DSG DARKWINGS: “With the rematch [against LG], their mentals will probably be reset and it’s still going to be a tough fight.”
Q: Did you feel you were stronger as a team today (vs LG) than vs Estral?
DARKWINGS: Yeah, today our mentality was a bit more locked in. I felt like we had a better idea of what we actually wanted to do, like with our comps and things. But I think versus Estral, [what we wanted to do] wasn’t as concrete.
Q: Do you see that as rust, or was it a new problem the team had yet to address?
DARKWINGS: Oh yeah, […] not playing on stage for a while is a part of it. You kind of see a lot more of how you play after playing on stage than just from scrims.
Q: From your perspective, what happened on Monday?
DARKWINGS: Monday, the first day of the Estral matchup, […] our ping kept spiking, and it wasn’t just like us or Estral — both teams’ ping were just spiking at random times. Then we just had to keep pausing.
And then at one point [the refs said] we need to pause for like 15 minutes. And then after 15 minutes it was like, oh, we’ve got to keep paused for another 30 minutes to figure out the issue and try to fix it.
Q: So what did you guys do during the pause?
DARKWINGS: I mean, me personally, I was just thinking about the game for like the first 10 minutes. I was like, wait, pause is still going. And then after that, I don’t know, we were playing with balloons. I took a nap for like a couple of minutes at times.
Q: When did you catch wind of the cheating discourse?
DARKWINGS: After we heard that the match was going to be delayed to the next day. The pause was long enough [during the second game] where they gave us time to just walk around. That’s probably after like 45 minutes of pause, because they delayed it like another hour and a half.
After the third game, [we] saw on Twitter that people were calling Summit and Ghost out. But we weren’t really sure if there was actually going to be any difference, so we just thought Summit was going to keep playing the next day.
Q: From your perspective, what was that revelation like? I’d imagine it must’ve been really shocking.
DARKWINGS: I mean, we’re pretty surprised that they had to get a sub, but we’re just like, “Well, we’re probably going to win anyways. Just play the game.”
Q: It felt like Cody got the better of you in some of the matchups in that series — where would you rate his level overall?
DARKWINGS: I definitely agree that Cody is a pretty good player. [There are] matchups sometimes are like that, where you’ll lose early and then you’ll win later, or the other way around. I think he’s definitely a solid player.
Q: What does that say about Estral’s level overall? They found advantages early — was that a function of the comps you chose more than a sign of their strength?
DARKWINGS: We do think that their skill is not that much farther below us; we [can’t do] whatever we want. I think it’s pretty close, and the difference is mainly just our mindset. I think the reason we got down gold is because we messed up.
Q: It looked to me like, on the second day of your match, EST weren’t really trying.
DARKWINGS: I mean, yeah, I don’t think they were trying at all, the last game.
Q: Just from draft or from how they played?
DARKWINGS: Like, because they had a sub, right? I think mostly from draft. I mean, they definitely tried to win their lanes, but I don’t think they could really do much because the draft was bad. Yeah, we just exploited their draft and some of their skills.
Q: But the thing is, they now face Tigres — who did defeat them. You haven’t faced them yet, right?
DARKWINGS: Yeah, we haven’t faced them. We’ve played them in scrims though a couple of times. But I still feel like Estral will beat Tigres even though they lost the finals against them.
Q: With the substitute?
DARKWINGS: Oh, not with [Shintalx], I think.
[Editor’s Note: This interview was conducted before the SDM-EST series]
Q: Regardless, you think LG will defeat the winner, then?
DARKWINGS: LG, yeah, I believe so. I mean, LG seems pretty [clearly] stronger than them.
Q: Looking ahead to that rematch, it looked like your late-series drafts were much stronger, since the results got more dominant every game — do you expect that to happen again next time?
DARKWINGS: I think they also lost a lot of momentum after Game 1 because they were up so much and we somehow came back. So I think that was also part of the reason why it looked much [easier] for the second and third game. […] But with the rematch, their mentals will probably be reset and it’s still going to be a tough fight, I believe — but I think we’ll come out on top.
[Transcript editing by @midjglsynergy]
