This article is part of our Game Side series.
After Astralis hoisted the ECS Season 2 crown, we caught up with Peter "dupreeh" Rothmann to get his thoughts on the win and where things will go heading into 2017.
How are you guys feeling after this big win over OpTic Gaming?
"It's super great. We really wanted this revenge and everyone was so hungry for it. Everyone played well individually. We played great as a team. So everything is really great. And I'm super happy. I'm so relieved. Christmas came early for us. We got a title already. We haven't won anything in 2016."
How important was it for you guys to get this win in terms of your mentality and to prove that you can still win big?
"The good thing is that this is the last real tournament until the [ELEAGUE] Major coming up in January. It gives a lot of confidence, but then again, it's probably going to make people a lot more aware of how we are as a team and how we play. So they're probably going to prepare a lot more for us. Overall, it's more worth it to get the confidence that we've been looking for [after] so long. It's super great. This is exactly what we need and this is what we've been working for."
Looking back to SK Gaming from your previous series, how did you feel about the timing of the roster change they made? Was this a good time to do it?
"It's hard to know because we don't know exactly what has been going on in the team and if there are deeper problems than the ones we've just heard about. So it depends. I can't tell. If it was because a deeper problem, then yes I think they should have changed it because it takes down the entire team, when one guy is not working out as it should. If it's just like a surface problem, I think it probably should have waited until after the major. [Ricardo "fox" Pacheco] has been away from CS for quite awhile and he's returning now into the top level. I think he needs a little bit more time. Obviously, he can maybe get that before they go to the major. He was just kind of thrown into it, and he was just doing a lot of the basic stuff and playing a little bit on his own and told what to do instead of working together with the team as much as they wanted to. But in a matter of time, when the major comes, I'm sure they're going to be prepared because they always are."
Did you see any differences in their style of play with fox in instead of Lincoln "fnx" Lau?
"I feel like they played a bit more sloppy and they didn't play much as a team. They played a little bit more like individuals; people just trying to get picks. Whereas if they played a bit more with crossfires, [they] would probably win. Not taking anything away from them. I still think it's great that they made it to the semifinals here with a stand-in and they've beaten pretty good teams as well."
Do you think your win over OpTic diminishes anything that they've been doing the last few weeks? Or is NA still going to be a threat going into 2017?
"I think OpTic is the best North American team right now. I think they're better than Cloud9. I think OpTic is going to go far in the major because they seem to be a hardworking bunch of guys and super skilled individually. They're so good at playing basic CS, they don't have to do anything advanced. [They're] really good at trade-fragging and always trying to play as a team, instead of having to rely on individuals. Once they do rely on individuals, they're still really good. I think this loss is probably just giving them more hunger for more success in the new year. They've come, in my opinion, a little bit out of nowhere with the win in Northern Arena [Montreal]. They've just kept going and going and beating good teams in best-of-threes. They beat us at ELEAGUE when no one really expected that. So they're definitely a team to look out for in the future."
