NertZ: "We want to win this event, anything we hear in the news doesn't matter"

A stand-in and rumors of roster changes won't stop ENCE aiming for the title.

ENCE have been one of the standout teams of 2023, but have gone into the CS Asia Championship a man down after visa issues affected Paweł "⁠dycha⁠" Dycha. Rumors around Falcons' interest in Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer have also added to the cloud around the team, but Guy "⁠NertZ⁠" Iluz tells us that their focus is still on winning the trophy.

Their campaign began well against TYLOO before a collapse against Astralis, but the international squad has qualified for playoffs and is still in the hunt for that title.

We sat down with NertZ to ask about those rumors, their CT struggles — and just how much makeup he was wearing on media day.

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You're through to the playoffs here, but that was not the game against Astralis that you would have wanted. Can you tell me about that match and how it went?

In the first game, on Overpass, they were just better than us, let's be honest. I feel like they played really good, they had really good set rounds and deserved to win.

The second map, I would say SunPayus gave us this game. Huge shoutout for him.

The third map it's a bit unluko because I feel like we should actually fight this, but we couldn't do anything. I feel like we gave them a lot of space.

A lot of struggles against their T sides specifically, is that just because you're having to use a stand-in?

Most of the time we are not good on the CT side right now, even with dycha, so we are trying to improve it, we're focused on it.

Tell me about working with VLDN as a stand-in and how that's been. what he brings since no one really knows too much about him.

He's the kind of player that is really calm. He's a really good teammate, nice to work with, and I'm happy that we brought him to play with us this event.

Looking at this tournament as a whole, how do you feel about playing in China and how this event has been for you so far?

The Chinese fans are crazy, in a good way. They are just hyping us a lot, and everyone is happy to be here. We just want to be in the arena already.

It's hard to talk to ENCE right now without touching on the rumors of Snappi possibly leaving, him being in talks with Falcons. Has that affected the team at all, what are you thoughts on that?

It's always not so nice to hear rumors, but we still don't know what the future holds and everyone is giving 100%. We want to win this event, like anything we hear in the news doesn't matter.

There's a Tweet that you made in a reply to an HLTV photo, 590kg of makeup-

Oh my god. This, it will be... I'm going to say it from now, I'm just allergic for makeup, you will never see me doing makeup on my face in any event. It's like I was looking like a fucking clown.

I heard you had a nickname?

Marco, Snappi liked to call me Ken. He was just trolling me the whole day (laughing). It was not nice, let's say like that.

When your campaign in Sydney ended, it was a pretty brutal loss to FaZe, you came back here, beat TYLOO, but lost this game as well. How do you feel about CS2 personally after being able to play two LAN events, have a couple of good games, couple of bad games?

I feel like in Sydney we didn't have time to prepare, to feel the game, but right now I feel that we understand how the mechanics work in this game and I really started to like this game. I guess we didn't show it this game, but we're going to show it in the playoffs I hope.