TdU asap on the season ahead: 'We've raised the expectations for ourselves'

From a 13-0 against old friends Rooster to dropping a 10-2 lead to Ground Zero and exiting early, THUNDERdOWNUNDER's HyperX Intel Nationals campaign was wild to say the least.

But ultimately, it's the missed opportunity for revenge in the grand final against fellow IEM Cologne attendees FlyQuest that Tyson "asap" Paterson and THUNDERdOWNUNDER will be ruing the most.

It's been a quiet return since the fireworks of Cologne, but for asap, he's now chasing the high that was competing at the pinnacle level of Counter-Strike, and as he revealed to DFRAG, he's more than willing to make the move across the pond to make it happen.

A 13-0 in the win over Rooster to qualify for the playoffs. Surely you feel a bit for the old boys, especially when it was the old Chooks you and TjP doing the damage?

"Yeah... I feel a little bit bad. We're just having a lot of fun playing against them, just seeing their names on the server, like playing against chelleos and ADK. It just brings me a lot of joy even though we've beaten down on them. It's still lot of fun.

"We didn't prep too much though, we know the level of the teams here is a lot lower than Europe. They don't have two analysts and two coaches going in-depth on us, so we don't need to get too in-depth for them.

"For me and TJ, we already know how these teams play, we already know how chelleos IGLs and stuff like that so I think we pick up on a lot of things subconsciously. On top of that, aliStair is IGLing — the game seems pretty easy for us."

The IEM Cologne campaign on paper says 1-3 in the opening stage, but the win against MIBR was epic given many believed you guys were going straight out. Talk me through the experience, and following that, is there a little pressure on this season to repeat or improve upon that result?

"Nah, I think there's not much pressure to be honest. We're not playing for an organisation or anything. We're basically just a good group of friends that are playing a decent level of Counter-Strike.

"That said, we've raised the expectations for ourselves. I think we knew we could have gone at least 2-0 in Cologne, maybe even 3-0, we definitely could have won that B8 game.

"Obviously we lost a lot of forces at the Major so if we iron that out and you know, it could have been a whole different story, so we definitely want to keep playing better Counter-Strike and it starts here."

While we're talking Cologne, you were lights-out individually, and speaking to me earlier you said that a lot of it was about luck, but heading into the major you were carving up OCE. What do you credit for that performance? How has the TdU system under viridian and aliStair helped?

"On an individual level, just buying into the system has been the most important thing for me.

"For my whole career I've been a team player that just wants to do anything I can for the team to win, and aliStair's put me into some pretty important rotational roles and he's let me know when to be a big voice on certain sides.

"I don't know, I've just played the same Counter-Strike I've always been playing and I think I've raised my level when I'm playing against better opposition. I just enjoy competition so much when I'm playing higher standard players, like, I really enjoy it."

You've played for so long with chelleos at Rooster and in his system. How does playing under him differ from your experience so far at THUNDERdOWNUNDER?

"Chelleos was more about micromanaging, he IGLs like CS is a chessboard, moving his own pieces around. But in this era, with the best teams like Team Vitality, all of their players are probably good enough to IGL a tier one team themselves, kind of.

"Like everyone on Vitality is smart enough on a macro level that they can play the game for themselves, and the IGL can trust them to do their own type of map control.

"I think chelleos was just used to having not really loud talkers, whereas on this team we have five loud talkers. Some maps where you're lurking on different spots, you obviously don't talk as much, but we all at least have three or four spots in the map pool where we have to do a lot of talking."

"That's probably the biggest difference between TdU and chelleos' rosters... he is the fucking team to be honest. He is the whole system, he's the whole impact, ... he does it all. He does it all, honestly.

"I give him so much credit, even with this new team he's got, he still manages to make Rooster a coherent Counter-Strike team even though they haven't played together that much."

How about your future individually? Say an org comes knocking for the squad, or a chance to move solo to Europe for another team lands in your inbox, is that something you'd be ready to do now? What vision or goal are you setting yourself?

"A hundred percent, I could see myself moving to Europe as an individual. I think with time and where the older guys in the team are at in their lives, I don't think they'd probably want to move to Europe to play Counter-Strike full-time again because they're getting a bit older. They probably want to settle down in Australia."

"I want to be in and around Europe's intense Counter-Strike environment as much as I can be."
Tyson "asap" Paterson, THUNDERdOWNUNDER

"[But] I would definitely do it. Every time I've been to Europe to play Counter-Strike, I've absolutely loved the atmosphere and just everything, like being able to play whenever I want.

"In Australia, deathmatch is only half-full for a couple hours a day, and it's kind of like sad sometimes. And you can't play pugs too late at night because once you get to a certain Elo, you just start getting like level 8s on your team just for them to balance the games out.

"In Europe, everyone's the same Elo, at any time of the day. It's like a full match game and I can just play my spot and just play normally. The quality is just a lot lower in Australia and I don't think it's Australia's fault."

TdU exits the HyperX Intel Nationals in third place, with Saturday's victors Ground Zero taking on FlyQuest in Sunday's grand final, live at 10:30am AEST.

For more HyperX Intel Nationals and OCE CS news stay tuned to DFRAG.