rain on Twistzz's calling: "It's almost like playing with karrigan"

FaZe have one final match against MOUZ to have a chance to advance to the main matches in Rio.

 

rain said FaZe's winning streak against MOUZ will help them gain more confidence when entering the loser's bracket final.

FaZe are just one best-of-three match away from entering the arena in Rio de Janeiro, although their journey so far has not been easy. They lost to FURIA in the best-of-one opening match, followed by two matches against paiN and Liquid in the loser's bracket.

The final best-of-three match will be against MOUZ, a team FaZe has not lost to since CS2 launched. The two teams have met seven times since October 2023, and each time Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen and his teammates have overcome Kamil "⁠siuhy⁠" Szkaradek and his teammates.

This time, FaZe hopes for an eighth win over MOUZ to advance to the final stage of a tournament in Brazil for the first time since ESL One Belo Horizonte in 2018.

Congratulations, another win over Liquid. You guys have always been their bitter opponents, constantly defeating Twistzz in this new lineup. How does it feel to continually ruin their chances?

It's an old teammate so of course it feels a bit fun, but at the same time I don't have any bad feelings or hate towards Russ [Twistzz]. It's difficult for them to keep losing and against us because I think they're playing very well and competing very closely with the top teams.

It seemed like we were the only ones who were really having trouble. I think a big part of that is from the back-to-back defeat in Cologne, I think that's a mental barrier for them now and once they get over that, the games will be much more difficult.

I've seen them only really lose to NAVI, Vitality and you guys since the ultimate team was formed. It seems like they have a mental problem when confronting you guys.

Yes, and even in the matches against NAVI and Vitality, they were very close. Only we were able to defeat them easily for some reason.

Besides the mental barrier from losing in Cologne, do you think there's anything else behind this?

I do not know. Maybe karrigan and Russ have quite similar ways of thinking in calling cards. Sometimes it's almost like playing with Finn [karrigan], and Finn's like, 'Ah, I knew this was going to happen, I knew this was what I was going to call,' you know? It was a bit of lighthearted banter, so maybe it was a clash between the two teams.

Is it a big advantage for FaZe that Finn has led the team for a long time and if Russ is trying to learn his style, then karrigan will have the advantage in experience?

That's right. I think you can look at this both ways, Russ can also remember a lot of the things karrigan did. But certainly now, karrigan knows them well and we're playing very good Counter-Strike against them.

FaZe has been going through a rough patch for a long time and has struggled to stabilize, but seems to be making some progress. You guys had good results in Fall Final and came here, even though it wasn't the smoothest start. Can you tell us the process to regain your form?

Personally, my form in this tournament was pretty bad, to be honest. I'm trying to fix it, I don't know what's going on, I don't feel the game and it's not as comfortable as in BLAST or even Cologne, so I'm trying to improve little by little.

Regarding the team, I think we are improving at the moment. The loss against FURIA, I don't know, we lost to FURIA in Brazil, they had a bit of home advantage, they also beat MOUZ. I think we're still improving and results from tournament to tournament are going in the right direction and we're happy with that.

One of the changes between Fall Final and this is the animation update. Does that have any impact on you?

Not really.

It's interesting. I talked to a few teams and they said the same thing, but people online felt a little differently.

I don't really feel any different. For me, it's mainly a matter of confidence.

The upcoming match is against MOUZ, a team with whom you have had an undefeated streak since CS2 launched. How do you feel about the opportunity to play in front of a crowd in Rio with a best-of-three match away?

It will be great to play in front of a crowd, I haven't played in front of a crowd in Brazil since Belo Horizonte, I think. Because we couldn't do that at the Major or IEM Rio. This is the first best-of-three match we've won in a very long time, about six years in Brazil, against paiN, so being able to play in the arena will be great.