TeSeS: "I think when cadiaN has momentum on any map he can outcall every in-game leader in the world"

We spoke to René "⁠TeSeS⁠" Madsen after HEROIC beat FaZe in their opening match at the BLAST Premier Fall Final.

HEROIC secured victory in their opening match for the BLAST Premier Fall Final in Copenhagen, recovering from slow starts on Mirage and Nuke to sweep their series against FaZe 2-0.

A match against the winner of Natus Vincere and BIG now awaits them on Thursday, while on Friday, they'll have the chance to play in front of a home crowd in the Royal Arena.

After the match, HLTV briefly spoke to TeSeS to get his immediate thoughts on the result, as well as to reflect back on the end of HEROIC's run at PGL Major Stockholm now that they have had some time to recover from the loss to G2 on stage.

Let's start with the match you just played against FaZe, you've started off well in the tournament even though the match was somewhat close. 16-14 on Mirage and then a comeback on Nuke, can you walk me through the series from your side a little bit?

We had a rough start on Mirage, and we already knew before playing this match that the first game of every event is a struggle, people are playing kind of weird in the first five rounds or something. We were ready for that and we just reset on Mirage and came back to win that.

Then we went into Nuke, we were pretty confident, but again we got behind 12-6 or something and came back as CTs, we showed that our CT Nuke is strong as always.

Was there anything specific that helped that comeback on Nuke, or was it just momentum-based?

I think Casper (cadiaN), when he has momentum on Nuke, or just any map, he can outcall every in-game leader in the world. When he's feeling it, there's no one that can stop him, or us.

To go back a bit, you're coming here after the Major where you made it to the playoffs. You beat VP there, but then there was the match against G2 that you only narrowly lost after almost coming back. What was the approach to playing those matches in the arena for you?

We have our mental coach and our performance team, and they had a great idea to be in the arena a few hours before the match started. We were just sitting there for five minutes in complete silence, just imagining what it will be like playing on the stage, imagining the audience and everyone going crazy, and I think that helped us a lot during those five minutes, helped calm everyone's nerves.

So we just had a feeling when went into the first match on stage against VP that we were just going to enjoy it, enjoy every moment of it. At that time we had completed our goal to get to the quarter-final, we were just happy to be there and just wanted to win that match and go on to the semi-final. Everything was a big joy for us, we're very proud of it but it doesn't mean that we're still not hungry.

A little bittersweet with the way the G2 series ended as well, I'm sure.

Yeah.

You're talking about that preparation to play on stage in Stockholm, and you're also guaranteed to play on stage here, in front of a home crowd. How does that feel for you?

It's going to be amazing. I'm just looking forward to it, it's going to be amazing to see everyone, every Danish fan, my family and my friends are coming and hopefully there are some international fans as well. I'm just looking forward to being in the arena, it's going to be great.

Does having the home crowd add more pressure for you, or will that just help build momentum on your end?

Hmm, I don't know, I haven't had a home crowd booing at us or cheering against us, so I can't say anything really, but I can imagine it would just help us. The more people that are cheering for us, the more it'll help us for sure.

You're also the only team playing at this event that are guaranteed to play at both the World Final and IEM Winter, what're your goals like for the rest of the year since you have all three of these LAN events to play?

We've talked about our goals for a long time now, and right now we just want to win that one LAN event and build our confidence on LAN, play on big stages for the next year and just do everything we can to build our confidence like we have online. When we have confidence no one can stop us, so we just need to find our groove and feel the momentum again.

NAVI are your main competition here, obviously they're everybody's main competition at this point. cadiaN said in an interview with Dexerto that you're the only team that can beat them, so for you coming into this event, what is the approach to taking on NAVI when they're in such hot form?

They're definitely in great shape, they've just come back from a Major win, and it's going to be great to see how they will perform at this event and see if they can keep their fire.

We definitely want to meet them and we want to show everyone that we are the number one competition for them. I think deep inside they know it as well, that we are hard to play against, and it's just going to be fun if we meet them.