BESL Pro Season 2 finals are going to kick off on the 20th of October at Saku Suurhall arena in Tallinn, Estonia. The event is hosted as part of the HyperTown Tallinn Urban & eSports festival. Tickets can be found here!

The culmination of €9,000 CS:GO competition is going to feature the four best teams from the online stage. These teams are going to be placed in a single elimination bracket, with all the games being played as a best-of-three series.

The winner of the event is not only going to be crowned as the best team in Baltic states, taking home the beautiful BESL Pro Season 2 champions trophy, but will also receive the lion share of the prize pool in form of €2,200!

As we’re still waiting for the event itself to come along, let’s take a closer look at the teams that made it to the finals this time around and get to know them a little bit better!

Note: as of 5th of October, the team previously known as WASD Sports has parted ways with the organisation and has now joined XGR eSports for the time period of the current BESL Pro season. With that change, the former XGR eSports team is now known as XGR-X. Also - a few days later, a similar change happened to the other Estonian LAN finalist namely AUTOCLUTCH, who have now re-joined forces with their previous organisation WORTEX.

wolsung

Continuing our ‘A look at the finalist’ series is wolsung - the best Latvian team in our league that finished the regular season with a 13-2 win-loss record. The only two games they lost this season were to the two teams above them in the standings - XGR eSports (17:19 overpass) and 1337HUANIA (12:16 nuke).

Additionally to the XGR eSports game, there were two more opponents that managed to take wolsung into overtime, thus taking a point from them - XGR-X (19:17 train) and SkinLordz.RED (25:22 inferno).

To understand how exactly did hyskeee qualify for his second BESL Pro finals with a completely different roster, our head admin Gekons sat down to have a chat with him!

Gekons: Congratulations on making it to the finals for the second season in a row! I think you’re the first player to do that with two completely different rosters as in season one you were playing with SkinLordz guys, but this time around, you decided to make a mix of your own. Can you tell us a bit more about what happened during the off-season and how did you end up making a mix of your own instead of playing with SkinLordz?

hyskeee: After the first season SkinLordz guys told me that I have to find new team because they are going to replace me. But, even before I got told that, I was already thinking about making my own mix with players who I enjoy playing with and who know what they are doing in the game, so you don’t have to micromanage them. In wolsung we’re basically playing a glorified version of ffa deathmatch with everyone chipping when in comes to strategic side of things giving ideas of what can we do to win the rounds.

 

Gekons: The roster you ended up with is without a doubt made of some of the best Latvian players out there. Names such as YEKINDAR and krii have tons of experience playing in CIS region, while the youngster broky is the first Latvian player to qualify for FPL. With a star studded roster like that, were there ever doubts in your head that you could not make it to the finals? Or did you think that there is no way you do not make top 4?

hyskeee: The only thing I was worried about was that we would not play all the games together with the same roster, because it’s really hard to schedule league games when 3 out of the 5 players are playing for pro or semi-pro teams at the same time. Other than that - I always knew that we will reach top 4. Right now I’m only worried that broky could dodge lan (hopefully not).

 

Gekons: Speaking of broky - he seemingly came out of nowhere and got his first international fame back in July when he was grinding FPL-C, which resulted in him qualifying for FPL. Correct me if I’m wrong, but as far as I know he is yet to play in any kind of LAN event. Do you think that this is going to play a part in how well you guys do in the finals? Or are you confident in his abilities to replicate the same level of performance in a LAN environment?

hyskeee: That’s a no-brainer...of course he’s going to dominate everyone on LAN, because he is paying for those good private cheats! But if I’m being serious - I think that he can easily not only replicate the same level, but play even better as CS is and always will be about the confidence and gamesense you have, and he has both of them!

 

Gekons: Let’s talk games. At the very start of the season on week 1 you were matched up against XGR eSports. You played them on overpass and despite taking it to overtime, you ended up losing the game 17:19. When we asked Dodz this, he said that they should have won that game in the regulation time. What do you think? Were you the better team on overpass that day or do you agree that they deserved the victory there?

hyskeee: It was our second game of the season, so we were yet to find the perfect way of how to play together. I remember that we gave them too much respect on our CT side. At the point when they got 14 rounds someone just said “What the F is happening guys? Why are we giving them so much respect? We’re better than them!”. After that we started to come back, but it was not enough and we still lost in overtime. Though, everyone understood at that moment that we could’ve taken it, so in theory we were on par, if not even better, than the best team in Baltic states. If we’re gonna meet them here in the finals, I feel like we’re going to crush them, but that, of course, is not given as they have some really good players as well.

 

Gekons: On week 4 you guys played against 1337HUANIA on nuke. The game felt pretty close, but in the end they pulled ahead and took it with a scoreline of 12:16. A fact to note is that you were not present on the server that day as you had an official game with forZe at the same exact time, so Warden was standing-in for you. Looking back at it - do you think that things would have gone your way if you were playing?

hyskeee: Honestly, I don't think so, because Warden is a great player and he knows all our nuke strategies and all the small things we like to do on that map, so he knew what we were doing and what he had to do to fit in the roster for that game. Overall, I would just say that it was an unlucky game for us.

 

Gekons: Those were the only two games you lost this season finishing the regular season in 3rd place. In the finals you’ve been matched against 1337HUANIA, after XGR eSports, the team that finished 1st, chose to play against WORTEX. As previously mentioned, during your regular season game against them you suffered a defeat on nuke 12:16. With that in mind - is there any special kind of preparation happening in wolsung camp for this match? Or are you relying on the extra confidence gained from you actually being in the server this time?

hyskeee: We all feel really confident to play against this 1337HUANIA roster. Last season it was way more scarier, because they had pounh, but this time around the only good player on that team is the grandpa Carcass. We’re definitely going to be prepared as we’re gonna have a 1 week bootcamp before the trip to the LAN finals.

 

Gekons: As mentioned above, the other semi-final is going to happen between XGR eSports and WORTEX. What are your thoughts on this match-up? Who do you think is going to win and who would you like to face if you win your semi-final game against 1337HUANIA?

hyskeee: Well, on one hand it's a domestic battle, so in theory anything could happen. But, on the other - I feel like XGR eSports could win against WORTEX even if they played 4 against 5, because every single player on XGR eSports is insane individually and that is all you need when you play against a team like WORTEX. We definitely hope to meet XGR eSports in the grand final and get our revenge for the GameOn III finals. Definitely no nuke this time around!

 

Gekons: Thanks for your time Reinis! Do you have any final words or shoutouts you want to give?

hyskeee: I would like to say thank you to everyone who was watching this BESL Pro season and cheering not only for us, but for good Counter-Strike! I hope that you (CS:GO fans) are going to come to Estonia as well to witness the most exciting Baltic state LAN event that has ever happened!

Stay tuned as even though the regular season has come to an end, our news section is still going to be filled with interesting content such as interviews with the teams that made it to the finals and the big LAN finals preview article to let you guys know what to expect from the matches happening at HyperTown Tallinn Urban & eSports festival!

News article by: Bruno ‘Gekons’ Gailītis