NBK- interview: Mercenaires, analyst work, and the future

The French player, who joined the analyst desk at BLAST Open Lisbon, spoke about his time in Revenant, putting together the Mercenaires lineup, and working as broadcast talent.

Nathan "⁠NBK-⁠" Schmitt was on the desk at the BLAST Open Lisbon group stage in Copenhagen, Denmark, and we took the chance to sit down with the veteran in-game leader to discuss the new team he is playing with, Mercenaires, what it was like to work the desk at the BLAST Studios, and what went awry with his last project, Revenant, before returning to a french lineup.

You can read the lengthy interview below or listen to it on our Spotify playlist, where other interviews from what has already transpired at BLAST Open Lisbon have also been uploaded.

If you can't see the embed above, you can listen to the audio recording of this interview on Spotify.

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The first thing I wanted to ask you is: Where did the idea of building this new team, Mercenaires, come from? Was it a fun experiment that became serious when you reached the PGL Astana Closed Qualifier? It's not the first lineup you're playing with, there was another lineup before that had slightly different players. When did you think, "Maybe this can be a proper team?"

 It goes a bit further in the sense that I was searching myself for what I wanted to do after Revenant, and then, into that, I started wanting to play again and that kind of stuff. I was talking a little bit with bodyy before he went to 3DMAX. And then we're trying to figure out, 'Is there something that we can do?'

There was a part where we were playing the open qualifiers with different players to kind of sense how people were. It's easier to do it, even if it's a mix, you have a better idea of how players behave, how they are, what you can find.  And with those players at Mercenaires specifically, we just trialed two different players, but the core four was pretty sure. Grinding in FACEIT is cool, but grinding as a team is way better, even if it's just for individual recognition or something.

And why these players in particular? Can you tell me a little bit about why you decided to put this roster together. Because there are some players on that team that just didn't work out in other teams, like afro in fnatic or misutaaa, someone people had high expectations for when he was playing for Vitality. Since then, he hasn't had a lot going for him.

 I think there are some factors. One, being an actual team is easier to put together and to have the same ideas behind everything you're doing. So it would also make you better individually within that group. The second part would be that, yes, some players have had struggles, and I think it comes in part from the play style in the teams they were in. They were not necessarily comfortable expressing themselves, whereas here, with this team, it's also very willingly that everybody's coming to practice and doing theory because nobody has a contract.

We have nothing at this point, and people are just eager to do something. I think — and we all think — that with a national team or, like, the same language, it's easier to break into the top 40, top 30, and get back into that with building good chemistry and having the same ideas in mind because often something that came from players in this team is that they were not very comfortable because different ideas were always there.

 So that's where this group can make sense because we've talked about the game. We've done more theory than actual practice, I think. So that's where we can find a good balance and be a real unit moving forward.

One of the main surprises on this team is PerX, right? He has played all his career in Germany. He speaks French, I imagine?

Yes, correct.

What can you say about his background and how this guy, who has played all his career on German teams, all of a sudden we find out that he speaks French and he's on a French team?

It's a bit of a surprise, even for me.  I wasn't sure, but he played as a stand-in for GenOne for a few games, and that's a French team. And afro played in a kind of mix team for like several weeks, if not a month, with him, and he was very impressed. He very much enjoyed playing with him, so when we started talking about this team and that kind of stuff, it was just a name that afro pushed.

And so, out of curiosity, because we had time, I was, like, "Sure, yeah. Let's try him out. Why not?" And it turned out great. Obviously, he has a different background with different teams, which is good, in a way, because he can also bring his own ideas, which are not necessarily the identity of French CS.

In terms of his play style, he is a very knowledgeable support element, and he will find his voice more and more within the team. Because right now, even though he speaks French and half of his family is French, he lives in Germany, so he's more used to German. So the more we're playing together, the better he's getting with his French.  But even then, you could see that the guy has a good mind for the game.

He's also a very good clutcher, and so those are qualities we're needing because we have a team that is more on the aggressive side, with three riflers, misutaaa, Djoko and me. So it's good to have a more supportive/passive player to round up the team.

One of 3DMAX's strengths is that they're a very good tactical team. And I guess one of the reasons for that is that, in a world where most teams are international, the fact they have players from the same country, with the same background and the same way of thinking and playing the game, maybe that helps them be such a cohesive team. Do you think that also applies to your team? Because when you look at 3DMAX, they don't have a star player, and when you look at your team, I guess it's the same. Do you think that the fact you can communicate in your own language helps break down some of the barriers that a team can have at the beginning?

