rain on M4s: "It's very balanced now in terms of which one is actually better"

FaZe look forward to playing the new map, Anubis, at some point during the BLAST Premier World Final in Abu Dhabi.

FaZe started the BLAST Premier World Final with a 2-1 victory over G2, although they were up against the ropes on Inferno and nearly dropped to the Group A lower bracket. Instead, they won the map in a double-overtime to take the series on the Ancient decider and will now play Liquid for a spot in the semis.

We stopped Håvard "⁠rain⁠" Nygaard in the mixed zone after their opener in Abu Dhabi to discuss the the M4A4 and M4A1-S, as he was one of the pros that gave HLTV his opinion on the changes when the patch was first released. The Norwegian also spoke about FaZe floating Anubis in the first round of vetos and how the series against G2 played out.

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Video: Pros comment on AWP and M4A1-S changes

When we talked to you about the new patch you told us you were changing to the A4, but here in the first map you were using the A1-S and I thought you were just being sneaky. Then I saw you were playing the A4 on Ancient, so is it a positional pick for you now or are you still figuring things out?

So far I'm trying to use it depending on the map. I feel like on Nuke it's really nice to have the silencer because you can spam the cross smokes and do a lot of damage. I don't want them to notice where I am all of the time, so that's why I have it there.

Same with Inferno, I can spam banana smokes without them seeing my tracers. On Ancient it's all close range for me on B site, if you're spamming they know so it doesn't really matter. So yeah, it's map-dependent.

It seems like people are still trying to really figure out what works and what doesn't. Do you think it'll become map/position-dependent or will one of the two become prevalent?

No, I actually think it's going to stay map-dependent now. Of course some people prefer the A4 because of the many bullets, but I think it's very balanced now in terms of which one is actually better. I think the A1-S has its good sides and the A4 has its good sides, it's very good at the moment.

You have the first series of the tournament behind you, but it looked like you were going down for a minute there on Inferno. Run me through the final rounds and the back-and-forths late in the map and the overtimes.

It was a bit rough, we lost some rounds we should have won, we gave away some rounds that made it really close. We had a really good T-side, 8-7 at the half, and we got pistols as well but then lost the forcebuy. They got some momentum, but I'm happy we have our young trio and even Finn [karrigan] stepping up. I didn't have my best game, but ropz and broky had some really important rounds.

Once you won the overtime and it went to Ancient, did you breathe a sigh of relief or were you still worried that it's too close for comfort?

Going into Ancient we were very confident. It's been a really strong map for us in practice, we worked a lot on it recently because of our previous results and we know that people like to pick it against us. We have our preparation down and our CT-side is really strong on it, which worked out really well today.

Your second ban was Anubis. We saw it played today already, and it looks like it could get more play these days. What do you think about the map and can we expect FaZe to float it here and there?

Yeah, we love Anubis, all of us love it, but we just didn't want to play it today. It's the first game of the tournament and we didn't want to start out on Anubis. We felt like we should beat G2 on the other maps so we let it go today, but someone can pick it against us or we may pick it ourselves depending on our opponent.

You had a rough patch after summer, but you made the BLAST Fall Final grand final and had a deep run there. It's the last event of the season, there's a new patch, you've gone through some struggles and bounced back. Where are you at now?

After the summer break we had a bit of a rough patch, I didn't play the best myself and if your entry isn't entrying then it's going to be hard to play, right? I think we worked it out, I didn't have the best game today, but I feel like I'm getting back into it even if it's the last tournament. But it's never too late, right? We're just working and we didn't really get to do any bootcamps except for the Major, so we'll see how it goes for next year.

When I talked to B1ad3 from NAVI he said that if you don't win here it's going to be proof that you're not really that dominant team anymore. Is that something you feel a bit, like this amazing year you built and had is slipping away now?

No, not really. We lost a lot of close tournaments. It hasn't been the best half year, but we still feel like we have it in us even though we lose a final here and there. It doesn't matter for us, we know we're going to have a long future. So far it hasn't even been a year we dropped, right? We still have a long time with this team, we want to stick together and do the best next year, as well.