Farlig: "Other teams were talking to me; I was saying to Astralis that I'd rather play with them"

After making the quarter-finals of Pro League with his new team, Farlig sat down with HLTV for an in-depth interview.

Astralis have been on a consistent journey of improvement in 2022, underwhelming early exits at FUNSPARK Ulti Finals and BLAST Spring Groups followed up by a much improved showing at IEM Katowice.

ESL Pro League has been a success so far, and their brand-new AWPer Asger "⁠Farlig⁠" Jensen had his best series for his new team in their round-of-12 triumph over Entropiq. With that under his belt, he sat down with HLTV to chat about the game, his career before Astralis, and the challenges faced while settling into the biggest team in Denmark.

Congratulations on a great win today, how do you feel after that one?

Obviously I am pretty happy about the win, it feels good to finally be on the winning side of a close match like that; we had two pretty close calls against NAVI and Heroic in the group, where it felt like it could go both ways on some of the maps.

Is it hard to play in such a long series, to stay focused and motivated in such conditions?

Actually I have a hard time recognising it while I’m playing (smiles), but when you’ve had a long series like that you feel it on your body after the game, right? As soon as the game ends it’s like something clicks, and you realise you don’t have to be focused anymore. Honestly, I don’t think you feel it when you’re playing.

Is it tough to get up for Overpass when you had worked so hard to get back into Vertigo and take it to overtime, and then you let a chance to 2-0 the series slip away?

No, I think resetting is definitely fairly easy. It’s more about when you convince yourself that you have to mentally reset, and then you go in and the first thing you do is lose the pistol round. I think honestly the half might have been a bit different, I can’t speak to our mental endurance and stuff like that if we had lost the pistol round and following round, but it’s a pretty good feeling when you lose the pistol and win the round after.

It's hard to say what happens if we lose the pistol, the two following rounds and then the first buy round or something, it can be pretty tough mentally. You’re probably looking at best at an 8-7, 9-6 half if you play well the rest of the CT side.

How did you feel about your own performance – you had some great impact rounds, particularly with the deagle, and on Overpass you were potent with the AWP.

It’s definitely one of the series at Pro League that I’ve played the best, obviously you can tell that from the numbers but it’s not necessarily the numbers that I am speaking from. It’s more about how it felt playing the game, I think as I ease more into playing matches with the team I am hoping to have repeat performances like that.

Honestly things have been going pretty great in practice, but I think in the end a team is always going to be playing a bit differently in official games, no matter what. I think I needed an adjustment period for that as well, not that the way we are playing in official matches is necessarily better or worse than how we are playing in practice, but there is definitely a difference. I was already in a spot where I needed to ease into the team and adjust, and then things being different in official games made the start maybe a bit difficult for me, but it’s not that any of teammates made it harder. In the end it’s my own fault whether I am doing good or bad, obviously.

Taking a step back for a moment, you might be a player who’s history isn’t too familiar for many who focus on the tier-one scene, so let’s get a bit of background on you – how did you get into CS?

The only reason I am playing CS in a team is because back when I started my first year of high school, someone from my class was playing CS on an amateur level, and I became pretty good friends with him. He actually thought I was cheating back then, because I had so few hours in the game but I was still pretty good (smiles). I started playing with him and his team, and even when he got another from another amateur team, I kept playing with his old team.

After that I was bouncing around a few teams in the lower scene, I’ve played with nearly all of the Danish sub-top IGLs, some of them are not even playing anymore. I’ve played with BERRY, I’ve played with netrick, I’ve played with Inzta, maybe some of these names you won’t even know (laughs), I’ve played with all of them.

I think all of those IGLs were speaking good things about me, and then Copenhagen Flames decided to pick up a team, and I was one of the names they were interested in.

During your time on Copenhagen Flames, you seemed to have a real breakout event with the ESL One: Road to Rio, where the team picked up map wins over FaZe and MOUZ, with you being the real carry force behind it. Did people start to take notice of you after this event?

Yeah (laughs) it was definitely the event where people started to take notice! I don’t think it was different than any other event, I mean we were just sitting at home right, I think things are a bit different when you are sitting at home playing these online matches honestly. Part of the reason why we were able to make any results at all on that team is also because we almost had like a home-field advantage, playing online.

It was right at the time where LAN tournaments were being taken off the table, and all of the good teams were thinking ‘oh f**k, do I really have to play these matches from home?’. There’s not the same weight to the matches, or at least it doesn’t feel that way, so I think we had a jump on a lot of the good teams in that sense. I think we were just playing our own game, and with the team back then if you look at the roster, we actually had a pretty good team with players like HooXi and refrezh.

Not long after the event you got picked up by GODSENT – you could argue that this was a bit of a risk, such a young player going for an international project rather than sticking with his countrymen. What made you choose GODSENT?

I honestly barely had any offers, I mean I had a few people talking saying they were interested in me but I barely had any offers at all, and definitely nothing Danish. If I chose myself I would have kept playing with Danish people, but at a certain point if there’s no offers presenting themselves, you have to be flexible.

At the point where GODSENT were asking me, I think they were ranked number 14 or 15 in the world, and it just looked like a really good team to join and I don’t regret joining it at all. I honestly would have picked GODSENT over a lot of other offers back then even, because to me it was a really interesting team to play for.

What was your time with that roster like? You played with them for so long, so you must have enjoyed it?

Yeah I definitely enjoyed playing with them, you have to enjoy playing with each other if you stick together for so long I think. I think we definitely had potential, but towards the back end of the FPX roster I think everyone was sitting with a bit of a feeling that the team had run its course, right?