That's one hundred percent one of the main factors why we even put this team together and why we believe we can make it through… The HLTV ranking is now a bit different than the VRS, but we can break through the top 50, top 40, top 30 pretty fast, especially with the opportunity to go to Fragadelphia. It gives a real chance, and you can be good pretty fast with a national team.

So yeah, this is definitely the direction we're going. I think we have players that can reinvent themselves with different needs and different wills on how to play the game. There's a fun small thing: When I asked Djoko how 3DMAX were playing Nuke, he started texting me 30 different strats they had. And it's like, you don't have that in international teams because it's, like, small variations that are very easy to understand if you're from the same background. It's, like, this strat with this small variation, and it just clicks way faster.

So that's kind of where we're going as well. We want to be tactically very sound, and luckily, the more French game style, in a way, is one of the strongest at the moment. If you look at Vitality, Eternal Fire, 3DMAX, those are teams that I know for a fact other teams are looking up to tactically, on top of individually. That is another thing, but, tactically, they are leading the meta.  And so that's the kind of category that we're trying to get into.

I wanted to ask you about Revenant and what happened there. You had a decent lineup on paper: Nivera, yourself, lauNX. It wasn't the best of teams, I guess. You only went to one LAN tournament, in India, where you had to play with a coach because lauNX got ill. Can you walk me through what happened during your time there?

It started off pretty good. Like, the idea, as you said, was there. We had a good group that was very much willing to be together, but also, there was no real trial. It was just, you know, adding up names that looked good together and then seeing how we would fare.

There were definitely close to the team, not necessarily from the org itself, a lot of management and coaching issues that we never solved from the moment we went in to the moment we exited Revenant. That's something that I had to step up into a lot, which takes away from the game directly. You can't perform individually.  You cannot really put the same energy within the team. That was a big thing that hindered us in terms of results and where we wanted to be. I think it's better to leave it at that.

When it comes to Revenant, I think they had and probably still have a good mentality and will in what they wanted to do, and just the execution, with the people close to the team, sadly made it a bit harder, especially because Revenant is from India, so it was also a bit hard in terms of communication. But I do believe that several pieces from the org and the players had good will, and sometimes it's just hard to make things work, whether it was internally, or with just the output of like, frustration of some rounds and stuff like that.

There was a lot of hype when Nivera came back to CS. Is there a reason he's not on the team right now?

Nivera is a bit of a… question mark, because he's a very smart player, so he can fit in several roles, but his natural role, and the one he has been very vocal to me about, is AWPing. And when it comes down to AWPing in what we wanted to build, afro was the centerpiece of everything we were talking about because he had the short stint with OG when he was standing in, and he was excellent.

 I also know that he's a very hard worker, and he's bringing a lot to the table in terms of what he wants to do, how he wants to do it, and that kind of stuff. He's very vocal when we're doing theory, strats, and stuff. And so that's where Nivera was not necessarily in the conversation because the baseline was with the four of us, Djoko, misutaaa, afro and me.

If you want to break through, you need players comfortable in their roles. And to bring him in and to change him into a role that is not the one he really wants to do… It could work, but it could also be breaking apart in that regard. So that's why it happened that way.

You've been here for a week as part of the broadcast team for BLAST Lisbon. By the time the team qualified for the Astana closed qualifier, you had already committed to this event. What can you say about the practice you've had since you've been here? Have you been able to play DM or something like that, just to make sure you're still sharp?

There was a litte bit of luck in the sense that I only came for the groups, which made me available for the closed qualifier that we had just before leaving, and we managed to qualify on our first try. So there was a bit of luck in that sense. I'm just coming back straight to go back into it.

But yeah, there was the analyst job, which I'm very grateful for. BLAST gave me the opportunity, which I think is a really great thing to do. I really enjoyed my time here. On the other hand, I've been working double shifts pretty much, where it was the analyst job, then going back to the hotel, working a bit on the demos of the next matches, and then using several hours to build up our own game with the team, watching demos and playing Deathmatch with a PC set up by BLAST, and then doing theory with the team, while talking to organizations and sponsors at the same time.

So no scrims at all.

No scrims at all during this week, but we've done a lot of theory and especially filling the gaps with small things that we saw during the open qualifier.  And it helped us tremendously to just do that theory. We got in probably 10 or 12 hours of theory during the week, just talking about integrating new maps and small plays and stuff to make us more complete. It's work that had to be done, and everybody played a lot individually, so I'm not too worried.

You're now going up big teams in the closed qualifier. Considering you haven't had any practice during this week, what kind of expectations do you have going into it?

 The expectation is to beat as many teams to get as many VRS points as possible. As simple as that. There is one slot for the tournament, which is, realistically, very hard to get. We're very much on the outsider's part.  But yeah, I think the theory and the fact that nobody has really any read on us, can play into our favor.

