The undisputed best team in UK CS over the last year had a slightly different challenge at EPIC.LAN 45. After winning three EPIC.LANs in a row, NXT would have ordinarily been looking to secure a four-title. Unfortunately for them, that wouldn’t be the case as top teams in Europe travelled to Kettering in search of VRS points.
On top of this, NXT had a rough couple of weeks leading up to the event due to players travelling to IESF and the Svenska Elitserien Spring 2025 Final. Alongside this, on the setup day for EPIC.LAN 45, NXT played EYEBALLERS for a spot in the Winline Insight Season 7 playoffs. This turned out to be very messy because when they were invited to the tournament, it was from their VRS team on the 25th of April. This listed Callum “Girafffe” Jones and Tobias “shyyne” Sæther as a part of their roster, and didn’t include Mason “Vacancy” Haines or Jamie “Tree60” Callan.
Because they couldn’t change Jacob “Rezst” Hemming’s flight due to costs, NXT had to use shyyne last minute when they were supposed to only use Matas “MAGILA” Magila.
These factors trickled into day one, which saw NXT lose to 8Sins in the group stage and Alliance in the upper bracket quarter-finals to round off the day.
They got their groove back on for Saturday, but were ultimately knocked out by Alliance, placing fourth. This meant for the first time ever an EPIC.LAN didn’t have a UK team in the finals, and the first EPIC.LAN Matas “Extinct” Strumila had attended, and not won.
On paper, anything but a win at EPIC.LAN for NXT would have been a failure. But, despite this, they still hit their expectations and took a lot of positives away from the weekend. Moreover, they also gained +116 VRS points, 35 spots in the world ranking and 15 in Europe to sit 89th and 62nd respectively.
After they lost to Alliance, UKCSGO sat down with Extinct to talk about NXT’s slow start, their change of form on day two, his takeaways from the event, and his experience at the EEF European Esports Championship.
Extinct and NXT celebrating after they beat The Last Resort at EPIC.LAN 45
It has been a tough event for NXT. At the beginning, you guys had a very slow start. What caused that?
We had a really rough start to the event because arTisT, Rezst, Tree60 and I went to IESF, so there was no practice leading up to EPIC. Right before that, Rezst had to go to a Swedish LAN [Svenska Elitserien Spring 2025 Final], so that added to the lack of practice.
We nonstop had a stand-in, we even played with Girafffe so we could just get some practice hours, but once he is gone, we had to review and relearn with the person who was missing. Whoever was missing that day had to go over everything and make sure that things worked. This caused a mess in terms of how we came into the LAN.
It wasn’t the most perfect, or even a normal way to come in. It was just a mess.
This showed after you lost to 8Sins in the group stage after being 9-3 up. What did that loss do to you? Did it wake you up when you lost in that manner?
It was more of a wake-up call from us not playing our game and losing to ourselves. We were lacking things that we had three weeks ago. It was about three weeks before this LAN that we were all together as a five.
At that time, we were so comfortable, and the coms were good. We just had good composure. We totally lost that on the first day back.
After a two-week break, we came back together, played again and were like “oh fuck.” We are lacking on the coms, forgetting strats or nades. So after that game, we were like “Okay, we need to wake the fuck up”. We had many conversations to wake people up and drill into each other about what needed to be improved. We constantly kept doing that, which led to us playing way, way better on day two. Tenfold in every way.
Does that also relate to what happened against Alliance at the end of day one in the upper bracket quarter-finals?
When I say day one, I also mean the game against Alliance.
Day one, we had the same issues throughout. Right after the game against Alliance, and went back to the Airbnb and went over all of our strats so everyone understood what they needed to do. We spoke about how tomorrow it has to be different, it cannot be the same, or we will just get knocked out instantly, even against noobs.
We had a very important chat that night, and it definitely woke everyone up. We were back in form straight away, coming into day two.
You played EYEBALLERS on Thursday at EPIC. It seemed very chaotic as you had to use so many stand-ins. Does your performance on day one correlate with that game against EYEBALLERS?
Oh, it definitely, 100% does. It was such a messy situation.
I had to book an earlier flight to make the official, so we could have our core. But then, when we came to us thinking we had our core, oh no, we were wrong. shyyne, Rezst, Girafffe, arTisT and I were for some reason the core. That just isn’t our core; that was our last game we played in a month when we needed a stand-in for Vacancy and were still trailing with people and seeing what could be changed.
