Boaster: “My goal is to be the greatest leader of all time in VALORANT”

Fnatic are back on top of Europe, once again crowned VCT EMEA Stage 1 champions. Their 3-0 dispatching of in-form Team Heretics sent a message to those they’ll meet at Masters Toronto next. We spoke to their in-game leader Jake “Boaster” Howlett for an interview after the win.

What did you make of kaajak’s performance today?

Lee Jones: Surely he’s completely shut up those who had doubts after Kickoff.

Boaster: Yeah, it was insane, wasn’t it? The first round on pistol — they’re flooding back onto B, I’m full blind, I come out of the blind, and kaajak’s killed all four, and I’m like, “Oh, nice. We won the round”. He’s different gravy when it comes to being able to kill. And it’s just my job as an IGL to try and set him up as much as possible, give him as much impact as possible.

Were you happy for crashies to finally get his regional title?

Boaster: Yeah. We were talking about it a few days ago and he’s like, “Man, I really want to win”. He’s like, “Alfajer, I know you won trophies”, cause Alfie’s like, “Eh, I don’t care”. He was like, “Bro, I’ve never won a regional, I need to win one”.

Lee Jones: How have you found the experience playing Team Heretics a few times in quick succession?

Is there some sort of meta-game that forms when you’re playing the same opponent back-to-back?

Boaster: I think it’s just, we kind of know how they play. They’re obviously a great team and originally I used to be kind of like, “Oh no, we have to play Heretics. They’re a decent team”. But after our loss against them, I really wanted to get revenge and I wanted to bring a lot of energy.

Boaster: When we beat them 2-0, something just clicked within me and I was like, “Actually, if we just bring our energy and believe in ourselves and if I believe in the team, we can do really well”. And it just simplifies it, you know, that we don’t complicate it too much. Play against them, try and get the reads, people hit the shots.
[It] got a bit squeaky bum time on Fracture today and a little bit on Icebox, but I eventually found the read on the Icebox attack side with the fakes and we managed to step over the last two rounds, which I’m happy with.

Lee Jones: From a viewer’s perspective, it sort of looked like TH was done by the time you were six or seven rounds up on Icebox, but then they suddenly came back, and the Fracture was very close too.

Were you at all surprised that they fought back a bit? 

Boaster: Yeah, I think with the Icebox, it was just that we needed to find the gap. I wasn’t too worried because the one round that could have been ours, they had a Sova ulti and a Gekko ulti, which they ended up using which is amazing for the next round. And we still had enough money to buy. And then after that, we had to get the read and figure out what was going on. So I wasn’t too worried yet because we had some ultis coming online and they had nothing left.

Fracture, however, they played a different comp and we eventually found a solution by taking fast A main because they couldn’t actually fight from us. I think after that we could have done a bit more working of the map after taking A main. We were very obvious — take a A main, try go A – and against Heretics, who were like flooding in and like playing heavy rotations, [it] wasn’t the best idea.

Lee Jones: Particularly following FNS’ retirement, there’s been quite a bit of debate about who is the GOAT IGL of VALORANT?

Do you think it’s you?

Boaster: Nah, I don’t think so. I think there’s a lot of good IGLs in the scene in tier one. Especially valyn, he’s not necessarily the GOAT, but he’s definitely [a] really class IGL and he’s putting up numbers on the scoreboard whilst also being able to lead. His team hasn’t won a big trophy yet, but they’ve been close and I think it’s their due one. It’s just whether they can close it out when it comes to these Masters.

But it’s so difficult. It’s so difficult. I don’t think I am, but my goal is to be the greatest leader of all time in VALORANT. So I just got to keep striving and keep going for it. And that’s kind of my goal as long as I’m just 1% a day, etc. I just won a trophy and I’m coming up to 30 years old. So if I can keep that going, that’s really inspiring to older people, I think. And I actually did quite good shooting on Icebox. Have myself or give myself credit for that.

Team Heretics’ finals curse has lengthened now. What do you make of that record?

Boaster: They had a big chance to beat us in the one before Shanghai. But we obviously had quite a few tech pauses that day with Leo’s illness and stuff. And I think maybe they just ran out of energy, ran out of fuel. And I think it’s just- I don’t know really.

They’re maybe a team that doesn’t have that person who can not make it get to squeaky bum, panicky mode. They need one person who can keep it calm. I’m not saying I’m the person that does that for our team, because I can be obviously quite stressed at times. But I think we definitely try our best to keep it as positive as possible and try and do a reset, we have to reset after a lost round or whatnot or a lost map.

But yeah, we just had a lot of fire and energy when we wanted to play them. And maybe they didn’t have as much energy. It’s really hard to say until I watch it back and I see whether they’re screaming or not. I remember hearing something like, someone said when Heretics start losing, their comms go really quiet. They’re like the quietest team or something. So it’s interesting to see. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but someone said that somewhere, I don’t know where.