isak: "We're looking for a fresh start"

The Swedish rifler says GamerLegion are now comfortable with Snax's calling style.

GamerLegion's Paris Major run was an incredibly hard feat to replicate, one that only became tougher after the departures of Mihai "⁠iM⁠" Ivan and Kamil "⁠siuhy⁠" Szkaradek. The European squad struggled to adapt to new caller Sanzhar "⁠neaLaN⁠" Iskhakov, and the Kazakh IGL lasted only three months.

Janusz "⁠Snax⁠" Pogorzelski was next to take the reigns, but the Polish veteran oversaw a terrible end to 2023 as GamerLegion ended the year with two last-place finishes.

A reset for the entire team was needed, says Isak "⁠isak⁠" Fahlén, and a break seemed to have done them well. They defeated FaZe in their opening match of 2024, and isak sat down with HLTV for a quick chat after their victory.

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Congrats on the victory, you beat FaZe in your first game of 2024. Talk me through your feelings.

It feels very nice. Playing against FaZe, they're the second-best team in the world, so it feels nice beating them. It's always fun to play FaZe, I feel like we had a close series every time we played.

They brought it back on Ancient to force overtime. Faze are known for eking out games like that, were you worried at any point?

A little worried, they're a very good team. They have a very strong mentality, every one of them. But I think Snax called super great today. He outsmarted them a lot, and he made many great calls.

Talking about Snax, he's been on the team for a while now, meaning he had a chance to imprint his vision on the team. What kind of an IGL is he?

He's an open IGL who lets every one of us get some space, but he also wants his way of playing so everything doesn't get too clustery. I think we've all learned how he wants to play, and it's working very nicely in practice. It's been going pretty well, so I hope we can implement it more into the server.

The end of last year was pretty bad for you guys, you had six losses in a row. How did you bounce back over the break?

We had four events in a row, and it was hard being away from home for one and a half months. It definitely took a toll on us, we had sickness all over. So everyone just reset and chilled out over the break, we had to fully reset going into this year. The old core might have been the team that went to the Major final, but we just have to remove everything. A fresh start, that's how we're looking at it right now.

You said you've been on the road for a month and a half, so do you think that not playing the open and closed RMR qualifiers helped you this year?

Yes, definitely. It gave us an extra week or something like that to relax, which was very nice.

You have BLAST Groups and Katowice up next, then the RMR shortly after. So what are your expectations for these few months?

We want to make it as far as possible here at BLAST and take it one game at a time. Then for the RMR, obviously we want to qualify for the Major, but I think this Major might be the hardest one to qualify for. It's a very stacked group. In Katowice, we want to make it to the playoffs. We've been close to making playoffs at so many events, and I just want to play on stage again.

Do you think if BLAST goes well for you and you ramp up at Katowice, you could come close to your Paris Major performances?

Yeah, definitely. I hope this game and the next few games will give us a nice confidence boost so that we can go into every game with full confidence.

Talking about the next game, you'll play the new Liquid or a depleted Spirit. How do you feel about your chances of making it through?

I feel like we have a pretty good chance of making it through, but we have to take it one at a time. I think the new Liquid lineup looks really strong, so if we play them, I'm looking forward to it, and the same goes for Spirit.