M80 have secured their place at the Singapore Major after beating Legacy, getting the job done early after some solid local LAN results and impressing at Pro League.
Whether that Major spot is worth much remains to be seen, after Valve's changes to the sticker system hurt the revenue of teams and players in Cologne.
But on the server, M80 are on the charge.Having lost two maps by two rounds to BETBOOM, they bounced back against TYLOO and then beat VRS number five Legacy.
They're a side that do have the ability to hurt top teams, evidenced by their Porto win over Natus Vincere. But realising that potential more often is still a work in progress.
"It depends on the day," Michael "Swisher" Schmid explains. "When the energy's there, the vibes are there, the attitude's there, I think we can be a top ten team. But then the issue that we run into is sometimes we're a little quiet. [The potential is] there, it's just trying to get it to be consistent."
Listen to the interview here.
Okay, congratulations. That's fifty VRS points just from that. So how does that feel?
It feels good. That should lock us into the Major. We're already pretty guaranteed going into this game, but that really seals the deal there for us.
Yeah, and Legacy, they might have had a stand-in, but it's still, you know, latto, dumau. It's still all the firepower. So what was the attitude coming into this game in terms of trying to maximize it but also not underestimating them?
Obviously, we kind of had to at least keep in mind that we wanted to abuse their stand-in a little bit, because he's obviously not a pro player at the moment. So I think it was evident at least on Cache. I don't know if you noticed, we targeted B a lot. Tried to get on Mirage, didn't go our way. But then going into Dust2, we were like, 'fuck him, we just play our own game.' And then it went from there.
And you mentioned Cache. It's been such a big strength for you recently, at least. What is it about the map? It's just an NA map, right?
Yeah, that's what dephh even said, right, when it came into the pool, that it's an NA map. It's historically been an NA map. He's loved it back when he was playing. And then I think even our losses, three of our four losses are OT losses that should have gone our way, that we reviewed. So I think we're confident going into it against just about any team.
And this tournament so far, the BETBOOM game felt like it showed how much you can compete with these top European teams, so did the NAVI win in Porto. What is this team's ceiling now, do you think?
It unfortunately depends on the day. When the energy's there, the vibes are there, the attitude's there, I think we can be a top ten team. But then the issue that we run into is that sometimes we're a little quiet, the dead comms are lacking, and things just fall apart against a lower-tier team. They're there. It's just trying to get it to be consistent. Even the Mirage game kind of slipped into the same habits there on our T-side Mirage. So that was big in our debrief going into map three: get our comms up, our dead comms up, and really focus on it.
And it's interesting you say that because I was reading one of the older interviews, I think it was s1n, he was saying sometimes you guys have excess communication, almost too much, like classic American I guess. So what's it been like trying to fix both things at once almost?
It's a little tricky. Munstur has helped a lot with that. He's been keeping people accountable in practice and stuff for keeping comms simple and being more precise on things and not just bad chatter in that aspect, and actually giving the right positions, and dead comming plans and post plants and things like that.
And also just in terms of... we had the local LANs recently, I think it was... was it Liquid, 3DMAX? A few of those losses. What is it like going to those tournaments and then coming here in terms of keeping the confidence and also knowing your level and things like that?
Honestly, we were excited to be here because it felt like we actually had a consistent setup for once. Becuse we were at Roman, we were at Logitech, we went to fl0m Mythic LAN. We were on different setups, almost every day it felt like. I think we came into this tournament with the average between all five of us at thirty hours each in the last two weeks, just because we were traveling so much. We had six or seven travel days. So we were finally able to settle down, be on good setups, be on good PCs, and relax and actually take it in.
Like you said earlier, the Major, I think it was like eighty-eight percent before the game. Now you're ahead of Liquid even in live VRS. So how is that to just get it done a bit early, really?
It's nice. It eases us a little bit. That was kind of our mindset going into the Roman Imperium as well. I think we had the invite for Thunderpick that we turned down, because we felt like it was just good teams, online, it's kind of like fifty-fifty matches. And then getting some LAN wins in early could help ease our stress and trying to crunch things in.
Winning [Roman] was a huge plus. Getting some wins at Logitech was nice. We wish we could've done more, kind of would've made it a better look. But I think getting these wins here seals it in for us, and gives us a little bit of a break before bootcamp into the Major.
And with the way the stickers have changed since last Major, we know especially smaller orgs, it's been tough. Is it kind of weird to still have the season so focused on the Major? Are you just almost more for the prestige at this point?
I think everyone is hoping that they rethink their stance on the stickers and the system. I think Valve isn't one to go back on things too often, which is a bit of a scare for everybody. But I think the difference between this last Major and this one was really bad. Really bad. I think everybody suffered, especially tier-two, tier-three orgs. I think everyone is just hoping that they actually look into that, take the feedback that they got, and adjust accordingly.
Legacy
Andrei 'arT' Piovezan
Eduardo 'dumau' Wolkmer
Bruno 'latto' Rebelatto
Vinicius 'n1ssim' Pereira
Santino 'try' Rigal
Alan 'adrrr' Riveros
Michael 'Swisher' SchmidPast 3 months
BETBOOM
Kirill 'Boombl4' Mikhailov
Aleksandr 'zorte' Zagodyrenko
Pavel 'S1ren' Ogloblin
Daniil 'd1Ledez' Kustov
Kirill 'Magnojez' Rodnov
Artem 'Fierce' Ivanov
M80
Fritz 'slaxz-' Dietrich
Michael 'Swisher' Schmid
Elias 's1n' Stein
Josh 'JBa' Barutt
Mason 'Lake' Sanderson
Rory 'dephh' Jackson
TYLOO
Yi 'JamYoung' Yang
Dongkai 'Jee' Ji
Jingxiang 'Mercury' Wang
Qianhao 'Moseyuh' Chen
Su 'Zero' Jingshen
WeiJie 'zhokiNg' Zhong
Natus Vincere
Aleksi 'Aleksib' Virolainen
Mihai 'iM' Ivan
Valeriy 'b1t' Vakhovskiy
Ihor 'w0nderful' Zhdanov
Drin 'makazze' Shaqiri
Andrey 'B1ad3' Gorodenskiy