mithR: "In Apeks we want to help the Norwegian scene become more professional"

Rebels, the academy roster of famous Norwegian organization Apeks. Now they’re playing at WePlay Academy League Season 4 alongside the best academies in the world. Their coach, Torbjørn “mithR” Nyborg, has a ton of experience behind the back. He was a coach of MOUZ, North, Renegades, and ALTERNATE aTTaX. Now his goal is to develop the local Norwegian scene in CS:GO, and help to grow the young talents. The previous roster of Apeks Rebels managed to take 2nd place at Fragadelphia 16, which was a very good result for young Norwegian players. After a decent result, two players were transferred to another Norwegian team, 777 Esports. Then a decision was made to rebuild the roster. It took a long time for this, but mithR did it.

Ahead of WePlay Academy League, Apeks Rebels announced the new roster, which is very hungry and ready for new challenges. In this interview, you will know, how the new Apeks Rebels was created, which goal the team has for this season, about the relationship between mithR and karrigan, and many more interesting things.

Let’s start with WePlay Academy League. Before this tournament, Apeks Rebels announced the new roster. Only sense remains from the previous roster. What happened with the previous roster?

With a previous roster, we traveled to Fragadelphia 16, it was a very good tournament. After that 777, another Norwegian team, came to approach our players Trax and SLY, gave them an offer, and both of them said “Yes”. Two players were sold to another club, and we decided to rebuild the entire project. We were considering making changes as it was, but as Trax and SLY left, we decided that a fresh start would be the best way to go.

How was the selection of players for the current line-up, how difficult and how long was it?

It was very difficult to find new players, whom we want to go with. In Apeks we want to help the Norwegian scene become more professional, and one way to do it, it’s respecting the ongoing season. When 777 approached our two players, they did it in the middle of the Norwegian season. The motivation was a bit drained, so despite that the players were sad, and felt motivated to play, it was my impression that the mood in the team during practice was different. So we won’t just let them go, and focus on rebuilding the project.

We took a couple of months, where I studied a lot, about what Norwegian players are available as well as watched a lot of demos to see what kind of qualities they have. I had a lot of interviews with a lot of different players to see their mentality, their attitude to matches, and some values that we have in Apeks. I’d say that it took around 2-2,5 months from the moment when we decided to rebuild the roster until the announcement.

What’s your goal this season?

We don’t have any resolve-wise goals for this season. We hadn’t had a full practice day yes, because we have official every day, and we played Norwegian league finals this weekend. Right now, it’s all about we have a positive mindset. If we just get another week that we’re slowly starting to get some basic stuff to perform better. But now we’re desperate bootcamp to work on our game and stuff like that. I think that our goal is just not to end last, just to win as many games as possible. We were close to winning some games, we got destroyed against Astralis Talent. We want to win a few more games, and don’t end last.

How do you personally rate the format of this tournament, maybe you want to change something?

I just like the idea that you play one time as a home team, and one time as an away team, you get to select the map as a home team. I actually feel that Academy League is a perfect place to experiment with these kinds of things like new format and video-system. We knew that coming to this tournament, and were very open-mind about it. So far everything is good. Some things, which I want to adjust, it’s just minor things, which I saw at tier-1 tournaments, when I was there. Now everything is good, admins are super friendly, and they’re trying to help us whenever we need to move a match, everybody seems to enjoy the tournament, and there is a good cast. We are appreciated to be here.

Let’s return to a couple of months ago. The previous roster of Apeks Rebels visited Fragedelphia 16 and took 2nd place. Who decided to travel to this tournament, and how it affected the players?

What we try to do in Apeks with the academy roster, is create stars of tomorrow. In order to do it, we need to give them a lot of experience. Experience can be many things: having good practice against good opponents, playing HLTV matches, and open qualifiers. But it’s also traveling abroad to see how these players will feel, what it means to deal with jet lag, travel so far from home, and have a kind of pressure playing on stage. You need to save your config and set it up on a new PC, all these kinds of things. All of these small details combine what young players need in order to perform at a high level much faster.

