brett on Wolffe: "An all-around upgrade we couldn’t pass on"

Roughly a month ago, LAG picked up the Vagrants squad, the ESEA Advanced S53 winners who went on to reach the semifinals of Dust2.us Eagle Masters Series #2.

Prior to getting signed by LAG though, the team made a crucial roster move, replacing Sebastian "Seb" Dietrich with Kyle "Wolffe" Greenfield after he was released by BLUEJAYS.

At Fragadelphia 19, Brett "brett" Rhein talked to Dust2.us' Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore about the importance of that change and the impressive stack of teams competing at this event.

The full interview is available below on YouTube, with key snippets transcribed underneath. All questions and answers have been edited slightly for clarity and length.

Can you walk us through the process of replacing Seb with Wolffe?

Seb was good, but honestly there were a couple mistakes here and there that he made, and obviously Wolffe is a very talented player and you can’t pass up on that. He’s consistently been a 1.1+ rating player, he’s just got some EU experience after getting cut from BLUEJAYS, and also he’s very hungry to compete and get some revenge. It’s a combination of things that led to getting him, especially with me having played with him on Fluffy Aimers. He’s just an all-around upgrade.

Do you think BLUEJAYS made a mistake cutting him?

We talked about this before, and I think they had him in the wrong roles and they wanted him to play aggressive. He’s not an aggressive player and he’s not a player you want to put in a situation where you consistently have to use teamwork. You put him on his side of the map, he will play his game, do his job, and succeed. He’s more of an anchor/lurker, and I don’t think BLUEJAYS had him doing that, or they had different expectations of him.

Is he in a successful position with LAG?

Yeah we’ve moved him around on multiple maps already trying to find what’s the best spot for him. Spots where he’s not going to be like a support lurker, but spots where he’s actually going to be the guy who’s alone for the whole round, so he can play his own game and play off his own reads and experience and all that. It’s pretty much been like a glove fit, he’s slid in perfectly.

You'll be running into some really good NA and international teams here. How do you feel about your place at this event?

Well we were one of the first ECL teams to sign up for this tournament before everyone else decided to hop on the bandwagon and get their VRS in...uh....where are we? Canada!

So we were one of the first teams to sign up from ECL, but then every day we check the list and we see a Polish team, then M80 and NRG are coming, then BLUEJAYS! Originally we signed up with the intent to win the whole thing somewhat easily. Now it's going to be a lot harder but I still have faith in our team, especially on LAN. I don't think that these people here are that better than us by that much, or at all. I genuinely think we can beat anyone if we're in our flowstate.