At the 2019 MSI Group Stage, G2 Esports is continuing to make a name for themselves and Europe. With a 5-3 record, they're currently in 2nd place and have already bought their ticket for the knockout stage. G2 Wunder played a variety of 'odd' picks such as Pyke and Neeko to bring great results for his team. 

The following is an interview with G2's top laner, Wunder. 

You've now locked in your spot in the knockout stage. How do you feel?

I'm happy that we've made it out of groups, especially since this is my first MSI. The public had high expectations of us, and we had high expectations of ourselves, so this result was kind of already expected. But still, I'm relieved that we made it out. 


Unlike G2, SKT and TL are playing a more defensive and methodical playstyle that centralizes their focus on late game. What's your opinion on that matter?

I believe their playstyle is worse than ours or IG's. They like to be very controlled, and they don't take full advantage of their enemies' mistakes - leading them to miss out on a lot of opportunities. Against the weaker teams, their playstyle brings more consistent results and look cleaner. But against IG and us, they're struggling because they aren't used to the playstyle that we bring. 


How's Vietnam treating you?

We've pretty much only been at our hotel, as we're playing each and every day. We warm up at the hotel, come here to the venue to play, then go back to eat, practice, and sleep. 

But from what I've seen so far, Vietnam looks very nice. I also have a lot of friends who really liked Vietnam when they visited here. 


What do you think G2 needs to work on to defeat IG?

Mainly, I think we lost our first game against IG because of the draft. As for our second game against them, I think we lost because we kept taking fights when IG had the advantage. Next time, we'll need to be more aware of our composition's strength and pick the right opportunities [when it comes to power spikes, level advantages, etc.] to fight. 

Our second game against IG was much more competitive and close than the first one, so I'm really looking forward to playing them again in a BO5. I think we have a good shot as we're creative. We're also capable of taking fights when the enemy doesn't expect it.


Your top lane Pyke was very impressive when you played him against SKT. How did G2 come to prepare that pick?

We're all very creative and always have a lot of ideas. The idea of playing Pyke in the top lane mostly came from me. We were looking for a good pick to play against Jayce, who is a very contested pick right now. Pyke can survive lane against Jayce and do really well outside of the laning phase as well. 


Near the end of your second match against IG - when you were sort of in a base race - you guys continued to push hard after securing the bot lane inhibitor and lost a large team fight that led to you losing Baron. What was the team's thought-process at that time?

We saw that Sylas was pushing. When he started recalling, that's when we started pushing bot lane hoping to force out a good fight that could end the game in our favor. However, in hindsight, it was a very greedy play from us. Had we recalled after taking down the inhibitor, we would've been able to prevent IG from taking Baron - the game could've gone very differently. 


Who do you think is the hardest top laner to play against? 

The obvious one is TheShy, because we lost to him twice now. He knows how to play his matchups and knows how to play to his limit. We were kind of even in our second match against IG, but he had the upper hand on me in the first match. 

We're currently in 2nd place, but we surely don't want to stay 2nd.