Ace: "[Relyks] is definitely kinda carrying the team on the experience side"
I had the chance to talk to eUnited AWPer Brandon "Ace" Winn at ZOTAC Cup Masters before their match against FURIA to get his thoughts on how his team has been faring online, their upcoming debut season of EPL, and how Relyks compares to the team's previous IGL Andy "vSa" Xu.
You guys have been doing really well domestically in online qualifiers and leagues like MDL, but often fall short in the semifinals or grand finals for closed qualifiers. Is that just because of a lack of experience, or are you still adjusting to different roles like Relyks getting used to calling?
I'd say at this point it's pretty much just an experience gap. Right now everyone on our team is fairly new to Counter-Strike, probably just a year to two years experience-wise except Skyler.
He's definitely kinda carrying the team on the experience side. I feel like once we can lock down our post plants, our general awareness in the game, we'll be able to close rounds out, and hopefully close games out.
What does your coach, Jared, do for you guys behind the scenes?
He's kinda a jack-of-all-trades really because he kinda does everything. He's our manager, our analyst, and our coach all in one really. He'll be watching demos for us, he'll be do write-ups for other teams so we can see what they do, but at the same time he's doing everything — like when we go to LANs he's trying to keep everything organized and keep us on course.
Do you guys watch demos with him as well, or is it mostly just him who writes it up for you?
We all watch our own individual demos and we also watch demos together, but outside of that he'll watch demos on his own just so he can get the writeups done and all that.
You haven't made a change to your roster since you dropped vSa and Jonji back in January, what's it been like adjusting to that roster change and what sort of qualities did vSa have that have changed up with Relyks now?
It was sort of weird for us because we had to change our IGL and we had to switch out Jonji, who was our entry. We picked up dapr and Relyks at the same time so we brought on two new members and a new IGL is sort of hard to adjust to. That was a struggle in the beginning but everything kind of evened out and I feel like it's working for the better now.
As far as things vSa had that he brought to our team, he was a very loose caller. We could pretty much do whatever we want, if I wanted to go for a pick he would let me do that anytime I wanted. I feel like Skyler is a little bit more structured than that, and a little bit more experienced on the IGL side so I feel like he's bringing more to the plate than vSa did, even though Andy did a great job. I dunno, with Relyks I feel like we definitely improved our skill cap and have a higher skill ceiling now.
When you're going into larger matches, for example ZOTAC Masters here or the Americas Minor and qualifiers, is there a lot of prep, or is it mostly playing your own game?
I'd say it's a lot more individual practice. Sure we go into the server, but we don't really try to counter-strat as much as we try to figure out things that improve our own game really. We try to stay on top of individual prac like keeping our aim fresh, we try not to let ourselves get too stale or anything.
Coming into this we just tried to watch a little bit more demos than usual, trying to do anything we can to try and get an advantage really.
Your first season of EPL is coming up in September, it's the first season for most of you — I think only Relyks has played at that level before. It'll be your first time playing against the top teams in North America alongside the last season of ECS. Will playing against that level of competition make it easier for you to improve as a team, will it change the way you play overall?
It'll definitely help for the better. Being able to play better teams — mibr, Cloud9, Liquid and the like — they're more likely to exploit any mistake that you make, so you really have to capitalize on not making any mistakes and try to improve your game.
Once we get better competition we're definitely going to improve as a team faster and faster. With the new season of EPL coming up it's kinda sketchy cause I don't know how we're gonna do, but we just played our first season of ECS and it went pretty well so I have high hopes coming into the season and hopefully we do well.
What're your expectations for ZOTAC here and at the Americas Minor? What do you think you guys will be able to accomplish?
Hopefully bring home the W, really. Tryna go to Hong Kong, tryna make it to the Major, and anything less with not be tolerated. We gotta get this W.
