flameZ: "nexa is really good at calling what the players want instead of what looks good for him"

Shahar "⁠flameZ⁠" Shushan kicked off his adventure at the Regional Major Ranking event on the front foot, now the rifler hopes OG will carry over their form against Natus Vincere.

OG joined the likes of FaZe and Natus Vincere in the 1-0 pool following their victory over MOUZ in the first round of the European RMR. The result was hard-fought, with Christopher "⁠dexter⁠" Nong's young squad pulling a comeback attempt in the second half with a solid CT performance, but in the end, cooler heads prevailed. Casper "⁠ruggah⁠" Due's perfectly timed pauses combined with Mateusz "⁠mantuu⁠" Wilczewski's fantastic form was enough to push OG over the finishing line, 16-12.

After an exemplary display of defensive Counter-Strike on Mirage, flameZ sat down to talk about his team's form coming into the event as well as his in-game thought process and the team's adaptation to Nemanja "⁠nexa⁠" Isaković's style of leadership.

OG - MOUZ was the big match of the first round and you guys came out on top. Walk me through it.

First of all, going in to the match, we though they were going to pick a different map, but they came up with Mirage. We were kind of shocked because it's one of our best maps, if not the best, and we're really feel comfortable on it, while they've lost four times. So we knew that if we played our game as we usually do on Mirage it would be an easy match. In a sense, just a fun map to play, and that's what happened. At the start we went in really strong and then laid back a bit because they played good, solid slow rounds.

We just talked about needing to do our protocols right, play CS the way we know and not just fall into pressure-based situations, and not let them have as much space as they gave us on their CT side. We got strong and started winning again and again, rolling the rounds because it's just easy, you know what they're going to do and you get in the flow state.

Going into the T side, it was a rough start, we weren't sticking to our agreements. We didn't play the way we know to play. That was kind of 'eesh,' but we felt like we were going to win the game because we were in control. I felt like there was not as much pressure on us.

A lot of regards to Casper, he took timeouts exactly when we needed them and we won the round after every time. We just needed to breathe and calm down, which we lacked a bit. But that's just the first game, you have to get the rust out of the way, same as NAVI against QUAZAR in a close match because you're not used to the environment yet.

At 14-12 or something we just talked about the round and it went in, nexa was calling really well and again, props to Casper for the timeouts. He didn't even talk a lot, just said 'let's do this, this and this, what we know, and we'll win the game.' That's what we did, and we won.

There was one great play you had on wood, you got four opening kills and then fell off right before the ace.

Oh, I didn't even know I killed three or four! I killed the first guy and valde is screaming 'nice!' Then I killed the palace guy and valde again says 'nice, flameZ!" So I'm like, 'what's happening?' And I see I killed four already, when I thought I only killed two, so I was wondering why he's screaming so much.

The last guy, I thought he was in tetris, but he was apex because nexa was shooting and I didn't hear properly, so I just fell down and was like 'OK, I'll swing apex and get the ace.' But then just between hearing noises and seeing that I killed four, thinking what the fuck, it was just a moment of realization that I fell. And I thought I could kill him as well, but yeah.

You talked about getting the rust off in the first match of a tournament. You guys haven't played many officials lately, so what have you been up to?

We've been practicing a lot. Obviously nexa joined a few months ago and we instantly went into BLAST and the Major qualifier. We were going to play a Pinnacle Cup, just to play some officials to get things going, but there were issues with flights and stuff so we scrapped it and went to bootcamp.

Basically, we just built our map pool together, fixed a lot of mistakes that were popping off on officials that we played. We also reconsidered a lot of stuff because we basically hadn't had the time to sit on the map pool and stabilize it, but now we're pretty comfortable with it because while people were playing officials we spent time building up our map pool, getting to know each other better and getting in sync with each other, which is important for me.

Regarding getting the rust out of the way, it's always a thing in my brain because if you think about it, playing officials is way different in terms of pressure, sound in-game, the game itself doesn't feel the same as at home or at a bootcamp, so it's just getting the knowledge in my head that it's completely fine no matter what happens because the game is in our hands and not in our heads, we're just here to have fun, do our best, and even if we lose it's OK if we've given our best and that's what we did.

I felt the rust at the beginning, they were giving us resistance and we had to deal with it, but then the rust literally scraped off. So instead of playing all of the officials I think it was a good idea to just sit and figure out things as a team.

You mentioned nexa now being on the team for a few months and you guys getting to know each other a bit better. Can you tell me about the changes that he has brought to the team and how he's made it different than what it was before?