Sure, I want to qualify. We all want to qualify, but the realistic thing is to take it one game at a time. We have no idea. We don't have the best seeding, either, so we're going to be facing pretty good teams. But overall, I am still pretty confident. I think it's not like international teams, where if you miss two days of practice, you come back and it's chaotic. Like, it's chaos. It's very hard to have a good game.

 We've been in touch the whole week, done a lot of theory. We're going to have an open qualifier over two days just before the closed qualifier, so we're going to be back into it as well. So, win as many games as possible, I think that's the realistic option.

You say that you've been talking to organizations. What can you say about the level of interest that there has been from organizations in your team? Do you think that you'll be able to find an organization?

I've been a little bit surprised by the fact that, yes, there are orgs that are willing to get into it. I think it plays into a part of it that we're a national team and that we have players that are kind of known, as well. People know our names, for most players, so there are opportunities. Especially the fact that we're willing to put ourselves out there with Fragadelphia, for example.

If we start getting good results, we can get into top 50 of the VRS extremely fast, and that's where orgs are willing to be. They want to have that entry and then win one or two CCTs. OG has been doing that, they haven't even been on LAN, I think, and they won one CCT and they're top 23 or something like that.

So there's room if you start winning, and especially if you go on LAN and stuff like that, to multiply your points and shit. I can't disclose too much, but there have been good talks with several orgs.

French? International?

It was mostly international. The French scene has a bit of an "issue" because Vitality is the best team in the world in Counter-Strike, and there's the fight among the French orgs, like KCorp, Gentle Mates, and always being compared to Vitality, you want to enter the space...

With a team that can be as good as Vitality.

Right, yeah. But the realistic part in Counter-Strike is that it doesn't exist. You look at Falcons, which is a team that built themselves up well, and it took them three years to be in that conversation. That's the reality of Counter-Strike. If you want to have an efficient group, you need to take time getting the roster and I don't know what level of interest French orgs actually have, so mostly it has been international.

You're making your first broadcast appearance in six years and people have been praising your analytical and communication skills. How are you finding the role of an analyst, and is it something you see yourself doing in the future?

The overall feeling has been extremely positive, for sure. Being able to talk about Counter-Strike and watch the games, and share what is interesting to me, as a player, is kind of an educational part, in a way, "Teaching" people about the beauty of Counter-Strike and the small aspects that people don't necessarily see, is something that is so, so enjoyable.

Maybe it's the age talking, as well, but being able to bring the passion of all of those details in the game and everything that is so nice about Counter-Strike, and doing it with the top talents in the business — that makes it very easy to be smooth on the desk, and an excellent production, as well —, I have nothing negative.

Getting players that are friends on the desk, as well, and being able to exchange there with them... Seeing everybody at the LAN is just a really, really good feeling.

Do you see yourself doing this in the future, maybe once you decide to stop playing?

Yeah, a hundred percent, to go back to the beginning of it, when we started talking, after Revenants there was a period when I was really wondering, "What the fuck am I doing? Am I going to play for years and struggle with the same teams over and over again in that space of Counter-Strike, or is it time?" Because I think I can either coach or be on the desk, in more of a passive role, if that makes sense, but after I returned back to playing, having been there now, it is definitely super enjoyable.

I can see myself being much more active, in that sense, if things start going bad with Counter-Strike and it's just a repeat of the things that have been happening. But yeah, I definitely enjoyed it a hundred percent — analysis and coaching. The main part is if people enjoyed it, that's what matters to me the most, and it's probably a good sign for the future.

You're going to Fragadelphia, as you said, and there's no guarantee that you'll find an organization by then. Who will be covering the costs, then? And do you think there will be an extra special feeling going to an event like that, possibly without an organization like, I guess, it used to happen for you back in the day before VeryGames, for example?

Yeah, for sure. It's a pretty funny feeling to get back to that, almost fifteen years ago, just going to those tournaments. Luckily, we don't have to bring the PCs anymore; they're there, so that's fine! But yeah, it's an initiative that we took. We talked to the team about it because I think it's a great opportunity to get to do it. Just pay, and you can go to a LAN and get VRS points, and see how many points it brings. It's a no-brainer.

If you want to stand out compared to other teams, you have to do something special, so yeah, we're going to Las Vegas for a three-day tournament. You know, it is what it is, jet lag's going to be a bitch, but you deal with it. The goal, initially, was just to go for it and put our balls on the table. We try to find a sponsor, a brand, or anybody that is willing to help us with that. We're in talks with several ones, as well, and then we'll see what happens, but I'm more in the school of, "This is an opportunity," and I don't know if there's going to be a lot of open LAN throughout the year.

