xertioN on the veto: “I mean, in hindsight, of course, Nuke was a disaster…”

While MOUZ’s run at BLAST Open Porto was nothing to be ashamed of, this final will leave a sour taste in their mouth.

Simultaneously, they weren’t that far off, and they were also completely massacred. The game plan seemed solid through a good portion of the series, but Spirit shot harder at every moment. Because of that, it was demoralizing to watch at times.

Still, MOUZ got it close for a 3-1 series loss.

To find out what happened, we spoke to xertioN, who was gracious enough to speak to us after the loss. Here’s what he told us:

First of all, commiserations. It was a tough final for you guys. I wanna ask, first of all, how much of this was in your hands, and how much was them just shooting harder?

Well, I think it was a bit of both. Definitely, we didn't play our A-game today on all the maps, but at the same time, I think they were really sharp. They were, I mean, I think they were just winning a lot of aim duels, to be honest, on a lot of maps.

Tactically, I would say we stood with them on some maps, some maps not. And, yeah, we will just have to look back and see what we can improve next time.

And for Dust II, it seems like your B hold seemed to be struggling at times. Is that something you guys noticed in the game, or something you need to work on in the future?

I think Dust II CT-side B is a hard side for everyone. I don't think it's only up to us. I think also on our T-side, we abused them a bit on B. We got two, the first two buy rounds, we basically won kinda easily on B side.

I think it's just a really hard side to hold at the moment with the meta. And just like other guys, our two guys will have to figure out what's the best conclusion to take out of it, but I'm really confident that with the work we're putting in, we will probably evolve the fastest out of everyone else.

And then my final question for you was the decision to pick Mirage in the first rotation of the veto. I personally expected Nuke. Was there a plan behind that for you guys?

I mean, in hindsight, of course, Nuke was a disaster, and Mirage was a really good pick. We end up winning it. I think we played poorly on basically all the maps today, on the majority of the rounds, unfortunately, but a lot of positives to take away on the map choice.

For us, we feel really confident in Mirage, so it was a good map to go against and pick it against Spirit. But, of course, when you play the best team in the world, they are really good on all the maps, and if we didn't show up on our A-game today, we're just gonna lose, and I think that's basically what happened today.