Finn "karrigan" Andersen was our next interviewee at ESL One Cologne following Astralis' win in a nail-biting dignitas series where the coach had to step in.

Yesterday news came to light that Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen wouldn't be able to play the remainder of the event as he was hospitalized and had to undergo surgery.

Astralis still came out on top of the decider against the odds, losing Cobblestone in overtime and winning Mirage and Cache in double-digit results.

"Virtus.pro have everything to lose and we have everything to gain," says karrigan 

Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen sat down with us to talk about how the team planned to use Danny "⁠zonic⁠" Sørensen in-game, ran us through the maps and previewed the Virtus.pro quarter-final scheduled to kick off day four.

With dupreeh not being able to play, how hard was it to figure out how to use zonic as a completely opposite player?

One of the decisions we took when we found out about dupreeh was basically try to play what we didn't practice, we tried to play more on me and device opening, we can see that we changed a lot of stuff in-game wise as far as the playstyle goes for the players and their roles. It was kind of hard, because in practice it went very good with gla1ve and dupreeh as this combo, same as we had with Kjaerbye and dupreeh, so basically what we have trained for wasn't the way we wanted to play today because it wouldn't have made sense to put zonic as the entry-fragger. But still, he would also be able to do mid-round calling as well, doing some stuff for the team which you don't see, flashes and smokes. That was one of the big issues we had and we decided to try to play more on me entry-fragging and let Xyp9x and gla1ve play their own game. You can say more FPL-like but still going together as a team and try to out-play the enemies. And that worked somehow, especially when our T side on Mirage was one of the best we've had for a long long time.

Were there any surprises in the veto, was there a better way for you to go out of it?

Coming into it we knew they would pick Cobblestone, that's why we were shouting "yeaaah" when they took it, we kinda knew it and didn't really anti-strat, just decided to play our own game and see where it took us. One of the reasons we let Cobble go through is basically that we haven't played Nuke at all with zonic, so it would be strange to put him there when he doesn't know the map. Going into it, we kinda knew how they played, because Kjaerbye told me everything about it, we had a good idea on how to play. One of the things we also decided was to play that map first instead of playing our map first so we could get two good maps afterwards. So we let them get Cobble to begin with, but somehow we were close to winning it. Going into the third map, Cache was basically the worst map out of the remaining maps if you ask me, especially against them because we lost it 16-6 in Malmö. It would've been better with Dust2 or Overpass, but in the end we managed to close it out, maybe we should've done it earlier at 15-11 when they won their forcebuy, the rest was close but we still won it.

I have to ask about Cobble, it was 14-11, I guess it's going to be an obvious answer as to why you lost it in the end...

Yeah, we lost that 1v4 to k0nfig, but I think one of the main issues we have with Cobblestone is not getting the entries and not knowing how to play off of your teammates, how to rotate. I have problems with knowing the routine of how teams rotate on Cobble, basically we only had practice, and practice is just practice, so I'm learning a lot. They retake A so fast, so when we get two kills on A, either we should go A directly or rotate to B and let device try to get a pick on B. So that's what I learned in the end, but it was too late and that 1v4 just cost us the whole thing. They would've been at a forcebuy at 15-11, but he played it well compared to what the situation was, so well played to him.

Before this tournament, you mentioned your goal was to advance and then see what happens, things have now obviously changed with dupreeh out of the picture, but how far do you think you can get against Virtus.pro, who aren't the hardest match-up for you?

If we had our lineup that would probably be a very good match-up for us. You have to keep in mind that Virtus.pro sees this as an opportunity to plow us. They have that opportunity to go to a semi-final of a Major and I think they will take it with all their hearts, because they want it so bad to be in that semi-final again. It's going to be a hard match, especially if they start the plow and have no respect, because we are a mix-team with two stand-ins, so people may say it's an easier match-up for us, but we still feel that we are the underdogs. It's a big map pool, it's between six maps and you never know about the third map, but we have to win our map pick, that's the only thing I'm going into tomorrow. If we do that, then you could probably say the randomizer will favor Virtus.pro. We can't do much about it now, we just want to enjoy the moment, enjoy the arena. That's all we wanted coming into the Major, of course we had higher hopes with dupreeh in the team and with how practice went, but right now I feel like I won a tournament with the emotions we had today. And the emotions will only be higher tomorrow if we start playing good, Virtus.pro have everything to lose and we have everything to gain.

So far we have conducted eight interviews at the Major, which you can catch up on in the list below:

Jesper "⁠JW⁠" Wecksell: "Came in with fresh minds today"

Aleksandar "⁠kassad⁠" Trifunović: "nV match was a team effort"

Ladislav "⁠GuardiaN⁠" Kovács: "Confident playing T side [on Cobble]"

Dmitry "⁠hooch⁠" Bogdanov: "We wanted revenge for MLG"

Joakim "⁠jkaem⁠" Myrbostad: "I expect us and G2 through"

Jarosław "⁠pashaBiceps⁠" Jarząbkowski: "Tech pause was good for us"

Nicolai "⁠device⁠" Reedtz: "gla1ve is really good at adapting"