The stage is set and teams are ready to take on the BLAST Open London playoffs starting tomorrow. After rejoining the team just a couple of months ago, Helvijs “broky” Saukants has been back on form and played a huge part in Faze’s success so far in this tournament.
Just before their game against G2 Esports, I fought a valiant battle against Avanti West Coast trains and got a few minutes to speak with Helvijs “broky” Saukants about how he spent time off, introducing jcobbb and his Nando’s order.
Sophie: How you doing, broky?
broky: I’m doing great. How are you doing?
Sophie: Yeah, I’m good, thank you. Had a bit of a rush this morning, but here we are.
How are you finding London so far?
broky: I arrived pretty late yesterday, so didn’t have much time. But I have been here plenty of times, so it’s always nice to be here.
Sophie: That’s good, that’s good. What’s your favourite thing to do in London? If and when you ever get time?
broky: Go to Nando’s.
Sophie: What’s your Nando’s order?
broky: I just get some chicken with lemon herb and that’s pretty much it.
Sophie: Okay. Yeah, I’m the same, to be honest. So to get into the event, the first question I’ve had to ask you is you’re in a monster form since coming back to Faze.
What changed during that break that you had?
broky: It’s hard to say. I just had some break, you know, the team decided to give me. They decided to give me a break, I guess, and I just took the break more seriously. I had a stressful, stressful half a year. We didn’t do good in the results. So coming back to the team, I started working out and eating healthier and things like that. So maybe that’s, that’s the reason.
Sophie: Okay. I mean the physical as well as the mental part of game.
Were you playing a lot of CS during that break?
broky: I started playing right after the major started trend around that time. So I started playing more. But I didn’t play during the break, no.
Sophie: Ah, okay, cool. Well, I mean, sometimes it’s nice to have that mental break, isn’t it? Because I guess you’re not the only “new” player to come onto the team. You’ve got a brand new guy as well.
How is he slotting into the team right now?
broky: Yeah, we didn’t have much practise with him. So coming into the team, he. It’s like me when I first joined Faze, I was like shy. So I think he just needs time to open up and things like that. So it’s a bit fun to see, like kind of myself from the outside as well.
Sophie: Yeah. So what do you do to sort of make someone feel a bit more confident? Like first of all, how did you feel more confident and how can you help him?
broky: I think just making jokes and, you know, I think it depends on each person differently. Some people are just open, open naturally. Some people are just shy. So I think he just needs some time to show his personality and things like that.
Sophie: Yeah, that’s exactly it. So I wanted to touch a little bit on the map pool that you guys have been playing. I’ve seen, you know, you’ve only had a few series, but I’ve seen a lot of Dust 2, you even 13-0’d Ecstatic on Dust 2.
So what’s the difference maker on this map? What makes Faze so strong on this map?
broky: Everyone likes this map. I mean rain especially, it’s his favourite map. So I think it just favours us as a team. I think it’s more like a pub map. So it helps. Especially with jcobbb coming in, we didn’t have much practise. So it’s a bit easier to play this map than others. So I think that’s one of the main reasons it’s our favourite map right now.
Sophie: Ah, okay. So it’s rain’s favourite map, but what’s yours?
broky: I would say Dust 2 as well.
Sophie: Ah, okay. Why?
broky: It depends on how good we play as a team. But now since we played Dust 2 was good, so I would say Dust 2 is the best for now.
Okay, cool. That’s great. Okay, so I just had one last question for you.
So next up, tomorrow you’re going to be facing G2. If that goes well, you’re going on to FURIA. Is that going to be easy, do you think?
broky: It’s never easy to play in playoffs. It depends who you play. I mean, we know who we play now, but it doesn’t matter who we play in the end. It’s just we take each team game by game. So yeah, pretty much we just play jitsu and then we focus on Fury after that.
Sophie: Absolutely. Okay, thank you so much and good luck for tomorrow.
broky: Thank you.
