OpTic Gaming may be a dying brand, but their last remaining CS:GO team persists. We spoke to Rene “cajunb” Borg about his time on OpTic, how he felt about their ESL One New York 2019 group stage performance and his predictions for the rest of the event.
Cajunb was emphatic in his feeling that the team could have competed on the mainstage. While normally a team like OpTic (who are considered an “underdog”) would be happy with beating FaZe Clan 2-0 and only losing to grand finalist Astralis (twice), Cajunb felt that the team could have competed with anyone. While he would not go as far as to say the team is tier 1, he feels that the team being in organisational limbo could have put on a better showing.
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Ezekiel: You guys had a decent tournament all things considered, you came in as the underdogs and had some good games, how do you feel about your group stage performance overall?
Cajunb: I would say a bit disappointed, I really wanted to go to the Barclays centre. Overall I think we can be satisfied, we played against in my opinion the best team in the world, we lost twice like they were definitely better no question about that, but we beat FaZe as well, I know they just came in with Coldzera but i think they are also a really good team and im really happy we showed some signs of like that we have improved as well. We bootcamped for the last month and a half to prepare for the tournament, so there’s some improvement.
Ezekiel: For sure! You played Astralis a Danish team of course, what was it like going against a Danish team at this stage of OpTic as it is of course a weird stage as an org, we all know the OpTic situation, what’s it like org wise for you?
Cajunb: You know it’s always difficult to play against Astralis like also because they are danish but like there’s always like a Danish derby or it feels like that but they are really difficult to play.
Ezekiel: So obviously you want to have a good performance here as you are still looking for an org going into the future, do you think your performance will have attracted the eyes of a top tier org or not?
Cajunb: Well I think that we showed what we are capable of, like we are, I wouldn’t say we are top tier yet because then I would lie, but we are a team that’s improved really fast we beat a FaZe like team convenient and we are still a new team, like think about the next three or four months and where we’re going to be then. So i believe that we have yea.
Ezekiel: So you have malmo coming up in a couple of days i believe and i’m sure you’re going to have online leagues as well not online anymore but how do you think you will perform in these upcoming months?
Cajunb: I think that it’s going to be a good couple months for us, I believe that we have Liquid first game of malmo which is definitely going to be difficult as well, the hard teams are going to be Astralis, Liquid and Evil Geniuses, but if you look below them teams then we are around that level i believe, but we are not a Top 5 team right now but we are working towards that.
Ezekiel: In the final of course you have Astralis and Evil Geniuses, right now it’s 1-0 maybe 1-1, so who do you think is going to win?
CajunB: I think to be honest Evil Geniuses is going to win, I hope my friends from Astralis are going to win, but I believe Evil Geniuses is going to take it.
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Written ByEzekiel Carsella@jamaican116