When the Finns from D-Sky lost to a team called Pentagram at the InveX Euro Cyber Cup in late 2004 many assumed they had vastly underperformed at the event. Little did they know only a couple of years later than team would begin writing itself into the record books as one of the greatest of all time. A member from the beginning Wiktor 'TaZ' Wojtas talks, in the first part of a two part interview, about the early period of his CS career, Pentagram's progression from mid-level team to elite level side and his major tournament successes up until the end of 2008.

Explain the early period of your career where you were teamed with LUq against neo, who was in a rival team, and how the Pentagram lineups including mirri, zibi and later napalm came about. How do good you think you were back then and how would you compare your current level? The team's first victories came at the InveX Euro Cyber Cup in 2004 and the SEC in 2005 so how important were those to your development as a team competing internationally?

The beginning: LUq and zibi were in a clan called GryNet, me in BOR, and neo was in Specnaz, and the results were always random. It's funny that one time we decided to create an "ultimate" team which would win all the events in Poland, and maybe someday play good vs. international teams, that was the time when I joined forces with LUq and zibi, and neo stayed in Specnaz. During this time we always had 4 fights with Neo and his team, but somehow we always managed to come out on top in all the events.

Then WCG 2002 came and my drama started, I had an internal fight with LUq and zibi, and decided to leave their team just one week shy of the WCG Polish qualifier. During this time I thought that I could manage to win WCG on my own, with a team of my friends, and I have no idea why my priority was always to win against neo, no matter the tournament and prize of this tournament, it was something more. My team managed to beat Specnaz after thrilling overtime, but then came up short vs CGL.red with LUq and zibi on board... so there was my first CS-career drama.

I decided that next year I would go to WCG 2003 no matter what, but then suddenly Neo created another "superclan" in the Polish scene which was Specster with mirri and pitrek in their lineup, and I was back with LUq and zibi in CGL.red. We decided to bootcamp before WCG 2003 in an internet cafe, but during whole summer our internet cafe had problems with internet connection, so we were playing on LAN vs. some guys from i-cafe. Still we had hopes that we would win WCG Poland, and here came my second EPIC FAIL. We managed to beat SpecSter in the upper bracket pretty easily, but then came up short in the finals, where they beat us on 2 straight maps. From that point I started to think about creating a team together with neo, to compete with teams from other countries. Back then it was really hard to create such team, because the Polish scene was cut into two halves: Arcy and SpecSter halves, and those two hated each other without a reason.

It's funny that the Pentagram creation talk started from neo asking me if we needed a 5th player for mix (and we weren't best friends back then... :), I saw the opportunity and started to talk about the future. The first lineup of Pentagram was: neo, LUq, pitrek, zibi and I. We had really long talks about this lienup, but when I look back it was the best possible choice and I only regret that pitrek and zibi lost their dedication to this game because I always saw them as great players with huge potential. mirri was just outside of these 5 players... he knew that, he also was good friends with pitrek, so it was natural choice to pick him up after pitrek decided to quit.

When it comes to me as a player, I think that I was a lot better back then :) at least when it comes to 6 years back "level of CS", and there was something about the rivalries with some players for me, I just had to be better than LUq, neo or zibi, nothing else really was in my head, pure will to be the best out there, and I lost it somehow when we created Pentagram. With time I started to think that the team is not putting all their money on me, that I don't have to be on my A-game etc. I didn't lose the motivation, I just lost the X-factor which I think was always keeping me on a bit higher level. I'm trying to find it again nowdays.

Our first victories at Invex Cup or SEC were huge because they showed us that we can compete with all the best teams, that hard work will pay off and we just have to keep on training and getting better and better.

Take us through the next lineup changes and how they affected the team, as zibi and rulon were removed in December of 2005 and loord and motyw brought in. Then neo left for 11 days in July of 2006 and when he rejoined motyw was replaced by kuben. In October of that year you had your first major successes as you won WSVG London and then the WCG gold medal. How do you remember that step up from some shaky international results to winning a major events like the WCG? In that final you were facing a heavily favoured NiP who took the first map against you so was that intimidating at all?

Well basically zibi lost his dedication to cs, he was often late for practices or sometimes just skipped them altogether, and he wasn't playing as good as he used to and we also had the feeling that we need some bigger change than just one player. That's why we also decided to change to rulon: he always was playing a lot and he also was at a good level, but something was missing in him as a player for us and that's why we decided to do a double swap. If I remember correctly the time when loord and motyw joined I had some problems with dedication as well, I was tired of the lack of results and of the game, it took a lot of time from my life and it felt like it was not giving me back as much as I wanted. So basically changes which took place were decided by Ryan and Neo, I just was lucky that loord and motyw wanted to play with me ^^. It really had an impact on me, the first time ever in my career someone was thinking about changing me for other player. It also started the fire in me to show how bad a move that would be.

Then we had a lot of bad luck during our ESWC campaign, and to this day I remember the situation on dust2 vs. Lunatic-Hai: I had a 1vs3 as CT with the bomb planted, I killed 3 guys with some ultra shots, and then... started to jump around looking for defuse kit, afraid that my mouse would jump, and heard that there is defuse kit somewhere near me... but all I had to do to win this round was just to start defusing the bomb. I had plenty of time... we drew the game, lost vs. MiBR and didn't go through. After that neo got some offers from international teams and he decided to try one out. It was a hit for us but we decided to accept it and find a player in his place, and loord told us to try kuben. We played one practice clanwar with kuben instead of neo, and I was like "Damn, it's looking really good, maybe it will work well in the end", I don't remember what happened after that.

