karrigan: "The main issue we have is we don't have a pick that's 100% safe for us"

The FaZe captain sat down with HLTV after his team locked in a top-four finish at the $250,000 competition in Dallas, Texas.

FaZe, despite currently being the third-best team in the world, have had a mixed 2023. The European combine won the Intel Grand Slam — and the $1 million that comes with it — back in March, but have since struggled to contend for titles, missing out on the playoffs at IEM Rio before being knocked out of the BLAST.tv Paris Major in the quarter-finals.

Date	Matches
IEM Dallas 2023
03/06/2023	ENCE 23:00 FaZe	Match

Alas, the Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen-led lineup are showing much better form in their campaign through IEM Dallas, where they are now in the semi-finals after a 2-1 victory over G2 and are set to face ENCE on Saturday at 22:00 for a spot in the title decider.

HLTV caught up with karrigan shortly after FaZe guaranteed a top-four finish in Texas. The Danish in-game leader touched on the series versus Rasmus "⁠HooXi⁠" Nielsen and company, how the team is dealing with motivation amidst signs of burnout, what is stopping the team from reaching their ceiling, and how it feels to have the American crowd on their side in the quest to make the IEM Dallas grand final.

If you don't see the embedded SoundCloud player above, you can listen to the interview here.

karrigan, congrats, you're through to the semi-finals. Didn't have an easy time of things with Ancient, can you tell me about that map?

When we started having a good result, we automatically started playing more passive and when we tried to play aggressive it was too late. I feel like we were saving a lot. I don't know how the rounds went down, but it felt like we maybe made some mistakes or aim fails, and that's why. Maybe the game could have been over already, but I have to rewatch and make sure it doesn't happen again.

In the second half there was a point when they were hitting B a lot, and there was this last-second fake that came in at 13-14. What was that like from your perspective?

In the end we got kind of outplayed, and sometimes it feels like maybe we outplayed ourselves. That's the biggest question to just make sure it doesn't happen again. We played without information a lot and when we lost an area we didn't re-push and regain it, and that's why it was so easy for them in the end to outplay us. In my opinion we outplayed ourselves by not pushing as we usually do, like on Inferno.

You said at the Major that you had a lot of late nights sometimes, thinking about fakes and stuff like that. Any late nights so far at this event?

I've been more laid back. I think I prepped for the first time today, the other days I didn't prep. I just wanted to make sure that we're playing off of feeling, we're trading well, we're playing the basics well. Obviously today I prepped way more just to make sure that we have some good ideas and we can execute them well. It seems like it worked well, especially on the CT side of Inferno, I think me and rain had a really good game plan on how to punish them.

Yeah, that Inferno bounce back [after Ancient] was really good and ropz's 1vs3 was immense, as well. What was that like on the server with the team's comms?

That 1vs3 was insane. It just feels good that we're winning these strange rounds again and I think that's the old FaZe Clan, when we have some Deagles we get very dangerous. That 1vs3 from ropz was a beautiful play from him, and it's good to see him in that shape. We need him if we want to win the tournament.

Something ropz told me at the end of the group stage was that the team isn't putting in 100% right now. You all almost sound burnt out in a way, and it just seems like the reality based on the schedule. How do you feel about that?

Yeah, the Paris Major, the whole story there and the whole grind we went through there, was a long process. What we're doing right now is we're giving 100% of the effort and motivation and game time we can, and that's just how it is. We can't always be at 100%, we can't always peak, but sometimes playing 20% less, preparing 20% less, makes you also play better in the game and sometimes that's how CS:GO works. You have less playing time, but you play better.

I think that's what's happening right now, we are playing a little bit less and we feel less pressure, and therefore we are playing better CS. I know it sounds strange, but that's how it feels sometimes, when everyone at the Major had expectations to win and then you come here and there are less expectations to win but just enjoy the game more and play the best CS we can.

I overheard you on the desk saying it's hard to hit your A-game right now. What do you feel is missing?

It's a little bit of everything. The individuals have shown up here and there, we need them to consistently show up, and our map pool has been good but still there is not a set pick we can do. That's the main issue we have right now, we don't have a 100% pick that's safe for us every time, or two picks like we used to.

Also, some of the main concerns and main problems we had in Paris were communication and understanding each other, but it feels like now that we're playing here in the arena the communication is better, and the other day when we played Cloud9 and Liquid the communication was better. That's something we tried to focus on today, the trading was better and the communication was better, and that's something we can fix right now. That's our main focus this tournament to try to improve that.

Turning attention to tomorrow, you're going to go into this rematch against ENCE. They gave you some trouble during the group stage, they beat you 7-16 on Anubis and 13-16 on Overpass. What's the change up that you're going to do this time, what's the plan to get one over them?

I think ENCE played really well, but I don't think we were there. I'm expecting us to play better, and we played better against Liquid and Cloud9 than we did against ENCE. ENCE is a really good team and obviously playing here with the crowd they have less experience, but obviously they are really great players and have played on the big stages nowadays. I just expect a really good game, a very explosive game. I like to play them even though they beat us the last two times, I think it's a very fun matchup, and hopefully we can manage to do better this time because we need to.

You didn't make the IEM Dallas grand final last time around. This time you have a second chance and the crowd is cheering for you. How does that feel?

You can really feel that NA is here to support Twistzz and that is super fantastic. Hopefully that will continue and hopefully we can at least have an NA player lift the trophy here in Dallas. We just want to do the best for our fans here. There's not an incredible number of fans, but they're super loud and it reminds me of the old ELEAGUE where there were 300 people, but it was so loud inside the studio. Super good crowd so far.