Peter ‘dupreeh’ Rasmussen was one of the backbones of the greatest team of all time, although success has been somewhat hard to come by since he took the plunge into an international roster when joining Vitality.
With a win at ESL Pro League Season 16 under their belts, Vitality would have been hoping to find more success at IEM Katowice, although that was denied by an incredible comeback by Team Liquid in the Quarterfinals.
We got the chance to sit down with the man himself after the ill-fated Liquid matchup to discuss the series and the shape of Vitality heading into the future and the Paris Major.
Sam ‘AN1MO’ McKenzie, BLIX.GG: The Semi-final was an absolute rollercoaster of a series, can you take me through it from your perspective?
Peter ‘dupreeh’ Rasmussen: I think we played really well in the beginning, but then we started to suck. That’s how I would describe Overpass in one sentence. The mental recovery for Nuke was great and then started having some struggles on Mirage again, we couldn’t really close it out or find the solution, and we lost.
BLIX: Are you happy with where you guys are right now?
dupreeh: Not really. We have some good things, some bad things, and some stuff we need to figure out. There are things we want to work on in terms of individual levels and how we are as a team, so there’s still room for improvement.
BLIX: How do you feel about the team’s map pool, are you happy with Ancient remaining as the perma ban?
dupreeh: Yeah, I think it’s fine, there are a lot of good Ancient teams and it’s a map that goes through a lot of change, I would say there are some reasons not to play it right now. I think we have a decent map pool, it’s one of the things we’ve been working on.
We have a couple of good maps, and we have some maps that need some more love. I think we’re getting there with the map pool. I don’t think it’s about the map pool anymore honestly.
BLIX: What are your thoughts on Anubis?
dupreeh: It’s quite interesting in my opinion, I think it’s kind of simple. It reminds me of Train in the sense that you don’t have to pick up that much map control as the T-side, you basically have it all from the beginning, you only have to fight for middle, it can be good and bad. They still need to make a few changes, but overall, the map is pretty good, I like the simplicity of the map and the design is also cool.
BLIX: What changes would you make to Anubis?
dupreeh: I would probably change the bombsites a little bit to make them more viable as CTs. I would also change a few of the corridors maybe, that could open up the mid area a bit more to allow CTs to help the bombsites, but that’s it.
BLIX: In terms of the roles on your team, do you think all the roles fit together? Because a few people have been critical of apEX not entrying as much, and Spinx not having the same impact he did on ENCE.
dupreeh: For some of the maps the roles fit pretty well, some of them not so much. We still have a little bit of an issue because we don’t have a specific anchor, it’s mostly me and Magisk doing some of the anchoring stuff, and apEX does a little bit as well.
It’s essentially split between the three of us, we simply lack that anchor player that will take care of bombsites on his own and play those tough positions. Right now, we have a lot of players who want to play specific positions and want to be proactive, and that’s not doable right now.
BLIX: Is that something that you or Magisk will look to do, become the real anchor?
dupreeh: We could but it’s difficult when we’ve been playing every day in similar roles for 8-9 years, having to change something all of a sudden, I think that’s tough, so we’ll see.
BLIX: What are your hopes for the rest of the year?
dupreeh: Hopefully we’ll get a few trophies, go to the Major and have a good showing. Winning it would be the most important thing, the rest doesn’t actually matter when we’re putting all our effort into being ready for the Major and being really good for when it comes around.
BLIX: Heroic and G2 seem pretty clear as the top two teams at the moment, what do you think the gap is between you and them?
dupreeh: Two months ago, G2 was playing horrible Counter-Strike, and now all of a sudden, they’re playing well. It’s kind of weird, right? But I guess that’s just Counter-Strike, sometimes you’ll have a really good period and be playing well. FaZe just dropped out before going to the Playoffs here, and they were the best team last year, Counter-Strike just goes up and down.
Maybe you’ll see G2 be dominant for a couple of months, and maybe they’ll drop off if they start putting fewer hours in or become too comfortable, a lot of things can happen. I think Heroic is probably the team right now that is going to be the most stable going forward, they’ve always had a pretty stable level.
They just won in Copenhagen so they also know they can win titles now, so they’ll be a contender for this one as well, so yeah, it’s gonna be interesting.
BLIX: When you were in Astralis during 2018-2019 you were the best and it was indisputable, what’s changed since then?
dupreeh: The whole way of approaching the game, back then people didn’t prepare as much. Right now, it’s like people are scared of playing without information so CTs are pushing up for a lot of information, and that creates a lot of randomness in the game in my opinion.
If you push an area and no one is there, you’re like “Oh cool, they’re gonna go B” or the opposite can happen, and you push into someone waiting for you and lose the round. It’s a complete gamble sometimes, and I think that’s one of the reasons Counter-Strike right now is pretty random.
Feature Images: PGL/Stefan Petrescu
