Ricardo "boltz" Prass is the in-game leader for Immortals and is a CS:GO Major veteran, having attended three Majors with Keyd Stars and Luminosity Gaming. Though boltz has found his fair share of success with his current squad, he has not yet achieved his primary goal: bringing them to a Major.

So far, 2016 has been a crazy year for the team. After they were picked up by Tempo Storm at the end of 2016, they saw meteoric success, winning the CEVO Gfinity Pro League Season 9 Finals, but they were not invited to ELEAGUE, reportedly because of a dispute between the league and Tempo Storm's owner.

Tempo Storm sold the roster to Immortals, the second big move for them in six months. As Immortals, they fell short of qualifying for the Cologne Major, but they went on to win DreamHack Summer 2016 nonetheless.

boltz took the time to speak to theScore esports about the squad's formative months and their future as part of Immortals. The team's new coach Rafael "zakk" Fernande also took part in the interview and provided translation.

If you could sum up your year so far, how would you say it’s gone?

boltz: It has been good. We started with Games Academy in January, and now we are representing a huge organization like Immortals, which is a privilege for all of us.

In terms of the game, it has been a good year for us, but we still need to prove ourselves. I mean, it's good to win tournaments and gain experience, but our main goal is to be in the Major, and we are messing up this part.

Champion dh summer versus Nip pic.twitter.com/GpS8kAgaga — Ricardo Prass (@IMTBoltz) June 20, 2016

In a post-DHS interview with HLTV, João "felps" Vasconcellos said that you guys are "lacking a bit of experience" and that you "need to play teams like Astralis, LG, Na`Vi, NiP." Have you considered moving to Europe to have those teams as potential practice partners?

boltz: No, felps meant that we need to play against them in tournaments, not in practices. The pressure you feel playing with a crowd against a good team is totally different than when you practice; we need to play more tournaments against the top-tier teams.

You came into the IGL role shortly before winning the CEVO Season 9 LAN. Would you say that it was because of your leadership, or were there other factors in play?

boltz: I just gave the players more freedom to be aggressive in the way they want to be. In addition to that, everyone started to play better because they felt stuck before.

About a month after CEVO, you guys decided to pick up zakk as a coach, though a lot of people didn't think you really wanted a "sixth member" on the team. Was there any truth to that? Why bring in zakk?

boltz: zakk arrived in the team to be our manager at first, but things changed in our bootcamp after seeing that he had potential to be a coach and can also speak English. We needed someone who was good to live with with, spoke English and was a former player of CS:GO. zakk had all these qualities. felps also lived with him in Portugal and told us that he was a really chill guy.

After the Major qualifiers, we gave him the chance to be more active inside the game at Dreamhack Summer as a test, and he really did well in his role.

I have to say that inviting @IMTzakk was the best idea we had in a long time. What a man. — Henrique HEN1 T. (@IMTHEN1) June 5, 2016

In another interview with HLTV, zakk said that you don’t really like being an IGL. Can you expand on this in your own words? What are the ways that the team could theoretically fix this?

boltz: In everybody's opinion I have a good aim, right? But that changes when I have to pay attention to what everybody is doing and try to coordinate a strategy in the middle of the game.

I would like to pay attention to what I'm doing and stick with the role of second IGL, but I think we can’t fix that now, and I will have to live with this, haha. In time I will get better.

What about you zakk, would you consider being the team's in-game leader?

zakk: I don’t feel prepared to assume that role. You have to know every single thing about the team before being an IGL, and I'm still learning what things each one of them like to do inside the game.

I like the role I’m doing in the game now. I help the guys when they are a little lost and show them stupid mistakes that can’t happen in this level of game, but who knows about the future right? Maybe I can relieve boltz of some of the pressure.

How has being a part of Immortals been so far? Can you compare it to your time with Tempo Storm?

boltz: We have a lot to thank Tempo Storm for. They gave us the chance of our lives to prove ourselves and show the world what we can do.

Immortals treat us like professional athletes, and I never seen such care and good people inside of Counter-Strike. They care about our sleeping, the food we are eating and if we are exercising or not.

We have a performance coach (basically a nutritionist/psychologist) who is helping us to have more healthy habits, and I’m sure this is going to reflect inside the game pretty soon.

Conclusion: Immortals are amazing.

It seems like you have a bit of a lull until after the of the Cologne Major. What do you guys plan to do with your free time?

boltz: We are in Brazil right now, spending some time with our family and girlfriends. It’s really important to see them at least twice in the year, it renews our energy to keep playing at our top level.

As far as CS:GO, what plans and goals do you have for the future?

boltz: We still have a lot to prove for us and everybody else. We have never been in a Major yet with this team, which really sucks, and our main goal is not to choke in the next qualifiers and finally reach where we belong.

Talking about personal goals, I want to stick with my team so we can fix our mistakes, because I believe we can be Top 1 in the world.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.