nahtE: "It's good seeing new teams rise in [North America]"
As ESL One New York neared its final day, our very own Joe "tolkienfanatic" Cardali caught up with Ethan "nahtE" Arnold of NRG to talk about the team's semifinal finish in New York, their strategies in their matches, and the team's overall performance, including NRG's absence from the recent FACEIT Major.
You were unfortunately knocked out of the event by mousesports yesterday, walk me through what happened in that series.
Inferno was the first map, we were confident going into it, it was our map pick. We started off like 4-1, and then we lost an eco, and then oskar's 1v4 really just ruined all of our momentum. I think we lost another eco, just a lot of dumb rounds that game so I think that affected us mentally.
Going on to Nuke, we got a good start, it was 4-2, and then we kinda just lost out after that, I don't remember what happened. It was 8-7 at half, and our T side really just struggled. I don't think we've ever played mousesports in an official before.
You guys pulled out some nifty tricks on Overpass with the quad boost, do you have anything else up your sleeves that you're saving for some of these events coming up?
Yeah, we've got a couple more things. We just try and look around each map and make some stuff up where you can win a couple of stupid rounds.
ImAPet has come on as coach and you have history with him from CLG. What has he helped bring to the team?
After he left me in CLG, he went to OpTic, so he had some experience with European players there. He brings both the European playstyle and NA playstyle and helps a lot with making new stuff and finding new things.
NRG is the second big organization you've been a part of, how can you compare being in NRG versus your time in CLG?
In CLG, they were mainly focused on League of Legends — they were a League of Legends organization at that point. We were kind of just off on the side doing our own thing. Coming in to NRG, we were their main focus. Maybe not at the start, but definitely after we started doing well, we were their main focus. It feels good to be really supported by your organization.
You have StarSeries and IEM Chicago coming up, what kind of prep are you going to put in for that to avoid the kind of mistakes that happened here?
For StarLadder, we only have 2 or 3 days at home, and one of those days is just filled with online matches. This is my 3rd time at StarLadder so we're just hoping to keep this streak alive with playoffs, and maybe win the final this time.
For Chicago we have 2 weeks, so we'll definitely be fully prepped for that.
You also have ECS and EPL starting up soon, what do you think of the level of competition in both those leagues?
I think for EPL and ECS this season it's really crunched together from what we've seen, so it's gonna be a lot of matches in a really short period of time. Hopefully we don't get burnt out, but I think the level of competition in both of these, and online leagues especially, is kinda low right now. Hopefully we can duplicate what we did last time and own through the whole season.
eUnited are new entrants into Pro League, and they were also here playing the side event. What do you think of them and that team's rise in the past year or so?
It's good seeing new teams rise in NA. I just know from first hand experience that's what we did, starting from CLG for me and coming to NRG and working our way up slowly. It's cool seeing the same thing happen to other teams.
Right now people probably have you guys as #2 or #3 in North America, especially considering the form Cloud9 is in. Do you think you can sustain this success and getting more of these event invites instead of playing qualifiers?
That's the plan, just staying on top. I think with this tournament and how we did we should come back up. We lost a couple of points on HLTV not being at the Major. We should be fine sustaining the #1-2 level, but #1 is definitely the goal.
You guys missed out on the Major, how did that affect the team?
We kinda looked at it as a missed opportunity, but there's also the plus side that we didn't have to play a 3-week tournament since the Major was kind of messed up this time, there's multiple levels now. We got a lot done as a team and individually, so we looked at it as more time to practice than those teams do.
NRG are set to return to LAN action StarSeries i-League Season 6 in Kiev, Ukraine in roughly a week. The team will also return to playing online in ESL Pro League and the Esports Champions Series, whose seasons are set to kick off in the coming weeks.
