blameF: "It's up to me to help take fnatic back to tier-one if I want to play there"

"I'm not afraid of that challenge," adds the four-time top 20 player of the year.

Benjamin "⁠blameF⁠" Bremer, a four-time top 20 player of the year, has been synonymous with the fragging-IGL tag during his career. After failing to lead Astralis to an appearance at their home Major in Copenhagen, however, the 27-year-old was relieved of his duties and announced his transition away from the in-game-leader role.

The Dane spent three months on the bench before joining fnatic in what was a shock move considering the team was ranked outside the top 30, but blameF says that the decision was down to "choosing a place where he can prove that he is good enough again."

fnatic have so far claimed just one title at the online RES Regional Series 6 Europe since his signing, but now have a chance to lift a LAN trophy at the RES Regional Champions 2024.

Ahead of their opener against UNPAID in Belgrade, blameF spoke to HLTV about his individual form, the team's expectations for the tournament, and fnatic's recent addition of Tim "⁠nawwk⁠" Jonasson.

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It’s been half a year since you joined fnatic, which coincided with many changes for you in quite important regards compared to Astralis. How does it feel playing for fnatic, what are your overall impressions?

It's been great joining fnatic. I want to start by saying the organization is fantastic. They treat us really well and I feel very welcome from day one until now, so I'm very happy to be at a place where the organization is very well organized, structured, and everything like that.

I'm really comfortable with the team as well. Maybe not in the past couple of matches, when we haven't played that great, but other than that, I feel like we have had some really good results throughout the time since I joined, so I would say I'm very happy being here.

After getting benched in Astralis, you said that you’re looking for a new challenge as a rifler and not as IGL. Now that you have been able to focus on your game, do you feel like you were able to realize your potential to an even greater extent?

I think it's just pretty basic that you always play better when you don't call. It's pretty hard being a caller, for sure. So, yeah, I think that I've been playing pretty well in fnatic. I've been pretty happy with how I've performed so far.

While playing under the lead of bodyy for some time as opposed to leading yourself, did you have any new reflections on the time when you were an IGL? Do you understand what worked and what didn’t?

I don't think I made many reflections back then. That's in the past for me, but I'm just trying to focus on how I can help the team. On some maps, there might be more required of me right now in fnatic, and on some maps, there's nothing. There's not much required of me because that might be a map they were very comfortable on before I even joined.

It's just pretty map-dependent, but I try to help with what I can. And if anyone ever asks me to chip in with more, I'm always going to be happy to do that. But other than that, I'm just going to try to focus on doing the role and stuff I have in the game.

The other aspect that has changed is that you joined an international team again. You’ve been on and off in Danish- and English-speaking teams throughout your career, so I’m wondering about your perspective. To you personally, how much of a difference is there?

The biggest difference for me is that when I was in Astralis, it was so easy to meet each other all the time. We were bootcamping all the time when we practiced and met up for a lot of media days and stuff like that. In international teams, it's a little bit different. You don't meet each other as much and there's definitely going to be periods of time without you seeing them in person.

So I would say it's a little bit harder to get to know people really well as fast as it was in Astralis. In a Danish team like that, you get really close to people very fast, and that's the biggest difference. Also communication maybe a little bit in the beginning. People don't have perfect English in the team, so maybe the communication is a little bit harder, but it's not a massive problem.

Do bootcamps help you to amend that? Does your team do things like Liquid when they were doing all those bonding experiences? Is there anything that you do in that regard to amend what you've mentioned?

For sure. I'm pretty sure all teams do that. It's just not all teams who put it out on video, but all teams definitely do some sort of team activity that is supposed to be fun and help open up people. I've done that in all the teams I've been in, so that's not new to me for sure.

Four years in a row, you’ve been in HLTV Top 20 despite also being an IGL throughout. So for many, it was surprising to see you join fnatic since the team wasn’t high in the rankings. Why did you join them in the end?

