Hello, Christoffer 'Sunde' Sunde. There is no need for you to introduce yourself since you are no stranger to the scene, however, I do think that sharing an interesting thing happening in real life would be great.

Hello, actually very little exciting has happened lately, I've been spending most of my time playing computer, and it's sad to say that my highlight the last month have been my little brother and little sister visiting me for a movie night *smiles*

mTw were the team to beat in 2008, winning ESWC Masters of Paris, WCG and some prestigious events. We all know that four of the five members quit school in order to focus on Counter-Strike, what were the others reasons that made you such a successful team back then? Was it motivation, tactics or another reason?

Motivation is one of the key ingrediences in being and staying a successful team. Personally I think we were the best team tactically for a long time, and felt we had an edge against every other team. We had five players who all had close to the same mindset in-game, making our teamplay natural and flowing, besides that we are all good friends and always had fun playing together and hanging out wherever we might be in the world.

In 2009, your team only won EM III Continental Finals Europe and EPS.sca LAN Finals. What were the reasons that the best team in 2008 suddenly stopped performing as well as they did last year and stopped finishing in the top 3?

After winning team of the year 2008 and being the team to beat, study as well, I think that most if not all other top teams had a good idea of how to play us, thus forcing us away from the gameplay that had worked so well for us. Also the competition and skill level is so high that staying on top for long these days is gonna be really hard for any team. Regarding us not placing top 3 at some events, I don't think it's as simple as saying we disappointed, there will always ups and downs and we just didn't play as good as we could.

Jonas 'whimp' Svendsen said in an interview that some of you would go back to school this summer, and he has decided to retire from the gaming scene due to a lack of motivation after years of competing. What will be your biggest loss after his retirement?

The biggest loss is without a doubt his personality. Jonas is easy to be around, always helpful and up for joking around aswell. Obviously he is a great player as well and we're gonna lack a lot of teamplay without him, but the thing I like the most about Jonas is just his way of being.

Did his lack of motivation lead to your recent sub par performances or your sub par performances lead to his lack of motivation? If the latter one is correct, why had you been underperforming from time to time after EPS.sca?

I don't think he lost his motivation due to us performing worse than we had earlier, he had a lot on his mind with school and other stuff he'd rather do than spending so much time in front of the computer. Nor do I think his lack of motivation led to us underperforming, when he made up his mind he told us that he didn't have the same passion for the game, and that we should find a new player. However this is a question I cannot answer without speculating a bit.

It is never easy to fill Svendsen's shoes, and you picked up Mirror.p00nhandlers' member Martin 'trace' Heldt who has excellent individual skills. Why did you choose him?

As you said he is a really good individual player, he has been performing great for a long time, so picking him up was a very natural choice. Also we have played with him in mix', gathers and on the Danish national team, so we had a good idea of what kind of a player we were getting.

Mohammed 'mJe' Eid went inactive following the recruitment of Heldt, and you lost two important members in less than half a month. Eid has always been famous for defending a smaller bombsite alone on the maps, so who will take over his role?

Obviously our teamplay is gonna be hit by two roster changes in such a short period of time. At the moment we are practising as much as we can to build up new teamplay and adapt to the playstyle of our new line-up. Primarily trace will be taking over most of mJe's positions.

Oliver 'minet' Minet was brought in afterwards, however, he is not a familiar face to the Counter-Strike scene. Some people say that we can not find his POVs even at some of the most famous e-Sports sites, what led to this decision?

For a long time in Denmark we have only had one team competing at the top international tournaments, NoA/mTw. Therefore it's hard to breed talent and for good players to evolve outside the small CS-scene we have in Denmark. Trace had a lot to say regarding the recruitment of minet, since he had been playing in the top three Danish teams for a while, thus knowing who was more talented than others. So we brought in minet, and he has not disappointed any of us.

Will you still be the primary AWPer? Who will be the secondary one? trace?

For now nothing will be changed, I will still be the main AWPer, zonic will be the secondary and occasionally trace might pick it up. But everything being very new to us we just have to wait and see if we decide to change anything.

Will the team have a different play style and setup in the future with the new members? I mean, more and more top teams have learned your team as well as Sunde really well and known your exact position on every map, resulted that you were less effective as before.

Yes indeed we are going to change a lot of things around. We are very aware that people know how we play as a team, and how I tend to position myself with the AWP. Some things change quite natural with the depature and arrival of two players, the rest we are working on, trying out different tactics and playstyles.

You won the "best player" award in 2008 and the whole team were awarded as the "best team". How did it feel to win such an award?

It was a great feeling, I was very surprised to recieve the "player of the year" award since guddo tricked me into believeing neither zonic nor I would get it *smiles*. And after that we won "team of the year" as well, the feeling was just undiscribable, it just felt like everything had paid off and I got a "this is why your playing" feeling, while popping champagnes with the mTw crew on the dancefloor, a great night!

What do you expect from the "new" team? What are your goals in the future?

Our goals are to be the best team again, knowing we have to work hard to get there. I think we can go very far with the new lineup, but we will have a better feeling of where exactly we stand, after we try out against the top teams in the world at the upcoming WCG.

With WCG coming up in less than 2 weeks, will you have enough time to mesh or is it safe to say the team are qualified enough considering your natinoal results with the new roster?

We're not on the same level tactically as we were, but our new team hopefully features lots of one-man action. The last few days we've been practising a lot, but most of the big teams have been playing the Global Challenge in Dubai, so we haven't been able to play against the best of the best much yet. I'm looking forward to WCG, and I don't feel as if we're not prepared, we have done the best we could with the time that was given to us. As to how we will do you simple have to wait and see *smiles*

What other events are you going to attend in the near future?

There aren't many future events announced yet, but probably Arbalet Cup in Stockholm - other than that we will continue to attend all events that are attractive for our sponsors or us as gamers.

In an interview with cadred, Christopher 'GeT_RiGhT' Alesund stated that he wants to see mTw.dk crying, What do you think about that?

Hehe, I'm not sure what he's getting at to be honest. I don't know what he will gain by seeing us crying, but we all have our turn ons and who am I to judge.

We can see many gamers stepping down from professional gaming due to lack of motivation and studies, do you plan to retire from gaming at all?

At some point I'll be moving on as well, gaming doesn't age beautifully - but as long as I find it exciting to compete and being the best I will continue playing. I can't put a date on when I will retire, I think I'll have to realise that I can't compete with the best anymore before that day comes *smiles*.

Christoffer, big thanks for this interview. We wish you the best of luck with your new team mates at the upcoming events, any shootouts?

Thank you, also thanks to our sponsors: Mindfactory, Sennheiser, Mysn.de, 360o Gaming and OCZ.

Photos by ESL and readmore