k0nfig: "It's been a long time since I had this fire inside of me"

After a dramatic end to his stint with Astralis, Kristian "⁠k0nfig⁠" Wienecke is excited to return to the server and help HEROIC at the BLAST Premier World Final.

HEROIC are competing at the BLAST Premier World Final this week without Martin "⁠stavn⁠" Lund to give the 20-year-old extended time off ahead of the winter break. In his stead the team has called up k0nfig, who is set to make his first LAN appearance since mid-September.

The former Astralis rifler is ready to return to action after he last played at ESL Pro League Season 16, an event following which he got into a highly-publicized altercation and suffered a complicated ankle injury, which led to his departure from Astralis less than a month later.

Coming off of their BLAST Premier Fall Final victory on home soil in Copenhagen, HEROIC will hope to battle the odds and replicate that achievement even with a stand-in. Their first matchup puts them up against the lowest-ranked team in attendance, OG, in Group B.

While in Abu Dhabi, HLTV sat down with k0nfig to get his thoughts on the opportunity to return to competition before the year closes and what the adaptation process to HEROIC has been like.

You're back at LAN and ready to play again, what's it like for you to have this opportunity?

I said it to the boys when we had a talk, this is actually an unreal feeling and I'm really, really excited for this tournament. I can feel it in my chest. I can feel the pressure, but I know that I'm a good player and I know that I will do well here. It's an incredible feeling and it's been a long time since I had this fire inside of me.

You haven't played in the past couple of months, so how have you been keeping in shape and how do you feel on an individual level?

To be honest, my individual level feels like it went up a lot. I've played FACEIT, surf, KZ, DM, just trying to keep my individual skill as high up as possible. Of course you don't want to spend too much time in front of the monitor just doing those things and you need to focus on demos and watch other people play to innovate yourself a little bit, but I feel pretty fucking good to be honest.

Talking about innovation, we have a fresh patch. Have you had time to play around with that? What are your thoughts on the M4 changes and Anubis?

I feel like the M4 change has given me a bit of a buff, I feel like I was pretty bad with the silenced M4. I don't know why, it's so easy to use, but the M4A4 is better for me so I feel like I got a buff on CT and also a buff on T because now you don't get laser-beamed as much without having a clue where it's from and you have time to react. I've played Anubis on FACEIT a couple of times, I feel like it's a fun map, it's different. There are a lot of up-and-down angles, there's water and all of that stuff. It's a pretty good, well-connected map, it feels like it just needs a little bit of a change and it will become a really, really competitive map.

How has the preparation been with Heroic? Have you had time to practice with them and run through things? Are you a one-for-one with stavn?

The preparation and the practice have been really good, they've given me a lot of tips and tricks and they're showing me how to do the different things that they need me to do to still be Heroic. I don't want to change their style too much because Heroic's style is Heroic's style. It just feels good, to be honest, I've been put in, given all of these things, and I have to work with them. I have a stratbook, so I feel like I'm set.

One of the things about Heroic is how cadiaN expects his players to do certain things and have a certain autonomy throughout the map, which is what makes Heroic so dynamic in their style. Maybe that's why it took Jabbi a little bit of time to get used to this team. Is that something you've noticed by practicing with the team?

I think I'm a pretty good swap for stavn, when you put me in of course there are things I have to ask about if we do something we didn't go through, but it's easy to be put into a system that's so well put together on their side.

Getting into the spicier details, there were some words exchanged with Heroic in the past, some confrontation. How is it now getting to know the guys?

I always felt like we had a bond, I always said hi and was polite to them, so it's not like there's any bad blood. We're just five Danish guys together with some good people around us. To be honest, what was said earlier should be washed down the drain and it's amazing to be here with them. They've put me in a situation where I feel like I'm invited into their warmth.

How important is being here with them right now, getting this opportunity, when looking at the way your career went when you got dropped by Astralis and the struggles you had before coming here?

This means the world to me as an individual. I know some people have doubts about me going into a tier-one team after the whole situation with Astralis and me not being mentally ready for tournaments. From my side, this is the world for me, I live for this game and I'm here to prove something that I've proven so many times over and over again. I'm not really scared if I play a bad match or a bad tournament, it shouldn't say who I am. I can play at the highest level, I will play at the highest level, and it's just that doing good will be good towards the outside, but for me individually I feel like this is where I need to be. This is my home.

Date	Matches
BLAST Premier World Final 2022
14/12/2022	HEROIC 15:15 OG	Match

You're opening against OG. Do you have any particular thoughts about the match-up?

OG is a good team, they have a good in-game leader, they have structure, they have a good organization behind them. So they're going to play well, we've seen them play well before, we've seen them dominate teams with the young core that they have. But I feel like Heroic has a pretty good grasp around them, they know what they like to do and what kind of team they are. Of course now with a stand-in it will be a bit more difficult, but I still think we have the upper hand.

Can Heroic live up to its previous results with you as a stand-in? Are they still a tournament-winning team that makes important grand finals?

Of course it's hard, but from my side it feels like they're the same team as they are with stavn. They just have a strong core, so I feel like me being put in here makes it different, but it's not a big difference.