[hkes_show_google_ad] Marco “Snappi” Pfeiffer is a stalwart Counter-Strike player from Denmark and the in-game leader for Heroic. His team saw mixed success in 2016, but look to have a stronger run in 2017 with a new roster in the books. Ahead of his games at IEM Season XI World Championship Katowice, Snappi spoke to theScore esports about Heroic’s roster changes and Danish esports. Heroic had its fair share of the limelight in 2016 after winning Power-LAN over the likes of Astralis and the Team Dignitas roster, but haven’t really been able to maintain that same form since. However, after some recent roster changes you guys look to be a force in 2017. How would you sum up your 2016? How are you feeling about this “fresh start” to 2017? In the late summer of 2016 when the lineup was created, we had the chance to actually practice and develop our playstyle for over a month before attending anything apart from open qualifiers. In that time we learned a lot, we swapped positions, swapped in-game leaders, let go of our coach and generally set ourselves up for success. We solved a string of problems in our playstyle, were unpredictable and therefore beat almost every team we faced. We had an alright showing at Northern Arena, losing out to Cloud9, who at that time were on their way up. At Starladder we had another good showing but lost to Dignitas, in a match that, in my mind, we shouldn’t have been lost. They would probably say the same thing, but I feel like we surely threw that one. Later on we were forced to sell gla1ve [Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander] to Astralis, and because we had five events afterwards with zero practice with niko [Nikolaj “niko” Kristensen], we had a string of mixed results. 2016 was overall a good year. We showed that we can beat any team in the world, but at the same time we lacked firepower to do it on a consistent level. The roster changes we made for 2017, getting both niko and JUGi [Jakob “JUGi” Hansen], is what we hope will solve that. Both are individually better players than both gla1ve and Friis [Michael “Friis” Jørgensen]. I will always miss having gla1ve by my side as I felt like we worked really well together, but at the same time I now get more control of the team and it’s now my job to utilize the firepower I have been given. I believe this team will be a Top 10 team before the summer of 2017 and I also believe we can go further if we develop like we imagine we can. You guys notably transferred gla1ve to Astralis. How do you feel about your former teammate winning the ELEAGUE Major? What effect could that victory have on Danish esports, considering Astralis were also honored by the city of Copenhagen? I don’t root for Danish teams in general, but the difference in Astralis’ case is that me and gla1ve were good friends and teammates for over a year, so I’m really glad he succeeded. We are, after the transfer, still good friends and often discuss both in-game and out of game related stuff, making it impossible not to root for him. The fact that we’ve gotten a closer relationship to Astralis has changed my mindset a little. We share offices and can, in the future, use each other as practice partners on a different level than what you are used to playing different teams online. With that said they are still our rivals, and we would throw them to the wolves if that would put us in a better position. Regarding the effect of the Major victory, it has certainly been positive. The Danish media has finally opened their eyes to esports with the whole RFRSH setup and other prominent organizations and individuals in Denmark showing interest. The ELEAGUE Major victory was just the icing on the cake. I believe everything combined in the future will help Danish esport grow even faster than it currently does, so it’s surely had a positive effect. JUGi is a pretty well-known rising star, but what made you guys decide to release Friis? In order to beat the best teams in the world, we felt like this was a change that needed to happen. Being the AWPer is the easiest role to put in solid numbers, and we just needed our AWPer to be a star player in order to succeed long term. Friis is a great AWPer but with a more stationary playstyle, which made us play around him, while JUGi is more versatile and has a presence all around the map. We need to learn how to make it easier for us and him now, cut down on the high risk, high reward plays and let JUGi work the map. Right now we need time to grow and make sure everyone is comfortable in our system, hopefully we can still get some good results in the process getting there. With JUGi, everyone now knows that it is in our own hands to make sure we will develop and reach our goal. You’ve been the in-game leader for Heroic since its formation, even when gla1ve was still on the team, but this is still a relatively new role for you. How have you adjusted to that role? This is a new role for me. In 1.6 I would sometimes do mid-round calls and join in with suggestions, but I never had the full responsibility to make a plan every round, even when things went south and people didn’t hit their shots. In CS:GO I played as a stand-in during early 2015, but really started playing again late 2015. I felt eager to get back, seeing how the scene had developed since I hung up the mouse. At this point I was the AWPer for Copenhagen Wolves, playing alongside gla1ve and HUNDEN [Nicolai “HUNDEN” Petersen] and learned a lot from both. I still had not reached 1,000 hours in CS:GO, so I thought stuff that worked back in 1.6 could still be viable. With months going by I picked up on stuff that worked and what didn’t, while also understanding why HUNDEN and gla1ve wanted to do stuff in certain ways, which I didn’t agree with at first. I feel like my in-game leading style is a mix of both, as I felt like both had their pros and cons. The biggest adjustment I still haven’t made is mentally. In 1.6 being a rifler and in CS:GO being the AWPer, I was always one of the top fraggers. My confidence has, in that regard taken a big hit, which makes me dig a hole when I start out bad and leads to occasionally awful individual performances. I still need to adjust my mindset, accept that I put myself in a tough spot to set up my teammates and not let bad starts affect my later performance or in-game leading. Have you guys thought about getting a coach? With me and gla1ve together, and having experienced players like MODDII [Andreas “MODDII” Fridh] and Friis, we didn’t get much value from a coach, but now with three new faces — valde [Valdemar “valde” Bjørn Vangså], niko and JUGi, we surely got the need for one. We are looking into options and hope to announce a more experienced guy to help out me and our youngsters. IEM Katowice will be the team’s second LAN of the year already, but the first for this specific lineup. What are your first impressions of the team? What are the shortcomings you guys have identified and what are you doing to fix them? We started playing with JUGi less than a week ago, so we haven’t been able to sort our playstyle yet. We had at least a best-of-three official every day with JUGi. For now we have to rely on our individual skills and the system that we already built. The team has a lot more talent than it ever had, so we can rely more on individual players, than we could before. Every time we lose a round, we try to fix the mistake. Usually when you play with the same lineup for months, you experience most situations in different tactics, but we are not at that point yet. We have to accept that mistakes will be made, try to lower the amount and play well enough so that it won’t hurt the end result. But the talent on this team is so great and I am confident we will be a strong contender in the future. [hkes_show_google_ad]