F1KU: "It's a nice feeling to not play a map before and still win"

OG started their season with an impressive 2-0 win over Liquid, playing Nuke for the first time.

OG came into the BLAST Premier Spring Final after a less-than-ideal 2022. The European team did show some encouraging signs at the end of the year at BLAST World Finals, where they defeated HEROIC and Vitality en route to a semi-finals finish.

At the first tournament of the year, they were put in a tough group including Liquid and FaZe, the third and fourth-placed teams in the HLTV.org rankings. That didn't dampen their spirits, as they came out 2-0 winners against Liquid on the first day of play.

After their win, Maciej "⁠F1KU⁠" Miklas spoke with HLTV about the match and their performance on Nuke, which the team played for the first time in nearly a year.

First of all, congrats on the victory. How does it feel to be back at an event after your vacation?

Thank you. It feels great. Obviously, we made some mistakes, especially in communication, after the break you have bigger emotions because you didn't experience them for a long time. So we had a little problem at the beginning with our communication. I think for Nuke, a map we didn't practice a lot, that communication is really important there. So often I was missing information or I wasn't hearing the opponents' footsteps, same with all of my teammates, like everyone had this, so it was a bit hard.

But I'm happy that we managed to do it because I know that if Liquid would pick Nuke right, they had to kind of prepare it. It's not like they were practicing for two weeks or anything like this, but they had to play for like four days, maybe five, like some practice games. But still, it's a nice feeling that you didn't play a map before with the team and you still won, right?

Yeah, of course. So did you expect Liquid to pick Nuke, or was that a bit of a surprise?

No, we were completely surprised. Like we didn't expect that at all.

To track back a bit, the first map was Ancient, which was a comfortable win for you. Do you think the map got a bit better now, especially for the T side with the changes?

Yeah. This map is T-sided as fuck (laughs). Whenever we were playing practices, we were getting like eleven or twelve rounds on the T side. So it's like really, really T-sided now.

Looking into the future, you meet FaZe in the next round. Do you feel comfortable about your chances of progressing to the Spring Final?

Yeah, sure. Even if we lose, right? We have like two more chances, so I'm open-minded about it, but I still think we're going to win anyway. I don't want to say that es3tag is not a good player or anything like this, but obviously, rain played with them for a longer time, so he was a much more important piece for them. So if we beat them with rain, I think we have chances to beat them with es3tag as well.

You ended 2022 in good form and also started 2023 well today. What are your goals for the season?

I don't know honestly, just play the game and do as much as you can, and we will see where that takes us.