After qualifying for the playoffs of EPIC37, JackB sat down with UKCSGO’s Dafydd Gwynn to discuss his return to competitive CS with K10. The EPIC36 champion was in high spirits having secured six back-to-back victories to start their day. Since this interview, K10 lost to Shuaib ‘Shoobie’ Saddique’s ShushGG mix, eliminating JackB and co from the tournament.
You’ve spoken in the past about how being on a team never really suited your lifestyle, but now you’ve returned to team play, why?
When I came to that EPIC.LAN, or last EPIC actually, just playing again and actually just coming back and winning one was a big reason why I’ve come back. I used to play a lot, obviously the landscape has changed now, I used to turn up and get top eight, top six and at the time that wasn’t a bad finish because there were a lot of good teams around, but I don’t know whether the scenes got worse, or all the people I play with now have gotten better, so I don’t quite know what’s happened but I’ve come back more competitive than ever now and yeah I’m enjoying being back.
And how are you fitting in to this team?
It’s been a bit rough, because I haven’t played team CS for two or three years, so it’s been a little bit tough. But I’ve played with most of those guys before and the roles make sense within the team, so it’s not been too hard, it is quite literally the fact that I’ve jumped straight back into a team now. And it’s just a couple of weeks, three weeks to get in to that – you know I can’t just run around everywhere and the team isn’t going to back me, it’s not like that in team CS, that’s the only problem and other than that yeah it’s been fine, I’m fitting in quite well, roles-wise anyway.
And would you say these guys have helped your transition back into team CS?
They have, they’ve given me a lot of freedom in game, like playing a mix almost. But other than that it’s just getting in the habit of being a part of the team rather than being an individual, that’s the difference, sometimes you win a round by simply not dying. That may sound obvious but in a mix you just walk around shooting people don’t you? And in a team I don’t have to be the person to rotate everywhere and we can win the round just by playing normal CS, and that’s the biggest difference and they’ve really help me out there.
As one of the better AWPers in the UK scene at the moment, why would you say the UK scene has an AWP-deficit?
That is a good question and I think a question that I don’t know the answer to. I just think that… I don’t know, it’s interesting. Teams have their AWPers, and because of the lack of AWPers, people who are in the teams tend to stick in the team as an AWPer, so the easy way to move up is to switch to rifling – I’ve seen quite a few people do that like eMy switched between a rifle and an AWP, Yoshwa switched between a rifle and an AWP, DeXter was playing for BLVKHVND, to get in to that team he had to rifle. So I think people have got the AWPers that are comfortable, because there is, like Atrox was another that was a talented AWPer but now rifles, so I think its people are just making that change to get in to a better team and that is becoming them being known as a rifler, so I think that is the problem, if that even is a problem.
And which UK AWPers do you rate highly?
Well I’ll give the obvious ones, I hear a lot about wfn, I’ve not played much against wfn but you hear a lot about wfn being a great player, obviously JamieG wherever hes gone, I’ve never played with or against JamieG but ive heard all about him. But in the uk scene at the minute, you know eMy’s a solid AWPer, but he’s a hybrid, a solid player rather than a great AWPer. So when it comes to overall UK AWPers that I rate, I wouldn’t join a server and think “shit, I’m up against someone who’s a better AWPer than me here”, I’m not counting smooya.
But, other than that – no, there isn’t an AWPer I rate so highly or look up to.
When you were coming in as a new team and adjusting back to team CS, what were your expectations for this LAN?
Well my expectations were skewed anyway because I won the last one, personally for me, disappointing to not going to top four, top three, top two. But you’ve got to be realistic, there’s some great players, it’s a really competitive LAN, teams who have been together longer than us, probably with more talented players than us, we expect that, but we don’t want to disappoint, we want to prove that we are one of the big boys, and I think my team feel exactly the same as I do. I’m playing with those boys and they’ve not had their break with the big teams. The eMasters, the BLVKHVNDs, or LVNs core, my team haven’t played anything like that or gone far in a tournament, so we’re just here to show we’re not here just to take a map off of someone, but we can go far. We are a good team we are not causing upsets. So that’s our reputation, and we’ll just take each game as it comes.
How are you feeling about going up against Psych Ward?
I said to the boys, I’m glad we got Psych Ward instead of XRAVEL, we played against XRAVEL in EPS qualifiers and they absolutely slapped us. We’re a different team, we just hopped on and played that game, but even so you’ve always got that in the back of your mind ‘they just slapped us’. You always want to play against a mix anyway, and I played against Josh, Rhys, and Eric last LAN so we feel like theres more opportunity to outplay them there than XRAVEL, I think that XRAVEL will kind of be chasing the game, team-wise, but teams versus mixes is a different ballgame. We’re feeling confident but they’re great players.
Is there any team you want to beat, personally?
Editors note: This question was asked before JackB and K10 were eliminated.
Well obviously eMasters, they’re kind of our rivals, we’re all friends, but probably the two teams I’d like to beat are eMasters and Psych Ward because we’re all friends, there’s no bad blood there, but it would be nice to go and beat teams – lets single out LVN, we don’t have much contact with each other, but to go and beat them would show those boys where we’re at. But the teams like eMasters, they know how good we are, and with Psych Ward we’re all friends, but a team like LVN’s don’t know much about us outside of we’re playing main, so it would be nice to go and prove ourselves against a team that we don’t know.
Would you say this one of the most competitive EPIC.LANs we’ve had in a long time?
Yes so the most competitive one since I’ve been back. Like I said I’ve been to LANs when I was younger and I’d be happy with a top eight, nowadays I’d be absolutely livid with a top eight. Yes I used to come with some great players, players who are playing now and getting eighth, ninth, tenth seed, so there are a lot of players that can beat other players, a lot of teams that can beat other teams, there’s not a stand out team, a team that I can say “they’re going to win” in my opinion. But yeah, this is better than last LAN, bit more competitive than iSeries so yeah its good, a good LAN full of good teams.
My final question is about K10, what kind of future do you see with this team?
Short term is giving ourselves a good performance in main, that’s the short term goal, pushing for playoffs, maybe taking a best of three. Long term I think for me personally its to show that I can do it on team CS, I would like to take that step up, whether we do that as a team and we can take that step up ourselves, or we’re one of those teams where a player gets picked up somewhere, the long term plan is to be playing at a higher level than we are currently.
