ruggah on device: "We've taken steps to make our training environment and travel schedule better"

Astralis' coach addressed device's stress-related absence at the end of 2024, and his team's precarious position in terms of event invites.

Astralis have stuttered and stalled in the early days of 2025, exiting BLAST Bounty early doors before suffering a narrow defeat to MIBR to kick off their campaign in IEM Katowice Play-in.

A victory over FlyQuest has ensured Astralis still have more CS to play in Poland, but it was far from a convincing victory, an unlikely eco win turning the tide when the deciding map seemed to be slipping away from them.

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Astralis survive scare to eliminate FlyQuest

With VRS points on the line, every win is vital for Astralis. "It's in the back of our heads," Casper "⁠ruggah⁠" Due admitted. "But we tend to not focus too much on it because then every game will feel like you have everything to lose."

ruggah sat down with HLTV after Astralis kept their Katowice hopes alive, to discuss their precarious position in terms of invites, Nicolai "⁠device⁠" Reedtz's absence at the end of last year, and how their run in Poland has gone thus far.

Listen to the interview here.

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A tight finish and an eco win ended up deciding it all. Tell me about this series, it could have very easily slipped away.

We didn't do the things we wanted to at the beginning, which is why Train went kinda poorly. We missed out on a lot of the things we agreed on before the game, to play as a unit and play what comes in the mid rounds together. The actual opposite happened, we tried to push some smokes and play a little bit too solo when we got the situation we wanted. We know Train is a mid-round map a lot for Ts if you don't wanna brawl out Mid, so we knew it was gonna be the mid round that decided the game, but not getting more on the T side obviously hurts.

So I gave them a tough speech in between the maps because I think what we showed has not been up to what we've been doing the last month in practice. The boys showed that they were willing to go the extra mile to get this one over the line. As you saw, 13-11 on the third map, it does take a mental toll to get it over in such a long game.

It was your first Train in an official. Does that come with growing pains of not being too familiar with the map at the moment?

No, we actually played it a lot. We feel pretty comfortable on it and also saw that they had a hard time yesterday. But it's the classic one when there's a new map in the map pool, a lot of the things that you fix, it's easier from official games because you don't tend to get the same situations as much in practice, where opponents are maybe a little bit too careless with things and then you don't get the exact same scenarios happening. At least we have something now where we can finetune our game, and we still think it's one of our comfortable maps for sure.

You mentioned that there is a lot of mid-rounding unless you go for those early plays out of T Main. What do you think about the map overall and how it plays out? Does that fit you guys?

I think it fits a lot of the things. I always try to talk about what philosophy we wanna have in general on our team, and communication is one of them. As you are a national team, you have to have an advantage in that department. As a mid-round map like Train, it should also play in our hands that we can get these mid-rounds in our favor and then win the rounds. Then we know it's as hard for the others to come to their T side as well. The brawl part got nerfed a little bit with the spawns, it's not as easy for the Ts to go out. At the beginning of practice it was basically just A rushes every round for like two weeks or something. The changes were good, still it could be tweaked with some things, but I think that's a little bit of a broader discussion. I don't think the B site sees as much action as it used to.

You were in a good position on both maps to take it against MIBR and it slipped away, opposite to today almost. What went wrong there?

The main thing was that it was unacceptable how we handled these good situations we had. We had a long team talk yesterday, because I think if you are not so strict, we lost seven low buy rounds, and if you're really strict, it was nine. And it was still two close games. We just threw away a lot of advantages we had because we were either too passive or too over-eager, and basically that's also what I preached after the first map today, that it was not up to what we talked about.

Yesterday was a learning experience even though we are an experienced team, but also with the roles and stuff that maybe earlier in the previous teams that all the players have been playing on, they have had more of this room that they were the guy that took these type of chances, whereas now we need to get on the same page about who is doing it and who is not. Today in the last two maps it was much, much better. Even though it was 13-11, I don't think it resembled the actual game because I think we were the better team all throughout Inferno.

paiN had a good start to the year at the Bounty. A difficult opponent for tomorrow?

I would say it's kind of a 50/50 matchup. They have the form, where we maybe should have the advantage in the experience department. I know biguzera is really good, we also scrimmed them a couple of times since the beginning of this season. Obviously they are a good team, and I also think our scrims have been pretty 50/50. I think biguzera sets them up pretty well with his mid-rounding and playmaker IGLing, it's not something you see on a lot of teams these days. It's also why they surprise some teams, that he's the guy taking the chance so the others can aim and take the gaps he creates for them. They are a good team for sure, upwards trending, and it's gonna be a fun match.

I wanted to ask about the position that the team is in at the moment. Last year ended on a very sour note with device taking time off just before the Major qualifier. Now you're in this position where there's a lot of pressure on the team to perform so that you don't miss out on invites. How difficult is that to deal with at the moment? How much pressure is there on the team?

Regardless of the Astralis organization, there will always be pressure with how Valve changed everything from the new year. I saw something about one team from the open qualifier for BLAST later in the year gets to the closed qualifier or something, and it's full crazy. Obviously it's in the back of our heads, but we tend to not focus too much on it because then every game will feel like you have everything to lose if you don't win the game. We try to take it one event at a time and we're super grateful that some of the other teams didn't take the Cluj invite. That might give us an actual chance to go deep in the rankings if we perform.

As a side note, opening up 2025 season with BLAST Bounty where everything is full random and the bounty, some get money and some doesn't when they get actual wins. It's a nice idea, but at least where it is in the tournament with the new system, it just feels a little bit flat for our side.

The device situation created a lot of uncertainty around the team and whether this could happen again in the future. He spoke about that you had a talk about better prioritization during the year so that you can manage energy levels better. Is that all there is to it? Is there any worry from you that you have to be extra careful about this situation as the season progresses?

We've taken a lot of steps in terms of making our training environment and traveling schedule better and more suitable for also getting the breath of fresh air, to get your professionalism compared to your social life a little bit, so that the players get this energy burst every once in a while.

The short answer is that we've changed our practice routines a little bit to make sure that they also have time to see their friends and family sometimes.

And as this season progresses, let's say you get a good result here and you do get a lot of invites, is there going to be a lot of prioritization, when at this point there's a lot of pressure on teams to play a lot of these events to make sure that you do stay in that invite cycle?

It's 100% what we aim to do to keep it consistent, to not overload the players just because we're in a bad position but actually trust what we're doing and see how it rolls throughout the whole season. It's been one of the things we've been talking a lot about because we obviously want the five players we have to actually play on the team and not get burned out. We believe we have the right five players, so if we wanna build on the nationality thing and keep going, and also compare ourselves to the other teams that got this time, like Eternal Fire and some of the others, to actually get everything settled within the team in terms of roles, playing style. We also need to see it out to give it time.

Is device the most unlucky person in the world? It seems like he's injured in some way, can you explain what happened?

Bro, I don't know. We played BLAST Bounty, and five minutes before the game, he opens the fridge where we have our drinks and he drops a laptop on his head. Now, yesterday or the day before, he was running on a treadmill and there was a power cut in the whole gym, so it quickly stopped and he was like [imitates stumble], and then it happened again two times within like 10 minutes or something. I think he's up there right now, let's hope he used up all his bad luck for now at least.