Jerry: "Fierce was the key that I was missing before"

FORZE's captain talks at length about the importance of having Artem "⁠Fierce⁠" Ivanov behind him and his new lineup, which is now one series win away from a place at the BLAST.tv Paris Major.

Once a consistent top-30 team, FORZE struggled throughout 2022 but have since been on the rise again powered by the additions of Vladislav "⁠Krad⁠" Kravchenko and Evgeny "⁠r3salt⁠" Frolov at the turn of the year.

The Russian squad has impressed as of late with a run from 46th to 14th place on the HLTV ranking on the back of a quarter-finals finish at ESL Pro League Season 17 and second place at BetBoom Playlist Urbanistic 2023.

They are now 2-1 in the BLAST.tv Paris Major RMR after recovering well from a tough opening loss to Cloud9. Andrey "⁠Jerry⁠" Mekhryakov's squad beat ENCE in a close Anubis affair and grabbed their second victory in the Swiss group against Ninjas in Pyjamas on day two on Inferno.

The in-game leader took time to sit down with HLTV in an interview to talk about all things FORZE's rise this year, what separates them from previous rosters under Jerry's reign, what coach Fierce brings to the table, and their Regional Major Ranking campaign so far.

I want to talk about FORZE before coming here, with your EPL run and jumping 30 positions in the world ranking, establishing FORZE once again. It's something you've done before, bringing it back from the depths.

From the bottom to the top.

Exactly, what's the process you've gone through?

If we talk about the old me, I was the kind of guy that was trying to show my teammates that if they play against top teams, they just need to do what we discussed before and we do the things we're not afraid to do. That was the old me because I had some coaches that were supporting me in that way. In this particular time I have Fierce and he's not a guy who says common words. He says particular, deep insight words, and because of that we have a more complex understanding, a deeper understanding of what's happening on the map and we can provide really good decisions.

What I mean is that when you're a T, for example, and you're coming for two players in a 4vs2, it's pretty good, especially when you're using proper nades. We discussed that because Fierce is looking really deep into the game and he's saying 'If we go like this, we need to throw this one, if we go like that, we throw this one,' and I like it. I follow it because I think he's doing a great job with that deep insight. I'm trying to follow his deeper way because before, as I said, the old me, I wasn't looking that deep. I was just trying to go about it the leadership way.

Now I'm trying to combine leadership with some deep insights when I'm able to do that. For example, yesterday, when we finished the game, we arrived at the hotel at 10PM and today we had a game at 10AM. The problem is that we had to be at the lobby at 8:15AM and we had like one hour to eat, to focus, to clear the mind, to refocus, and I didn't have enough time. That's when Fierce comes in. He went to the practice room and tried to prepare the map we discussed. We spent 40 minutes discussing what we would play today and he sacrificed his sleep to prepare for the match. That helped us in some ways.

You talk about the addition of Fierce adding another layer of depth to this FORZE and also helping you, as well, to become a more understanding in-game leader when it comes to the tactical side. Are there any specifics you could give fans, what to look out for in your matches?

I think that the most new and the thing that we already prepared and are using all of the time is on our T sides, when we're insta reacting on info we've been given on the map. For example, on this Inferno [against NIP], once we took the mid control on T side, I killed the guy boosted on roof and there was additional info that there's an AWP on short, as well. I did a jiggle peak so that the AWP didn't kill me and I saw someone was shooting at me from balcony. I insta called 'We flash long, go for long, go B,' because I knew two were on the right and there is a big gap in the map if they didn't take banana.

I knew they were trying to retake car, not deep banana, so to get back to your question: What you can see in our games is that if we're in our prime form and everyone is in a good mood, we're insta reacting to information and finding the gaps on T side. That gives us some kind of advantage, we're not predictable if we do that. Cloud9 are going step by step, step by step. We're not ahead, I'd say, we're in a parallel universe, doing almost the same, step by step, but if we see something is odd or weird, we just step left and run. That's what gives us an advantage, and that's what you can see in our game.

You used Cloud9 as an example, but when you played them it seemed like they were a step ahead, right?

Yeah, they are! [laughs]

How did that go down?

