Xizt: "Winning against FaZe was something we needed"

We sat down with Richard "⁠Xizt⁠" Landström ahead of his team's decider match against MOUZ in a series that will decide which of the two teams survives and which one goes home.

After a loss in their opener against Natus Vincere, Xizt & co. beat FaZe yesterday in a two map bout to stay alive at ELEAGUE Premier. Today, they will go on to face MOUZ to try and reach their goal of making the playoffs.

The Swedish in-game leader talks about bringing William "⁠draken⁠" Sundin into the fold, how that has changed some of the roles in the team, their troubles on CT sides, fnatic's goals in Atlanta, and what is to come after.

As the changes in the Swedish scene are starting to settle, how are you feeling now?

We are in a pretty good state right now. We just need to work more together and find that chemistry and work on our communication. We have the right players for the right roles right now. It's the probably the most difficult for JW, maybe because he is having to switch from a full-time AWPer to a rifler/secondary AWPer basically, but I think we are pretty happy right now.

How about the new AWPer, draken, is his aggressive style something you wanted? How is he adapting?

From the beginning, when we brought draken in, we wanted him to be aggressive, to find picks and entry frags for us. He’s been playing really good for us, especially here in Atlanta when he stepped up in the first game against Na`Vi. We are still struggling as CT’s, all of us. We need to find a better way to utilize draken’s AWP, for example, to try and get him into good positions so he can find those entries for us.

You lost to Na`Vi 2-0 in Cologne, and then you faced them here in the opener, and although you lost you gave a better showing. What did you change betwen events?

We have been tinkering with our CT positions quite a lot I would say so that one thing we have been working on. Also, as Terrorists, we are playing really good on most maps right now. One thing that we are kind of bad about is playing stressful sometimes as Terrorist - running into stacks and stuff like that. We need to utilize the time more and that is something we have been working on during practice, being calm as Terrorists and taking map control, and then figuring it out from there.

Against Na`Vi in Mirage you had a couple good streaks, early in the halves, but were unable to seal the deal. Have you had trouble adapting and changing your play when things don't work?

To be honest, I think we played really scared. I think it showed as well against FaZe as CT on Mirage. We have to play to win and not become too passive as CT and they ran over us when we had setups for example. So that’s what happened yesterday and that’s what happened today as well.

The match against FaZe was very fun to watch, but also because of how chaotic it was. What do you think made it so scrappy?

It was a very stressful game as an in-game leader, and it was a very frustrating game for us because we lost a lot of force buys, but they also lost a lot of force buys as well. I don’t know we just believe in ourselves that we could close it out. No one else believed that we could win, so I don’t know, maybe we were just more hungry.

How important is ELEAGUE for you guys? Is it important to end the season with a bang or are you just taking it easy and seeing how it goes?

This event is really important for us. It’s one of the biggest tournaments of the year with eight of the best teams here and, first of all, we want to get out of the group stage. I don’t think we have won a best-of-three yet with this lineup against a really tough team, so winning against FaZe was something we needed.

Are you looking ahead, or are you focused only on ELEAGUE? What are the plans for the next season?

Right now we are just focused on ELEAGUE. We are going to do our bootcamp after the player vacation for DreamHack Stockholm. We are going to try and start strong in the new season and prepare for the Major.