As is expected from any EPIC.LAN, there’s never a quiet moment after games start in the KCC. Players showing their passion for the game, hurling obscenities at their opponents across the hall, there’s no place like it.
Amid the screams of LAN, UKCSGO’s Lewis “badger” Head got the chance to sit down and talk to Oscar “LVN” Levin. LVNÂ has been a well known name in UK CS for a while, most recently being 7AM’s IGL before leaving in August. His next steps in his career have taken him to transition into a coaching role at the new GamerLegion academy. UKCSGO spoke to him about his thoughts on EPIC40, life so far at GamerLegion, and his hopes for the future of the project.
Following your 2nd place finish at Epic39, what are your goals for this event?
Goals for this event, I’d say, is to have a bit of fun. It’s not a serious mix, I’ve brought my brother here to try get him a HLTV profile. Hopefully if we get top four, that would be pretty jokes. I didn’t look too much into the teams coming here, so I was a bit surprised that we got pot 1, but at the same time I guess with the teams aside from K10 and Raptors, it’s quite hard to decide the other pot 1 teams cause there’s quite a few mixes. Yeah, I mean making top four would be the goal, would be what we made the mix for, to get Igor and my brother HLTV.
I’ve brought my brother here to try get him a HLTV profile
With this being your first time playing CS2 on LAN, how’s it feeling for you so far?
It’s feeling good. Literally since CS2 released I’ve played like one FACEIT game of CS2, so I can’t really compare LAN to online yet, I really haven’t been playing that much. It seems alright, the first game I played I’m still feeling pretty good. As the event goes on, I think Vacancy and Zy have played a lot more online, and they’re saying that on LAN, it feels pretty good, not that much latency and stuff so it should be good for us on LAN.
We don’t want to cause the demise of any teams but if we beat them then that’s unfortunate for them.
Are there any teams here that you particularly want to play against and beat?
Puffle Pals are right in front of us, so that would be a good game to play against them. I know Need more bullets are right across from us as well so I want to play them. We didn’t really get anyone in our groups, we have to wait until playoffs to play any of our friends. But it will be good to play our friends. It would be fun to play against Raptors or K10 and see how we do, we don’t want to cause the demise of any teams but if we beat them then that’s unfortunate for them.
Moving away from Epic, big news for you recently is that you’re the new GamerLegion Academy Coach. With Ash and volt in the main team and now you in the academy, there’s a bit of a UK CS invasion. How has life been for you at GL so far?
It’s been really good, it’s coming up on a month now that I’ve been there. We started trialling people for the team about three weeks ago, and we’re getting close to having a finalised roster. The opportunity has been really good, and in terms of UK involvement, there’ll probably be one UK player in the academy roster when it gets announced. That’s all I can really say on that at the moment, but it’s definitely a different avenue for me.
I thought it was the perfect opportunity to take it, and it would have been a mistake not to go for it
Going off of that, what made you want to go down that avenue of changing from the IGL role into a coaching position?
It wasn’t really something that I was actively looking for, it was just that I got approached and then sort of weighed up where I was at and what I wanted to do. I didn’t feel like I was finished playing, I wasn’t only looking to go into a coaching role. It was more that I got the opportunity to do essentially what I’ve done in past years as in IGL anyway, building teams, but to do it as an academy coach for GamerLegion. To start down this avenue and see where it takes me, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to take it, and it would have been a mistake not to go for it, so that’s pretty much how it went.
From being approached to it all being finalised was really quick which was good for me and the project that I was building as there wasn’t that much uncertainty about what was gonna go on. It all moved pretty fast, but it was something that I definitely wanted to explore.
It’s going to be an exciting couple of months for me.
You touched on it already a bit, but how involved have you been in the player selection process?
I’d say I’m given a lot of trust with the process, even in terms of players being selected for the trials, being open about the reasons and the criteria that GL want to reach with the players selected, and the goals they want to reach in a certain timeframe. I’m given a lot of trust in terms of what I think will be best roles wise and players wise and sort of going from there. It’s going to be an exciting couple of months for me.
Can we expect an announcement soon on the finalised roster?
I’d say a few weeks. They want to do it properly, so they want to fly everyone out to Germany for it and do a proper announcement around it. I’m not exactly sure on the timeframe, but I’d say probably the next few weeks you can expect to see something.
Have you got any big overarching goals for the roster?
I think the main goal is promotions, essentially the goal of an academy team is to nurture players either to be good enough for the main roster, or to sell them on to make profit for the organisation. That’s the main thing, and the way you do that is getting them experience in the higher HLTV events, getting the CCT invites, general tournament invites, just play as much as possible. The team will be full time, and that will essentially be it. I’ll be learning a lot, I’ll be learning from Ash in the main team as well as in the academy team, just learning as much as I can and teaching everyone what I know.
Is this the end of your playing career and the start of your coaching career, or is there always an opening to come back and play down the line?
I wouldn’t say its the end, I’ll see where I can get with coaching. I think I’ll be able to do a good job, and if anything does fail in the GL Academy we’ll see, if not we’ll see what happens. I’ll still be playing and still be turning up to these events and stuff, but I don’t think it’s the end, just a hiatus for now.
I’ll still be playing and still be turning up to these events
Finally, are we ever going to see GamerLegion Academy play EPIC.LAN?
Not sure to be honest, I haven’t really brought it up. I would say probably not. You never know though!
Anything else you want to talk about?
Don’t think so, I’m not really clued in on the new UKIC league, I haven’t kept up to date with how that’s getting on. I don’t think there’s as many signups as maybe they were hoping for in the open division, there was that Turkish tournament that seemed pretty good, but apart from that, UK-wise, I haven’t kept very up to date to be honest.
