Twistzz: "The longer we're at an event the more dangerous we get"

"Getting to Paris first and playing on everything, just to get the feel of the event — how it will be, the atmosphere —, I think that's good," the FaZe star said.

FaZe became the final team to secure a spot at the BLAST.tv Paris Major with a 2-0 victory over Cloud9 in the Europe RMR's last chance qualifier, a bracket the two teams found themselves in after going 2-3 in their respective RMRs. The final series, which went the way of the international squad, was a heartbreaking moment for their foes, who will miss the final CS:GO Major taking place in May.

After the series' conclusion, which included a 5-14 comeback on Mirage and ended on Inferno, Russel "⁠Twistzz⁠" Van Dulken stopped by the mixed zone at the BLAST studios in Copenhagen to talk about his team's run at the RMR and its last chance qualifier, as well as what lies ahead for his squad, who have to travel to IEM Rio before their first bootcamp of the year to prepare for the Major.

What a crazy couple of weeks it has been for you guys going through the first RMR, 2-3, and then the last chance qualifier. Huge final match against Cloud9, whom you had just played recently. How has the journey been for you guys?

Yeah, like you said, it's been quite the crazy last month, even. We won Pro League, but it's kind of fading away, it was two or three weeks ago. But getting away from Pro League, we felt pretty good going into the RMR, we just wanted to play our game. Obviously, it was impossible to kind of practice in between when you go so deep into events, you don't get much time before the next one.

The first day went well, the BO1s went well, and then we fell face first against NAVI — we couldn't really get anything done there. Then the last two BO3s we lost against BNE and MOUZ were unacceptable. That was a huge wake-up call for us. We had a big team talk and let everything out, we got everything out there, and I think it definitely made us stronger than before. So yeah, we went home, had only two days of practice, but a really good two days of practice, and came back wanting to do our thing.

You say that the last best-of-threes you lost were unacceptable. Do you think after winning the Intel Grand Slam... After you won the Major and a bunch of Big Events, you finally win the IGS, do you think there was a bit of complacency before the RMR?

I don't think it's complacency, we're playing such huge underdogs against us that we ended up playing not to lose instead of being the aggressor or taking matters into our own hands. I think that's what caused it for us, and we didn't play with the same energy and passion that you saw here at the last chance qualifier. At the end of the day, whoever wants it more is going to win and, in my opinion, I don't think a team like BNE should be louder than us. Or Aurora, they should not be louder than us even outside the server and that's something we're trying to work on — bringing the fire outside of the game.

That's something we could really see, Cloud9 seemed out of it, afraid, a bit worried, whereas you guys were trying to get fired up in the last chance qualifier, even players who are sometimes more quiet. Tell me about the mental side of it going into the Cloud9 game.

I think against C9 it's completely different because we did just beat them in a very high pressure tournament. Especially Pro League... Every team, when they looked at us, they knew the pressure was on us to complete the Grand Slam. We played with big balls that game, we had immense pressure on us and we lived up to the expectations.

We knew that match would still be on their minds and I think the reason there was so much emotion in their game against ENCE was that they knew that if either team loses they have to play us and it's not a great feeling. So yeah, mentally we knew that we're just a more dominant figure, especially in the last chance qualifier, because nobody wants to play us.

Tell me about that Mirage, you were down 14-5 and brought it all the way to overtime, you then pushed it through the line. How did you manage?

Just believing in our game plan from the first round until the very end. A lot of our T side rounds were unlucky, we couldn't really get the ball rolling. It's not even like our spacing was bad, they just played a bit different than we expected, but we wanted to continue playing with our game plan. At least our game plan on the CT side was working just as we anticipated and yeah, I mean, I think we started loosening up the more we got into the game. The hype started building and when the hype starts building, the momentum, you can start to finally implement your style of play into the game and that's why you saw me and Finn had huge recoveries on the CT side.

On the T side it's hard to get momentum going when Finn gets AWPed entrying or I die to an off-angle entrying. It's tough to get into the game, but on the CT side everyone was flowing so well as a unit and understanding the fundamentals of Counter-Strike. Like they're taking one are? Okay, we have to clear this area, find info, and yeah, we just played the basics way better than them. Obviously you could see some pressure mounting, you could see some rounds where they were simply running out of time and I think it's because we've done a good job at making them second guess if we're three B or three A.

On Inferno there were many clutch situations early on in the map and you came out on top in most of them. Was there something to that, a little something extra to win the clutches early on?

Any game that ends up in some forcebuy war where either team is trying to break the economy early on, usually when the T side gets favored on it it's really hard to stop it as a CT. You're getting reset to $1,500, you've given the enemies M4s and everything and you know it's just going to be a tough half. Obviously the clutches were super important early on and we knew that even when we lost them they were down to one or two players so we just kept buying and buying. That's a confidence building thing too, because you know that you're so close that it's destroying their economy and it changes the game completely. Everyone on this team had their moments throughout the game and yeah, that's what we're known for, right? The individuals showing up through the XvsX situations, I just think we mesh so well together.

Now that the pressure has been lifted and you know you'll be in Paris, how does it feel to put these weeks behind you and move on?

I mean it feels good to kind of close a chapter and start a new one, but I think that we just want to kind of continue this momentum, build our hype back up, and having a good performance in Rio is pretty important for us. Now that we qualified we feel like some of the pressure is just gone, I feel like the stakes would have been higher in Rio because we have to prove ourselves that Pro League wasn't a fluke and everything is fine and we're improving as a team. Obviously we want to play well in Rio, we're always considered a title contender and that's why we're trying to play like that more and more. It feels great to qualify for the Major, but there's still things to accomplish.

To round things out, the Major is kind of when everybody wants to be peaking, hitting their best form. Do you think you'll be able to do that? You have Rio now, it'll be a bit tiring, you have a long flight and it starts the day after you get there. Then you fly back to Europe for the Major. Will you be able to find your best form?

We have a bootcamp planned right before Paris, that's our first bootcamp of the whole year, so I think it's going to be pretty nice for us. Obviously we all know that we're all in this together and everyone is going to have the same shit feeling after the travel day, probably, but we just have to stay strong and keep the morale up.

Playing good in-game makes everything else in life better, so I think for us it doesn't matter how shit our travel is or what the situation is with our routine or schedule — it's fine, just play our game, practice like we've been doing and I think everything will be fine for us.

Final question, you're starting in the Challengers Stage. Curse or blessing?

I think there is some kind of upside to starting earlier in the event, just because we don't know what the setup is going to look like in Paris, so getting there first and playing on everything, just to get the feel of the event — how it will be, the atmosphere —, I think that's good. The longer we're at an event the more dangerous we get, so that can be a positive for us.