After Evil Geniuses bested FORZE in group B's opening match, we briefly spoke with Ethan "⁠Ethan⁠" Arnold to discuss the team's stand-in situation and expectations going into EPICENTER 2019.

Evil Geniuses kicked off their campaign with a 2-0 victory against FORZE, despite being forced to employ HellRaisers' Igor "⁠crush⁠" Shevchenko as a stand-in. The North Americans now await the outcome of the ongoing Group B match between Virtus.pro and MOUZ to know who they will face next in Moscow.

After the match we picked Ethan's brain on the team's decision to take a break pre-event, the experience of playing with a last-minute stand-in, crush, and what went well on the two maps. He also gave an update on the situation with Vincent "⁠Brehze⁠" Cayonte's visa, which is apparently still up in the air.

Before we discuss EPICENTER, let's talk about the run over the Autumn/Winter season. Outside of Beijing and Malmö, the team has demonstrated decent results, but consistency is something that has been missing. Why do you think this has been the case for the team?

Yeah, for the last six tournaments we've been coming in with no practice. Especially this one, it's going to be pretty rough with a stand-in, and we don't even know if Brehze is going to be here tomorrow. We're just going to push on through to the end of the year.

What's the current status of his visa?

He's in the process of getting his visa. Hopefully, it happens, but we won't know until he confirms it himself.

Coming into the event, the team went on a small break as opposed to something along the lines of a brief Europe-based bootcamp, for example. Why did the team decide to take time off instead of preparing for the event?

Honestly, I'm not sure, I don't remember. Somehow we decided to take a week off before this event, I'm not sure how or why, but it definitely would have been better to practice, I think. It's just how it is.

Considering the state of preparation and crush standing in for Brehze, what goals, if any, did the team set for EPICENTER?

The goal is always to win. I think we know that even with a stand-in for the first couple of games we can win, but yeah, it's just the last event of the year so we're going to do our best and hopefully come back actually rejuvenated after the end of the year in January.

Could you explain how the team landed on crush as a stand-in? Was there a story behind why the team chose him specifically?

ImAPet just thought of the first Russian player [Editor's Note: crush is Ukrainian] who spoke English and he just contacted him right away, and he was available.

How was the experience of playing with crush as a stand-in? How did communication go?

We just went into it, told him the spots he was going to play right before the match, and then we went over some call-outs, because obviously some call-outs in Russian are different from the ones in America. His communication is good, so I think he's meshing well.

Talking about Mirage, the team understandably had a difficult T start, but after switching over to the defence, you managed to show a really solid CT half, concluding the map at a close 16-14. Take us over the map and some of the difficulties on the offense.

T sides are pretty difficult with a stand-in, just because he doesn't know all our protocols and all the stuff we are usually able to run, but I think the CT side was more about team play and making sure you make the right plays and work as a team, which I think he did pretty well. That's why I think, on both maps, we played well as CT.

Speaking of the second map, you had an absolutely flying start on Nuke, where you landed a 14-1 lead. How did you produce such a convincing CT side, setbacks considered?

I'm not sure, we just plugged him in to wherever Brehze would play on the CT side and I think he played it well. Nuke is all about communication, and as I said before, his comms are good. We did what we usually do, and got a little lucky.

The second series is between Virtus.pro and mousesports, the winner of which you will face in the group B winners' match this evening. Any initial thoughts on the potential matchups?

It should be interesting. We've lost to mousesports in the last three games we played against them, so hopefully we can get revenge this time if they do win.