Snappi: "Perhaps the biggest disappointment I've had with this team"

HEROIC's journey at ESG Tour Mykonos came to a quick end on the first two days of play in Greece, when the Danes lost to Gambit and MOUZ, only putting up 22 rounds across three maps.

Snappi discusses Heroic's disappointing campaign in Mykonos

On the last day of the tournament, we caught up with the team's in-game leader, Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer, to quiz him about the team's disappointing campaign and their nearest future.

What level of expectations did you have going into ESG Tour Mykonos, considering your latest results on LAN and the fact that you had about a month to prepare for this?

The expectations were to pass the group stage. We're a team that is far from fully developed, but the way we went out was a major disappointment, because usually when we go out, we at least make the games close, but at this event we just got bodied on all three maps. So, a major disappointment, perhaps the biggest disappointment I've had with this team.

What do you think went wrong, is it just that no one showed up on an individual level?

It was really everything, the individual performances weren't there, everyone hit their bottom level, and also the communication was super bad. We lost all of the key rounds, gunrounds, close clutches. Against Gambit, someone wrote that we had nine rounds where we had an advantage and we lost all of those. So, if that happens, you're obviously going to lose.

It's been a while since you've brought in es3tag, now you have three young guys alongside you and MODDII, tell me about the challenges that come with that.

The biggest challenge was that at first, we tried to put es3tag into valde's roles, which were kind of star player roles. But he didn't feel like he fit them, so we tried to swap it out again and give him his old positions from Tricked.

I hope it will work out in the future, but now we obviously need to define the roles better and maybe switch up some stuff, because I don't really know exactly what went wrong, because in practice and in online games we've been fine, but we just really struggled at this event and I don't think this is our usual level.

Yesterday, we had a discussion about JUGi and what you want from him that I found interesting, can you elaborate on it, what you expect from him as an AWPer?

Yeah, when we played online after the vacation, he really started to feel comfortable, started to move players around, because as an AWPer, you need to take a shot everywhere on the map, but you also need to move the player playing that spot. So if you for example want to take a peek in B apps on Mirage, you need to move the player or say what he needs to do for you. I play B on Mirage, so I throw some nades for him so that he has a better peek, and then I go to another position.

Some players can do that by themselves, know where to go, but some players need to be micro-managed when he takes that shot. A really good AWPer knows where to take the shots but also how to micro-manage the player playing that spot. And he's really starting to develop, obviously this tournament wasn't good for him, but it wasn't for anyone on the team. I think he's starting to show that he really is the star player in our online games.

Going into the rest of the year, what are going to be your goals for the next three months or so?

Our goals for the next six months is to solidify ourselves in different leagues, because it's really hard to be a team that's not in the big leagues and isn't in the Major cycle. It isn't a major goal to win a tournament, the major goal is to get our foot in every big tournament, we are in the ESL Pro League, but we also wanted to get into ELEAGUE, we managed that, and we also want to get into ECS and the Major cycle.

Those are the major goals, because if you've got those tournaments, then you can progress further on, but one good result like we had at IEM Katowice really does nothing, it doesn't give us any invites at all, so it isn't important to do good at one tournament, it's important to get the foot in everywhere.