kioShiMa: "When two teams are from the same country, it's always the favorite who's going to feel the pressure"

The day started out bleak for Fabien "⁠kioShiMa⁠" Fiey and the rest of Envy as they lost 16-1 to FaZe in what is probably the toughest group in the tournament. Facing G2 in a French derby for survival in Marseille, Envy were able to pull off a victory, 16-7.

kioShiMa would rather play Cloud9 than FaZe in the decider

kioShiMa ran us through some of the issues Envy has been facing as of late, as well as how the team faced the day's matches, Ali "⁠hAdji⁠" Haïnouss's adjustment to the team, and his preferred match-up for tomorrow, among other topics.

Let's kick it off with your guys' preparation coming to Marseille, did you do anything particular or special?

We didn't really do anything special, mostly just tried to fix our mistakes. The team is pretty new, really, since we couldn't play as a full roster until after WESG, so we literally have like one month playing together. It's still new, we still need to figure out how we're going to play, everything about how to play together... obviously there's always something going wrong between players, and playstyles clash. That's what we're fixing, so we don't have any special preparation for this tournament, just something general. We didn't really focus on this event, we're focusing more on the long term. It's our first tournament, so we just need to see how it goes.

So what have been some of the clashes you were mentioning within the team?

The way of playing, really. For example, the roles in the team, because if you look at all the riflers in our team, they all have the same kind of playstyle, so it's kind of hard to make it all connect. You can see it for example in the game we played against FaZe and the game we played now [against G2], it was like two completely different teams played.

So what happened against FaZe? FaZe got that early 5-1 lead and then they just cruised to the end of the match.

I think we tried to play way too fast. We tried to make it so they couldn't get into the game, but that kind of backfired against us and then we were the ones who were lost and who didn't know what to do because we couldn't play a game that we never play online. This was not the playstyle we have online, so it was kind of new for everyone. We wanted to try it, but then we saw what happened... [laughs]. It wasn't great, so, after that match we just said "we're going to play what we know and what we do well," and that's what we did against G2.

Exactly, the match against G2 was a completely different game, even though it was the same map it seemed like a different team playing. What were the adjustments made, or how did you reset mentally?

We told each other to just forget what happened against FaZe, because that's just not us. Why even fix some problems from a match that wasn't really us? That map never happened, remove that map, and move on to the next one, and play the way we play... and it went well!

A lot of times national rivalries are talked about, so how was it to play G2 on the elimination match on the first day in a tournament in Marseille?

The thing is, when you play this kind of match, when two teams are from the same country, it's always the favorite who's going to feel the pressure. For instance, we're all from France, we're all friends, we talk every day. I know all the players, so I know how they play, what they like to do, and so on, so most likely the underdogs can come on top or at least make it really close because we all know each other and there's no surprise or anything. That's probably why it's really close between teams from the same country.

With maLeK behind you guys, is there a lot of work put into scouting other teams and trying to figure out what they do or don't, or is he more focused on your game and what you guys have to do?

Obviously, maLeK is watching every team, but we're trying to create something and finding roles for everyone, even for the coach. So he's watching all the videos, but we don't want all the information. We just want what's important for us, and what he can tell our IGL, happy, so that he can make adjustments.

When he's watching videos, for us as players (not the IGL), he's just looking for timings and special things, for example: "if I throw a smoke here, what is going to be his reaction?" Because that's something people don't realize, but they react the same way 80% of the times because it's just something natural. That's what we try to ask him to find out, what's going to happen and the odds of certain things happening.

Since WESG it has only been one month, but you've had at least a bit more time to play with hAdji, so how is he fitting into the whole system?

At the beginning, it was a bit hard for him because he came from the academy team, which was a really strategic team. They knew what they were doing from the beginning of the round, they knew from point A to point B that they would do X, Y, and Z. When you play in a top team, you have to make adjustments. You have to think for yourself, and then you try to always adjust to what's happening.

The two first weeks he was having some trouble. He didn't understand why we were calling that way and why we never knew where we were going to finish on the map. Like, there's the basic strat, and the end isn't sure, we see what's happening mid-round. He wasn't used to that at all, so it was hard for him to understand it's how it works here. I don't know if it's the same everywhere, but for us, it's like this [laughs].

So coming into the tournament, did you have any goals? Have they at all changed after winning the elimination match against G2?

Our goals didn't change, our goal is to pass the group stage because we know that in this group stage every match is a final. You could be in the final of this tournament against any of these three teams, so we're just giving it all we have in every matchup and then we'll see what happens. If we play well we can win, and we know it, and that's what happened with G2. Now it's probably going to be different against either FaZe or Cloud9, but we're going to take it as a final again, and our goal will be to pass the group stage. Just pass it, and everything else is a bonus.

It feels like there's a lot of uncertainty now regarding what teams are good and what teams are not so good, especially with roster movements and so on, do you think that's affecting the tournament?

Well, as we have seen the past few months there's always some up and downs in every team. There's not anyone on top all of the time, and that's what's making CS interesting because it means you always have to be at your best. You always have to be 200% into what you are doing. If you relax a little bit you're not going to be on your top level and that can cost you a match.

One last question. Would you rather take your revenge against FaZe or go up against Cloud9?

I think I would rather play Cloud9, because FaZe is a really hard opponent. Also, losing against them 16-1 means they're going to have the edge, mentally, because they just destroyed us the first match, and that's never something good because it can be the same thing all over again, or we can kind of fight them and it's really close but they have this small edge. I'd rather play Cloud9 for another reason, too, that it would be sad to lose only against the same team and get knocked out of the group stage. I also want to play the other team, obviously, so if you lose you really deserved it, and it's against the two teams that made it out of groups and not just against one, so I prefer to play Cloud9.