rifler's roles "fell into his nature", and he hopes to provide a stable base for M80 as they take aim at Major qualification.

M80, despite losing star rifler Mario "⁠malbsMd⁠" Samayoa to G2, are having a solid season.

Ethan "⁠reck⁠" Serrano and company secured a top-eight finish in ESL Pro League 20, retained their ESL Challenger NA title, and now enter the Americas RMR as the fifth highest-ranked team with seven Major slots on offer.

Part of what drove reck to go pro was watching classic Rank S streams of Braxton "⁠swag⁠" Pierce and Joshua "⁠steel⁠" Nissan on his journey through the ESEA divisions in North America.

After the heartbreak in Monterrey, reck, a stable, sensible anchor-lurker, is still waiting to play in his first Major, but he and M80 arrive in Shanghai knowing that they can qualify. "We feel prepared and confident."

If you cannot see the Soundcloud embed, you can listen to the interview here.

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First of all, how was the preparation, you just mentioned your EU bootcamp, how do you feel coming into the RMR?

Yeah, we feel very prepared. We had two weeks, about 14 days, to prepare and we were just going over our stuff, and building new stuff for this tournament, and everything went smoothly. We had a rough patch at the start but that's usually how it goes when you're learning new stuff. We feel prepared and confident.

How was Thunderpick for you? It is more of a warmup event, really, but were you concerned at all by the BESTIA games?

Our result definitely sucked, but the style of their team was hard to play against. Put us against other teams, and we wouldn't have performed like that. We had a rough meeting with them, learning how they play. They're a very strat-heavy team and just how they were playing, how fast they were playing, all the fakes and stuff, so we had to go back to the drawing board and review what we did wrong.

It should have turned out better but we were not playing our A game. That's what we had the bootcamp for, and right after that event we started, so it gave us more time to prepare, if anything.

Is the RMR a different type of challenge? We know you guys for coming to Big Events and taking some scalps, used to being the underdog maybe. Is it a different type of preparation when most people expect you to qualify?

I wouldn't say it's a different type of preparation, it's more a different type of intensity. We all really want to make the Major. That's the big tournament, so in terms of intensity preparing for a specific event, this one's just higher. But in terms of preparation, it's about the same. We scrim, review our mistakes, add some new stuff, just that baseline is the same. But the intensity for sure, everyone's locked in, trying to prepare their best, put in the most hours, and come in ready.

How is it here? I saw slaxz-'s tweet laughing about some of the complaints people have made. Are you okay with it? What is going on, because there are conflicting things online?

I saw people complaining about the desk height, I didn't see the whole thing but I saw slaxz-'s tweet, and I kind of agree with him. I don't think anything is wrong. The PCs are running really well. The monitors are obviously different but we were on different monitors anyway because we were at the Vitality bootcamp before this, and they had the AGON monitors. Not 540 Hz, but the monitor is different and the colors are different because of the different monitor. But I don't think it makes a drastic difference.

In terms of the desk, not having changeable heights, I think that's whatever, it's a practice roomm right? It's all minuscule to the big thing, especially because it's just a practice room. I don't know what other complaints were made, but the desk height and monitors at least.

I also wanted to take the opportunity, because I realized we'd never interviewed you properly before, so just something on your journey here? What do you think pushed you to make it?

When I first started the game I just developed a drive. Initially, just for fun like everyone else, but I started really getting into the game and putting in a lot of hours just by purely enjoying it. At age 14, I thought, 'this game is really fun,' and started competing in ESEA Open, Main, then Advanced, then MDL. Once I hit MDL, I realized there was a lot of potential. I went off the feeling of enjoying the game, and then realized I could be competing and chased that ever since.

Back in the day, Rank S really made that stuff fun when you got to see pros playing against each other, steel, swag, all those OGs. Watching them play was fun and I always wanted to get to that level after watching them play.

About your role in M80, it's the type of player — at least from the outside, maybe you want different roles — that NA doesn't produce that much, as a specialist anchor. Do you see yourself as one of those, or is it a circumstance thing, a career thing? What's the story?

M80 was my first team where I was really solidifying myself in that role. ATK, I was kind of getting there and those were my two big teams. Before that, it was just PUG teams. I don't really know how I fell into that role, I think one of my teammates suggested it and I started picking up roles that applied to that. It's just fun, I guess, just anchoring a site and making it yours.

In terms of lurking now, again, it fell into my nature, the way I play. I don't know how I fell into the role to be completely honest but M80 was definitely the start of realising, 'I'm an anchor-lurker,' and I've been developing myself every since, and I'm loving it right now.

And the team overall, losing malbsMd could have gone a lot worse than it has with Lake. Do you think you are prepared to qualify based on that?

We all feel confident, for sure. We all come here knowing that we can, it's just going to depend on our performance. In terms of losing malbs for Lake, Lake has been an awesome substitute. He's been learning, he meshes with the team really well. We're not even looking at ourselves like we're minus malbs, that's not really a thing anymore. We recreated ourselves plus Lake and what he needs, in terms of evolving and being as good as he can. We're all confident in what we have right now.

Date	Matches
Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024 Americas RMR
12/11/2024	M80 07:30 BOSS	Match