The decision to go to Fragadelphia was a combined decision of Apeks management, where CEO, Head of Board, Manager, and Sports Director, they all came to the conclusion that it will be a good learning experience for the entire roster to go to Fragadelphia. I know that it’s unordinary to see a European team of our level to go far to play in this tournament. But it was also a necessary step. That’s also, why I love Apeks so much because they are willing to invest in order to give the player’s experience that they need.

Do you think teams from Europe need to travel more often to this kind of tournament to help the NA scene develop, and receive LAN experience?

They don’t need necessary to travel to the US. It was because right now for the Rebels project, the local events are not a common thing anymore, in Europe either, because not all of them are listed on HLTV. The primary thing for us, when we talk about experience, is that players need to play on LAN, but also play matches on HLTV, because it adds pressure.

I definitely say that in order to get more experience, you need to travel abroad to know what it means to perform when you’re traveling as well. You don’t need to feel the responsibility that you need to save the NA scene. Fragadelphia didn’t get us an invitation, so we just register for the Last Chance Qualifier, where we could be out after two bo1 if we were very unlucky. Luckily, it didn’t happen. It was a gamble that we took. Now we’re on the other side of it, we gained so much experience from it, which we really appreciated.

You worked for about one year with MOUZ, a top-tier team with big ambitions. How hard was it, or was it easy, to adapt to coaching the academy?

I’m still kind of adapting because coaching MOUZ is a kind of different level. Also coaching a tier-1 team, such as MOUZ, vs coaching an academy team, you need to change an approach as a coach as well. My biggest issue and what I need to learn is patience. Some mistakes, which academy team is doing, are out of my world. It can make me pretty frustrated to see some mistakes, which they are doing because, for me, it’s so basic.

But it’s a part of what you need to do as a coach when you’re coaching an academy team is let them make the mistakes, and learn from the mistakes in order to make them improve. Whereas in MOUZ, I was more direct like this is a mistake, that’s what we need to do in order to fix the problem as fast as possible. But here in the Academy team you need to let these mistakes happen, and ask the right kind of questions in order for to players actually learn from that experience.

For some period of time, you worked with karrigan, one of the best IGLs in history. How was it? How much did you learn from him?

I’d say that karrigan is the best IGL in the world. He’s definitely the best IGL that I had to work with. His understanding of the game is a manse. I was pretty surprised when I joined MOUZ that I get along to work with karrigan, he gave me recognition and kind of confirmed to myself that the way, I’m thinking tactical Counter-Strike is the same as his, he is just better at it. We had the same forms as to how the game should be played. I don’t know, it’s just because we’re both from CS 1.6, or we’re both Danish, but I was actually very surprised to see that and made it work so easily together.

Me and karrigan had a good companionship when we worked together as an in-game leader and a coach. Obviously, I was sad when he left, but it was what it was. Having the experience to work with karrigan made me more hungry because I know that the way I’m thinking about the game is right. It’s not about the development of tactics that he was doing, it’s more about what kind of strats he’s using, it was very interesting for me, so I learned quite a bit about the way of thinking of the game.

I saw you are a founder of tacs.gg. Can you tell me some info about this tool? Do pro-teams often use them?

Tacs.gg is a side project that I have, which is growing a bit, and I’m excited. The idea is that we’re analyzing tier-1 games, we’re taking strats that they’re using, and we’re recording them just one-to-one scale, and upload directly to the site. Some of the thing that we’re working on is also making posts around the maps, and making playbook tools, that people don’t need to use Google Docs. Tacs.gg is pretty big, it’s a very exciting project, and a good tactical tool for CS:GO, and I still believe in it. It’s not perfect yet, but I hope it’s getting better within next year.

Let’s talk about other interesting tools for CS:GO: Skybox, Shadow, Noesis. Which of these tools are you personally using? Are you advising novice coaches/analysts to use them?

These kinds of tools are more different from Tacs.gg. If you need new tactics, you can come to Tacs.gg, and find a pistol round or execute. I use Noesis on a daily basis in order to analyze demos. I’m kind of impressed with this demo tool that they have. I’m using it for anti-strating, analyzing, getting inspiration, finding a new start, etc. Likewise, I use it a lot.