kioShiMa: I just wanna lift the trophy

FaZe skipped the quarter-finals with a first place in Group A, which was decided through a rather original set of tiebreakers played in overtime settings among FaZe, Astralis, and Immortals.

We grabbed Fabien "⁠kioShiMa⁠" Fiey for an interview during his day off to talk to him about the group stage, the tiebreaking format, and the upcoming semi-finals:

The only team you lost to in the round-robin stage was Astralis, how do you feel about your showing in groups overall?

We feel pretty good because we didn't have that much time to pracc, we only had three days or something because I was away for a few days. So we did fairly well, even against Astralis, I don't think we did that bad because we lost seven clutches or something like that in a row with one or two left alive, so the result doesn't really reflect what happened in the match. It could've been closer or even a win, we don't know, we just lost too many situations that we shouldn't lose.

In the end, you had to go through the mr3 tiebreakers, that's new, what do you make of that format?

I like the format, because it's kind of the same as the Major format, the Swiss, I think, because you need to make so many mistakes - even if it's just best-of-one. If you're a good team, you're gonna have the good maps, because you practice a lot of maps, so you need to do so many mistakes to not pass the group stage. Even the tiebreaker, I like it, it's something new, it's intense and that's what players want. The only thing I didn't like is that if there's a three-way tie again, they just take the round difference. So why would you do this and then take the round difference? Just keep going, even if you last five hours, just keep doing the tiebreaker again and again. For me, I like it, and even for viewers, they would love it as well.

What about the way they do the veto, where all teams end up playing the same map, do you like that as well or is there another way this could be done?

The thing is, I didn't really follow the veto, but that was so hard to understand, they were explaining so many things. Every team vetoes two maps in a certain order, so you need to pracc five maps to be fine in that tiebreaker, because you only veto two maps and can end up on five others. You need to know that other teams are really good on those maps, so it's kind of fun how it finished, I mean I liked it, it was funny.

Staying on the topic of the tiebreakers, you ended up playing Train again versus Astralis, which is what you played in the regular portion of the group, and ended up winning in the first set - was there anything you noticed from the first match and adjusted for the tiebreaker?

The thing is that we started CT and we tried to surprise them with a UMP rush. Didn't work out, but it's not that bad, because even if it doesn't work, you are able to buy two rounds after. That was a good thing for us. We knew we didn't have to change anything, as I said, we lost many, many clutches in the regular match. Our play there wasn't that bad, so we just did it again but better.

Talking about that buy in the first round, that is naturally the result of the $10k startmoney settings as normally you can't buy three rounds in a row if you keep losing, would you rather have the $16k option?

I don't think it's better, I like the $10k because you need to take some hard decisions sometimes, you can do that half-buy and try something risky and then you can buy in the rest. If you do a risky buy and you win it, it's only a bonus for you, you can buy in all the rounds. You just won a free round, money-wise that's how it's going to work. I don't know, I like the $10k.

Lastly, going into the semi-finals against North or Immortals - who would be the better match-up?

To be honest, I don't know. I don't care who I'm playing against. If you wanna be first, you need to beat everyone, so whatever opponent you meet, you need to win. I don't care who I play against, I just wanna win and lift the trophy again.