Upon the showmatch opposing his team to the Finnish from 3DMAX, Brandon "Storen" Valembois, in game leader of Platinium, spent some time with Millenium. He introduced us with his team, its position toward the struggle for the Top3 position against Epsilon, a feedback on their ESWC journey and a preview of the next goals of this french team.
[M] Laemey : Your team is undoubtly the most famous french subtop team. You keep on improving, while Epsilon is dealing with some issues. Do you think you could remplace them in the french Top3 ?
Brandon "Storen" Valembois : We don't claim being in the Top3 FR so far, because none of our LAN performance was done when Epsilon was also in the competition. In my opinion, we are rather the best subtop team which CAN claim it can enter this close circle, but only if we have a better practice rythm.
Can you briefly explain the role of each player in your team ?
In our team, boddy handles the entry frag. fuks is more a backup player on T side, trying to get a kill on almost every map, allowing him to end on its biggest skill : a clutch. Toinou is our main AWPer. matHEND is the one looking for frags at the beginning of the round, even though he is also helping me a lot especially concerning communication, redirects, opponents setups and ideas that could make us win rounds. My role didn't change since my very first teams : I'm an in game leader. I try to power up our game, watching a lot of demos to make it better. I provide everything the team should know, strats and small tricks included.
We saw you a lot on french LANs. Do you intend to take part in international events ?
As for the international stage, we took part in the last DreamHack, in Valencia. We also planned to attend this kind of events in the future.
Some teams prefer online events, while some others are more interested in offline tournaments. What does your team prefer to focus on ? Why ?
It might surprise some people calling our players "onliners", but we are way more comfortable when there is an offline event. We had our best results during this kind of events, and our motivation to win and show our qualities is therefore stronger.
You recently took part in the ESWC following the withdrawal of the algerian team ES4S, and have even managed to win against NiP. What is your feedback on this event ?
We went there with the only wish to take as many rounds as possible to the big teams. Our winning against NiP made us realize we are able to defeat such teams. We lived this tournament as an event to show what we can do.
What do you think are your team's strengths and weaknesses ?
I think our strength is clearly our individual skill, and our constancy : from the beginning, no player has returned to a level below the others. Youth and enthusiasm are also strengths of our team, but the lack of experience combined with enthusiasm sometimes become our weakness.
What is your next goal in CS:GO ?
Our next goals are the Northern LANs [of France, ndlr], which will happen right after Christmas and the ESEA league which will resume soon. We might even try to snitch a little the top teams during international events.
This interview comes to an end, thanks for answering my questions. The final words belong to you.
Thanks for this interview. I would like to thank Platinium, and especially cobra and ari, who do way more than just following us, Olriko our manager and everyone who follow us.
