Last weekend, G2 Esports bounced back from their 1-2 week to win both of their weekend games against GiantX and Rogue in LEC, the League of Legends EMEA Championship. Rasmus "Caps" Winther talks to Sheep Esports about the slow start to the Summer Split for the Samurai and looks back at the lessons learned from the MSI.

You managed to finish off Rogue in a slightly chaotic endgame on Sunday. Did you expect to win when you started pushing the bot lane?

Rasmus "Caps" Winther: "I was definitely threatening to win. I felt like I could just dive Larssen (Emil Larsson) and I saw that they were all going to Baron. So, I kind of expected them to just skip the Nashor and try to defend bot but then, when they all went to Baron, I was like “Okay, now is actually the time to shine”. It became a bit awkward with the topside fight, but we managed to cancel really well and then, even at the end, it was very close. But even if we’ve just opened their base, that would have already been pretty good.

What did you think of playing against Larssen? Do you think Tristana is still good against Corki?

Caps: Yes. I think Tristana-Corki is definitely the matchup of the patch. I’ve played a lot of times from either side and both sides can win. It's like very small stuff, especially when people have cooldowns, you can really try to push some advantages. Sadly, he got a bit ahead in early game. I think Blitzcrank and Maokai both flashed on me and I was not ready for it. They caught me a bit off guard in early game, I managed to farm up and my team was doing really well so that was nice.

You lost two games last week and haven't been in your best form this week. How do you explain that?

Caps: Last week we were just playing very bad as a team and I also had two very bad games, both the SK and the BDS games. I was making a lot of mistakes. There was a lot of individual errors but I think also as a team, especially last week, we were playing very poorly, which led to us losing. This time we were playing way better, which is why yesterday, even if I was dying a lot, we still won the game, and we still know how to make it then. We were still a bit rusty in week 1, but also a little shaken up by our defeat against T1. This loss was pretty tough on us, and we were second guessing a lot of what we were doing. But now we're like: “Okay guys, we need to just play with confidence”. I think we're capable of anything.

When you play in Europe, do you struggle to try to win games as hard as you do internationally? Because maybe you want to try stuff domestically?

Caps: We always try to win. It's just a lot about the mindset, about how you want to win. I've played many years now, and it's very clear that there's some easier ways to win in Europe, but those easier ways will very often not do very well internationally. For us, something that's been important is that we want to win every game. We take it like this, we give it 100%, but we also need to have a plan that would work against T1, that would work against GenG and all the other best teams in the world. So, yes, a lot of preparation, not just to win in EU, but also internationally.

Do you play certain drafts or strategies in Europe because you're aiming to win the World Championship, unlike teams who are perhaps "just" trying to win a few games in the LEC?

Caps: For sure. I mean it's a balance. It has to be a balance because if you just think too much about Worlds, then are you really giving it your all the rest of the time? And if we want to succeed at the Worlds, we have to give it our all every day in LEC. Also, we can just lose, we saw that last week. If we don't play our game we will just drop some games. There's for sure some champions, some things that again, will work better in Europe. Especially I, but as a team we try to stay away from those, because it doesn't give us any advantages in the long run. In addition, a big focus for us is to have champion pools that are very patch-proof. Which is hard because Riot change the champions all the time.

But some champions can be more or less patch-proof and we need champions that we can pick against T1 and still be comfortable with it. If something is too big, like easy and full, and you're just winning because you're styling in Europe, maybe it's not going to be as easy internationally. However, there's also a mix of that. Because we've also had some very good Draven performances from Hans Sama (Steven Liv), and that's a champion with a lot of style. That is also his signature champion, so... There has to be a balance in it, for sure.

Did you learn something from playing at MSI this year?

Caps: We learned a lot of things for sure at MSI. We learned a lot of macro stuff. Especially going up against T1, we just saw some common ways that T1 were getting ahead of us and we're gonna try our best to fix it. Did we fix it yet? Not really because it's not just like : “Oh we know about it, now we fix it”. We need to actually try it and have it in action. That also explain a bit of our last week performance, when we were thinking about all these strategies which are a bit more complicated to execute. But we're also a bit rusty. It doesn't really work out that great. So we kept it a bit more simple this week and then for next week we will try to up our game.

Those things that you learned from MSI, or international tournaments, are they mostly meta related or are they things you mentioned earlier like patchless things that would always be useful?

Caps: I would say patchless but everything can always change. If they remove Baron that would be changing a lot of things. If they change how midlane works, like last year when they did the wave speed up on side lanes early games, or like when the map changed...If they do some major changes like that, of course some things might change.

What we learned is definitely not mostly about champions, some things are champion related, like you know maybe you have a certain pick that can leverage some advantages but most of it is were not about that. If we look back at some of our worlds, like last worlds and MSI, we were making some of the same mistakes.

So, I think we acknowledge these mistakes and if we correct them, we can be very dangerous, because I believe that in this MSI, in previous worlds, and even in the MSI before that, we've had a lot of games where we've taken a big lead. Again, it was all the same mistakes we were making and they ended up costing us dearly. Those mistakes are not easy to fix, but it's definitely something we have a lot of eyes on now. If we fix it, we're gonna be very good.

Do you think that Asian teams especially have a better meta read of the game ?

Caps: I'm not sure. I don't want to put all of them together because I think different teams have various understanding of all things. I do think that they are very quick at picking up champions and they are very solid. The ceiling is very high on their champions. I don't think they always chose the most optimal pick. I guess we actually got some advantages in some of our drafts, but when their level is that high on how they play their champions, we need to at least reach their level, otherwise we will just get run over.

Other teams also learn from G2. Do you think that's what happened when you faced T1 again?

Caps: Definitely. I think they were used to a lot of our habits, but the fun thing about it is that we have been changing a lot of how we play. This MSI, we played very differently than last Worlds and I think we like to change our style a bit. We like to play a bit of crazy champions so, it can be hard to prepare for us. I think we also have the advantage of being European. A lot of teams will prepare less for us than they will for the other LPL/LCK teams. We can really use that to get some advantages.”