I understand that I'm not even considered in the top 20 now because we're not playing the biggest tournaments, so obviously that's not realistic right now. But for me, it's about choosing a place where I can prove that I'm good enough again. I'm okay with taking a step back and proving that I can play at a high level. It's up to me to show that if I want to play tier-one, I'm going to help take fnatic back to tier-one.

And if I'm not good enough, that's just how it is, you know, I'm not really afraid of that challenge. I'm just going to play Counter-Strike, try to enjoy it again, and do my best to prove to people that I still have the ability to play at a high level.

How is the team doing relative to your expectations when you joined it? Is it in the place you would expect it to be by this point?

Not at this exact moment because we just had some very bad officials. But I would say if I go like a couple of weeks back, then I would be very happy with where we're at. I think we beat a lot of the strongest tier-two teams, we were very comfortable playing them. We didn't have that much trouble, but then we changed the team and we haven't won many maps recently.

So I would say that right now we're not in a good spot, but it can change really quickly. Hopefully, this is a tournament where we go back to winning a lot, but I would say I'm happy with our overall performance in fnatic. It's hard to say that as well because we just lost so many games in a row, but other than that, I'm happy.

Recently you got nawwk on your team. He’s not a top 20 player, but he built himself a decent name nevertheless. Does it feel reassuring that the team is getting such upgrades?

Yeah, for sure. I like playing with nawwk. He's a very chill guy and he's shooting hard as well, and he's easy to play with because he says what's on his mind. But even though I like playing with nawwk, I just want to say I also enjoyed playing very much with afro. I don't think afro is a bad player, he's very good and he did a lot for the team. So I just want to make sure that I state that I think afro was a really great teammate in fnatic. Maybe he wasn't the right fit in that specific lineup, but I really enjoyed playing with him, he was definitely one of my favorite teammates.

You’re now at RES Regional Champions. It features a hefty prize pool and a very competitive field, and you certainly are not underdogs here. How important is this event for your team in this context?

It's pretty easy for me to say that I'm expecting us to go pretty far. I'm not saying that it has to happen, because obviously if we play like we've done in the past couple of officials, then we won't go very far. But my expectation for this event is to at least go to the playoffs. It might not happen if we play like we used to, but as I said, we actually had some practice with nawwk now. So this is meant for us as a fresh start now. We're ready to go again, and I'm expecting something decent.

You referenced your recent misfortunes a couple of times. Can you share what you think went wrong? And what do you think you need to fix to step up?

It's hard because it definitely went over a couple of events. We had a really good start at EPL by beating Astralis, which was the high of the team, and then we had a match against MOUZ and stuff where we just got annihilated. And then we came home and I think we changed players, and then one day after, we had officials. So we had like one prac on each map or something like that before we debuted with nawwk, but we didn't have any strats or anything really to talk about.

So I don't care too much about those results with him recently, but I care more about showing that we are actually ready to play now. It was a mixture of us having high highs and low lows in the past officials, but also us not having much practice with nawwk. But no excuses for us at this event, we just have to show that we can play good Counter-Strike now.

The last thing I wanted to ask you about is KRIMZ. He is one of the few players who’s been competing at the top level from the very start of CS:GO to this day. Since 2016, he’s been playing for fnatic but eventually faded away from the community’s spotlight. What’s your experience of playing with him, and what role does KRIMZ play in your team?

He's really great to play with because he's that solid anchor in the team who can do everything. He doesn't require anything from anyone in the game to play well, he plays well all the time and he doesn't ask for hundreds of flashes or strats around him. He's really good at giving info and at taking space on the map when he sees it's needed. So I think he's just one of those great teammates that doesn't require a lot of help, but still provides a lot of value to a team.

It's very valuable having some of those in the team as well because I think a lot of teams have people in the team that require a lot of things, but he's one of those guys that makes a team function because he's the opposite. He's shooting hard as well, but he gave up a lot of his positions throughout the past years, I would probably say, in order to make other people play well, and he was fine with taking a step back. A great teammate, a great guy, and I'm really happy to play with him.