gla1ve: Happy to play Cobblestone

cs cases free2025-04-20 04:47:19981

Astralis went 2-0 in the first day of IEM Sydney, defeating their rivals FaZe and the local team Chiefs. To hear about his teams and their plans to build the Astralis era, we talked to Lukas "gla1ve" Rossander

The Danish side marched through the first day of the IEM Sydney Swiss group stage, picking up two similarly dominant wins against two very different teams: FaZe and Chiefs. With a 2-0 score, Astralis are set to meet SK tomorrow to decide which team will take the first place in the playoffs.

gla1ve revealed that Astralis started working on Cobble after their defeat at StarSeries

After the last match of day 1, HLTV.org talked to Lukas "⁠gla1ve⁠" Rossander about building an era, teams copying their style and setups as well as playing Cobblestone versus FaZe.

When you won the Major and ECS S2 before that, the thing that you as a team mentioned a lot was that getting on top is easy, but staying on top is the hard part and the goal. After finishing second at StarSeries, how do you feel you are doing on that path, are you happy with what you achieved so far, what do you think of that result in the grand scale of "building the Astralis era"?
Yeah, we are doing our best in building the Astralis era, as you said, we really want to do that and to improve all the time, practice a lot and make new things. As about staying as the number one team, that is pretty hard because people are looking so much into what the #1 team is doing.
I can see that when I see semi-good teams play, and tier 1 teams play - they steal our tactics, they steal our setups. And of course we steal from them as well, but they take more from us than we take from them and that is just because we are number one. When SK was number one we did that as well, that's all fine because that is just how you are trying to improve.
Coming here, in the preparation phase, how did you approach the tournament? Did you take it like a big tournament, the last few that we had, DH Las Vegas, IEM Katowice, StarSeries S3, or did you take it a little bit laid back considering the schedule that is coming after this event?
I think this is a pretty big event for us, it means a lot for us to win this. We've been trying to fix a lot of things, we want to show that StarSeries was a fluke, that we are not going to lose one more final this time. That's our main reason to practice a lot for this event, we want to show that we are number one in the world.
Coming in, you first had a game against Chiefs. They had some openings, but you closed them down - what do you think was their main issue, was there anything you felt they were doing incorrectly?
It can be tough, because I don't think they practiced a lot of EU teams. So we used a lot of things that we've got taught from EU teams, and that's not a playstyle they've faced before. I'm not sure about that, but they are a really good team, they have shown that in the game against Renegades and I'm really happy for them.
Coming into the match vs FaZe, the veto ended up on Cobblestone, a map both teams don't really play but you've flirted it around in the vetos a bit before, you left it in late and now we finally see it played. Can you tell me the thinking behind it, is that tied into the surprise and getting something new in as the #1 team?
After we lost StarSeries we were looking at our map pool and we saw that FaZe has a pretty good map pool against us. We knew that if we got good on Cobblestone we would have an amazing map pool against them. So we started practicing Cobble, we did that to be ready for our next matchup.
Tell me a bit about the match, you had a great start, they came back but in the end, you ran away with the lead…
It was a pretty calm match for us. We were pretty happy with the veto and we were happy to play Cobblestone. I feel like they feel that they are the underdogs and that they have to play a map like Cobblestone. That was fine because we were ready for it, and after an up and down beginning, we managed to close it out.
Looking forward, there is a lot of events coming in the next two months up to the Major and you are one of the rare top teams that declined Cologne. Do you have a full schedule of events you want to go to and things you want to do in the next couple of months?
The Majors are the most important events for us, that's why we decided to skip Cologne, we had a really tight schedule and we didn't want to do that, we wanted to be fully prepared. We don't want to show the new things we will do for the Major at Cologne. And yeah, we have a pretty tight schedule after this, we have three weeks then go to ESL Pro League finals, if we win one map against EnVyUs I think we are qualified. That's our goal right know, to go to the ESL Pro League Finals and qualify for the ECS S3 finals, and we have the Major after that.

Professeur writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter.