Snappi on playing with s1mple: "The stuff he does gets more crazy by the day"

Snappi gave his insight on the arrival of s1mple in Falcons, the team's disastrous RMR run, and more in a podcast with natu.

Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer has experienced mixed fortunes as of late, making a surprise run to the semi-finals of IEM Katowice with Falcons, failing to qualify for the PGL Copenhagen Major, and receiving the news that CS:GO's GOAT Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev will be joining his team on loan.

The Danish IGL appeared on Joona "⁠natu⁠" Leppänen and Roope "Robu" Leppänen's esports podcast to talk about a whirlwind couple of months for him and his team, and he also gave some interesting insight on his decision-making process when it came to leaving ENCE for Falcons.

To check out the full podcast, click here.

On the topic of Falcons' recent massive loan signing, Snappi spoke about finding out s1mple was joining and what it has been like playing with the Ukrainian. "It was very sudden, I didn't know much about it until very shortly prior to it," he stated. "I think it was a deal that was struck very late, the loan, but what can you say about him? He's the GOAT of CS:GO for a reason, obviously he hadn't played a lot of CS2 but you can already see now after some practice days, some of the stuff he does gets more crazy by the day.

"He's naturally gifted so he's really fast at picking up stuff. I think also he has been playing in international teams prior to NAVI and during NAVI, he's been grinding FPL all the time, so it's nothing new to him to sit and speak English, and it's nothing new to him to take charge. I think it is fair to say that we need a star player, kind of like we had in ENCE with Spinx and then NertZ, that is what we need. He is definitely doing the job so far from where I am standing, and more also."

The Dane was tight-lipped on the prospect of s1mple continuing with the team beyond his current loan, saying "obviously it's just a loan, but we will go and try to do our best in BLAST."

The podcast also discussed Falcons' disastrous RMR campaign, which ended in bitter disappointment for Snappi and company. Whilst the Danish IGL admitted he was not happy with the result, he went on to give an in-depth explanation of what caused Falcons to struggle, as well as describing why their excellent IEM Katowice run was in fact a negative for the team.

"[I feel] really bad to be honest. I had obviously hoped for better in terms of the RMR, but it was tough because we got SunPayus and maden pretty late. We started practice on January 3 right after Christmas, we had one-and-a-half weeks going into BLAST, one or two practice days at home and then straight to Katowice.

"We overperformed at Katowice and that was a bad thing I think. Obviously it's really good to get to the semis at Katowice for a new team, but what it meant was that we had to lose two practice days because we got a delayed flight into the RMR. We had to sleep in Munich because our flight got delayed, and so we didn't get any practice coming into the RMR.

"You don't practice a lot at tournaments because you are in game mode. You are doing your DM, you are doing theory for the matches, you are prepping the matches and doing a lot of things like this. It's not the same as sitting and practicing, and because we were in RMR A, we were just limited on practice. We were not ready to fight like we wanted, we had some pretty big gaps in our playbook where we just didn't have time to sort it out, and it ended up biting us on the ass.

"We did what we could, we sat every evening after practice to try to fix stuff, but when you create a new team, even though we had some members who played together before, it's a new game… For example, on Nuke, all the stuff you did on Inner in CS:GO you cannot do anymore in CS2 because the whole thing with utility has changed, you cannot use almost any of those strats anymore."

Snappi concluded by highlighting how this RMR result was particularly painful for him specifically. "It is what it is," he began. "It sucks, especially because it's in Copenhagen and for me it would have been very big to potentially play in front of my friends and family at a Major, but there's nothing to do about it now except move forward and work as hard as we can."

During the discussion Snappi was also asked departure from ENCE. He gave some insight into his decision-making process, specifically referencing fears that the team would break apart no matter what happened.

"I was pretty certain that no matter what, there would be at least one change, and I thought that change would set off a chain reaction," Snappi admits. "That was, in the end, why I chose as I did, because if I were to stay, I would have wanted to stay with everyone.

"Then the offer came, and I felt like I had three good years in ENCE, so I saw it as if I am going to potentially be losing one or more players, then I will try something else where I think I am also going to be happy. I always wanted to try and work with guys like Magisk, zonic and also Lars the sports psychologist, he was a big part of it."

Snappi went on to elaborate on the allure of working with Lars Robl, the Director of Performance at Falcons who has been part of Major-winning campaigns at both Astralis and Vitality in the past.

"As you know I am a bit older than other players in this business, and when you are 33 it can be harder and harder to keep up with the young guns. I felt with this guy (Lars) I could get a lot of help in terms of improving my health… improving your mind, improving your health in order to be better off the server with your family and friends, but also on the server in optimizing everything you can."

Snappi also referenced Falcons ability to hang on to players as a significant factor drawing him to the team. "I was thinking this could be another situation like after ENCE lost Spinx," he stated. "Where the team could go into a very long downward spiral potentially, and I was like 'fuck it, I'll hit the reset button and go to a place where we can keep players easer.'"

Whether or not Snappi made the right decision, only time will tell, but he will continue his journey in Falcons as s1mple makes his debut for the team at BLAST Spring Showdown. They kick off their campaign March 6 with a matchup against Metizport.

Date	Matches
BLAST Premier Spring Showdown 2024
06/03/2024	Falcons 20:15 Metizport	Match