kAdavra: “I know that we will go super far”

A new-look rookie-filled roster put together by Gentle Mates for the 2025 VCT season garnered little outside enthusiasm and saw most resign them to bottom-feeder status. However, Kickoff wins against Apeks and KOI have shown that there are signs of life for the side, despite their eventual elimination at the hands of Fnatic. Following the 0-2 loss, we spoke to Thomas “kAdavra” Johner, the organisation’s only remaining player from last year and the “big brother” to its newcomers.

Lee Jones: I imagine it must be tough to have been eliminated, though there were some positive signs throughout the series.

What are your immediate thoughts?

kAdavra: The first thing we have in mind, I just think that we lack experience right now as a team, and lack experience on stage also. I think we just need time. We need to play. We just need more time on stage I think. 

Because they played really good, they were the better team on the server today, but I felt that we could have fought more and we could have won more rounds on both maps. We just lost too many clutches by playing too scared and not doing things how we were used to doing online. So yeah, for me, we just need more experience on stage.

What do you think was going wrong at the start of map one that caused Gentle Mates to lose the first 11 rounds?

kAdavra: They had a good comp to counter us. They had a good plan. They knew our A was weak and they just abused it from the start to the end. Some rounds we had advantages, but I don’t know, we couldn’t close anything and we were losing a lot of our retakes and advantages. So I think we were not ready for them to play in this way with this comp, and, honestly, I think they just played better.

Attack was easier because we can set the pace and just play how we want a bit. So that’s why we managed to come back a bit. But yeah, on Pearl they just played better and had a good plan, you know, nothing much to say.

Lee Jones: Talking of having an inexperienced team, I could easily see a scenario where going 0-11 down with a team or rookies would be incredibly difficult to come back from and begin to turn around at all.

Are there positives to take away from the fact that there was a fight back?

kAdavra: Honestly, we are a really good group, everyone has an insane mentality and no one is giving up. And our mental coach is also doing a really good job with that. So I think we were not scared, it was just that we were just losing rounds and we were always in the mindset of like; “Guys, it’s okay, we will come back, keep going, keep going”.

No one was giving up, you know? I think it’s just that, like I said, for me, they just like played well and everyone saw it. They never went on B, you know, but I could see they are doing good. It’s not like we were full trolling. We trolled some rounds by advantage, but they played good, so nothing much to say. 

It’s more on Fracture that, for me, we can have some regret, because we could have won the CT side in my opinion 9-3, 10-2. We lost so many crucial rounds. So yeah, in my opinion, we can just have some regret on Fracture and that’s it. But on Abyss; nothing to say. For me, they just played better and that’s it.

There’s been talk of you being the ‘big brother’ to the new players. Is that an effect of you being the only M8s player from 2024?

kAdavra: It’s a bit in my personality. Click and Minny are 18 and everyone is new in VCT except Zyppan, so it’s kind of natural for me to take this role. I’m older and I did the second split from last year on VCT. So I took it a bit naturally, you know.

And yeah, I’m still getting used to it because I’m not perfect and I also need to improve on a lot of things – sometimes I don’t show the best example. But overall I think it’s going well and we are improving super fast.

Our team — since we started the team and right now — it’s just so different.

Even today, again, I’m pretty sure with more time and more game experience on stage, we win this game. I know that we have an insane team and we can go super far.

Lee Jones: I’d imagine with a rookie team you wouldn’t expect to be smashing everyone straight away and the focus would be on improving and ramping up through the season.

How do you evaluate dropping out at this point then? 

kAdavra: I’m happy about our Kickoff, to be honest. It was the first VCT game on stage for 3 players. We are still working on fundamentals. We are not ready yet and we managed to win two games, and when we were winning it was in a good way, you know – we are not only winning by clutches and stuff. 

We put up a really good fight against Heretics. We did some good stuff against Fnatic tonight, even if we lost. But for me, I’m happy about our Kickoff, about our performance. Of course it sucks to lose, you know, we wanted to win, we wanted to qualify to Bangkok. We all want to win, but we are realistic. We know that our main goal is to go to Champs at the end of the year. And if we keep going and keep grinding how we are grinding right now and how we are doing things..

I know that we will go super far. We’ll see at the end who is the best and that’s it.