Lucid joins FunPlus Phoenix as analyst
Former Third Impact coach Hunter "Lucid" Tucker has joined FunPlus Phoenix as their coach, the newly-minted analyst has announced today.
Lucid has been working with FunPlus Phoenix for a period of around three months, initially helping the team during ESL Pro League Season 13. Lucid's involvement with FunPlus Phoenix marks a massive step-up in the level of competition for the coach and content creator, as he previously worked with Third Impact, Clarity in Advanced, and Austin "gmanchew" Vieira's Onyx in Advanced during Season 31 — a squad that would later go on to become RBG.
Lucid is the latest North American to seek CS:GO opportunities abroad, with the latest notable names including NIP's Danny "mahone" Hsieh and Nordavind's Joshua "m1cks" Micks.
Dust2.us reached out to Lucid to conduct a short interview with the analyst about how he linked up with FunPlus Phoenix and what it has been like working with the European team thus far.
So to start, how did you get in FunPlus Phoenix and start working with the team?
So I got in contact with Devilwalk through nart who had connections with them before. We got to talking and did some introductions while they were in EPL, when they still had suNny, where they made the playoffs in the pretty stacked Group A. To get my stay I wanted to prove myself and prove that I was ready for the next step, so I provided notes on their last two opponents in the group stage which were BIG and OG.
FPX were pleased with my work, so they brought me in, and I met the GM and we quickly built a strong relationship, and then finally I met with management [and talked] about how I wanted to be a part of FPX.
What are your current responsibilities in the team?
I have a lot of duties currently in FPX including making weekly progress reports for the organization to track our progress. I'm also there during practice to help give my input in theory and scrims similar to an assistant coach (although I am struggling to be there all the time with the extreme time difference which I am still adjusting to), I'm also in charge of the analytics for the team and recording advanced statistics for the players so we can keep track of the overall numbers, and finally I also usually schedule the scrims.
Making the jump to a European team, you're working with a lot of famous names in the scene. To pick three, what is it like working with STYKO, Devilwalk, and the team's new IGL emi?
STYKO is by far the smartest person I have interacted with in CS:GO and his approach to every spot he plays is so meticulous and thought out. Me and him also share the love for coming up with new gimmicks and wacky things so we will often bounce ideas back and forth.
Devilwalk is really easy going and easy to get along with. He's been a huge help to me making the adaptation to an EU schedule and has been understanding with the difficult situation it puts me in currently (especially since we've had some schedule changes during Flashpoint) which completely ruined the groove I was starting to get into. I've also learned a lot about how to be a better coach myself from him especially when it comes to understanding players and keeping a good team atmosphere.
Emi is an incredibly hard working individual and is often very inviting to new ideas and different approaches. Only issue we can run into with each other is both having so many new ideas that It can be a bit overwhelming in a single day to cover it all, so we need to pace what we want to do day to day.
One final question, what are your personal expectations for your time with FunPlus Phoenix, and what are you goals for this team?
Personally I expect to continue to learn and gather experience from this opportunity. For the team, I fully expect us to continue to be a team that people do not want to play and for us to creep towards being a top 10 team by the end of the year.
As far as what the plan for the next couple months are; we obviously have the player break coming up, so we are planning to take a break. The team had a lot of roster turmoil for the "summer split" finally getting emi about the same time I joined in April. Post player break we just want to continue to develop our own play and resolve mistakes with our new IGL and finalized roster.
With the addition of Lucid, FunPlus Phoenix are now:
Jesse "zehN" Linjala
Martin "STYKO" Styk
Pavle "maden" Bošković
Asger "farlig" Jensen
Luka "emi" Vuković
Jonatan "Devilwalk" Lundberg (Coach)
Hunter "Lucid" Tucker (Analyst)
FunPlus Phoenix currently don't have any events scheduled until 2022, but likely be in action post-Summer player break.
