Liki: "We have bigger goals than to go back and forth from Australia"

Encore are aiming to stay abroad for extended periods of time.

Coming in as the Oceanic representation at the first big North American event in three years, Encore were looking to show their growth after competing in Europe for the first couple months of the year and gaining experience playing in ESL Pro League Season 15.

After their quick loss against FaZe in Group A of IEM Dallas, we caught up with Encore captain Benson "⁠Liki⁠" Niuila to talk about the team's recent tournaments, bootcamping in Europe, and the future of the team following the creation of the new brand Encore. The 23-year-old spoke on the squad's plans to compete more in Europe and the added stability in having some form of backing.

Starting off with the game you guys played against FaZe, what were your realistic expectations for this match, considering you were playing the Major winners?

To be honest, we believe we could beat them. We thought especially coming off a Major win, we would be a bit under their radar and that if we played our best game we would have a shot at beating them. We kind of got destroyed unfortunately. We definitely thought we could beat them, but didn't have any expectations - like "we expect to win this" - or anything like that. We gave it our best shot.

Did you have any specific preparation to counter anything they had?

It was BO1 so we had a bit more freedom with the map pool. We could ban what we thought were our weaker maps, so it helped us narrow it down. We went through our normal prep routine to set up - we thought it would be Ancient or Dust2. It seemed to fall apart in-game, but we thought we had a good idea of what to do, but nothing special for them, just our normal routine.

Moving on to the new name you're playing under, Encore. What's going to be different than using the LFO tag? Then do you guys have any backing and what's the future of the Encore name?

It's going to give us a little bit more freedom to not have to worry about the financial aspects of things to a certain extent. A big problem with the LFO brand is we've had to worry about "how long can we stay in Europe?", "how long can we bootcamp for realistically?" At the start of the year when we came to bootcamp we booked our own Airbnb using prize money we had won the last six months. So this just gives us a bit more peace of mind and can just let us focus a bit more on the game really.

As you just mentioned, at the beginning of the year you guys spent a lot of time out in Europe. What was it like competing and practicing there compared to back in Oceania?

At the start of the year, it didn't go as planned - as we wanted it to. We had a two month bootcamp planned, but one of our players had a sort of emergency at home which he had to take care of, so he wasn't able to come until about a month in. For us, grinding through the European circuit with those events is sort of like a pathway for us to actually competing as top 30, top 20 team.

So that's something we want to really look in to in the future and grind through because practicing in Australia, coming for an event like this, then going out last, second last, or whatever, is not really feasible long-term for breaking top 30, top 20, for us. It's definitely really important for us to spend as much time over here and compete in those events and practice in the future.

A little bit later on, you guys played at EPL. You got a lot of new fans at that event with SaVage's dad being there and you also managed to take maps from Fnatic and NIP. How as this event for you guys?

I would say it was an eye-opener for us, because the month prior that we spent bootcamping we kind of got tossed around pretty hard both in practice and in those cups, especially once apoc arrived. We spent a week and pretty much got smashed in everything. It was kind of an eye-opening experience for us to see that we can take maps off these teams. It gave us more belief in ourselves so when we go to tournaments like this we at least have that in the back of our mind that it's possible. It was a good experience in terms of that and just in terms of meeting everyone and building relationships with people, it was a really good experience for us, probably the best over the last six months.

Then we had the RMR situation, which was kind of messy in the APAC region. You guys played in the Middle East qualifier because of the short notice, and then even though you didn't make it through you still got to attend because the other teams had travel issues. What was the whole RMR experience for LFO?

It was an interesting experience. So we were in contact with PGL and they basically informed us like 12 hours before we flew. So we got the call-up, we flew in, trying to minimize the jet lag as best we could. It wasn't too bad in terms of the jet-lag and going into it. We gave it our best shot, but at that time we had come off a week break. That was a realistic shot for us to make the Major - I think if circumstances were a bit different we definitely could have made the Major, those teams are for sure beatable for us.

You guys have established yourselves as top two in the OCE scene, and you always regularly beat ORDER, who have now disbanded. So what's your view on the current state of OCE, and how are things going down there?

For us, we have bigger goals than to go back and forth from Australia. We don't really have a goal to establish ourselves as the number one team (in Australia). We don't really care for that because even if we're the best team in Australia and just going back and forth for events or for a week or two bootcamp here and there, it's not going to be enough in the long run to even break top 30 reasonably.

It's a bit unfortunate, because if it was a strong scene and there were a lot more teams to practice it would be much better, but there's just not enough good practice over there. Even with ORDER disbanding, I'm not sure if they'll be able to make a team to practice as well. It doesn't look like there is much hope to compete over there.

Do you think the fewer number of events has affected that? ESL has really cut back on the stuff they were running in Australia.

No, I think if anything, these international spots - for some reason Australia has been given a bunch of different spots recently. Just with these Conferences - like the upcoming Conference has three Australian teams there out of sixteen, which in my opinion is too much. It's good for the teams to get spots, but I don't really think it's fair for the other teams. I don't know how many spots South America has, but yeah three spots out of sixteen is quite a lot.

About that EPL Conference, is the goal to make EPL again?

For sure, we really need to be aiming to qualify for that. That's something where we definitely have higher expectations. For this event and EPL we never really had any expectations behind us, but for that for sure we definitely want to be qualifying for EPL.

Later today, you will be facing Astralis. What's the plan going into that match? Astralis have been struggling, do you guys think you can come in with an upset?

I think we definitely have much more of a shot in that game than against FaZe. We'll 100% know our map pick. I think the Astralis name is just a legendary name, so as long as we don't let that affect us and understand the form they are really in and don't go thinking anything but that, then we're always going to have a chance. What can we do but try our best?

I think you became the IGL of this squad not initially when you joined, but later on. What has it been like becoming the IGL, how has that experience been compared to when you were just a player before?

It was a pretty smooth transition going from player to IGL originally. At the start of the team, apoc had stepped down. He had to deal with some stuff and then came back into the lineup around six months later. I've just been continuing since then since it never seemed to be a problem and we continued with that. Since moving to Europe and bootcamping and competing here, that's where it's really tested me, especially with no coach.

We haven't really had a coach pretty much since the start of the year since as our coach had some unfortunate events with him, so he was forced to step down. Since we had no org, it was hard to find any established coach with no org, since we couldn't really offer anyone something, so that was a bit unfortunate. I think it's just a really big learning curve for me now, I have to really push myself to adapt as a person - in-game and out of game. But now with the org backing us, it's looking better in terms of finding a coach, finding some staff that can help us out more with that stuff and just let us focus a bit more.