We reached a point in the team where it felt like the more we played, the worse we got, it was a bit of a feeling like that throughout the team, like we were regressing. I think at that point it’s best that you part ways, or you definitely make drastic changes.

It was definitely still an enjoyable time on the team.

Did you experience any struggles playing with an international roster?

Honestly I didn’t think it was very hard, the only thing I felt that was unfortunate, especially because we were such a diverse team, is I legitimately didn’t meet most of them until eight months after joining the team, and I didn’t meet Maden until a year after I joined the team. I joined the team in mid-2020, and I genuinely didn’t meet Maden until after the player break in 2021. I think it definitely helps with everything that you see your teammates once in a while.

Apart from that, I don’t think it was difficult. In fact, I think it was pretty interesting and exciting to work with people from that many different nationalities and trying to make it mesh. In the end, everyone was willing to work towards the same goal, so no it definitely wasn’t difficult. Maybe once in a while you could feel a bit of a clash culturally, but nothing outspoken or anything like that.

Obviously your next team after this was Astralis – how did that move come about?

Well I had spoken a bit with the team, we’d obviously expressed a mutual interest. At some point I was asking them if they were looking at me, because I had other teams that were talking to me and I was saying to the Astralis guys that I would rather play with them obviously, but they need to tell me now so I can reject other offers.

I was trying to entertain all of the offers and not necessarily reject them outright, during a period where Astralis were saying they wanted to give Lucky a fair chance, which obviously I can respect right? They wanted to give him more time with the new roster, especially with their new coach at the time ave, they wanted to give him a real chance.

During Katowice a pretty good offer came to me, and Astralis were showing increased interest in me, so I contacted them saying that the other offer was getting pretty close to happening. They were also at the point where they were pretty close to pulling the trigger on the roster change as well, so maybe they changed Lucky out a bit before they were planning on doing it because of my situation, but in the end they might have made the change anyways.

I won’t ask which team made you the ‘pretty good offer’, but was it international or Danish?

International.

When you arrived in Astralis, were there many expectations placed upon you, either from the team or the organisation?

No it was nothing like that, it was more like… not necessarily expectation, I mean obviously there was an expectation for me to tell them how I want to play, right? So I think there was an expectation for me to be assertive about how I wanted to play, but it was more about what I like doing, what I wanted to do, stuff like that. Obviously it’s a balancing act, because there’s already a couple of players on the team that take up a lot of space on the server, but they did ask about my preferences.

What expectations did you have of yourself? You have joined a huge name in the form of Astralis, the biggest team in Denmark and with a long history of success, is there any pressure?

I honestly don’t know, I kept thinking about it a lot of the time, but to me it just feels like playing Counter-Strike, and I feel like I am already pretty great friends with people on the team. At this point, it has already become normal for me.

I think you would maybe feel the pressure more for example if we went out in the group stage here, I think I would feel the pressure a lot more and the negative words and criticism from everyone would probably be more outspoken; a lot of fans would probably be saying stuff, because everyone has high expectations. Right now though, I’m not really feeling any.

How is your role developing in the game so far? It seems like on T side you aren’t AWPing so much whereas on CT side it’s more of a priority, but how is it from your perspective?

It’s pretty map dependent whether I have the AWP or not. I mean it depends on a lot of factors but there’s a lot of the time where you see that AWPers don’t have the AWP on T side whether it’s due to not having the money, or playing close rounds or whatever.

I think personally I feel like I am not getting the AWP on T side enough right now, but that’s not anyone else’s fault other than my own right, I can obviously save for an AWP if I want and I think you are going to see me a lot more with the AWP moving forward. I think as I play more games, you are going to see me have more impact on the T side as well.

Do you feel like you are learning a lot, being with such experienced players? I know there isn’t really another AWPer to talk to, but maybe in other areas?

Yeah I feel like I am learning a lot, not necessarily about AWPing, but I am learning about so many other things. How the team practices is different, how we are talking about the game, each team has a unique philosophy around the game, and I think that’s part of why playing with new teams and players is so fun right, you see new perspectives on the game. In that sense, I feel like I am learning a lot.

Also, this is one of my first big LANs right, so in that sense I feel like I am really learning a lot, the way you play in online matches and the way you can play on LAN is different. In online matches where there’s so much less pressure I think you can play a really loose playstyle that relies a lot on individual ability, and everyone is talking all the time about what to do in the mid-round. On LAN, it’s pretty good to have a bit of structure in your game and that’s where the structure really helps, when the pressure is on. Back in FPX / GODSENT we played a really loose playstyle, so obviously the fact that there is a bit of structure now is different for me.

Looking to the future, are there any targets or goals that the team has set?

Yeah there’s definitely a goal, the absolute bare minimum is making it to the Major right? That’s the first goal, and I think if we make it to the Major, especially when you have gla1ve and Xyp9x on the team who have won so many Majors, I think there is at least a wish to be in the top eight right, or the top four. I can be honest and say that they have maybe higher expectations than me, I haven’t even been at a Major yet (laughs), but goals can shift when you reach them right, so maybe I will be sitting with the same goals as them down the line.

I don’t think there’s any individual expectations necessarily, it’s more team-oriented expectations and goals that we are striving for.

That was actually going to be my final question; do you have any personal goals, like maybe being included in the HLTV top 20, for example?

It’s about winning with the team for me. I think getting players in the top 20 is going to be a by-product if you are winning a lot right? It’s just going to happen by itself, I don’t think striving for any individual merits is… I think it’s going to come if you are winning all the time anyway.