k1to on HeavyGod: "You can see that he's special"

k1to has taken up in-game leadership in a young new OG roster featuring HeavyGod and Nexius.

OG enter BLAST Premier Spring Groups refreshed, with two new talents in the form of Nikita "⁠HeavyGod⁠" Martynenko and Bram "⁠Nexius⁠" Campana to complete a young core next to Iulian "⁠regali⁠" Harjău and Maciej "⁠F1KU⁠" Miklas.

Nils "⁠k1to⁠" Gruhne is the elder statesman of the group, and has taken up in-game leadership after Nemanja "⁠nexa⁠" Isaković's move to G2. "I feel really comfortable," k1to tells HLTV. "In practice, I was like 'What the fuck, this was natural for me.'"

His first LAN test as captain will be in a pressure-cooker, facing Vitality, Astralis, and Falcons in a stacked Group A. But, after progressing to the EU RMR, OG have the wind in their sails and k1to has set his sights on an upset.

---

First of all, let's talk about the recent roster changes. You replaced two players, probably didn't have much time to practice with all the qualifiers, but how is the vibe?

The vibe really good, I think it's not something you always have in international rosters with all the different cultures. We reached our goal so far, everything is good right now.

You went through the open qualifier on the third try and then some other teams like BLEED didn't make it through. Then you made it through the closed one too, but were you worried about the whole process?

No, I was sure that we would qualify. We didn't make it on the first try, it was our first officials as a team and it is always different to practice. But, after we won, I can't remember which in the open qualifiers, but a really close game, a lot of pressure, and after we won that I was sure we would make it and that's what we did. I'm really happy with the results so far.

Is making the Major your No. 1 priority?

Of course. Now we are at the RMR, everything is possible there. Everyone can beat everyone. We're looking forward to it.

There's been numbers floating around recently about the financial side of making a Major, does that add extra pressure?

Everyone wants it for themselves as well, it's not only the organization taking the money so there's a lot on the line for everyone. The pressure is less now than it was in the open and closed qualifiers, you have so much to lose. Just see BLEED, TSM — I think this was the hardest step to take and now we can play and see how far we go.

In the roster changes you lost your IGL in nexa, and it's rumored you have taken over but it hasn't officially come out. What's the situation?

Yeah, I'm the in-game leader in the team now. I feel really comfortable. In practice, I was like 'What the fuck, this was natural for me.' We had only good ideas for the whole practice. Then we went to the open qualifiers and had a rough CT side, and I never felt pressure like that before.

In these games, especially the BO1s, it was hard for me, but after we lost in the first qualifiers I learned my lesson. I talked to ruggah about it, and he said it's normal, every IGL feels this in these qualifiers. I went into the next ones really confident and it helped me a lot.

What was your biggest challenge so far as an IGL?

To make every player happy, to give everyone enough space to do their stuff but also not forget the overall picture of the team, how I want to play. That's hard, this is the biggest challenge for me.

You have played under many IGLs, in BIG which is very tactical, and under nexa who is more loose, where do you think you fit?

I'm in the middle between these two. I played almost three years in BIG and learned a lot from tabseN and gob, also tow b back in the day. This helped me a lot, but it was also really good for me to play the last season in OG in an international roster, the complete opposite. I know both sides, what's good in one, what's bad in the other. Without the last few months it would have been harder for me to be an IGL but now I have both sides and I can be more like the BIG approach, but other times more like the OG approach and that's really good for us.

You added two very inexperienced players, when it comes to tier one, in the form of HeavyGod and Nexius. How has integrating them been?

It was really easy. Like you said we didn't have too much practice. We were looking for our fifth guy, HeavyGod, for some days before open qualifiers and we went to bootcamp without practice, maybe one online practice day. Here, we have to play but everyone is doing a good job.

HeavyGod, he is putting up crazy numbers right now and in his game you can see that he is special I would say. [Nexius], also doing a good job, for him it's the hardest role in the team because of what I said earlier, it's hard to make him happy all the time. I have my vision of how I want to play and sometimes it's not his vision so I need to give him more space so he feels comfortable. But he's accepting how I want to play, and he's adapting well.

Moving the focus to BLAST groups, very tough group here with Vitality, Astralis, and Falcons so what are your expectations?

We want to win a game. We know we play Vitality first, so that's going to be rough we know that. But they are coming out of the break, they won't have had too much practice, so maybe that's good news for us. Maybe we can catch them off guard. I think we can beat the other teams for sure, I'm really confident. But also Vitality, if we have a good day, we can do well against them.

Date	Matches
BLAST Premier Spring Groups 2024
22/01/2024	Vitality 16:30 OG	Match

On a more general note, what about goals for now until the player break. You mentioned the Major, but is there anything else you want to achieve?

The Major is the main goal for everyone but we want to climb the ladder on HLTV again so we can get some invites and don't have to play these open qualifiers. Personally, I just want to improve as an IGL, to get better in this role. I think the loss against Cloud9 early on helped me a lot to see what was going wrong, and when I have bad games calling wise. I want to get more experience in this role.