“with boltz, me and fer have more freedom”

At the end of the EPICENTER semi-final day, HLTV interviewed Marcelo “coldzera” David. He talks about his journey against Astralis, explains the difference between felps and boltz, and how he feels about fer’s play.

SK was the first finalist at EPICENTER, as they won 16-11 in train and came back from 6-14 on the T-side at Mirage.

The 1st semi-final was the focus of the interview with coldzera. The highest rated player in the league at the moment, he also talked about the difference between Joao “felps” Vasconcellos and Ricardo “boltz” Prassas well as the influence of Fernando “fer” Alvarenga:

Firstly, at Train, it seemed like SK was in control of the first half, he didn’t let Astralis win a round in a row, but tell me about the second half, where they won 6 rounds in a row until SK finished. match?

We won the pistol in the second half, but the gun round didn’t go so well. Xyp9x pushing B broke the SK formation. In round 2 and 3, everyone couldn’t defend well, so they exploited this a lot, SK always started the round with only 4 people.

At first the game was quite difficult, but when we ‘pause’, to find therapy to counter Astralis’ aggressive play. SK starts playing faster and grabs openings if they push. Everyone started doing this and almost won the first round when the members pushed from the ladder to mid. SK lost the clutch but then we eco successfully. After the eco round, everyone started to speed up the game and that’s why we won that map.

I think the veto process is pretty predictable, that SK will pick Mirage, but what do people think about Overpass before that?

We said the night before and thought they would pick Overpass. But I’m also quite concerned, because SK won a lot of strong teams in Overpass, but we also lost that map to Astralis a lot of times.

For SK, the best scenario is that they pick Train. I don’t think it’s the right choice for Astralis because SK plays really well in Train. I don’t think anyone would want to fight Train against us offline. When they picked Train, it was very beneficial for SK. When the team moved to the Mirage map, we understood that we had a great chance to win.

Speaking of Train map, when there was felps, it seemed like SK was not playing well, do you think you play better with boltz?

At the beginning, when felps joined the team, I was concerned because SK was too active before. Teams with fer, players are very active wherever they are. But when we bring back felps, we lose this a little bit and it’s not in the system.

We have an extremely efficient system. So when boltz joined, we were able to reboot the system step by step, giving fer and me more freedom. And when felps joined the team, I stopped doing the good things I used to do so he could try them out. But he doesn’t stick to the system, but plays randomly many times. He can do it, but too ‘unlucky’.

I don’t think it works. But with boltz now, boltz is in charge of the passive part of the system and I play the active one step at a time. I can control the tempo, for example at Mirage I can control everything.

So the balance between active and passive parts has become better?

That’s right, when we want to play proactively, we give fer a good position. And when we wanted to play passive, SK gave me a good position, so everything was good.

Speaking of Mirage against Astralis, it’s a completely different story, to go 4-11 in the first half. Tell me about the reverse process, what is the key to turning the T side?

Speaking of the first round, SK’s start was pretty rough, Astralis won the pistol and in the first gun round we lost 2v5. This makes our money extremely weak. They have a lot of strategies to hit A and switch things up, sometimes they put 2 mids, sometimes they hit A all the way, sometimes they fake A. I think Astralis played really well.

Speaking of retakes, we played really well but couldn’t finish the round, someone was alive, sometimes 2, sometimes we made a mistake and lost the round. In general, when Astralis won 8-0, but the rounds were very close.

SK destroyed their economy with just 1 win round after that…

Well, when we won 1 round, they were out of money for 2 rounds. The first half went pretty well, I think going from 8-0 to 11-4 was fine, because they were in control of the game then. And on the T side, we won the pistol and started creating space.

Everyone stopped the game when the score was 14-6, SK understood that they played not to make us play mid but at the edge of the map. The members understand that they only need 1 solo player to pressurize mid and put more people on the edges of the map. Then we started to win, and started our journey to shore.

It’s been said a lot lately, that fer is a very annoying player even when he knows where he is. We see the most obvious examples here at this Mirage against Astralis, and the Overpass against FaZe. Why are teams having so much trouble against fer, what makes him successful with his aggressive play?

I think when SK got felps, fer stopped active play, because he understood that if he died, felps would try to play actively too, which is not good. So now fer has a lot of freedom and he can play the way he likes. Fer is very good because he knows how to take advantage of the space whenever he gets the chance, so I think he’s more confident than before.

Fer understands that if he dies, someone else will trade lives, because we have setups to change lives all the time. SK has active positions, if he dies, we will pressurize the rest of the map together, and swap lives. So now fer is much more comfortable.

Speaking of the best-of-5 match tomorrow, do you think you will meet Virtus.pro again after what you did on day one, when the match was like a ‘parking round’?

At first I thought I would meet G2, because G2 is a strong team, they beat us every time we meet. But for SK it’s going to be a good game, because VP beat us when we just made a substitution at DreamHack Las Vegas, and now it’s our turn for revenge.