Twistzz: "ENCE just have a very unique playstyle"

The Canadian star was glad to have a chance to review the team's mistakes.

Following their historic victory at the PGL Antwerp Major, FaZe came into IEM Dallas as the strong favorites, which became even stronger once the likes of Natus Vincere and HEROIC dropped out of the American tournament.

FaZe encountered little resistance in their first two matches, sweeping aside Encore and dispatching Vitality in two maps. However, when it came to facing ENCE for a spot in the semis, FaZe struggled to get a T side going and fell in three maps to a resurgent Janusz "⁠Snax⁠" Pogorzelski.

We sat down with Russel "⁠Twistzz⁠" Van Dulken after FaZe's loss to discuss the match against ENCE and the event so far. He gave insight into the trouble of dealing with the play-style of their international counter-parts as well as how FaZe plan on keeping their level up even without abundant time for preparation.

Starting off with the ENCE game, all three maps had 11-4 halves for the team on CT, then there was a comeback that came after that. Do you think this game is a good example of how CT sided the game is right now?

Not really, I think this is just an example of what happens when a team doesn't have the best communication and has a slight off day. I feel like our T percentages across all maps is usually 50% or more, so I think it was just a massive off day. To be honest, if there was a game that we lose out of every tournament that we played I would rather it be this one cause we're still in the event.

Following up on that, you guys are already locked into playoffs, do you think this is something you guys can easily brush off and move on and focus on the next stage?

I think we'll definitely brush it off. The good thing about this is today, we actually had some mistakes in our gameplay and we haven't had much of anything to really review. We can look at games that we win but it's not the same mistakes in the games that we win. But this time around we actually have something to review and I think it's good for our team.

You also lost to ENCE in a BO1 at the Major, do you think they have a good read on what you like to do?

I think they just have a very unique playstyle. As Snappi said in his HLTV interview before, "if the rush doesn't work, just rush harder" It can be very frustrating to play against, I feel like they've taken this FURIA-esque style and applied more structure and teamwork to it. They have good players on the team. The stand-in, you saw what we did at Katowice with a stand-in you know. Sometimes it helps because you have no pressure anymore on the team really. And they lost their best player so could say it's like they're going to just try and have fun at this event. They play good CS.

You already spoke on this, but ENCE did really power up a lot recently. Second at EPL losing to you, playoffs at the Major, do you think there was something specific to help them unlock this next level or is it more of an accumulation of all of their players hitting good strides?

They've been together, minus maden, but the core has been together for a while I'd say. Obviously over time the core gets really really strong individually or there are weaknesses in the core eventually down the road. For them, they have really good players individually it can be hard to play against and to be honest when I watch ENCE play I feel like they play the style closest to our team, so it can be hard to play a team that kind of mimics in the flow of the game, you know? They are very good playing with momentum. Not many teams can capitalize on momentum but I feel like us and ENCE really know how to nail it down.

This event in general has been a little bit cursed so far with all the teams pulling out and stand-ins and stuff, do you think the event lost any prestige with all the asterisks on it?

The public is clearly kinda saying the event sucks or whatever, you know? The only thing that is weird about this event, besides all the teams dropping out, is that it's instantly after the Major, there's not really a gap. It can be hard for the teams that came from the Major to go here, if they didn't go far in the Major, per se.

There's not a lot time to adjust stuff...

Yeah, exactly. For us, we have the mindset of: come here, do our best, enjoy the moment, play on the stage again, the crowd is always a blessing, and try our best to win. It's not like we're so harsh on ourselves if things don't go our way.

A lot of teams generally have a period of fall-off after they win a Major, is this something you have been concerned about at all? If so, have you done any work to counter that effect?

I think the most that we can do is play individually. Especially when we come to North America and we know our practice won't be like we can get in EU. You can get instant scrims, even the tier three teams in EU are gonna give us a good practice, and in NA you can't say the same, especially when the teams that are usually are in NA are in this event as well, so we don't want to scrim someone that we could play against eventually.

I think that's a difficult thing, so the most we can do is play individually and just talk as a team. I think what we try to do the best is give ourselves more breathing room, do more outside of the game stuff, because it can become a bad thing to play so much Counter-Strike on the road. I think for my teammates we're just happy to be here like I said before.

Over this year you guys have won Katowice, Pro League, and then the Major. Do you think a win here in Dallas would be enough to declare a FaZe era or is there more that needs to happen first?

I don't think this tournament would help create a notch in the era. Obviously it's a win that contributes to the Grand Slam, but I think there's much more prestigious events that come after this like Lisbon and whatever else follows — Cologne. Usually there are more bigger events throughout the year, so I would say — not to talk bad about the event — this event isn't on par with the other ones that will be coming up.

Looking forward to the playoffs, what's the preparation gonna be like going into the quarterfinal, you will either get C9 or Liquid? Will things differ between the team you get or what's going to be the mindset going into that?

I think the preparation will be the same for either opponent. Like we usually do, just see if there are any flaws in the gameplay to capitalize on. C9 is a team that is kind of under pressure right now to get results, so they are going to be hungry to win for sure. And I'm sure Liquid wants to do good on home soil. I think it's just review our loss, get stronger, and make a nice playoff run.