JT: "It feels good to finally be winning some games"

Complexity are in the midst of a winning streak, and just got their first top 10 collar at PGL Bucharest.

Complexity kicked off their run at PGL Bucharest by upsetting Falcons in a one-sided series on Train and Dust2, tallying their first win at the LAN and 12th consecutive victory in a row after clearing the tournament's North American Qualifier and the YaLLa Compass Closed Qualifier in Europe undefeated.

We caught up with Johnny "⁠JT⁠" Theodosiou after the feat, who shared his thoughts on the win against Falcons, the ongoing streak, the progress Danny "⁠Cxzi⁠" Strzelczyk and Nick "⁠nicx⁠" Lee have been making since joining, and Tiaan "⁠T.c⁠" Coertzen's surprise mid-season departure from the team.

You can listen to the episode here.

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Give me your first thoughts after that great, pretty convincing 2-0 against Falcons.

First of all, I think we just played really well. I'm really impressed with the guys on how composed they were today. We even lost some stupid rounds, just at the beginning, the second round of Train, we messed up really, really badly, and we managed to stay composed, wait until the buy rounds, and just execute the game plan that we planned.

Yeah, the team has just been playing really well the last month or so. I think the work that we've been putting in, which has been a lot of work, has been paying off, and it's good to see it in at least one match so I'm hoping we can keep that moving forward in the tournament.

You're on a 12-0 streak now, but this is your first bigger collar, on LAN, at a tournament of stature. Tell me about this streak that's going. How have you found yourselves winning everything after a pretty dire beginning to the year?

It feels good to finally be winning some games, even if most of the games were against lower-level teams. I think the games against NA teams and the qualifier we played are not at the same level as a tournament like this. I'm still really happy with having such a long win streak, but we're not thinking about it too much. We're trying to keep improving, see what we can do better, and keep practicing.

I was saying at the beginning of the year that our practice was going well, but we were struggling in the matches, and that was kind of depressing, but now practice is still going well, and the mood is good, everything is good, and we're at least winning some matches now. I'm just hoping we continue to win matches against tier one teams like today.

Where's the team at? There was a big change at the beginning of the year with EliGE leaving, and recently there was also Tc leaving, which we'll talk a bit more after, especially because you'd been together for such a long time. You have found some stability, and even if you're not the best team, you're still beating Wildcard, metizport, and now this. How is this transition going, and where are you in Complexity's new journey?

A lot of people, maybe us included, underestimated how big of a jump it would be for nicx and Cxzi. They were playing Advanced last year. I know that Cxzi played at a higher level before that, but the teams they were playing against were at a much lower level, so to make the jump straight to tier one tournaments, which is basically what we did at the beginning of the year, was going to be a struggle even if us experienced players can help them out and show them how to play these games and win these games, it's still gonna be a struggle.

I think just putting practice into play now has been the main focus of the past few weeks, so it's not really about adding a million strats or changing a lot of things, it's more about making sure that the guys are comfortable in what they're doing, comfortable in the strats that I'm calling, and working on the little things like who's going to be calling the mid-rounds here or what kind of reactions we're going to be playing. I think that's paying off, but we're just going to have to keep playing and see how it goes in the future.

It'll all be a part of the process. You beat the NA teams online, then maybe a bit better teams in Europe online, then you come to LAN. It'll all be growing experiences for them, as well. Can you tell me a few of the things you've noticed in their progression?

The main thing is, firstly, that they're just not nervous. Well, they're nervous but not as nervous as they were at the start, so just getting some game time helps. Getting some experience on LAN has helped with that. I think the second thing is that these guys, when we picked them up, one of the main reasons we picked them up, was that they're grinders, they're playing like 60-70 hours a week, and they're putting in a lot of time.

I think just being in Europe for extended periods of time and also just being with a more structured team has helped them get more comfortable with this kind of level. If they keep putting that amount of work in, we'll start seeing some more good games from everyone.

Tc was the head coach for such a long time, and your relationship with him even goes back to South Africa, so how did that come about? What happened there, and how has it been adjusting to life after Tc?

Tc is like the only head coach I've ever worked with, really, in the last eight years, so I think that adjusting has been a little weird. There's a lot of things that he used to do that I didn't realize a head coach is in charge of, and just having that relationship with someone for so long has been obviously really different, in practice, but in terms of the change, I can't really speak about that.

The team has been working really hard still, without a coach right now, and we're going to continue trying our best no matter the circumstances.

How is it not having a coach standing behind you, other than prep and stuff like that, the physical presence during the games? How is that, and are you looking forward to getting someone new?

It's hard to know what the difference is right now. We've been winning every match right now, so it's hard to say until we actually start struggling because I think that's when coaches make the best difference — when the team is struggling, and now we haven't been.

We have to wait and see before I can answer that. I think for everyone on the team, especially myself, it's going to be a lot more work outside of the server to prepare for matches, analyze our games, stuff like that, but like I said, the guys are grinding really hard right now and I think we're working as hard as we can, so it hasn't been a struggle yet.

The departure, and not having a coach immediately come in, has that created problems in the structure or would you say... Yeah, you're winning now, but are you expecting somebody to come in now? Is something happening?

We try not to think about it too much, to be honest. I'm letting management do the work on that until they get closer to the finalized details, but yeah, the team was surprised. It was kind of sudden, obviously, in the middle of the season, but I think the team is hanging on, and it hasn't been too much of an issue yet.

You just missed out on a spot at the Major, you were a few points behind M80, and sadly this match won't count towards the VRS ranking [for the Major]. How are you looking forward to the MRQ? Do you think it's at least a good moment for you to go into it?

We're expecting to go there, win, and make the Major, basically. It kind of sucks that it might clash with some other events we qualified for, so we're pretty disappointed in that, but the plan right now is to do as well as we can in Bucharest, get back, hopefully the jet lag doesn't affect us too much, and just qualify for the Major directly.

Beating Falcons 2-0, is that a big confidence booster for you in this tournament? It's one of those tournamnets with good teams here, but not the super elite teams, so maybe a good place for a team like yours to fight against teams in similar situations.

I mean, it feels great, especially the new guys. They didn't have any LAN wins yet, so getting some LAN wins under our belt is a big confidence boost. I haven't spoken to them really after the match. We just finished the game, but I'm just happy for them to finally get some wins under their belt, and I'm sure that next time they'll feel a bit more confident than we are right now.