ATLANTA -- It's the second day of ELeague and two teams face elimination: Immortals, the second best team from Brazil, and Europe's FaZe Clan, a team that just replaced Fabien "kioShiMa" Fiey with former Astralis in-game leader Finn "karrigan" Andersen.
The map draw is out -- Mirage, Train and Overpass -- and many say the matchup favors Immortals. FaZe unexpectedly come out strong early, putting down Immortals 16-2 on Mirage, a map which Immortals chose in the draw, in a game that didn't even look like a competition. But Immortals bounce back on Train, which has historically favored FaZe. The series is tied 1-1.
Going into the final map, the playing field is slightly in favor of Immortals. At halftime, the teams are tied 8-7. The two squads continue to battle back and forth until the game comes to a 16-13 close. FaZe is the victor and they move on to face Cloud9. But while the team beats Immortals and later Cloud9, adopting karrigan has changed what they were best at; the team has a new identity and it's still trying to figure it out.
"In the end, I think it's pretty good because we get more practice and we get to know each other way more," karrigan tells ESPN. "We played six, seven maps this tournament and that's exactly what we practiced before coming here, so I'm pretty happy that we came through the best-of-threes, coming through these marathon matches; we can learn from mistakes and the map picks we had. Definitely not going to pick Train right now because we need to fix that."
Karrigan joined FaZe after the team had a rough year, similar to that of his former team Astralis. The latter benched karrigan on Oct. 11, per coach Danny "zonic" Sørensen's decision, leaving him inactive for a short period of time.
"One step at a time, baby steps, learn from mistakes, learn the way we want to play." Finn "karrigan" Andersen
"Me, my team, and the coach found out that we wanted to play differently," karrigan says. "In the end, I couldn't see my play the way they wanted to play as a team. I didn't feel comfortable in that, and they didn't feel comfortable in the way I was calling. [...] That's why we decided that we couldn't keep on and that's why I got benched."
Earlier last week, he transferred to FaZe and immediately flew to Atlanta to play. With only two days of practice, FaZe managed to join mousesports as the second team to qualify for the ELeague playoffs out of Group A. Karrigan says part of that is because the team has given him reign to reassign players to new roles and fix a team that has failed to make a deep playoff run this year.
"When I joined Team SoloMid back in the day, it was the same situation for me; I get everything I want, everyone's listening to me, and the whole trust around me is there. And that didn't happen in Astralis, in the end, because of the way we wanted to play as a team," he says. "I think that's the big difference for me is that I actually have a team again where I feel reborn as an in-game leader and actually can think and call how I want. That's really important for me as a player and to underline that, I'm still a good in-game leader."
But unlike Astralis, which once was a Danish powerhouse team in 2015 under the Team SoloMid banner, FaZe Clan is a multi-national team. Its players hail from different parts of Europe and speak various different languages, something uncommon in European Counter-Strike. For karrigan, he says it was an attracting factor that led him to this team. Moving forward, he just wants the team to fix its past mistakes and improve slowly, even if there are setbacks along the way.
The team will travel to São Paulo, Brazil this week to compete in the ESL Pro League finals. There, they'll meet fellow European foes Ninjas in Pyjamas and Team Dignitas, as well as North America's Cloud9, NRG Esports and SK Gaming.
"I think that the most important thing is to move in the right direction. Even if we get set back and lose all the matches [at ESL Pro League finals] in Brazil, I still think that it'll work slowly and just because we lose a best-of-three doesn't mean we don't qualify for playoffs in Pro League," he says. "I think that one step at a time, baby steps, learn from mistakes, learn the way we want to play. As long as the team believes in me, I believe in them and pass that around the team. I think we can do wonders."
And in December, the team will compete in a major qualifier for a chance to return to Atlanta for the ELeague major in January at the Fox Theatre. "The biggest thing we want to aim at is the major," Karrigan says. "First of all, we have to go through a major qualifier, which is a major within itself if you look at the teams, so that's going to be pretty hard; that is the main goal for us. And we get on the other side of the New Year, then I want to make different goals. But right now, take baby steps, take one tournament at a time, learn from mistakes."