EliGE: "This could have been a sad ending, the sad storyline; thankfully we got the good one"

Complexity have secured a place directly in the Top 16 of the Major after their win over Liquid.

With a cutthroat format and only five spots on the line, PGL Major Copenhagen Americas RMR produced a number of heartbreaking matchups, but none was more compelling than Complexity's duel against Liquid to decide who North America's sole representative at the Major would be.

After faltering on the opening map of Inferno, Complexity pulled through with a reverse sweep, setting aside Liquid on Anubis and Overpass thanks to heroic efforts from Michael "⁠Grim⁠" Wince and Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski, allowing them to lay claim to the final spot at PGL Major Copenhagen.

After his monumental victory over his former team, EliGE spoke to HLTV regarding the details of the tense matchup, the individual efforts of his teammate Grim, and Complexity's approach ahead of the Major.

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

What an insane end to the RMR, an insane end to the game. You're through to the Major over Liquid, just... what are your thoughts after getting that win and ending the RMR in that manner?

Overall, it was just an insane series. That was... it's funny because I just keep seeing everyone tweet about how the RMR is the hardest tournament of the year, and I remember going into it I was like, 'Well, it shouldn't be that bad for us.'

I mean the EU one is crazy but for us, we ended up just getting a really hard hand with having to play FURIA, and Liquid also had to do that too. I'm happy that we were able to go past our limits. This was a really hard game, and for us to have overcome all the little things that were happening, for everyone to step up when they needed to... everyone just played really great, and I'm happy for that.

In the series you won all six pistols, which nowadays is even more of a help, right?

Yeah, 100%. Thankfully, it's just been clicking on the pistol rounds, but normally it doesn't go that well. It's really hard in MR12 if you lose both pistols, so super hard for them.

The series was a little bit back-and-forth, just before we get to Overpass, can you talk me through the first two maps and what went wrong and right for you?

Inferno was actually our worst map by far, so we're not surprised that we lost that one. I think that we even played better than we thought we would, it's been by far one of the hardest struggles recently for us. Overall we played a good game on it despite the loss, so nothing out of the ordinary for that one. For Anubis, it's been one of our more comfortable maps recently, especially our CT side is something that we have been focusing on. It's been a map that I've been feeling a little bit better in my position, so I'm able to feel the rotations a little bit more and getting anything over five rounds is really good. Then on T side we won the pistol round again, and we kept the ball rolling for the whole rest of the half. It's a very T sided map and it's really hard if you lose the pistol and can't really get anything going.

Overpass, I think that everything was going super well for us. I wanted to start off the game a little bit more aggressive especially since the last game, we were playing a more passive style, and I think that it would've been harder for them to deal with. We had a lot of map control because of that, the rounds were working out really well. It really only started getting tough at the 7-1 mark, we lost that round where it was really low time and I think Keith [NAF] was flanking heaven on that or someone was flanking heaven, and we ended up losing that round which made it a little bit tougher. Thankfully, everyone stayed super composed through it, even though we were losing really hard rounds that could definitely tilt anyone off the face of the Earth. It showed that we can keep our calm and keep problem-solving, and that's the thing we've been repeating the most in these hard rounds, in this RMR especially, is that we need to keep problem-solving and keep the comms up.

Talking about some of those frustrating rounds, sometimes tilting people off the face of the Earth, sometimes there has been frustrating that has showed in those kind of rounds, not necessarily here, but when these games get close.

For you, trying to work through that frustration and bring the team back into a positive mindset, is that something you've been actively work on because there have been times where you've shown a lot of frustration, or hallzerk's shown a lot of frustration, so what has that been like?

For me, the main thing that I focus on on this team is just making sure that I'm always saying what I'm thinking, like getting it out there. Sometimes it's been a little bit too far, like high energy where it's too much frustration, too much of saying what I'm feeling, and having to dial that back and find a good balance between it. Because just being able to get the frustration out also helps me, I just think, 'Okay, I said what I have to say, and now I'm problem-solving for the next thing.' So even though it looks kinda bad, and obviously it does get bad sometimes which obviously is my bad and I'm always trying to work on that, but it's always going to be a constant battle of pushing and pulling, the energy, and accounting for how that is affecting my teammates.

You were mentioning some of the rounds that got really close at the end of Overpass, you had one you lost with the bomb in Connector, but there was also the 2vs4 that you and Grim won, and then JT came through with the insane Deagle round-

Yeah, that was insane.

Can you just talk me through what was going on in the team, what the comms were like in those rounds? I think James [JamezIRL, Complexity's assistant coach] mentioned that Grim had a pep talk or something at some point, did that happen toward the end of Overpass?

No, not really like a pep talk (laughs). I mean, we had some crazy clutches, like the 2vs4, I even forgot about the one me and Mike [Grim] had. We were just really feeling it, I felt like everything was just flowing in those rounds. We just trusted each other. There's actually a cool thing that I saw from voo's video about donk, about him playing for second contact, which is something that I felt like we were doing in those clutches, subconsciously. That made them flow really well, where in the clutch with me and Grim for example, I kill one guy, then I'm planting, and I'm already assuming he's going to kill the next two guys and I can already get ready for the next thing that's happening.

