LVN: "We're going to make the main event, we're going to disband EG tomorrow"

7AM started their Fragadelphia 17 run on the right foot, taking down Cyberstorm in a quick 2-0 fashion before claiming a grueling 2-1 win over Limitless capped off by a 16-0 on Nuke. Following their win over the latter team, Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" had a chance to sit down with Oscar "LVN" Levin to discuss the win, to learn more about the British squad, and to discuss their experience in America so far.

How did that win feel over Limitless?

The win felt great, especially being on the stage it was an unreal moment. We won the first map very comfortably and the second map was a very frustrating map to lose. So going into the third map, was really good from everyone to mentally reset after that second lap and go in and win 16-0.

Now talking about the first two maps, they were a fairly standard affair, trading off between your map picks. I feel like it's fairly uncommon in the current meta for there to be such a strong 16-0. Looking back to that match and replaying in your mind, do you think there's anything your team did exceptionally well, or do you think there's a lot of unforced errors from Limitless, which ultimately allows you to snowball against them?

I think there are quite a few unforced errors, outside there were smokes that didn't land. They're normal smokes, but they have these little gaps and we always had info on what they were doing pretty much. I don't think they ever got down secret once, they weren't really there. This map, Nuke, we were really the most scared of, we thought they were going to pick it. So going into the third map, we thought it was going to be a tough third game, but props to everyone, especially how young the team is to reset after the second map and go on to play the way we did in the third map.

Now, your team is relatively new, its sort of a project between you and EMPEROR. Most of our readers will be pretty unfamiliar with your squad as our focus is usually on NA. Could you tell us a little bit about the roles on your squad and where everyone fits in?

My previous team, which was around for about two years, which is pretty unheard of in the UK, sort of crumbled in the end. If people know who JamieG is, he had a really good offer, but really unfortunate circumstances are going to cause him to not be able to take that offer. So then we started trialing AWPers in my old team and I came across zyyx who used to AWP for NIP Academy, which not many people actually know, they have Young Ninjas and then they have NIP Academy, which was fully 16-17 year olds. So we found him, we trialed him and when our team folded I knew I wanted to make a team with zyyx and as he's showed from this best-of-three, he's got the talent.

From there, the idea me and EMPEROR had going into it, we could do the same old thing using recycled UK players who have the experience, have played in Advanced or even EU players who have that experience, or we could do something completely different. We could go for almost like an academy-based team age-wise. We've got two unknown UK players, like they've been up in being up in the ranks before, but not where they're playing now in terms of yz0 and Vacancy. They are hidden gems, over the next few months you’re gonna see. And then we ended up looking for a fifth, and 1Knas was zyyx’s friend, and then we just went from there. The main thing about 1Knas, to shout him out, he plays all the bad roles pretty much. He plays all the shitty positions and for a 16-year-old to be mature enough to accept that and make sure he's doing his role and not care about anything like "oh your stats are bad." To have that maturity to play those roles and be a team player is really good and is gonna help us a lot.

You mentioned the two young additions to your squad, and they’re both Swedish. I see that’s a thing that's becoming more common in the UK scene. We're seeing a lot more import players, whether they're Swedish, Lithuanian, Polish. Obviously a lot of them live in the United Kingdom, but with that I'm starting to think of is parallels between the UK scene and the NA scene. Is there not enough young talent in the UK scene to keep growing and developing?

There's definitely not enough UK talent. I do a UK CS spreadsheet where I track UK teams. Two months ago I went through ESEA Main or Advanced UK players and I think there are only like 20 teams with a UK core and we've got maybe three players who are under the age of 18, so that's a real concern. Compared to the way Sweden does it, they have Esportal and zyyx and 1Knas explained how it works to me. They have so many players 16-17 or even younger who are coming up and that's something that I think helps the scene a lot. In terms of the EU approach, I think especially to speak for like Endpoint and Into the Breach, they’re at the point now where they would be holding themselves back being a full five UK team. If they've got the funding, they can get these good EU players like Into the Breach bringing in draken and RuStY.

NA has a very similar problem where we struggle to find new players who can slot in on the sub-top teams, approaching the top ten teams in NA. I think LANs are an important part of helping to develop our talent. On that note, why would a UK team travel all the way to Frag given all the expenses when you have EPIC.LAN and Insomnia?

