ImAPet: “With the new [CS:GO] economy, we’re trying to take advantage of it and buy to break them so we can get a few more rounds back”

The coach of EG spoke about the ever-changing meta.

Photo via StarLadder

Evil Geniuses, one of the best CS:GO teams in the world, lost to an in-form mousesports on Dec. 6 at the ESL Pro League finals. But arguably the most astonishing part of that series was the final map, which resulted in a 16-0 victory for mousesports. 

The coach of Evil Geniuses, Chet “ImAPet” Singh, talked with Dot Esports following their loss to eventual-finalists mousesports. ImAPet discussed the issues within the team and on the server. He also spoke about the meta, which has become a hot topic once more following the recent changes to the Krieg, arguably the most overpowered gun in the game, and the economy. 

Let’s start with the CT side on Train against mousesports. What were the issues that you spotted? 

ImAPet: I think we had some miscommunication so our rotations were a little bit worse because they knew we had two AWPs at some point and they just execute and enter, which is a good answer. We didn’t adapt to that situation fast enough. So yeah, we just got punished for small stuff like that—some missed comms. 

You mentioned that miscommunication plagued your match but did your team find it difficult to shut down Özgür “woxic” Eker?

Woxic was playing really confidently. I think the others weren’t as hard to beat, but he was playing with a lot of confidence and re-peeking a lot. So, it’s kind of annoying because you don’t see a lot of people do that. But the other players are fine. I felt like we were playing pretty well. On Inferno, we were getting pretty comfortable on our T-side—our default was working really well. Then, on the CT side, we were adapting just fine even though it was kind of close, so I don’t know. Just Woxic, he was probably the biggest problem.

Moving on to Nuke, what were the issues during the game? Was there a loss of confidence after you barely missed out on winning the opening rounds? 

I mean, the first five or six rounds, they were pretty close, they just didn’t go our way. They were pretty close to being broke. And with the new economy, we’re trying to take advantage of it and buy to break them so we can get a few more rounds back. But we just couldn’t break them because we just didn’t win the rounds and it set a bad pace throughout the game. [We] just [had] no money, which led to us buying pretty poorly. And then overall they played pretty insane. I think they had a lot of luck on their side that game. There was a round where [Finn “karrigan” Andersen] was in the far vent but he was full blind and killed three of us. So it felt like anything we were doing wasn’t going to work. We tried a lot of different stuff, so we thought we should try stuff that usually works against other teams like Astralis.

In regards to the economy issue, do you think that attempting to break the opponent’s bank is still a prevalent strategy, especially considering the Krieg has a predominant role on the T-side? 

I think with the new meta, you’re probably going to be buying a lot more if you think you can break them anytime you think you could break them you could get a Krieg at least. I think it’s worth. Then, other people should get utility because it’s cheap on T-side to get Molotovs. So, I just think that we just have to get better at making better plans on those types of rounds instead of saving. We don’t have to go to old meta ways. We should be adapting to whatever this is and trying to make the best rounds to actually close the rounds out. 

Speaking on the meta, how well do you believe the team is adapting to the new system? 

I think we’re adapting as fast as we can. We haven’t practiced really under the new meta. I feel like maybe one or two days. So we’ve practiced with the meta for one or two days and we figured some stuff out. But I think we still have a long way to go. 

To follow from this, do you believe that you’re behind in comparison to other teams with regards to the meta? 

I think everything has screwed with us. Just all these patches and on top of that no practice. So we’re playing on all these patches with no practice. On top of that, the Vertigo changes that weren’t that major, but it also hurts us as a team because we’re not as familiar. We’re still down to play it I guess but it just makes things harder because there’s less repetition overall makes everything not as fluid.

Talking about Nuke, although it was a tough loss, did you take any positives from the match? 

I didn’t really take away any positives [laughs]. I mean it was kind of like we’re doing our best. We’re trying to get by right now until the next year where we can boot camp and practice. So, none of these things are an issue and we’ll have a better schedule next year as well. So yeah, we’re just trying to coast by until next year comes around.

Going forward into next year, will you be making changes to your schedule or potentially attending fewer events? 

Yeah. I think we are going to ensure that we attend fewer events next year because we went to 24 this year. So hopefully we’ll cut the number at least in half, if not, a little bit more. Then, I think for Katowice and Cologne, we’re going to make sure we boot camp for those events for sure. They’re $1 million tournaments, but this applies for the Major, as well. So we have to make sure we have weeks when we schedule our calendar year that we have those boot camps and then we’re fully prepared and have no excuses.