JW: "I don't think we can change team things here, it's all about being on fire individually"

fnatic took the long road to qualify for the ELEAGUE Boston Major playoffs. They kicked the day off with a 2-1 record but lost to Natus Vincere and were placed into the last round of matches of the Swiss group stage taking place at the ELEAGUE Studios in Atlanta. Finally, Jesper "⁠JW⁠" Wecksell and his team were able to beat Gambit without skipping a beat to qualify for the quarter-finals.

Late 2017 tournaments were crucial to fnatic's growth for the Major

The three-time Major winner walked us through fnatic's last day of the group stage in Atlanta, the preparation for the Major, and what is to come as the competition moves to Boston for the playoffs.

Going back to the Na`Vi match, s1mple said they tried to bait you into picking some of your worse maps instead of Inferno which is both teams' best map. Was that something you thought about in the veto?

When we got the matchup yesterday we talked about the maps and we talked about the idea of playing on Nuke, where they lost heavily, or something like that, but then we figured that they would probably want to push us to a weaker map because I think they felt we were the better team going into the match. We were pretty surprised, we didn't think it would happen, that it would go to Inferno, so it caught us a bit off-guard, but we were ready, although finally we didn't play our own game. We kind of choked, we didn't take the duels like we usually do.

After we lost to FaZe we kind of had the fighting instinct, but after winning against Astralis we believed again we actually could win and play well and beat these teams, which I think messed with our brains and we didn't play our game at all. Gratz to them for playing well individually and stopping us, but it feels like these matches in which we play individually skilled teams like FaZe, mousesports, Na`Vi, it’s kind of more like we lose against ourselves because we overcomplicate things and their individual plays cause too much damage to us.

So how were you able to reset for the next match, getting such a one-sided result against Gambit, playing the match with barely any time to rest... how was the mood between the games and what did you talk about?

We were a bit upset, because we felt all the mistakes we made were stupid. We had a little rant about the game, and we talked a bit, but basically we said "just forget about that game, that wasn't fnatic playing, and very few teams can stop us if we play our game.” We were ready for Overpass, but they let Mirage through somehow, which I guess they must have planned for...

Did you expect that at all?

We didn't expect it at all. We expected Cache or Overpass. We had a plan to pick Overpass but they gifted us Mirage, so it was a no-brainer for us. We just started rolling and didn't give them any chance to execute any plan at all.

Going into the playoffs you have a couple days off. What are you going to do? Do you have something to work on?

I feel like we're really prepared as a team, so we'll just play individually and keep being on fire individually, because I don't think we can change team style or team things here, it's all about being on fire individually so we're just going to hope we don't draw FaZe and take it from there.

No small things you need to fix?

I don't think so, I think we fixed all the mistakes in our bootcamp coming into the Major, I think we fixed a lot of small things and the only game we showed mistakes in was the Na`Vi game. I think in the FaZe game we were just a bit cold, and it felt tighter than the score really showed, but we didn't really feel that we did many mistakes. Maybe we did things too obvious, and they could abuse us by going A when we were three mid and stuff like that, but I think we'll mostly focus on the individual side.

I've been asking the Legends how it feels coming into the tournament a week later than the qualifier teams, who did pretty well at the start. What are your thoughts on having more practice vs. being here for the main qualifier and having some games to warm up after such a long break from competitive play?

To be honest I'm surprised by the amount of Legends teams that lost, because I think Legends have a huge advantage, getting one more week of practice, and it gives us the ability to study their games from the qualifier, so I'm very, very surprised. I don't know why, for example with Astralis... we played them a lot coming into this tournament. We scrimmed each other very, very much, and they were really good, and had a really good style, and dupreeh was playing very well with the AWP. I'm not sure if it's a mindset thing, because historically the Legends have always been the superior teams. I think it's really time for a new generation of Majors. I think it's all shifting now.

So what do you think was different about you and your preparation, considering you hadn't played anything official for at least a month before coming here?

I think the biggest plus for us was that we got two kind of big tournaments at the end of last year and we fixed a lot of rounds for those tournaments. When we were at the tournaments, though, we found a lot of small mistakes, so we had a ten day bootcamp and we fixed a lot of those small mistakes. We know we have good rounds, we know we have good teamplay, and we know all these things are good. We just have to make everything slightly better and remove some little errors. Those two tournaments at the end of the year were a great learning experience for us.

Last thing I want to ask is the goals for the playoffs. I asked Lekr0 and he seemed pretty set on trying to win the tournament. What do you think will take you there? Are you confident about the map pool?

Yeah, we have the best map pool we've ever had with this lineup right now. The only things now are some mind games with FaZe, we never seem to be able to really play our own game against them on LAN. We have three people that have won several Majors, we always aim for winning it. I think as long as we don't draw FaZe we can go really, really deep and if we draw FaZe we need to really step it up because we haven't done it when we've played them in the past.