Twistzz on Liquid's development: "It definitely hasn't been sunshine and rainbows"

The Canadian rifler bailed his team out of a terrifyingly close match versus BESTIA.

Originally touted as one of the most highly-anticipated lineups assembled at the end of 2023, Liquid have had a mixed start to 2024. While the team headed into PGL Copenhagen Major Americas RMR with a successful campaign in the IEM Dallas closed qualifier, Liquid had fallen short in several previous outings, including the BLAST Premier Spring Groups and IEM Chengdu closed qualifier.

Casper "⁠cadiaN⁠" Møller's troops kicked off their RMR campaign with an opening BO1 against Argentine side BESTIA. What many would have expected to be a one-sided affair soon devolved into a fiercely contested match, with Liquid narrowly coming out ahead with a 13-11 scoreline only thanks to a stellar showing from Russel "⁠Twistzz⁠" Van Dulken.

Shortly after his team's victory over BESTIA, Twistzz spoke to HLTV regarding their scary debut at the RMR, the decision to utilize an old patch for the duration of the event, and the recent form of teammates Felipe "⁠skullz⁠" Medeiros and Mareks "⁠YEKINDAR⁠" Gaļinskis, among a slew of other topics.

If you do not see the SoundCloud embed above, you can listen to the full interview here.

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You survived your first best-of-one here. As I said just before the interview, probably a little closer than you would've liked. I'm sure you're happy with just the win, but what was going wrong for you in this game, and is it a little bit hard to not start here with a more confident scoreline?

(laughs) I honestly think that's just how RMRs are. You don't mentally expect a tough day, but you already know that it's not going to be as easy as you would think if you were playing them at some other event in a best-of-one.

But that's also the pressure. In the EU RMR, you have many more chances, like what I'm used to is that the one BO1 is not affecting everything so much, but here that one BO1 is everything to win. So that could play a factor, and honestly they shot pretty hard, I'm not going to lie. Even though we knew the map was going to be Inferno, they still had some new things, and yeah... I'm just happy to win the match, to be honest.

Date	Matches
PGL CS2 Major Copenhagen 2024 Americas RMR
01/03/2024	BESTIA Finished 11:13 Liquid	Match

As you said, the format is really brutal here. You said [before the interview] you've played the last three years of the RMR in EU and coming here feels very different, can you tell me more about that?

For me, it's just a bit of everything. From the people that I see, I'm kind of just like, 'Yo, where are my friends?' (laughs) But there's the format, and it's just a different region, a different qualifier, so for me it's just a general new feeling, I suppose.

You tweeted before the event about how we're not playing on the new update here. Can you expand on your thoughts a little bit here, since Twitter is a little limited with what you can say?

There's some deeper context, but like... you can say you want to keep all the qualifiers on the same format, but now those teams have weeks to play on the new update, and we're going to be behind for one week just because we chose not to play it here. And it was a team vote, it wasn't like PGL shut it down, PGL gave the vote, so this is purely based on team voting. I know for a fact that our team voted yes to doing it.

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Americas RMR will not use latest update following team feedback *

I feel like even though the spawn changes are kind of big, there are no new timings that weren't possible before. Maybe on Overpass, the AWP is going to get less freedom at A, but other than that, it's still basically the same. Inferno, you only have front spawns, so you're not able to always run to Car and still get away with it, you just have to be a little bit more aware as CT. And of course, the bigger one, Mirage with the lack of Window smokes, but the Window smokes are kind of falling out of meta at the moment I think.

I think it's a little bit disappointing that we stayed one week behind on the update, considering there were some pretty positive changes to it in terms of performance and stuff, and in-game feeling. And for us, we also have BLAST Spring Showdown after, so now we go from this event right into a Showdown not playing the new update for a week, and it's a little bit frustrating. But other than that, it is what it is, we play and the game goes on.

You played Inferno here, today we saw another team play it too. It wasn't common in the EU RMR, and in general we've seen a bit of a drop off in the map being played. Why do you think that is, and what are you seeing that could be contributing more towards that?

I think it's a mixture of things. It's teams that see other teams not playing Inferno, so they're like, 'okay, maybe it's a weak spot,' so they want to practice Inferno and get good on it. Or it could just be the lack of seeing the map played and the general feeling or the consensus that pro teams are avoiding it or are not as comfortable on it as other maps.

I think that's why you're seeing the meta suddenly shift to a map that was the least played map at Katowice. I've always been an Inferno lover, I'm still not so sure about the new one, but it's growing on me quite a bit and I'm happy to see it played more here.

Touching on this team, the early conversations were focused a lot on how you were working to mesh together the different styles to get on the same page. How is that coming along? Some of the online qualifiers weren't super convincing.

It definitely hasn't been sunshine and rainbows, that's for sure. Every team at some point goes through a tough period, and ours just happens to be right in the beginning. I feel like at the moment we suffer from playing to our opponent's level, so that's what happens when we're playing a team like BESTIA and we're making it close, rather than having a close BO3 against even FaZe.

I think that's just where we currently are as a team. It's still about players finding comfort and kinda finding our own playstyle. It's been difficult to iron out. But I will say coming into this event, our last day to qualify for Dallas was superb CS and we had adjustments the prior evening to kinda fix and realign how we want to approach the game.

A team like this, you have to do things every day to improve, you have to keep the ball rolling. It's everyone's individual responsibility to contribute to the team, and so far I have been pleased with what people bring to the team.

Originally, attention was on skullz and how he would perform in this team, but he has adapted to this level of play quite well. What are you seeing from him so far, based on your experience in FaZe and EU, regarding how he is transitioning into this level?

He's learning every day, he's becoming more comfortable every day. skullz three months ago compared to now is a completely different person. More of like, not a different person, but just him. That's just who he is, and we're learning who he is. In-game, he has amazing crosshair placement, it's really nice to see, a very unique aim set.

His individual decision-making is only going to get better, but in the early days he is taking his timings and going for it. He is not playing scared CS, and that's what I like to see. I also play some bombsites with him, so it's been nice to have him as a site partner.

One thing still in progress on this team is that YEKINDAR's level still isn't the same as what some people might have expected when they saw the names on this roster. What is the work like to help him get back to his old level? Are there issues you see contributing to that?

I think some of it is mental, of course. We had an online boot camp before going to play the Dallas qualifier in Europe, and his level was really high there. Of course, he still has it, the player just doesn't lose it. I think, for him, he might have been suffering a bit from us not being able to get on the same page in-game in terms of like how we want to approach things on CT and T.

But of course, we're working on that every day, and I only expect his level to get back to what people are used to. I think some things are just mental. I know today, I won't speak on personal matters, but something happened for him, and so that's all I can really say. Maybe fans can show him some extra love. I only expect him to get back to where he was, or even better.

Coming from playing with karrigan on FaZe, what has it been like playing with cadiaN so far?

I don't want to reveal so much, but they definitely have their own styles as captains. It's been intriguing for me to learn, being in karrigan's system for three years and kinda having him as a mentor, and then coming here and seeing what cadiaN brings as a leader, it's intriguing.

It's been very interesting to learn and adapt. Of course, every system you play in there's some level of adaption and finding your own playstyle within it. We're still working things out, but I have a lot of experience with Finn and it would be unfair to compare at the moment given the sample size.

Your 1-0 match is going to be against FURIA. What are your thoughts on the matchup?

Just do the same way that we prepared for BESTIA. Don't underestimate any teams really. Play hard, play our game.