I felt like we were in that constant state of flow, even in the hard rounds. I'd say the hardest one we had to really problem solve was where we had the bomb in Connector, and even that one we had a pretty good plan, obviously it didn't work out, but we were constantly putting ourselves in good positions to win the round if there was an opportunity for something lucky to happen. Because that's what you really need when the crazy stuff is happening, you need luck on your side, but you also need to give yourself the opportunity to take advantage of that luck.

You mentioned earlier that you had a really hard draw. The format here and the seeding was brutal. Can you tell me your thoughts on the format and the seeding of this RMR, and how difficult it's been?

The hardest part is that Liquid is seeded not where they should be, so that made the seeding tougher overall. I'm not really a fan like everyone else probably is of the Bucholz system, it's just an unnecessary complication for something that's essentially a double-elimination bracket. I don't really have too strong of an opinion outside of that, I'm not a format expert or anything to suggest something better, but I hope that we do get something different in the future.

Something you mentioned on broadcast was that at other events, Grim would be 'yapping' (EliGE laughs) and that's something you told him to do less of, and he did less of here. Can you expand on that a little bit?

(laughs) Well we're just having fun with the yapping stuff because of the one meme. But sometimes, Mike kinda goes into the IGL brain mode, where for IGLs, it's very hard for them to frag because they are always thinking, they are always trying to communicate little micros and what they think people are doing. Mike is such a talented player that he tries to... not overcompensate, but he's trying to do all of the same stuff at the same time. So he's trying to focus on the kill, and the extra comms, and the extra micro, and reading all the stuff, so he's just doing a little bit much.

After Katowice I just said, 'Mike, just focus on the kill, just chill, you don't have to talk as much. All these extra little things that you're doing is getting you killed, and we have that covered. You just need to focus on your kills and you're going to own them.' And seriously, ever since that conversation after Katowice, he's been owning in scrims. I think that he just had some unfortunate games at the beginning of the RMR, because I know Mike has been playing insane, and I just told that again to him after the FURIA game. He's so good, so I'm happy that he played super well this best-of-three.

You also have had a really good individual tournament here. Obviously, it ends with you and Grim knocking out your old team. Tell me about the feeling of having the RMR end with that.

Definitely bittersweet. I didn't wanna have to play them and have to go through this type of heartbreak for them, because I know how it feels. I was obviously just playing with them, I love all of them there, especially everyone on the org, so I know that it really sucks.

We both had a really tough draw, but I'm really happy that we were able to overcome the adversity. I know that were was kinda like a more damp mood when we got the draws that we did, where it was just like, 'Ah man first we had FURIA, and now we have to play the other best team in the tournament.' It definitely didn't feel good, but we were able to overcome that and we were able to focus on the game and just see what happens, it's just like any other day.

You're through to the Major now, the only North American representation there. With that on your shoulders, what is the mentality with that burden coming into the Major?

I don't have any super strong feelings about just being the only NA team. I'm obviously disappointed that we didn't have any other representation, a really tough draw between us and Liquid. I was hoping that Nouns, Wildcard, M80, those guys could have persevered and got through it.

It's just a learning process, we're gonna have to keep getting better slowly and slowly. I think it's a good thing that we're gonna be able to show that if you just keep on working through the adversity, because we've been having some bad tournaments the past couple of months, keep working hard, keep problem-solving and working every day, you'll get better eventually.

You had this really strong start to CS2 with your showing in Sydney, but since then your results haven't been that great. It hasn't been what everyone expected since reaching that height at the release of CS2. What has the team been working through to try and recover from that?

I think there's a couple factors. At the beginning of CS2, we were also playing a lot more stage matches, which I know the guys haven't played a ton of stage matches, which is a different environment, a different feeling compared to either playing online or in the studio. So there's that, just needing more experience, so I think that's why we failed in some of the matches against FaZe especially because we were playing really lights-out but I think the nerves just got to us, especially in a lot of those clutch rounds.

I think since November, December, I think our learning process wasn't as good, where we weren't focusing on the right things... not that we're not focusing on the right things, I would more say that we need to focus more on ourselves and improving our fundamentals. We were adding a lot of cool tactics and trying things, which is really good of course, and you always want to be doing that type of stuff, but we stopped focusing on fundamentals and pointing out that type of stuff. Since Katowice, we identified that issue, and it's just been something that we've been focusing on in our scrims and matches since then.

Going into the Major, what is your general feeling about heading to Copenhagen and what you can do there now?

I mean, we're just gonna be taking it day by day. I'm super happy that we were able to make it; this could have been a sad ending, the sad storyline, but thankfully we got the good storyline and we were able to make it through. We're just gonna have to see how it goes.

Since we started here, it hasn't been easy this tournament, we could have easily faltered. This is going to be good building blocks, and we have the Showdown after, so for us it's gonna just be a consistent buildup of getting better and hopefully showing our best face for the Major.

You guys are now confirmed to go through as Legends, going through to the second stage of the Major. How does that feel?

It definitely feels insane. I think that it's one of the things that we were really hoping for coming into this, not only that we qualify but also that we get Legends. The extra practice time is just super vital for us. We're gonna have a longer bootcamp coming into it after the Showdown, we're gonna be staying there and that's exactly what we want.

We want to feel prepped, we wanna feel like we have all of our T's crossed, I's dotted, the whole saying, and just being as prepared as possible. Super happy for us.

A nice reward after Jason Lake's acquisition of Complexity too?

Yeah, I'm really happy, especially for Jason. We had a talk with Jason right before the match, and I know that he's so happy right now.