NAF: “It was kinda just like the classic Liquid slow start.”

Team Liquid come back from a rough loss on Inferno to take down Outsiders 2-1. With the first-ever tier 1 win on Anubis under their belt, the team moves to the upper bracket of their group, where they'll face the winner of FaZe-G2. We talked to NAF after the match to get his thoughts on the game.

Arnav "xL" Shukla: Rough first half on Inferno. The T side was getting shut down by outsiders consistently. What went wrong on the T side?

NAF: "Yeah, so starting off, we had Inferno. It was our map pick, and we were pretty confident going into the map. We know it's one of their lesser maps. They're not too strong on it. They played a phenomenal game today. I don't know if it was kinda just like the classic liquid slow start. You know how we have these slow games?

Regardless I think they are playing really well on Inferno, they had a lot of good reads, and they had a lot of quick flanks. So they just read the game really well. We were starting really, really slow. I just have to give them props, they played well on Inferno, and luckily we bounced back on the other maps."

xL: Anubis, you guys started with a 6-0 lead before you dropped out of the server with the long tech pause. Did that sap some of the momentum out of the team?

NAF: "It's always unfortunate when a lag out happens, especially when we were winning like 6-0 or something. Of course, we wanna keep the ball rolling as much as we can. But unfortunately, that happens in counter-strike. Tech problems will happen. You just gotta make sure your mental game is strong; just get through it. Shit happens, just get through it and bounce back and try to get the win."

xL: First official on Anubis. How does it feel to play the map?

NAF: "It's nice to see a new map. It's always refreshing to see new maps instead of old maps being recycled. I like the map so far. There are a few things that need to be fixed in the map. Even during my game, there were two times when I threw a Nade, and it just bounced off an invisible wall, and I was just like, what is this? They updated the game recently, How did they not update the map? But yeah, the map is nice to see. I'm enjoying it so far, and with some future changes, I think it'll be a spectacular map for sure."

xL: Over on mirage, you guys were 1-4 down, but you were relentless with the force-buy AKs and that eventually paid off in round 6. You won the eco and built a 9 round streak off of that. Was that something designed to counter Outsiders or a general strat?

NAF: "No, not really. It's just how the game was going and how we practice the game. That's also a big praise for YEKINDAR, he always preaches the low buys. If we can get one AK or one Galil to slow down the build of their economy, and if we're able to get like 2-3 kills, then it's a huge economic blow for them and keeps them on the back foot.

So they always need to be aware and be ready. It's just the way we practice and the way we play. A lot of it is inspired by how Yekindar played with Outsiders before, so it's interesting to learn it from the opponent that we just played."

xL: I saw that you're sticking to the M4A1-S. Any particular reason for that?

NAF: "I still kinda just feel the M4A1-S too much. I didn't practice too much with the A1. I'm sure it'd take a bit of time to practice with it. I don't think there's too much preference. Short range, it's still a little bit stronger. But also, I just prefer the accuracy and recoil on the gun, so I'm gonna stick to it for a little bit."

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