ropz: "I'm super happy to be performing like this"

The Estonian rifler was heralded by teammate Twistzz as the "best CS2 player" shortly after FaZe's victory over MOUZ in the grand final.

FaZe came out of the gates swinging after the release of CS2 and seem to be back to their best. The Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen-led squad won the first CS2 Big Event at IEM Sydney and following it up with an online trophy from the Thunderpick World Championship in preparation for their next big test.

At the CS Asia Championships, Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool and company lost just two maps on their way to the title, continuing their spectacular run of form.

After their victory, tournament MVP ropz sat down with HLTV to discuss FaZe's form in the new game, the future of the roster, and his individual form.

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Back-to-back Big-Event winners in CS2. How does it feel to lift another trophy in the new game already?

It feels very unreal to be in the situation we are in right now. It's like a bit of a dream. You see the new game coming out, and everyone wants to be the best, and everyone wants to show up in the new game. It means so much to us that we're actually doing it, and it's been such a long time coming for us. We've had some rough patches, and winning right off the bat is kind of a similar storyline as last year.

You seem to have MOUZ's number right now. They took you close in this series, but you still beat them in the end. That's four in a row now, is this just a good matchup stylistically for you right now, or what's going on?

It's definitely an interesting matchup. About the match, we were down 6-12 on Nuke, and the moment we won the first gun round on the CT side, we were telling each other that it was only six more rounds. We managed to come back on Nuke and drag it out for a couple of overtimes. But I think it's an interesting clash.

They are extremely talented, they have young and fresh players who are shooting hard and have a lot of firepower, but that also goes for our team. So it is a good matchup for us on paper, but when it comes down to who's going to win the match, I think it depends on who will have the better day.

Going back to the start of the series, you ended up on the same maps as in the group stage match. What was the thinking going into that veto?

The veto was quite funny, because when we got off stage after we finished against ENCE, I think we had like 40 minutes to reset, eat, and relax a bit. I just saw karrigan coming into the room because he did the veto backstage somewhere while we were eating, and he was like, "Yeah, boys, same maps, same as group stage," and that's what it was.

Last time they had our number on Mirage, we did come back slightly, but they were definitely the better team. I think today we showed a more stable Mirage, which we can do when we're having more win rates in our duels, getting good timings, and then also having good reads on when to play aggressively and when not.

Talking about the series a bit. There was a really good battle between you, the last map had overtime after overtime. Walk me through the series a little bit just from your side.

I think Mirage went pretty smoothly just because we won both pistols, I think that gave us an extremely good start. We did those pistols pretty well, we had small reads on what setup to play. Mirage was more about us getting a good start or at least ending up on a decent half, and I'm really glad we did, because I think it's so often that we start out Mirage and we have a rough half and then we have to come back.

Sometimes we do it, [sometimes] we just get so close, but we don't end up doing that. As long as we start well on Mirage and get a decent amount of rounds, then we can always close it out in the second half.

This is your first LAN non-EPL MVP. I remember talking to you about how you kept winning only the EPL MVPs. So is it nice to finally get a different one on the board?

It's definitely a fact. I've had three EPL MVPs, and it's just a coincidence, in my opinion, it's how it goes. I've got the nickname Mr. EPL by now, but I'm super happy to be performing like this. I think whenever I have an idea or something that I want to do in the game, I have the freedom to do so. And that goes along with saying that my team means everything to me.

They are the ones who enable me to play like this, and they're the ones who give me the space on the map when I am lurking, making some plays, and sometimes taking initiative. So I think we have a really good chemistry in where we are right now, and it feels great to be performing like this individually.

Going back to the last CAC four years ago, you played with frozen and karrigan that time, and you all lifted the trophy together. This time you're against frozen on the server, but tell me about playing against him here and also how it felt to lift another trophy with karrigan in China?

As soon as we beat ENCE, I was already feeling pretty good because I was a longtime teammate of frozen's. Once we were both in the finals, I knew that one of us was going to be the back-to-back champion of this tournament, so from that moment I felt pretty happy with the whole situation. So much stuff has happened for me personally in the last like four, five years that I have a really tough time remembering even this tournament four years ago. I would have to look back at some images and stuff.

I feel like I'm a different person right now, I've matured so much in these four years. I was a kid or a teenager back then, and now I'm coming into being an adult, so life has taken its own direction in this sense. But super happy that at least frozen got the chance to lift the trophy and obviously even happier that me and Finn ended up lifting it.

I know BanKs was drilling you all about it a little toward the end of the interview, but there's this ongoing question about whether Twistzz is leaving the team. What's going on with that? We talked about it in our last interview as well, but is the team taking it as "whatever trophies we can win, that's what it is?" Just win as much as we can, and do what we can?

Winning trophies and doing as much as you can is always the memo. For us, it goes without saying that we are in an environment and a team where we are expected to win every tournament, and we go into many of them as favorites. So it's a lot of stress and factors that play into our minds, but regardless of what's happening behind the scenes or in our team, we have this special bond and chemistry between each other that we have had from day one, when we started winning.

And seeing CS2 come out, obviously, is a refresher. All the maps are reworked, there's so much new stuff you can do strategy-wise. It's that cohesion and chemistry showing up and making us win these tournaments. Also playing long drawn-out matches or even a 13-0 to spice it up is just classic FaZe, which you can get used to seeing now.

You're currently on a 15-0 win streak of games. You haven't lost a single CS2 game since your opening game against GamerLegion [in Sydney]. I think it has to be asked, how long are you going to keep this run for?

We are keeping the anti-jinx on. I think before this match we said there's no way we would win this final, and even before, against ENCE, we said there's no way we would win that match. So we're just going to keep saying that, and hopefully it works out for us. But yeah, it's an incredible streak, I would have never predicted this.

It could be even one more win. We could have done it against GamerLegion, I still remember how we lost that match when we felt like we threw a round to let them get into overtime, so that was a rough loss for us. It shows we threw that round against GamerLegion, but we still bounced back so hard and are managing to get so many wins.