"We underestimated them" - Ph1NNN

A stunning 2-1 series win against Gods Reign in the semi-final saw Carnival Gaming book their grand-final spot at the AMD GameOn 2024. Commonly regarded as India's best, Gods Reign fumbled one of their stronger maps- Ancient to start the series. Gods Reign's Ph1NNN spoke to Dust2 India briefly touching the aforementioned topic.

Ph1NNN, you guys came in as the favourites but conceded the opening map which was one of your strengths, do you think that affected the series?

Even after losing Ancient we were confident that we would reverse sweep them and win 2-1 because we knew that they didn't have a proper team and put this together a week ago just for the event.

Do you think you underestimated Carnival Gaming coming into this match?

Yes we did underestimate them and we were also overconfident because we knew that we were the favourites; it was a combination of both. We felt that we couldn't be defeated, like we were in the sky or something.

After pointing out that Gods Reign might have approached the game with a tad bit of overconfidence, the star Indian rifler spoke highly of Rossi when asked about his recent addition to the Gods Reign roster, regarding him as the best possible pick for the team right now.

You now have Rossi with you at Gods Reign, how does he fit into the Gods Reign system?

I Think he is the best player that we could've picked up, he has experience playing for top Indian teams for years on end and he also has valuable international experience playing for Asking Questions. He has a lot of experience playing for difference teams with different kinds of players. I think he was the best we could get. Everyone are sync, we're matching well and we've had no issues till now.

After their loss on Ancient, Gods Reign bounced back with a strong performance on Anubis, levelling the series at 1-1 but completely fell apart on Dust2. When asked if the team was surprised with how the veto went, Ph1NNN admitted that he personally was but it ultimately came down to their communication and temperament.

You looked very comfortable on the second map, everyone was on their A-game but what happened on Dust2? Were you guys surprised with the veto?

Personally yeah, I was surprised. I expected some other decider but still that's nothing to blame, it was all us, We did not communicate well enough, we panicked in crucial situations.

We're roughly around a month away from your eXTREMESLAND campaign, were you guys experimenting with new setups today?

No, not really. The usual game that we play in online tournaments- we didn't play that. Once again, we didn't communicate well enough and we made a lot of mistakes.