I should say that Cloud9 had a lot of time to prepare because we were kind of thinking that they would play Overpass against us because their Overpass, going back to Gambit Youngsters, was incredibly good. Time after time they show that their CT comebacks are incredible and I believed, as Fierce believed, that we would play Overpass. But we were outpicked, I would say, and they insta banned Overpass. We had some preparation there before, for Inferno, we played the BetBoom final against them on it. We picked it ourselves, so we had some preparation, it wasn't a surprise for us, but I should say that it's incredible that the Cloud9 team thinks our Overpass is good and they banned it instantly. For us it was like, 'OK, we're not that bad.' [laughs]

So, what about that Inferno? We had some plans to get some fast map control with good flashes, good utility, but it didn't go in our favor because sh1ro just knew how we would like to approach it, where we would throw the flash. The thing is, he killed me blind three times. He was full blind, his teammate wasn't covering him, he was far away, and sh1ro was blind, but he knew where to press left click on his mouse. That's the problem, and Krad... Let's say we died on B many times, not just one man, but two. Krad wanted to exchange because he could see a good situation, he made a kill blind, his teammate was alone, and we used some utility, but Ax1Le is an incredible rifler and he was just exchanging him really fast.

I can say that Cloud9 were a step ahead because they knew exactly how we approach our fast banana control, or mid control, but they were a step ahead because they knew where we're coming from and sh1ro was always looking there directly. Even if he was blind, even burning, even naded, he still hit his shots, and that was a problem for us. We're a team that knows how to find early advantage, but if we don't find it, it's hard for us to take the game. We're not at that level yet, we're just four months with this roster and we're working on it as well.

Talking about being just four months with this roster. One of the guys I'd look to put a spotlight on is r3salt. You're known for having brought up some young guys and developed players early on in their career. What was it about him that made you think that he would be a good fit for the team and how is it working out?

We had a really big problem to find a fifth player and the only solution we found together was that we needed someone that's like a Terminator. He can just go into a hard situation and go 90 degrees left, 90 degrees right, all headshots. That was our decision to take this guy. In this particular roster, as I mentioned, with Fierce, he's taking a lot of responsibility for coaching the young guy.

What's on me, I'm trying to show him that the team, the players, we're much older than him, we're 24, 23, 21, and I'm trying to integrate him inside our team as a member who's on the same level as everyone. That's my part of the job because Fierce took a lot of responsibility to work on some macro and micro things, like when you need to go, when you don't need to go. I can say the same, but I'm not able to spend the same amount of time as my coach can because I need to play as well and I think we're parallel, doing the same but some kind of different job.

I'm trying to integrate him, trying to get him comfortable in the team, with my leadership, putting it all together so we can be one unit, and Fierce is doing a lot of research, deep research, strategies, etc. We combine it all together, my leadership skills and his insights deep inside the game, and we have what we have. The result, I think, is getting him into the unit. He's almost inside.

I think he needs a little bit more time and he won't be as shaky as he was before on these LANs. When you're a young player you come to these LANs and you have some big name players sitting in the same room as you and you might be nervous. I think we need to step up, get two or three steps ahead, to get cold-blooded, and to have a good TeamSpeak without panic — just good information, calls and decisions.

One thing I wanted to do was make a bit of a comparison with this team and past FORZEs because you always brought them up and you were almost there reaching into tier one, you could always play against the best teams, but you never broke through and established yourself. Do you think this team has the potential to take one more step than the past teams?

By my analytic statistics it is. It's actually the team that can climb higher and stabilize there because we always have the guy behind our backs helping a lot. Me, before, I was trying to do it all, and when you're trying to do all jobs for everyone... [sighs] It's just mixing up in your head and you're maybe sometimes losing your individual, sometimes making bad calls... Now, as I mentioned, we have separate but parallel jobs that help each other. I think that was the key that I was missing before, so to answer your question, yes.

One of the things I wanted to ask is about seeding. The whole RMR B is stacked with great teams, but having a lower seeding you guys have to fight your way through big teams. What are your thoughts on the seeding and the way the qualifier works?

Buchholz is the way it's all working with the seeding, etc. It's a system I don't much like, but if you criticize it then you have to offer something better and I don't have anything better to offer. I think that if you can predict your enemy, predict the seed, if you know who is high seed/low seed, that gives you some information you can use after and prepare for the match. I think it's not that bad, actually, as a lot of people might think. In my opinion, I don't know any player who said how the RMR should be approached. Let's say some funny fact, I'm not sure about this, but... Well, let's say I'm sure about this [laughs]. In the Olympics, with everyone fighting for gold, silver, bronze, I think that was where the Buchholz was invented 50 or 60 years ago, it's an old system that is already proven and I think that's why Valve chose it.

You told me a bit about the Cloud9 Inferno, tell me a bit about the NIP Inferno. They're a team not on the level of C9, they're having their own struggles. How were you able to take advantage of a struggling team to come out on top?

First of all, we made a really good conclusion from yesterday's match, which is that when you have that kind of early game and you have a lack of sleep — enough sleep for me is eight hours, and for most people under thirty it's eight hours, as well —, so we made the conclusion that if you're playing on Inferno that early, you should start on T side. We weren't able to pick this side this time, so we're really grateful to NIP because they picked CT.

