‘I like to go into a tournament believing we have a chance to win it; we have the potential to be a dark horse’ – interview with UK coach Ash on GamerLegion’s new roster, big upsets and bright future after IEM Katowice 2025

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Gamer Legion put together an impressive run with a new roster at IEM Katowice, defying many expectations and highlighting the young talent that forms the core of the team.

Finn MacCarthy spoke to the UK coach of GamerLegion, Ashley ‘Ash’ Battye, about his experiences with these players and his plans and hopes for the future of this exciting team, after they just fell short of reaching the IEM Katowice 2025 playoffs.

So, Ash, this is a very new and very young roster, with an average age of just over 20. What are some of the challenges that you faced coming into a big tournament with such an inexperienced team?

The main one would be the map pool – we’ve had a lack of practice compared to other teams, and that leads to a weaker map pool – poorer reactions, no protocols, and players not having the same ideas on the same page. Having that map pool tested is usually the hardest thing to do, and we didn’t have it massively tested. It probably helped a bit having to play six maps instead of seven like we were doing before, as well as the fact that no one seems to want to play Train right now.

There are also challenges with integrating two people who don’t really know anyone else. REZ knows ztr and PR knows sl3nd just from playing some Faceit, so we’re working with the bare minimum.

We’re trying to get everyone to feel comfortable around each other – if they feel comfortable, they can start expressing themselves a little bit more, and that was kind of the main angle we went with.

We’re being ourselves as much as possible, making jokes, being light-hearted, trying to get people to start conversations. Once people are comfortable, they can express themselves, and we try and back that as much as possible in our game plans, keeping it very simple and playing around them a little bit.

So keeping it simple was more effective for you than trying to overcomplicate things while people are still settling in?

Yeah. I think that’s the beauty of coaching – trying to make an idea as simple as possible, no matter if it’s a strategy thing or a structure thing or anything, it’s trying to make things as simple as possible. I think we did a pretty good job of that.

With that in mind, you still had to make some adjustments throughout the tournament. You lost to the Mongolz, but then played Astralis on the same maps and won. Was that a case of Astralis letting you execute your game plans better, or were there any specific adjustments between those two games that turned the results around?

I think we did make some adjustments on Nuke because there were a few things that we weren’t as happy about. It was kind of minor things, but in general we felt we were the better team on Nuke to be honest [against the Mongolz].

We just had a huge problem this tournament of just not winning anti-ecos when it mattered. We lost so many of them and they punished us really hard even though it was still a really close game. We had a lot of confidence that we were playing a good Nuke, and this could’ve so easily gone in our favour.

We were leading at one point, and they were on a low buy and it felt like we were going to the next map in what could’ve been a one-zero situation.

On Mirage, we did play poorly. I had a very clear game plan in that one, and we just didn’t stick to any parts of it at all. I was taking pauses and reminding the guys, “we have these ideas, let’s stick with them, we know how they’re going to play,” and we just weren’t able to execute it.

Afterwards, we talked about the mental side of things, keeping our composure, making sure we stick to how we want to play. That was probably the only real adjustment we made. On the T side, it was all about making Astralis uncomfortable. We understand our limitations as a team and we understand the pressure on Astralis and we tried to exploit that as much as possible.

It worked out really well. PR was just unbelievable, he played an amazing game. We did a good job of going back to what we were doing before, but just improving it, and that worked out well for us.

What was it about the way you guys play that allowed you to take a map off one of the top teams of the tournament in Team Spirit?

I think our Anubis has been stronger than it’s ever been. I have to credit my assistant coach IMD, we put a lot of thought into the T side. We practiced it really hard and tried to fine tune it. We brought a style that they didn’t expect. I think it’s because we didn’t really have time for prep, but we also play a really structured T side that they wouldn’t possibly expect a team of our age to be able to do.

On Nuke, I was disappointed that we didn’t win. We were 4-3 up and their money was a mess – there were two or three situations where we had about an 80% chance of winning, if not more, in my opinion. We didn’t win any of those rounds, but if we were just a few months later in the team’s development, we’d find the connections and end these rounds when everyone’s in the right positions.

When you’re in these high-pressure situations, how important is it to have a veteran like REZ on the team to bring that experience and composure?

Having an extra person who isn’t affected by the the pressure, isn’t affected by what’s going on, and he’s willing to say, like, “guys, step up, focus on communication, let’s let’s get these rounds done properly”, is invaluable. Otherwise, I’m kind of relying on technical pauses to fix everything.

If half of my pause is used to regulate emotions, I’m going to have to take pauses at the wrong times, and if half of it is going to be useless information in terms of actually making adjustments and fixes to the rounds.

I think you always will need to help regulate emotions, but it can’t be all the time. And someone has to help with that, and I think he is good. And also having someone calm, it calms you down. If everyone’s frenetic, then it kind of spreads.

Another new pickup for the team, 17-year-old player PR, is turning a lot of heads. Do you have any experience moulding really young talents like him, and what are you doing to try and shape him into the star that many think he can be?

Age-wise, he’s the youngest player I’ve ever worked with, but I’ve been very surprised by the level he’s been at for us so far.

There’s very little we’ve done to improve his game. I’ve watched a few demos with him, given him a few ideas and a few fixes and told him a little bit more about what we want from him. For me, it’s super exciting having a guy that’s this talented. I just love just watching his demos sometimes on YouTube. I’ll just randomly search him and watch it, and it’s exciting because it’s the way he plays the game is really, really nice.

I think he has a very consistent nature to the way he plays – if he’s having a really poor game, he’ll just keep going and keep trying, and I really value that. I think a lot of players, if things aren’t going well for them, they kind of shut down a little bit. I haven’t seen that from him, and this is probably one of the biggest personality traits, that will make him a top tier player one day.

But I don’t want him to be the jewel on the team, necessarily. He might be, but hopefully not in the sense that to be a top tier team, everyone needs to be on the same level. I’m hoping all of them can evolve in their own ways and everything clicks and it can all come together.

All of the guys have a lot of potential to be top-tier players. At the moment, PR has expressed himself more, and I applaud that, but everyone else has that potential too.

With that said, what’s the ceiling for this new version of GamerLegion?

I mean, my ambition is to build a team that can try and win trophies. And, yeah, I think every time we’ve changed players, I’ve always tried to improve the lineup no matter what. obviously, one day, we hope to win trophies. I don’t want to say I expect us to be a top five team or something because I just don’t believe it’s something you even aim for, right? You aim to win things or you aim to not win things.

I’d like us to sit up there somewhere, but I don’t really care about the number itself. To be honest, I’d like to go to a tournament believing we have a chance to win it. To be showing a level that proves we have every chance to, and it’s not just a fluke, and that comes from good practice and everything.

I think we have the potential to be a dark horse at a lot of these tournaments. We’ll get more and more consistent as it goes on. Hopefully in six months or so, we’ll be up there.

Related article from the archive: UK CS2 coach ‘ash’ praised as GamerLegion qualified for Shanghai Major

Finn MacCarthy

Finn is a final-year journalism student that has a long-time love for gaming and esports. He specialises in CS2, Overwatch and Smash Bros.