It is crazy that VRS counted arTisT, Rezst, Girafffe, shyyne and me. I have no idea why, we played one BO3 against Zero Tenacity in March, and that locked in the roster when the whole last five months, the main core has been arTisT, Vacancy and me.
Rezst couldn’t change his flight because it was too expensive, and he would have been our core, so it would have been fine, only using one stand-in. We then needed shyyne to play because Rezst wasn’t there, and we didn’t have a core.
It was an unbelievable situation that I cannot believe happened. That was the evening before EPIC, so it just absolutely messed us up.
We were already going into EPIC at a disadvantage in terms of us not practising with each other for a while, but this added just a little bit of tilt that was brought into day one. We got annoyed at things a bit more and even at each other. It definitely caused these issues to happen.
Extinct lifting the EPIC.LAN 44 trophy
Day two, the main moment where it felt like it clicked was against The Last Resort. It was a very long series, in classic fashion, culminating on map three, where you had to always fight from behind.
We were in a different zone; day two was a completely different day. We locked in.
Our anti-strat was good. Rezst made good reads, I made good reads, arTisT made good reads, it was just perfect. We had really good plans, and you are telling me we were behind on map three. I’m telling you right now, we didn’t feel like we were behind.
I felt like we would win that game no matter what. It was in that zone. I was just fully confident we would win. I do not know why. I just had that feeling.
How did it feel to go from that to beating 8Sins? Sure, you normally beat them, but it shows the improvement from day one.
On that topic, yeah. 8Sins, of course, we play them all the time at EPICs and other finals. I will be honest, we did not see it as they beat us. I see it, and we see it, as we lost to ourselves.
We came into that BO3, I swear to god, we knew we were going to win. No matter what was going to happen, we were going to win.
I just knew. It is the same pattern. The cycle repeats. They lose to us again and again.
You ultimately got knocked out by Alliance, whom you had played online and beaten not too long ago. What changed at EPIC?
Online, I would say I don’t think they prepped for us, firstly. We caught them off guard as we heavily prepped them. But on LAN, they made slight adjustments and added a bit of disrespect that caught us off guard.
Their prep was perfect; we could tell instantly from their prep that they were abusing every second they could. If we left an angle for a second, it was being pushed. We were starting the strat and they would be instantly behind us.
Their prep was insanely better on LAN than online, and it caught us off guard. It was very difficult for us to counter their prep because they added that bit of disrespect that caught us off guard.
What were your expectations coming into this event, as it is inherently a different EPIC.LAN than normal.
We hit our expectations. We knew how tough this situation was going to be; we are not blind to it. We came into this event worried.
We said we would be happy with top four, and we fucking did it. And I’m happy. I usually am very tilted after a loss. This is also my first loss at an EPIC.LAN, it’s not nice.
I am very happy that we were able to pull it back after such a rough start to the whole LAN. I am very happy with the team’s mental, composure, and communication.
ALASKA winning the UKIC Season 5 Division 1 title
It seems like for EPIC.LAN 46, there will probably be a lot of European teams. What is your perspective on all of these teams attending in October?
I love it. This is something I have wanted for a long time. I just wanted to play European teams and get better at playing against them.
I was getting very bored, in a way, just playing UK events. No disrespect, every game has been very hard in UK CS recently. I just strive for that next step. I want to play harder opponents and learn more.
I hate this repeating cycle of being stuck at the same spot, but with this, I can see progression. At the next LAN, we will hopefully fix our schedule, make sure we are prepared, and not accept certain invites.
Even though, the way we came into this event unprepared, I still came out of it learning a lot, especially versus EU teams. I see what they are doing. I might bring it into the next LAN. I am learning from them at the same time.
Ending with IESF, you had the opportunity to represent your country in Kosovo. How was that experience?
It was great, but I wish we had just won a game. We didn’t have a full roster of five pro players to be fair.
I am really proud of the boys; it is tough for them to come to these events that are like a Tier-1 setting. There was a big stage and a crowd in the back while we were playing. We played high-level players, and most countries had a full team representing them. Sashi, TNL, BIG, but a mix won at the end. The Lithuanian team won, so fucking up the boys. I am still Lithuanian, – Irish and Lithuanian – so I am glad they won.
I really enjoyed my time there, and that is all I will take away from it. There were no high expectations; it was just to have fun, and we did have fun.
