Last week we saw The Imperial take on team Alternate in the EMS final, in a best of three match. All eyes were on The Imperial as they looked to finally prove that their 3rd place in the Cadred top10 was warranted.

They proved it with style beating Alternate in two maps to take the EMS championship and the €2,000 first prize. For the past year Imperial have been steadily improving, after a rough few months when they first formed they have finally began to reap the rewards of sticking together and working with it. A decent placing at SLAP #19 followed by a 3rd place finish at Dreamhack showed the team were ready to take the step up.

This year shows no signs of changing as they currently sit join top of the ESEA.eu league and have just pipped teams such as Dignitas, mTw, Power Gaming, Verygames and of course team Alternate to the EMS crown. The big test for the team now is to finally get the big LAN win on the board, something they hope to do soon as they will be attending DSRack lan and SMACKLan in March.

I caught up with the teams caller Henrik 'FeTiSh' Christensen following their win in the EMS final for a quick word.

Your team seems to be on a bit of an upward surge at the moment, some good placings in the past few months followed up by some great online results. What do you put this down to?

We've been together for almost nine months now and that helps alot. When we started out we had a very bad run in the first esea season and we didnt do very well at either OOF or TeX but it got better from event to event so I think the fact that we've stayed together as a team and worked hard is finally starting to pay off.

What are your goals for this year when the LAN season comes around? Will you be looking to finally get a major LAN win on the board now you've shown you can compete?

We actually have two lan wins, albeit now major ones. I wasnt part of the team when they won SLAP #17 but we won TheBlast together! But we'd love to finaly win something on the internatioinal stage, we did well at both DreamHack and the recent SLAP event so hopefully we can build on that.

What do you think of the Danish scene at the moment? You're currently sitting joint top of ESEA along with Online Kingdom, you also finished top of the DEL online stage and you've just won the EMS, with Online Kingdom finishing in the top 4. Yet every week we seem to see another team changing players or folding. Why does the scene seem to be thriving even with the amount of changes that have taken place?

Well its a mix of things really. SLAP has been supporting the danish scene ever since 2005 and that helps alot. But the biggest factor is that source is growing and all those "puh-heroes" are slowly becoming apart of the scene and eventually some of them bring talent to the scene. Back in 2006 just around WCG 1.6 was roughly 3 times bigger than CSS now CSS is almost twice as big as 1.6 so that kinda helps aswell ;)

Speaking of all this 1.6 and CS:S talk, what are your views on the newly released Pro-Mod? Will your team think about venturing into it in future? Or do you feel the future lies with CS:S?

Its hard to say, the competetive scene will look at CSP if the bigger events pick it up and if that doesnt happen no-one will care the least big about CSP. Problem with CSP is that its FREE and doesnt get any exposure towards the newer generations, these have bought CSS for the last 3-4 years and have absolutely no relations towards 1.6 so I dont see why they'd care about it yet alone like it when they're CSS players. But in a perfect world CSP would unite CS and CSS completely and get some sort of exposure towards the new generations.

On to your recent win in the EMS. Last weeks game looked like it could have tipped either way at any time, with some big moments from some players in your team, including yourself bagging you the win. Did you always know you would win it or were there times that you started to worry?

I was pretty suprised that we were able to win de_dust2 after losing both pistols and knowing its not really a map we're good on. But I got a bit worried on tuscan where we messed up the whole T side, knowing you have to get 12 rounds as CT versus aTTaX isnt easy.

One of the turning points in the match was THAT clutch by wantz. How the hell did he do it? And what was the reaction like when he got the defuse?

It was 1on4 with the bomb down and Bo was on the bridge connecting B and CPL. I asked everybody what cash they had left, since we were up 9-0 everybody had plenty so I asked him to get as many kills as possble. For some reason that just wasn't enough for BoMaN! Cant really explain the reaction apart from say; LOL?? I dont know what the hell Julien was doing that round, but thanks I guess :D:D.