dephh: "I feel we can actually be pretty successful with me calling"

We spoke to Rory "⁠dephh⁠" Jackson during the ECS Season 7 media day to discuss Peter "⁠stanislaw⁠" Jarguz's abrupt departure, the addition of Owen "⁠oBo⁠" Schlatter and the team's mindset going into the ECS S7 Finals.

Complexity are coming into the ECS Season 7 Finals in somewhat bumpy fashion; as recently as June 3, the organisation officially announced the departure of in-game leader stanislaw, who was replaced by young talent oBo. The North American squad has had little time to prepare for the $500,000 tournament with the 15-year-old, a suboptimal situation to say the least.

In an interview with dephh, who has taken over as in-game leader, we found out additional details regarding stanislaw's departure, why the team picked oBo over other NA players, and the players' mindset going into ECS.

It was shocking to hear that stanislaw parted ways with the organisation mere days before the event - why was his exit so abrupt? Why not postpone it to after ECS?

It was brought up by Peter [stanislaw] after our losses at ESL Pro League. He felt the need to tell the team, at that time, that he was leaving. It was kind of immediate, but we knew it was coming for a while, I think. It was very shocking and out of the blue, but it was mutual from the organisation, him and the players. Everyone was involved in the decision, so yeah, it was very amicable, and it was pretty passive, in the way he left.

It's a good and bad thing for the team. We've got a lot of pressure going into this tournament now, because we've only had a week of practice, especially bringing in a kid like oBo, who's very young and needs a lot of teaching. Apart from that, we're pretty confident, we've actually had a good week of practice, so we're excited to play, especially the best-of-ones, which give us the best chance to win.

It felt like stanislaw had a pretty significant role in the team's success, a shining example of which would be the team's FACEIT Major run. Towards the end, what do you feel were the misalignments that meant it no longer made sense?

I'd say it was more of the team deciding that was not how we wanted to do things anymore. The removal of coaches and any support staff had been an issue with the team that had been going on since he joined.

Obviously, the Major was a success, but I don't think it was down to him specifically. I think he did some good calls, and he's a great player, but the way the team wanted to work and the work ethic that we put behind every game wasn't there anymore. The team realised that he's a great player, but we wanted to work harder and do better.

In terms of the in-game leading, I understand that it will be you who will be taking over. If I recall correctly, previously it was a two-man shuffle between you and stanislaw. Give me your thoughts on going into a full-time in-game leader role.

I did a lot of the mid-round with him - we were probably the only two voices on the team at the time. Me transitioning to the in-game leader role now, I think it's a good part of my career to do that.

I have to thank Peter in a lot of aspects - I learned a lot from him and from every other in-game leader that I've played with. It has kind of cultivated into this position where I feel we can actually be pretty successful with me calling.

The team's last official was an EPL Americas match back in mid-May. What has the roster been up to since then?

We've actually had a really tough schedule, just because of Rickeh's visa problems and him being out of the country. We obviously had to acquire oBo, so there were also the contract negotiations and all those things.

It's been really hard to actually sit down and focus on just playing and learning CS. There's been a lot of politics involved with Peter leaving - that's a massive deal, where the media and the public want to know why. It puts a lot of pressure on the players and the organisation, but we really just feel like we're on a clean slate for now. Only the next couple of months can tell us if it was the right decision or not.

Let's talk about oBo. Considering the list of NA players currently available to play, why did you settle on him as a fifth?

There are a lot of players in NA who were probably available, but a lot of them have been on teams before, a lot of them have been tried before. There's kind of this FPL era, where you get a lot of kids that who highly skilled but need a lot of work. We just noticed that oBo is extremely talented - he has all the mechanical gifts that you'd need as a CS player, but he's also at that age where we can mold him the way we think is going to be more beneficial for him and his career in the future.

He's really quiet, pretty nervous coming into this event - you can definitely feel that from him, but we've got to just give him time. He's a 15-year-old kid, basically. We're going to just put no stress on him, and give him some experience. Hopefully, he can turn into one of these top players like Stewie2k and Twistzz did.

ECS is a difficult gig for you, in that you don't frequently have the chance to perform at an event of this caliber, and that you're coming in with a week's worth of practice, with a brand new, inexperienced player. All things considered, what expectations have you set out for ECS?

We knew this was a big tournament for us. Coming off a week of practice, it's going to be very difficult to compete against some of these teams that are more hard-headed and have had a lot more time to figure out how they want to play, but really we've worked harder these last few weeks than we ever had on this team, and that's down to every player and how we have run it.

This tournament is not going to just be one of those that we take lightly - we've prepared for every team, and we've hired two support staff. I'm really excited to actually go into a game with something prepared because that was something that was blocked for a long time.