Grim: "I want to play Liquid and beat them"

After Complexity took their first win over oNe and North America got its first win of the day, Dafydd Gwynn was able to sit down with Michael "Grim" Wince to talk about what that takes to win. They also got to talk about a rivalry game against Liquid, who he wants to play when Complexity go undefeated, and what Pro League did to their playstyle.

I'm not sure if you've kind of been keeping up with the other games, but this is the first NA team to get a win today. What does that say either about your team, the strength of South America or just North American CS:GO as a whole?

I think in NA right now we're definitely struggling a bit and I think that liquid are pretty much ahead of every other NA team right now, but we are all trying to catch up and I think that with our work ethics, I think most of us are putting in the work to try and get better. I think for us personally, like we're just looking at one game at a time, we're going over a lot of stuff, working over mistakes and we really ironed out a lot of things before this tournament. So we're all feeling confident to make it. We're really just looking at like, not really the outcome like if we make it 3-0, 3-1, 3-2, it doesn't matter, we're just taking it one game at a time and hoping it goes well.

Who are complexity's biggest rivals at this tournament?

In terms of rivals, I don't know if we as a team have a rival, but for me personally, I want to play liquid and beat them just 'cause that was my ex-team so I'd say for me it's liquid, but as a team, I don't know if we necessarily have a rival. It's probably all the other NA teams just to prove that we're the best here or the best NA team, but besides, for me personally, it's Liquid.

Speaking of playing against Liquid, are you looking forward to playing EG and more specifically Stewie?

Oh yeah, it's always fun to play ex-teammates. We beat Evil Geniuses at Pro League recently so that was a really fun game but it's always fun to play other NA teams as well. Just to play against our countrymen, right. I like playing EG because it's always nice competition versus Stew, we get to do some friendly banter during the games which is pretty fun to play and they're just really enjoyable matches.

Whilst on the top of Liquid teammates, you also played with FalleN, known to be one of the greatest mind in Brazilian counter-strike, and now he's here with a lot of his ex-teammates in Imperial, what do you expect from them?

I'd say I definitely expect him to go through knowing FalleN personally, being on a team with him for as long as I have, he has like the most amazing work ethic that I've ever seen out of a player. He's always in the game mentally, like he's always looking to the next round. If something bad happens, like even we got one 1v5'ed by refrezh that one time, he's like "alright guys next round so whatever if we're going to overtime, what are we doing in overtime?" It's just instantaneous, and I think that mentality can be like very beneficial to a team. He can definitely lead his team to the major for sure. I have a lot of respect for him.

You said you were like ironing out all the wrinkles in your roster every time something comes up, what has been the biggest thing you guys have improved on coming into this tournament?

I'd say for us we are pretty good tactically, it's just been our firepower lacking a bit so we are all putting in the extra work mechanically. Our biggest mistake right now, in my opinion, has been the basic mistakes like not grouping together when we need to, or overextending when one of us gets a nice little 2K and you want to get the 3rd right instead of playing back and passive. I'd say that's probably our biggest problem now but we've been working on that really hard in scrims and coming into this tournament, we improved a lot on that, so I expect it to be a lot better in these matches, and we'll close them out cleaner.

This version of complexity hasn't been together that long, so what's the team atmosphere been like so far?

The team atmosphere here has been amazing, the only person I didn't know coming in was our coach, but all five of us as players have been good friends outside the game before we even made the team. So it's a no-brainer for us to make the team when we all got the opportunity to. I've wanted to play a floppy for a while, I know JT is a smart IGL, I've played with junior before on Triumph and he was really good. He was like my second player on that team, a star player, he's pretty good. In terms of FaNg, I think he's been an up-and-coming player for forever, I know him from FPL and I've chatted to him in TeamSpeak like before we made the team. We're definitely friends, but FaNg is really good, he's really vocal and obviously he had the MVP, so he has a lot of potential for sure.

Just to make you choose, who would you say is the person you were most excited to play with?

For me it would probably be floppy just because of watching him in the past he's always like been a solid reliable anchor, he 1v4'ed Astralis, and he had 2 1v5's in the same 24 hours. He's just an insane clutch and calm player and it's been amazing to play with him and get to see what he's like in a team environment

Every team has questions marks and you guys are working on yours, what is the biggest thing that needs to happen for you to comfortably go through to the major?

I think we just need to stay focused and calm, we know our potential and we show it in our scrims. We do really well against some of the top European teams, but just like junior said in one of his interviews it's practice so you can only take so much from it. You shouldn't think you're just better than a team in practice, just 'cause you beat them. Every team is practicing new stuff, but I think that we have a lot of potential that we haven't shown yet just because of the basic mistakes that we are messing up on in the matches that we've been working on a lot on our scrims recently. We are just focusing on the basics pretty much because like know we have everything else down, once we get the basics down I think we'll definitely excel to the top pretty quickly.

You just played in Pro League, what experience did you gain from that and how are you going to bring that into this event?

Yeah, so it's always nice playing top European teams, especially in matches. We got a lot personally from the Heroic and NAVI games, just because those teams are really good at capitalizing off the basic mistakes that you can make or like mistakes in general. So we definitely reviewed the games back and realized "oh maybe we should have peaked with a teammate. Maybe we could have done a play differently based on what happened in a round." I'd also say those teams also play a lot slower than NA teams, so it's definitely a change of pace coming from NA and scrimming all the teams there because they play a quicker pace in my opinion. So that's definitely a learning curve for us and I'm still getting used to it as well. I know junior and FaNg that was their first LAN so they were getting used to the LAN environment and so far after our game against Team oNe I could definitely tell they are getting way more experience at LAN. I think that we could make it through if things keep going our way.

When you go undefeated, who is going to be the other team you are going to be facing? [Editor's Note: this question was asked before Liquid's game]

I would like to 3-0, and it's got to be either liquid or FURIA just because I like playing the best and then beating the best. It feels very accomplishing, so I would definitely say probably Liquid for me just because I want to beat them to make it. That would be pretty fun, but FURIA as well I think they're a super good team and like I said, I like playing really good teams and seeing what I can do against them.

Complexity are now scheduled to play 00Nation later this afternoon.