Yeah, I'll compare him to Aleksi. Aleksi's brain is full of CS knowledge, he's really smart, but we needed a style that we could improve on, we needed to just be sent out to figure out what doesn't work. So nexa came in with this looser style, just to see how we play CS first of all, and then he involved his way of seeing CS and how the game should be played. I remember when he just joined that there were a lot of situations in which I was just thinking how weird it was, instead of just jumping A I needed to play calm. So I started learning more things about myself, which I think nexa improved.

You also need to think about kakafu, our assistant coach, because he's spending a lot of time with me, mantuu, valde, niko, nexa, everyone, we're building a lot of plans in the game and we go over a lot of things which I think is important. Regarding nexa, the impact he has had on me is getting me to play the way I want to play, no matter what happens he'll be there to support me. Even if I don't shoot well, there's always a general idea of how I should be playing, so even if I don't shoot well I can still go and do good utility damage, play for my team, basically by the book instead of doing the thing you just feel like doing.

We're still working on it, but the coach, the assistant, we're all talking to figure out the balance for me between being over aggressive and passive, like the Gambit 2020 way of playing, that you really just do nothing. Sometimes I get really hyper in the game and just want to click 'W' and push, but this is important for me to take the next step in my career, to just know how to play certain situations and literally understand why I need to play them that way. In practice I saw a lot of things that really worked out and now I need to continue because its effect has been insanely huge.

There was one situation against MOUZ in which you were underpass after killing one, and instead of chilling you then repeeked against a bunch of players on mid and got taken out.

Yeah, I wanted to push underground but then niko said 'let's fuck them in middle,' so valde flashed above window. I thought I wouldn't get blind, but then I got a bit blind. I don't know the situation properly, but I think it was just the pressure calling to me. Normally I'd just push under, take B and basically play how I should be playing, by the book, but in this round there was some communication and I think the idea was good, but I just didn't understand the image as properly as I should have.

In regards to nexa, during one of the rounds he was getting mantuu to be confident and do his thing as an AWPer. Is he good at making you guys confident in your own game and making your own decisions?

We need confidence to play CS, if you're confident you're the best player in the world, and nexa is really good at implementing what we need to do to become confident because we have the idea in our brain, but the confidence may not always be there to make the play we feel like making. So he's really good at understanding what we want to do before we even figure that out. It's really important for us, and for him, that everyone knows what needs to be done because we all have a general idea, the strats or the setups and stuff like that, but it's really important to give that command and nexa is really good at calling what the players want instead of what looks good for him.

He really understands and knows how to play situations. On the A site, let's say, he's really good at understanding what's happening in middle, in B, what push needs to be done, so I think he's really good at having an image of the game and implementing confidence in freeze times. He just knows how to pinpoint it for the players.

MOUZ is one of the teams that beat you at IEM Katowice, did it feel good to get revenge?

It was kind of revenge, but in a way we didn't really care about Katowice. We knew when we played MOUZ that it wasn't the way we play. When we played Heroic, before that, who were very competitive, we gave them a good fight. We were two rounds away from beating them on two maps. Then, against MOUZ, it was a mix of disrespect and not playing our game. Not disrespect in thinking that we were better, but just because they had two stand-ins and we were like 'OK, let's just get through this game' and we were thinking about the next games already, which was a good slap in the face for us because we really needed to focus.

We spoke to YEKINDAR earlier and he talked about how stacked the RMR is, which is sometimes overlooked because it's a qualifier. How confident are you guys in fighting for the Major spots, and particularly the Legend spots. Everyone wants the 3-0, but where do you feel you're realistically at?

The approach to this tournament is to go step by step, that's our mentality with everything. First of all, we need to qualify for the Major. I don't think it's important if we're Legend, Challenger or Contender, it's really important to just focus on our game and I know that if we play well we'll qualify, so we just need to keep that going. The RMR is obviously really stacked, but there are not a lot of teams that are really hard. There's Heroic, FaZe and NAVI, those are the really solid teams. But then Outsiders, I'm not so sure that they're that competitive, I feel like we could beat them.

Everyone could also beat Heroic, FaZe and NAVI, but they would win most times out of 10 games. So we just need to play our game and qualify, it doesn't matter in what position, and then we just go on from there. Then we aim for playoffs, you know? Just focus game by game, make sure we have a good approach to every game because that's what's important, what's in front of you.

You're playing NAVI, that's a big match. How do you feel about it?

It's a best-of-one, which needs to be considered. In a way, it gives us an advantage. They're obviously the favorites, they're big names and played well all of last year and this year, but we just need to aim to win. You can see NAVI haven't been themselves the last few months, so that's a big plus for us.

I also think that nobody is unbeatable, if we just focus we can beat them. It favors us being the underdog, and it being a best-of-one, which is an advantage in a sense. They're the top seed, so they'll choose the map. But we'll choose sides, which is also an advantage to a certain extent, so when we go into the match we'll know what we have to do. They're a big name, but everyone can be beaten and we can give them a good fight.