yxngstxr: "We're trying to wing it and play as good as possible"

The Swedish rifler is looking forward to his first arena outing.

Heading into the CS Asia Championships with a tough string of recent results, HEROIC's woes were further compounded by the need for a stand-in, with Olek "⁠hades⁠" Miskiewicz stepping in to replace Alimzhan "⁠Alkaren⁠" Bitimbai for the duration of the event.

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HEROIC add hades as sub for CAC 2025

Despite the circumstances, HEROIC have carved out a way to the playoffs of the Chinese event, pushing past B8 in a battle of stand-ins before besting FUT for the honor of securing a place in the Shanghai Oriental Sports Center.

Date	Matches
CS Asia Championships 2025
14/10/2025	HEROIC Finished 16:12 B8	Match
15/10/2025	FUT Finished 0:2 HEROIC	Match

Shortly after his team qualified for playoffs, Simon "⁠yxngstxr⁠" Boije sat down with HLTV to discuss reaching an arena for the first time, HEROIC's games against B8 and FUT, and the team's rough results prior to CAC.

Or you can listen to the interview here.

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Here with yxngstxr after a hard-fought win over FUT. You're headed to the playoffs, how are you feeling?

I mean, awesome. Even with a stand-in, it just feels awesome. It's like the first big event playoff for us as a team, and for me personally, so it means a lot, so I'm super happy.

You're coming into this event with a stand-in, who you haven't practiced with. Did you really think that playoffs were gonna be a possiblity?

From last season as well, I know we can put up very good CS. hades has a lot of experience, and fluent English, so he talks very good. Everyone always thought there aren't top dogs in this tournament either. We were coming in with no expectations, but high hopes.

I am curious about the B8 game. Were there some extra stakes, playing against hades' teammate kRaSnaL?

It was an intense game. It felt like we had the game under control, some rounds went to their side. kRaSnaL is a good friend of me and hades, so it was a bit of a fun rivalry there, but it wasn't too bad.

Pretty straightforward start against FUT, but a close second map on Overpass. How much of a fight did you expect from FUT, especially since they may not have been the opponent you expected?

I mean, we actually played when they were under NAVI Junior in Sangal, one year ago. And we knew they are a bit crazy, doing these crazy plays. We were just trying to be as aware as possible, and instead of letting them do what they want, try to face them and fight fire with fire.

How far do you think you can go this event?

Who knows? Maybe it's a Cinderella story.

It has been a rough past few events, but things are going well here. Why do you think things are going so well here?

At the start of the season we made a lot of roster changes, we changed coach, analyst, a lot like this. It's hard to instantly get everyone on the same page. It's new personalities to get to know. Now that we've played one or two months with each other, it's starting to click a bit better. We saw EPL, we started to get some better results, but still rough. Now we're trying to wing it and play as good as possible.