I said some bad words to neo back then, and I did it too early, as ryan never stopped talking with him and managed to talk him out of the deal. Still we had already told kuben that we wanted him to join our team, and we decided that we would take kuben for motyw, as we really saw potential in him. We had great, great atmosphere from day 1, even after some harsh words a few days before. Loord and kuben gave us a huge amount of tactics, and we got our target straight: we needed to win an international event. We just keep on practising with this target. It's funny that we lost vs. 4kings on the internet really badly a few days before the WSVG UK event, just to crush them on LAN. That's when we really realised that it may be our time.

We never had our minds on winning WCG, we wanted to play as well as we could, and see what happened. We had a huge amount of respect for all the teams, because we had only heard that they were good, but never played against some. So there was no mental barrier for us, everyone was the same: NIP, NoA, Hacker.PK... we knew that they can play, and that was all what we really needed to know :) In the final we were sure that we would take it, we felt like there was nothing that could hold us back... well nothing except nuke which we used to lose against Swedish teams all the time, so we took it rather easily when we lost on nuke :) We felt unlucky, but we knew that we were better on the other maps.

In the next period of PGS you had a poor WSVG finals but finished 3rd at CPL Winter shortly afterwards. Your 2nd at SEC in 2007 was a solid result, but came against an SK team for whom that was essentially their only respectable result with that lineup. You won the IEM finals immediately afterwards. So weighing all of this up how high were the team's expectations going into ESWC? Can you remember a feeling that you would win the event or did that campaign perhaps come together as it unfolded? Your semi-final against fnatic was a defining moment in your careers as the had been beaten you at both the WSVG finals and CPL Winter. What's more it was a close game as you lost nuke and then won the next two maps. What can you say about that game and this period of the team?

We were still a young team, and we were gaining experience with each tournament. Wins at WSVG London and WCG came too fast in my opinion, that's why we choked a bit during WSVG finals and CPL Winter. We got mental barriers which we couldn't pass during this events, then we just started to practise from zero again, and we got 2nd at the ShgOpen event (with a lot of top teams) and next was the Extreme Masters finals, with SEC at same time. We felt very, very strong before those events, and knew that we just had to play our game. We also didn't have any problems with our organisation as Filip "ryan" Kasprowicz, our manager, was doing a great job for us as a manager for our team and whole organisation. He was the best manager in the world, he knew Counter-Strike from a tactical point ov view, was talented young man and a great friend. I never saw a better manager than him, he had an unique skill set and he was able to hold us together, he had a lot to do with our success.

We had to play two finals on one day: the SEC final comming from the lower bracket and the Extreme masters final coming from the lower bracket. We had time problems because we had to finish SEC as soon as possible, and start the EM finals right away. We won the first map, after great play from neo, with a big result I think, then we became overconfident on dust2 and it never felt like we were going to lose or that we were loosing :-O Even after our game, we didn't even care about it, just ran away to the EM finals and won it in straight two maps :)

Before ESWC we put in a lot of practice hours and we had a good feeling coming into the event, the atmosphere was there, skill was there, we just had to play our game and respect our opponents. We always had huge respect for all the teams, and we always were focusing on them. Maybe that's why it was a lot easier to lose or draw a game, we had a great feeling for our capabilites, and we also could talk with Ryan if something was wrong ;D The game vs. fnatic was strange... we couldn't find any rhythm on the first map, and in the first 7 or 8 rounds on dust2. It felt like ESWC was slipping through our hands, but then we won an eco on dust2 with kuben killing 4 guys with an AWP at middle, and suddenly we were back, we started to play our way and control the game :) So this semi-final had two sides: fnatic's and ours. We were lucky that ours lasted a few rounds longer :)

About the whole period: it was an amazing feeling, we had so many dissapointments and hard moments in our team, but we managed to fight them and win the three biggest events in the world... words can't describe the feeling.

With fnatic's big results in 2006 and your top placings over the last year and a half that semi-final at ESWC was considered by some to be a case of what should have been the final occuring earlier than then due to the way the brackets were set. What are your thoughts on that and, politeness aside, do you think NoA were the second best team at that event?

Hmm I don't know if they were the 2nd best team at ESWC, but it felt like it was harder vs. fnatic. On the other hand we had a huge boost in the finals after the fnatic win, so it's hard to compare those two games. I think that NoA deserverd to be in the final, they were playing really well and you can't take that away from them. Those two teams were always playing on the same high level, and it would be unfair to take away anything from fnatic or NoA.

At ESWC 2008 there were times that your team looked unstoppable, such as your annihilations of emuLate on nuke 16:1 in the quarter-finals and mouz 16:0 on train in the semif-finals. The final though proved to be one of the most competitive of finals of all time: you won dust2 16:14, lost nuke 13:16 and took the series on tuscan 16:13. How did that event play out for you in light of your previous disappointment at ESWC Masters and what was the experience of playing the final map like as you were held at map point for seemingly forever as eSTRO refused to be put away?

Can you address the comments made on forums that eSTRO were at a disadvantage due to not knowing the map enough and even were seen taking advice from aTTaX's mooN before the game?

We just played a lot for that event, and we were lucky enough to get our rhythm going in the quarter-finals. At ESWC Masters we had some issues which had impacted on our game, so we really didn't take it as a big disappointment. During our final match with eSTRO when we got the 15th round, it was just frustrating that we couldn't finish it, and in the end we needed some lucky shots to overcome their attack ;P We didn't know tuscan as well before this game, so I was asking other players how it should be played just before the game :)

eSTRO/WeMade Fox is always a hard opponent, and this time wasn't any different, but we felt like we were on a good run and that we just had to win that series.

The second part of this interview will be published in a couple of days and will see TaZ talking about his team's place in history, his second WCG gold medal and how one goes about beating the 2009 fnatic in the playoffs of a major tournament.

(Photographs copyright of readmore, ESL and fragbite)