The earlier you get into the top 50 to get invited into the CCTs and stuff, you want to be in that system and start winning as fast as possible. So yeah, just be special and stand out from the rest; that's where we want to be. The objective is very clear for us: We want to win Fragadelphia.

I wonder if some organizations out there are thinking, "Oh, where do your priorities lie? Are you a player who is an analyst on the side, or the other way around?" What is your main focus right now? "I want to play, I want to still continue my career for as long as possible?" And if for some reason, this team doesn't work out, you mentioned maybe going into coaching or becoming an analyst. Do you have any plans or are you just focused on taking this team as far as possible?

Yeah, that was the question I was asking myself and had to find the answer for myself. For some reason, I feel very confident that this could be one of my best years in the past ten years, maybe, in terms of output and everything. I've workd on very specific mechanics of the game, and the approach and everything. It's also a bit of a meta where French CS is on top, so I'm very familiar with that, and I have a very good idea of how to incorporate it, so I'm 100% committed to being as good as possible.

Being an analyst was something I accepted before building the French team, when I was exploring, so focus is 1000% on Counter-Strike. I wouldn't be working double or triple shifts while being an analyst, and I love it, it's such a great chance to be able to do that. The future will hold what the future will hold, and if it doesn't work out, then we'll see then, but for now, I don't really have my mind on this. It's more about how I can get this French team to stick together and grind and get back into the top 30. That's a good first part of us and where we can be.

You have a very interesting combination of players on the team, you being the veteran and the guy who has won pretty much everything there is to win, including Majors. How far do you think this team can go? Some of the players on the team still want to prove themselves, like afro, misutaaa, for example. You want to prove you can still compete at the highest level, so how far do you think that this group can go?

When I see teams like, one of the best examples is The MongolZ, where they came in and nobody knew their name, nobody knew the players. They just came in and stormed the scene and destroyed people. The same with 3DMAX, they were very, very high and doing very well despite people not necessarily expecting them to, too much. That's the kind of team we're aspiring to be, and it will come from two parts, I think.

Breaking through is the hard part. The focus there is going to be on being a really good unit so that you can climb through the tier 3 and tier 4 teams. That's when you need to be very consistent in your performance. Then, in order to go further, players need to be exceptional and individually more than average to break into the top 20, top 15, and be in those bigger events.

I think it's more a story in two parts, building up the basics, finding a very solid group, a very solid understanding of the game on the same level for everyone, and then transforming that into something even better once we have that basis of small adaptation and individuals shining big time.

I think the top 30 barrier is the first objective, then top 15, and then challenging top 5 and stuff. That's a big question mark because obviously they're excellent and all very big, proven players, so I think realistically, top 30 first and then top 15 is clearly doable.

You've pretty much done it all in the CS space, but you said that you think that this can be the best year in the last decade. I wanted to ask, what do you think you still have to achieve in your career?

I don't really look at achieving more, in a way. Chasing for objectives and stuff. It's more, I feel very confident with several mechanics in the game that I kind of changed and adapted for myself, and I feel like individually, in terms of skill, I can bring something very interesting to the table.

In terms of understanding the game and how it's being played, I feel like I still have more to give, and I can give more to the team in being a good unit and playing Counter-Strike in a good way that everybody understands and is on the same level. And in a French team, I haven't done that for many, many years. That's where I can see something special with this group, and for myself, so it's more inner fire that is like, "Fuck, you can't stop here." It feels so good to play. It feels so good to be on the server.

Giving up now would just be... I would kind of regret it, I think, and I don't want to be in that position. I'm lucky to have had a very good career, so that financially, it also plays a part, right, where financially, I can take a bit more time to give and dedicate myself 100% into it, whether it works or not, and then see afterward. My inner will is just too strong to go on the desk and resent players who are there, you know? That's a bad place to be.

Do you think that being on the desk and talking to the players, that also lights a fire in you?

Yeah, sure! And especially watching the games and analyzing every single game. For the team, I watch the top teams and the meta and how they play, and now I see all of the teams playing, and I'm like, "Wow, I would have done that different," that is more similar to the meta.

And I'm kind of thinking, "Yeah, I think I would be a big asset to this team, or that team," and that's where I think that if you want to be doing that full time you can't have those thoughts because you're going to start hating the players, hating the team, you're going to be bitter all of the time, and so if I were to transition into something else, I don't want to have that at all.

I want to be done as a player and be like, "Yeah, look, I tried absolutely everything, and this is it," and I don't think I'm there yet. I think that I have way more to offer, starting with this roster that we put together, and I'm very confident that we can make good things together.