So what about the game? I think it was because when you're starting on T side you have to communicate more because otherwise you'll just be staying and have nades in your face... Starting on T side is what gave us the biggest advantage in this game we could ever have because we were forced to communicate from the first round — we had a lot of space, a lot of structure to work on the parallel pressure on B and A. We have a lot of preset nades that we can use to find out if they stack, if there is more than one on the right side.

Inferno is all about corridors, close quarters, and if you know that two are on the right, then there's only one on the left and you use your nades on the left and get the gap. Then you can put pressure on both sides because you have the gap you made. I'm talking about ivy, arch and CT and that's the gap each team uses. If you get that gap, which is kind of what we used, we used information really fast, we used that gap on CT to win some crucial rounds, and once we got that CT we just said 'Let's chill for a while, they will need to do something.'

There's not much you can do as CT if the spawn is taken. You can push banana or stay close, but if you stay close you don't have much information and we're in control of the game. We're ahead. We're dictating what we're going to do and they need to react. That was our biggest advantage this game.

What about Inferno as a map? I've read some conversations here and there. Some people say it's not as fresh anymore, especially in a meta in which people are more prone to save sometimes. Some teams won't even got into B retakes in a 4vs3 and stuff like that. What are your thoughts on playing it, and second as a spectator experience?

If you talk about the map itself as it was rebuilt in 2016 or 2017, it's really enjoyable for the player because if you know how to use utility well you may have control of a big amount of the map as CT, and the same as T. So the current meta says that you need to use your utility really properly. In the case that you have a molo in your face, you need to delay your molo, delay it for two seconds so that if the enemy comes close you'll have an extra two seconds to ask for a flash. That's the current meta, the same considering smokes, flashes... Let's not get deep into that, but I'm really enjoying Inferno right now because I like to do some fake stuff with the nades, I like to push sometimes, change the pace, and for me it's a pretty good map.

For snipers, for zorte, he doesn't like it much because you always get smokes, molotovs, flashes, and you're always close quarters so how can you use your AWP? Only if you're some insane shotgun AWP player [laughs], no scope 360 MLG.

So spectating, I think it's great, as well. If there's no save, this is one of the maps in which you can see fighting 3vs3, 2vs2, or some kind of fakes as I mentioned. Like when you're fighting 3vs3 the enemy can think you're three B. You never see a four man stack on B with a full buy with full utility and that's when the mind games are on. I actually saw it from cadiaN, he likes to do that, tactical genius.

As a spectator you see a lot of hard fights, a lot of utility, everyone's fighting — then the Ts are very happy, they're going to plant with a smile and what you can see on the camera when a fourth guy is killing you on the site? I mean for me, as a spectator, I like Inferno. It's all about fast utility, you can go for three palace execute, you can go for three nades to Dosia and insta flash, flash site and run. I think it's interesting because most of the times it's intense, fast and unpredictable.

I heard you say that you got a little info for the match against NIP in case they made some changes. Tell me about this world of preparing for other teams...

We're actually the kind of team that's always afraid that if we practice with someone who is communicating with someone that they will give some inside information. I don't know exactly how this works, I've never been involved in such things, but in this particular case we had Aurora, where KENSI and Norwi are playing, our ex-teammates who were just with me at the Major one year ago, they just said that they practiced against NIP and that we would destroy them.

I can't say much about this, but they just said it like that, and another way I will not tell you, but we thought that they were not lying to us and just said what they think. They're simple guys and as well, for us, we're not asking for this. They just gave us, we can see, we can just take it into our preparation, but we're not focusing on that. It just happens sometimes, I'm pretty sure that it might have happened with some top teams, but no one ever asks for this. It's just if you're friends with someone, they might tell you. If you're not, no one is asking for this or doing this.

In the game it didn't actually pan out.

No, no. It just gave us confidence, that's it. There's nothing you can do with this kind of information, we weren't interrogating. They just said 'Guys, you're good, you'll fuck them.' And we were like, 'Okay, if he's saying that, we'll do it better.' It's a placebo, you know? Like most things, it's placebo.

You got a 2-1 start going into series play. Are you excited about that?

Yes because we can finally play the maps that we worked on at boot camp. [laughs] We had a bootcamp and we haven't played the map that we had good work on. We had maps that we're trying to bring up because they're really bad now, and that's all of the maps we played here. Anubis, Inferno...

In best-of-three we can use our map, we can show what we're capable of, and there's always a chance to make a mistake. If you lose your own map, or the opponents' pick, there's always time to stick together, refocus, clear your mind, and go in with a clear mind to the new map. I like that, best-of-threes are the best!