I think especially for us and BLVKHVND, if you do the numbers, the UK LANs are good, it's good competition. But, when you're speaking about the top UK teams in terms of Into the Breach, Endpoint, and 1PIN, they don't turn up to the UK LANs, they’re not prestigious enough in terms of prize pool. It gets HLTV points but it's not worth the cost to send people to these LANs compared to what you get out of it. So that's a big thing and even going to Fragadelphia if you add up the numbers, to send a team to this Last Chance Qualifier for Fragadelphia, it costs the same as sending someone to Insomnia or EPIC.LAN. We planned on going to Fragadelphia like two months ago, but we couldn't get the announcement out yet. It made sense in terms of the cost and what we would get out of Fragadelphia for a team of our level, to be honest.

As good as they are, UK events are not really a magic potion on how to make the scene better, but events like these, if these could be in the UK it would be great. The price of LANs aren’t too bad, but if the prize pools get better like it would go a long way. Insomnia 58 had only a 20k prize pool, yet kioShiMa and GuardiaN turned up to the LAN. A big draw I think for a lot of teams is the massive prize pool for Fragadelphia 17. But you know, for a lot of our domestic teams, it's an experience being able to go to a big LAN, have a LAN experience to play against teams, which is something that’s fairly rare in the UK.

What has been your assessment of playing against NA teams so far? How do you guys rate them?

So far, we’ve played against Cyberstorm then we played against Limitless. I think Cyberstorm is 7-2 in Main and Limitless are 5-3 in Advanced. Comparing those records to if we were playing EU teams with those records, definitely the EU teams are a lot stronger. In terms of how I felt playing against them, we found out the bracket, and then we had to travel the next day, so I'm not sure how much teams could have prepped for us. In general, if I had to describe it, it's like there's not enough. These teams are quite predictable. In EU we've played 16 games in our two leagues and we've had to play against ten Russian teams, and that just goes against every single thing you know about CS. You have to dumb down your CS. We go five-man and just do stuff to beat those teams. But playing against these NA teams we've played so far, we can play the round so slowly, we don't have to be scared of any of these unnatural things happening to us, and that's where we're most comfortable.

From a team standpoint, you seem to have a fairly good matchup against them. How have you guys been enjoying the team culture? When I've talked to, Danish players or Norwegian players who came last year, they said they're not used to this level of screaming and banter. How's that treating you and is there any real comparison in the UK scene?

I think the big difference between this place compared to UK LANs is this place is a lot more confined, so the screams are a lot louder and eardrum-bursting than at the UK LANs. It's not too far from UK LANs, but the general noise level, because of the building we’re in, is very loud. It's especially bad for the mics because it's not really useful to play push-to-talk on LAN, so you have to deal with that.

Are players in the UK scene this loud and constantly bantering and shit-talking? Is that a similar experience?

Yes, it’s quite similar, there’s been a few incidents on UK LAN but you all shake hands after the game, it's all good. But to speak with one thing, everyone here has been so kind here. The North American players, even like in the hall people come up to talk to us, and even outside, we're walking around with our jersey when we went to Popeyes during our break and other people who stopped us or spoke to us, asked us what we did here and were interested in us. It's been an experience. It always makes people feel like they’re famous.

I think there's an old joke or something that says in London it's offensive and weird if someone comes up and tries to talk to you, right?

In London, no one would ask for a picture, no one would ask what we did, they would just stare at us and walk on.

I think that's the American city of brotherly love feeling there. I wanted to ask you for the last big question: as a UK player who is connected to the European scene and has a greater appreciation for this, how does it feel as a player to be playing in the same LAN as names like shox, kuben, and nawwk, these sort of legends of European CS? Did you think you were gonna reach that spot in your career?

It is surreal. You just walk in, you've got these people you've watched when you started playing CS like tier-one wise who now at this LAN you're playing with. I don't think when I start playing CS I’d ever expect to play an organization like EG tomorrow. It's surreal for sure and it's a really good opportunity for us and we've been working hard in terms of getting prepared for this event and we want to make the UK scene proud and show what we're capable of.

Do you have anything you want to say to the fans back home, why they should stay up so late to watch you guys play?

Because we're going to make the main event, we're going to disband EG tomorrow, we're going to, we're going to go viral because everyone is gonna tweet about EG losing to some UK shit team, and then and then we're going to win. We're gonna get playoffs in the main event and then we'll go from there.

7AM continue their campaign in the Fragadelphia Last Chance Qualifier today, as they square off against EG White at 01:30PM for a shot at qualifying to the main stage of Fragadelphia 17.