Muenster: "We think that Brazilian teams are very good... but at the end of the day, we still feel like we are a better team than most of them here"

Just before the start of the Americas RMR, Dust2.us' Dafydd Gwynn sat down with the coach of Party Astronauts, Joe "Muenster" Lima, to talk about the trials and tribulations of the squad in recent months and goals for the upcoming event. The American team struggled in ESL Pro League earlier this month having to field a substitute and look to improve with this event by using it as valuable LAN and travel experience.

You've been a part of Party Astronauts for a long time. What were your expectations when you first started? Did you expect to be playing Pro League then trying to qualify for a Major?

To be honest at the time no, that wasn't the immediate expectation. Obviously, when I joined after taking a break, it was because of the roster that they had assembled, I had faith in their ability to improve. They had the potential to get to this point eventually, but at the time that I joined the immediate expectation, for me, was to help them be as good as they could and maybe one day get to this point. So now that we have actually reached this point, playing in Pro League and actually having a chance to make the Major, it is a dream come true. It's something that we've always wanted to do, it's an amazing feeling to actually get the chance.

Would you say this is on schedule?

It's not that we are not on schedule, it's just due to all the unfortunate circumstances to do with roster changes and people leaving, we haven't exactly had the opportunity to play with one squad long term. That's why we weren't able to reach the potential we had with those rosters. In terms of the lifespan of the current roster we have, this is definitely way sooner than I thought, in terms of getting to where we are. We've shown incredible growth in the last couple of months, let alone the last year, and every time we've had one of these roster changes it's amazing to see that we seem to be coming out the other side as a much better team.

Speaking of competing in Pro League, does competing at Pro League give you an edge over teams such as paiN or oNe who haven't competed this year in Pro League?

Having this experience is definitely a strength, there's no way that it couldn't be a strength. Even with a substitute just having that experience in Europe, having that practice time against European teams, it really helps you understand a lot about how you play the game and where your weaknesses are, and how to tackle them to become a better team. So, going to Europe has definitely steamrolled the process of improving a lot. We've also gotten a lot of motivation from it. Being at these events is something that every player wants to do and when you're stuck at home, competing online, in your room, day after day, doing the same thing over and over again, playing the same teams over and over again, it starts getting stale and people get bored. So getting the opportunity to travel, not only to play CS but in general, getting out of the house, it's such a good thing for the mentality and the motivation of the team. That lights a fire under the guys to try harder and improve faster.

Do you think we'll see the immediate effect of Pro League in this tournament?

We hope so. The thing about this event compared to Pro League is that at Pro League we didn't have viz, unfortunate circumstances regarding his passport meant we had to use a substitute. So a lot of the time that we spent back home, in the two weeks before we came here, was just trying to catch him up with everything we learned and developed in Germany and now we are here we are trying to get as much practice as we can but we haven't exactly gotten a lot of time. He hasn't really gotten a lot of experience against European competition yet, but the little that he has gotten, he has shown to be incredibly good. He's learning really quickly and performing very well. We think that we're going to have a pretty good showing this event.

At the open qualifiers, in both the NA and SA, South American teams dominated across the board with the exclusion of GODSENT. Will they be able to dominate here?

It's really hard to say, we have a lot of experience against Brazilian teams, because we've been playing against the likes of paiN and oNe and GODSENT since they came over. We've been playing against them a lot so we have a lot of experience against this playstyle, we know what to expect. I'm sure a lot of these other top teams, Complexity, Evil Geniuses, Liquid also have a lot of experience against that kind of play so they also know what to expect. Whereas in the open qualifiers they were playing against a lot of teams that didn't really got the chance to play against that level of competition or that style of Counter-Strike which made it easier for them to make it through. We think that Brazilian teams are very good, the way they play is very unpredictable and very hard to read but at the end of the day, we still feel like we are a better team than most of them here. We are going to try and prove it.

Since we are talking about SA, Imperial is here and they've been a topic of conversation because people aren't sure what kind of mentality or form they have. What are you expecting going up against them?

They are kind of in a similar situation to Evil Geniuses where people are expecting the level of experience and accomplishments that they have to show in the matches that they play and when they don't perform to that expectation people feel like their motivation isn't where it should be but as players and as a coach, I feel like if you're at an event and you're playing in a match everybody wants to win. There isn't a single player that goes into a game not wanting to win, I expect them to feel the same way. I expect them to come in here and try as hard as they possibly can, because at the end of the day the Major is the one event that everybody dreams about and wants to make. Even the people who have made it before, they want to keep making it.

Going back to NA CS, obviously, you saw what happened with Orgless recently and have read daps' Twitlonger. Did you have anything to say about that in relation to the NA scene as a whole?

I completely agree with what he said, NA CS is in a weird spot where there isn't that old talent left anymore, a lot of the people either left or just didn't wanna play anymore so we don't have any experienced players help these younger players come up and teaching them the way the game is supposed to be played and because COVID happened and all the events started happening only in Europe we never see those European teams coming over to NA and giving these less experienced players the practice that they are required to have to actually be internationally competitive whereas in the old days there were constantly events here. So like teams like NAVI and Astralis, mousesports, Faze all those guys were coming over here and practicing against NA teams at the time. Like the Cloud9s, the Evil Geniuses, and the Liquids while they were all in NA. So when daps said that these teams don't get any EU experience, I completely agree and it's almost impossible for them too because there's barely any org support and the org support that is there is not well funded. So we don't see these less experienced players get the opportunity to go to Europe and get this practice that is completely necessary, 100% required to be competitive. There is absolutely no way you can expect an unsigned team with very little exigence to compete against anybody even in Premier in EU. These teams are constantly, every day of their lives, eight hours a day practicing against the best teams in the world so there's just no chance. The only way we can get this experience is by qualifying to these events, which our team has been lucky enough to do recently so we're hoping that we can prove that this experience is required and convince orgs to maybe come back and make an investment past just a salary and maybe put a focus more on international boot camping. Because that is really what you need to be a competitive team.

There's a conversation about legend status, there's only one spot for this RMR and there are three big names; FURIA, Complexity, and Liquid which are considered to be the favorites for that. What would it take, not this year specifically but just in the future, for Party Astronauts to be in that conversation?

A legends spot is definitely a really hard goal to achieve, that's something that requires not only a lot of experience a lot of time together with your team, our roster is still relatively new, even Jonji hasn't been on the roster that long, let alone Viz who only recently joined like a month or so ago. It's not something that we are expecting to get, but it's obviously something we are going to try and get. For us to get there it would take just incredible play all around, a great mindset from everybody, really good energy, no tilting, no getting upset, a strong emphasis on solutions rather than constantly stressing over mistakes. It's gonna take some of the best Counter-Strike we've ever played and with how we've been doing recently or at least the events that we've played recently and the experience we've gotten in EPL and the couple days we've practiced here. It's something that is definitely obtainable for us but our main focus is to just get into the Major and if we can do that then we'll be extremely happy.

My final question is when you go undefeated at this tournament, who's going to be the other team you face off against for the legends spot?

I believe that, aside from us of course, the strongest team right now at this event is probably a toss-up between FURIA and Liquid. I think in recent form Liquid has shown to be slightly better and I think oSee has been performing really well and that's something that Liquid has not had, a star AWPer. I think having that makes them a super deadly team, they are definitely the team to look out for.

Party Astronauts will begin their Americas RMR adventure Monday 05:00AM when they face off against Isurus.