EliGE on FaZe's comms: "Eventually I want to help shorten the amount of words so there is a little less chaos"

The American rifler gave some early thoughts after his debut with FaZe ended with a win.

FaZe secured victory in their BLAST Bounty opener in a hard-fought three-map series against M80, with Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski starring on the Dust2 decider to ensure a victory in his debut for the European lineup.

It was a chaotic series, in classic FaZe fashion, where an inspired showing from Helvijs "⁠broky⁠" Saukants (1.43 rating, 25-15 K-D) helped steal away Ancient before FaZe stumbled on their Inferno pick to let M80 tie the series.

FaZe lost out to a 1v2 ace clutch by M80 stand-in Nils "⁠k1to⁠" Gruhne and had some panicked mid-rounds on Dust2, but EliGE helped right the ship (1.65 rating, 23-11 K-D) to secure the series.

The 27-year-old moved over from Complexity during the tournament break after he was named the 19th best player of 2024, held back from placing higher despite excellent individual form due to lacking results by his former team.

In an interview with the BLAST Bounty analyst desk after the game, EliGE revealed that Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen invited him to FaZe soon after the Major and touched on his move to Europe, stating that he received other offers but that playing with karrigan was something he "really wanted" and a move to FaZe was an "easy decision."

EliGE also shared insight into his first practices and official with FaZe when asked about the hectic communication on TeamSpeak that is often showcased in karrigan's YouTube videos, saying it was something he hoped to help simplify in the future.

"The comms remind me of Liquid in 2019 and 2018," EliGE said. "There's a lot more stuff that's on the fly, we're trying to say everything really quickly, whereas on COL, yeah, it was just a couple of guys — me, JT, and hallzerk — that were saying a lot of stuff. But we also had a lot of codewords that simplified a lot of comms whereas here we do a lot of things on the fly.

"Eventually I want to help shorten down the amount of words so there is a little less chaos, because sometimes it is going crazy in the comms. If you get pushed anytime during those crazy comms then it can backfire a little bit, but overall I think we have a lot of stuff to look forward to."

EliGE also touched on how positions and roles are being distributed in this FaZe roster, giving the example of him playing A on Ancient but also often taking the fight in the Middle brawl.

"We're pretty much making it so anyone can do a lot of things," he said. "We're being pretty dynamic, like as you saw on Ancient I 'technically' play A but I can also do a lot of things. The A rifler helps take Mid control a lot too. We have a lot of setups where we can be dynamic and we're not just wanting to have rain play Upper Tunnels every single round on Dust2.

"We want people to get into the action, to activate our aggressive players because we have so many options for what we can do in these rounds, a lot of guys who want to do stuff in the round and not be passive. It's a good compromise that we have to find on all the maps."