s1mple: "We need some victories to feel more confident again"

We caught up with Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev at the first day of EPICENTER, hearing about the preparation and expectations for the tournament.

Natus Vincere grabbed the win in the opening match of the tournament, ending the series 2-1 after a dominant showing on the decider map, Dust2.

Natus Vincere are looking to grab some offline wins after their bootcamp in Moscow

After the game, we sat down with s1mple in the hotel lobby to hear about the team's Moscow bootcamp, the online games in ESL Pro League and more.

After the Major you attended ESL One New York, which was kind of an underwhelming result, but it was close to the Major and all that, however now you had some online games, been playing well, you have a good record. So has that given you more confidence and lifted the atmosphere in the team?

It was pretty hard to play the online season because of the ESEA servers, I don't know, the ping is always 55-60 so I'm really happy that we managed to win 16 games and lose only four. I think that because of this bootcamp we got our form back, we are just trying to find our form again, because after the Major we were a bit disappointed mentally and now we need some victories to feel more confident again. I think the bootcamp helped us, we did it Moscow because of EPICENTER.

What were the main focuses of the bootcamp, except maybe playing these officials, did you do anything else, specifically, as a team?

We discussed the weak maps, but still, we need more time to practice so we are going to use these days at EPICENTER to practice our weakest maps. We managed to play better on Dust2, but if you practice one map, the other maps are going to go down. As we see on Overpass, we lost to Astralis online and now to HellRaisers so we will try to fix it before the next game.

For everyone, you are one of the favorites here, alongside Liquid. Is that something you have in mind as well, you are in different groups but there is kind of a rivalry there, a small one brewing, as to who will be the number two team and then challenge Astralis?

We don't have a rivalry, but I would say that FaZe and ENCE, all teams that played the ESL Pro League season, all of them know how to win games. I think that Liquid and FaZe are [the ones to watch], I think that FaZe is just getting back to the top, you know, because they lost a lot and they are still fixing mistakes and they have a chance to win this tournament as well. And of course, ENCE, it was an unlucky game against FaZe, I watched it, I think they have potential to go to semis as well.

We just need to fix our Overpass, we just need to remember what we need to do on this map because the CT side is pretty bad from us. Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev

Let's go into the first match you had here, against HellRaisers, playing against ANGE1 and bondik who you know very well. What was the mentality and game plan going into that game? They are kind of a mixed-bag, you never know what to expect from them?

kane prepared the game, as always, he just gave us a plan how to play against them, on Train we started pretty good, on Overpass we failed our CT side once again, and of course, on Dust2 we knew how they play this. They like to go Long and Short so we just send four people A and they had time to come back to B and help me as well.

How come you got so many good reads? It seemed like every time they went long you had four guys Long, when they went B you had three guys B...

It is easy when you have a 5-0, 6-0 lead, you have more economy, you know that they don't have an AWP... I don't know, four Long just really worked for us. I hit my shots on B so my teammates rotated really fast and we got our rounds as CT.

Touching on the Overpass game, I think that in the first half you were really struggling to get kills, it was sub-par for your standards. Was there something special you were struggling with against HellRaisers on Overpass?

I mean, on that map I went B - they went A, I went A Long, they went B again, it is pretty hard to understand where they will go, but it depends on what my team is doing. We just need to fix our Overpass, we just need to remember what we need to do on this map because the CT side is pretty bad from us.

woxic is really good and he is a prospective player, no matter the sens he is using, he understands this game Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev

I just wanted to touch on playing against woxic, he is an AWPer, a high sensitivity player, has this exciting, flicky way of playing. How do you feel playing against him facing him in AWP duels?

It is always nice to play against woxic, I mean, I know what he is going to do, but on Overpass he killed me twice in a row in the last rounds. I knew the position [he was going to peek me from], but yeah, some unlucky rounds by me at the end. But yeah, woxic is really good and he is a prospective player, no matter the sens he is using, he understands this game. It was maybe an unlucky game from him on Dust2 because I don't know, they didn't really play slow at the beginning, maybe it was their mistake. As an AWPer, I know that if my team is doing something fast or going somewhere else, it is pretty hard to find your game. When you are playing with the AWP you just need to hold, right? If there is no opponent, if your teammates go first with AK's and get killed, what else can you do? Just save the AWP or kill as much as possible.

Oleksandr 's1mple' Kostyliev Age: 21 Team: Natus Vincere Rating 1.0: 1.22 Maps played: 898 KPR: 0.85 DPR: 0.67 Natus Vincere #2 Oleksandr 's1mple' KostylievIoann 'Edward' SukharievDanylo 'Zeus' TeslenkoEgor 'flamie' VasilyevDenis 'electroNic' Sharipov