ropz: "It's been a while since we felt that, closing out a dominant match"

The FaZe star was in good spirits after a convincing opening victory over OG in Denmark.

FaZe came to Denmark from a horrible a flop at the IEM Rio Major, where they crashed out with a 0-3 record after losses to Cloud9, Vitality, and most disappointingly, Bad News Eagles. The usual FaZe clutch factor was missing, and their individuals were far from their best.

The opening game at BLAST was a welcome return to form for Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool and his teammates as they swept aside OG in convincing fashion, with stellar performances by the star players.

ropz stopped for a quick chat with HLTV after that victory, giving his thoughts on the importance of a strong first showing here at BLAST and why they have persisted with Ancient, despite trying to avoid it at the Major.

First off, congratulations. How do you feel about taking that victory?

It feels good, it's been a while since we felt that, closing out a dominant match like we had today. It's been a long time coming, it's finally nice to get a hand on it.

Is it important to get a victory early after a disappointing Major? This is your first official back since that underperformance.

Definitely, it goes without saying, a win like this after our performance at the Major is a great boost for everyone. It's something we definitely needed. Everyone was feeling a bit low and disappointed, so I'm really grateful that we all showed up today and it worked out.

Speaking about Ancient, specifically, and particularly that CT side, it seemed to be a very aggressive approach from you. Was that a specific gameplan for OG, a specific Ancient thing, or trying to get that confidence back that maybe you've lacked since the Major?

The gameplan was definitely a bit of both, so we had just some of our stuff that we know works, and a few rounds which we noticed are weaknesses in OG's T side, it was both of those. We just mixed them in, made sure we made the right calls at the right times, and it was going to work.

Twistzz mentioned in an interview yesterday you were feeling a lack of comfort on Ancient before the Major, which is why you tried to work Vertigo into the map pool. Has that changed at all?

I don't think it has changed, the reason we played Vertigo was that our Ancient did feel weak before the Major. Coming into this tournament we obviously know the teams we are going to face, playing Vertigo in this tournament makes a bit less sense because there are really strong Vertigo teams in this one. The only team we could have pulled it out against was OG, but we decided to go Ancient just because we had some more stuff prepared. We haven't shown anything of our new stuff, and we had some good preparation against them in terms of anti-strats.

After that first performance, it was so convincing, do you think you can go on to win the tournament?

Yeah, this first game against OG was definitely showing the first signs of our form returning, and I hope we can do that.