We sat down with TLDR’s favourite player and G2 star malbsMd to discuss G2’s rebuild, huNter-’s first steps as an IGL, and where G2 need to focus as they look to frag their way back to the top of the Counter-Strike pyramid.

How are you feeling coming into this event?

I'm feeling good. I feel like I finally just had a good group stage, so I'm feeling good.

You did really well to beat Team Spirit. They might not be in peak form with another looming roster change being likely but they're still a huge team to beat. Are you confident that you can beat every top team at this event?

I think we're playing really good, hopefully more teams have visa problems as some guys said so we can beat them. We're playing well and just putting a lot of effort into trying to fix our mistakes and everything, the game against Spirit was a good win so I think we can beat good teams.

What's it been like playing under huNter-'s leadership in this G2 rebuild?

It's been good. I've always said either NiKo or huNter- can be good IGL's, I feel like they have this voice of being good leaders, I think they both have a gift when it comes to being good team captains.

Do you have an idea of how good G2 can become under huNter-'s leadership? Have any goals been set internally?

The goal is to lift trophies of course, we're just going step by step and know we've only been together two months or so. It's a long road but I think huNter- and SAW work really well together, they make for a good duo alongside our analysts. I believe we have really good coaching staff and they're helping a lot with huNter- becoming a good IGL. I think things are going really good.

FaZe have made a roster move recently and look to have improved a lot, how difficult will that opening game be for you guys now?

It's gonna be tough because broky is back. They just removed a big voice so I don't know how much that will impact them and I don't know how much karrigan will be taking care of CT and everything. Nobody really knows how good they'll be, we just have to take things step by step and focus on ourselves.

Have you looked into jcobbb yet, what do you think of him as a player?

Not really, I haven't really watched much of him so I'm not sure what to expect.

Now that the narrative of you being NiKo's replacement has died down a bit, do you feel any pressure to be the teams main source of firepower?

Not really, I feel like we have really good individuals on the team, anyone can shine depending on the day. I don't really think about being NiKo or anything, in the beginning of the year it really hit me and I had high expectations of myself. I feel like that's what brought me down, I knew I was not being myself and I knew I was not meeting those set expectations.

Where do you rank your team as whole in terms of raw firepower?

For pure firepower I think we are really high up there. Depending on the day we can hit really hard but I think our mistakes punish us a lot. If I had to rank our firepower I would say we're maybe third or fourth.

What do you think the team needs to focus on to reach the level you want to?

I think we need to improve a little bit on our CT side and some of that is my responsibility in terms of calling more and mid-rounding on CT. Both team decisions and my individual decisions could be better but we're on a good path, I'm working with SAW to fix these issues and it's going really good. I think I'm only getting better and better at it.