Snappi: "I still think the Swiss format is horrible"

HEROIC is currently 2-1 in the Swiss group stage in Kiev, Ukraine, at the $300,000 tournament organized by StarLadder. The Danes opened up the tournament by losing to Cloud9, but bounced back with wins over HellRaisers and TYLOO.

Signing RUBINO was a management decision, Snappi says

In the post-match interview, the Danish in-game leader revealed that he doesn't think the Swiss system is appropriate for CS, but appreciates the full-BO3 format StarSeries decided to use. 

Getting RUBINO in, what was the expectation like in terms of what he would bring to the team? And how has it been faring so far?

We needed a good aimer that would give some input and hold some hard spots at certain times. It's really good to have a guy with no ego, who can fulfill every position, and I think RUBINO's firepower is kind of underrated, I know he had one bad game, but I don't think that is fair to him as a player, I think his aim is really good. When I spectate him, he has a really good headshot aim, so to say. I think he brings a lot to the team in different areas and he is certainly the guy we needed, there is no doubt that the roster change was the correct thing to do.

At the time that the roster change happened, maybe not exactly, but cajun b was also cut from North. Was he a player you thought about in the same way, to be potentially added to Heroic?

I'm happy it was RUBINO, but it's actually not us who control it, it's the sports director and Luis (Luis "⁠peacemaker⁠" Tadeu). Obviously, we will often have a say, but in this scenario it was RUBINO being signed and I'm really happy with the choice because I think it's the correct one. I think that RUBINO adds something that a lot of other players can't add.

How has the relationship between you as the in-game leader and peacemaker as the coach been working out?

We need to find the balance, I think we get better at it day by day because Luis has been used to having a lot more control of his teams, often times there haven't been any in-game leaders, so he has been calling, deciding all the setups, deciding all the strats. But I'm kind of experienced with all of that so we agreed that when we play, I'll control the strats and what I call, and then when we struggle, he will take the pauses and give input in English

There is also the thing that we speak Danish and he speaks English, so when he comes in, we might have already talked about some of the stuff he adds, so it's important we use his timeouts and his inputs for when we need it. If we lose two or three rounds in a row he will always call the pause, give his suggestion and maybe give a new idea to me that I can run. I think the relationship with him is getting better and better, day by day, and I think it's going to be only better in the future.

Can you compare him to FeTiSh, who used to be the coach?

FeTiSh was more the kind of a funny guy, giving motivation to people, he wasn't the guy that brought anything strat-wise. I think FeTiSh could be really good, but I also think he found out coaching wasn't really for him because he didn't want to watch the number of demos and do the number of setups that a coach needs to do. So I think he could've been really good, but it didn't work out in the end. But I really like Henrik as a person, I think he is one of the coolest guys out there.

Let's touch on the TyLoo game here, when I talked to MODDII yesterday, he said that Inferno was a bit shaky for you guys, was that the biggest issue here or did TyLoo play well as well?

I think we tried to work on Inferno, but the thing is, we were actually very good on the T side but we tried to develop it even more and then we got away from what really worked back in the days. That's why it has been shaky because I think that when we play our own game, we are actually a pretty decent team on Inferno.

What we have to find out is, we are holding new spots now, RUBINO is A, niko is B so on CT we kind of have to figure it out, but we are going to practice a lot of Inferno today and during the tournament to get more used to CT setups. I actually think our T-side is pretty decent most of the time, the reason why it didn't go so great today is that we lost two anti-ecos, and when you do that, it's going to get hard. I think we still got seven T rounds, so it wasn't that bad, it was just that we shouldn't lose to the pistols.

Can you tell me your thoughts on the format that's being used here?

I enjoy it, but I don't think you can do it for every tournament because it's already [a really long one]. For a team like us, it's not that bad because we don't participate in a million tournaments, that is obviously our hope, that we would get to the top and be invited in the future, but I think that this tournament provides every team a chance to really show what they have got. There is no excuse to going out, if you lose three BO3's then that is your own fault, and vice versa, if you win three BO3's then you deserve to be in the playoffs, right? I think that in general, using this format will probably give you the best teams overall, in the end.

I still think the Swiss format is horrible, I don't think it's a good suit for CS and I don't care if it's BO1 or BO3. I think that the fact that it is actually positive to go 0-2 or 0-1, regarding the teams that you face, is a really bad thing. And I think reseeding is even worse, because if you do reseeding, teams like MVP, TyLoo, us, teams that are lower ranked, are going to end up facing SK, G2, FaZe and Cloud9 in order to go to the playoffs and I don't think that is fair either, because one of those [lower ranked] teams could be a lot better than what is going to get showed playing against that opposition. So I hope Swiss will never be used again, I think it's the worst format.

A change that happened recently was on Nuke, Valve introduced a lot of changes and you are one of the rare teams that play the map, so what are your thoughts on the changes that have been made?

We already found out a way to play the new Nuke, I think, so it's not going to be a problem for us. If anyone wants to play us on Nuke, we are going to do it.