Fadey: “EU teams [...] play a lot slower and that suits our game style a lot more”

Bravado Gaming have gone on a fairytale run at Dreamhack Winter 2018 so-far, having beaten G2, Optic and now x6tence Galaxy to make the finals.

Their entry-fragger, Fadey was one of the driving forces behind their 2-0 victory over x6tence in the semi finals. Rivalry sat down with him after the series to talk about their preparation for the event, his own game and thoughts about the final.

X6tence is a team who came, like you, through the qualifier. As such, compared to teams like Optic and G2, you mightn't have prepared for their game. Was this series more playing to your own strengths versus countering those of x6tence?

So, first of all, we weren't expecting to play x6tence galaxy at all. Our preparation really came from last night, going over demos and really seeing how they play. We also watched the Complexity game yesterday, how they beat them. They're very... wild. If I can say that. We just sort-of had to play our own game, just keeping in-mind and being aware, ready for pushes.

What was the biggest takeaways from the bootcamp you had here before playing at Dreamhack Winter?

The main thing from the bootcamp was just being able to scrim against the European teams and just get comfortable on all the set-ups. The screens are very similar as the ones you use in the booth, just getting all our settings right, practising our game.

Was their any major changes you made to your game in this bootcamp or was it more the refinement of details?

Mainly, we just got confidence from the scrims. Just being comfortable.

Who were some of the teams you scrimmed?

We scrimmed against AVANGAR, Vega Squadron and Epsilon - they were the main names you'd know. That just gave us so much confidence coming into the tournament.

I've heard some crazy things about Vega Squadron scrims from teams in Australia who have scrimmed them. Is there anything worth commenting about there [laughs]?

[laughs] They scrim very weirdly. It's hard to play against them. They play very aggressively with their AWPer jR.

We're on a bit of a tangent, but the reason why I wanted to grab you was you had an insane series against x6tence as the entry. I believe you finished with 34 kills on Inferno. What was the force behind such a big performance?

I'm actually not sure [laughs]. I was just playing my own game, being comfortable. Just having my confidence, taking my duels against riflers. I wasn't peaking AWPers. Just taking those 1v1's, ready to trade my teammates. That sort-of game.

That's interesting, because when I was watching some of your games in the lead-up to this event, I noticed that you were getting out-duelled by NA teams online. Yet, you come here against good EU teams on LAN and it seems you're more dominant than them! What's the reason for this contrast?

So the main contrast is just how fast those NA teams play and also they just catch us off-guard. A lot. So, coming against these EU teams it's fairly easy because they play a lot slower and that suits our game style a lot more.

Heroic and ENCE are the two teams in the other semi finals, you'll face one of them. Could you break down your thoughts on the match-up between either of them? Who would you prefer to face?

To be honest, I don't mind who we play. We are just going to play our own game, hope to get the veto in our favour and then just get it from there.