rain: "Cache was really intense"

The last quarter final match of ELEAGUE Season 2 ended up with the European mixture FaZe taking down Virtus.pro.

After the match, we talked to Håvard "⁠rain⁠" Nygaard to hear his thoughts on the tight Overpass and Cache maps and how he feels playing under Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen.

Starting with the veto, did you expect Virtus.pro to pick Nuke considering you had some decent results on it coming into ELEAGUE?

We were 100% sure that VP was going to pick Nuke. We didn't know exactly how they played though, so it was kind of a random draw for us, but we knew they were going to pick it.

So how did you feel going into it? In the end it was 16-4 so you were probably disappointed with how it went?

We expected a much tighter match but our heads weren't really in the game in the first map so we had to step it up for the other two. We expected more on Nuke from ourselves.

On Overpass it wasn't looking so good, but you stepped up the pace on the last few T rounds and got a good half. Who did the adjustment, who called that, what was your thinking behind It?

The adjustments during the game and how we play go mostly from karrigan. We all have our inputs but the adjustments themselves are from him. On the T side, we lost some rounds that we had in our hands. In the end we just changed up the pace, we played pretty slow in the start with some weird executes that didn't work out so karrigan found a way to crush their defense somehow.

Then you moved on to the CT side you lost the pistol round, the force buy and won the USP round. That was pretty unexpected, how much do you think that round influenced the rest of the half?

The thing is we just stood there "let's do some economical damage to them" and suddenly they died like flies. So from there we were like "OK, we are going to win this game now". We had the momentum, they are going to be full eco, they were just reset…

FaZe were confident they were going to win Overpass after the USP round win 

Cache was the last map, the decider. It started fairly well for you but it looked like they were going to close it out with their veteran skills, but you managed to win. What happened in those last rounds?

The thing is they did the same thing to them that they did to us. On our T side, we won one round, they won the next one, they got money fucked. It happened to us as as well, we had bad buys, we had full eco's and stuff. When it was 14-13 we had UMP's and not a lot of nades but somehow we managed to win it though, we made the correct call on the stack. Overall, I think the Cache game was really intense to play as well.

What are your thoughts on Virtus.pro not playing anything for about a month, presumably preparing for ELEAGUE since they don't have any more tournaments this year?

It can be a good move, there is a lot of tournaments, we are traveling for a month now almost, dignitas is traveling for five weeks straight. The pause can of course be good but it's also, you have to get into the tournament mood. And if you have only one tournament left in the year I don't see it as a really good move.

A lot has been talked about karrigan joining the team, but for you personally, how does it feel not being forced into the in-game leader role anymore?

I've never played with a proper IGL before, so playing with karrigan is a dream. I don't have to do any thinking anymore I just have to focus on my game and what he wants me to do. It's like playing chess in CS. It feels really good having a IGL in the team.

Was there something wrong with karrigan in the match, some people were talking about it, his performance dropped off as the match went on as well?

He has food poisoning, so he has to go to the bathroom often and he is not feeling very well. But he is always keeping the hype up and keeps talking and doesn't slow down or anything. We're proud of him.

You are playing OpTic tomorrow, any thoughts on the matchup?

In the CoD world FaZe - OpTic is the 'el classico', let's see if it's going to be the same in CS. 

Professeur writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter.