The European mixture started off the quarter-final series against Renegades slowly, as the Australians went off to grab an early lead. However, FaZe managed to find their way back into the map and secure a confident 2-0 win in the end.

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karrigan is very confident in their Cache

After the match, Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen revealed that he was hoping Renegades would pick Nuke, so they get to play the map after the rework, and that he expects SK to bounce back after some shaky results at the start of the year.

Back in Sydney last year there was that play with the veto between you and gla1ve regarding Cobblestone, now you kind of challenged Renegades to pick Nuke into you here. Tell me about that, do you have particular fun playing mind games with the vetos?

I mean, vetos are always kind of fun because it is something I prepare a lot for, going into tournaments and going into matchups. I feel like you can always challenge people in the vetos and make them do mistakes.

I tried to make Renegades pick Nuke because it's a map I really want to play with this lineup, it's a map that hasn't been that bad for us, when you look at that when we play Nuke, we play the top-tier Nuke teams. So mousesports has proved a lot on that map, before the change was made, and we also played NiP.

So I wanted them to pick Nuke against us because I knew that if they picked Cache, it would look like it did today because Cache is a map we have worked so hard on for the Major, and since the Major we've really shown good results, I think we have eight or nine wins and one loss on LAN. So that is our new Mirage I would say, and I just wanted to have a challenge.

You picked Inferno in the end, for your map, and it was a lot closer than a lot of people expected. So run me shortly through the key things that went well for them.

Our Inferno has been an issue since the Major, where we lost against Cloud9. It's something we worked on, so we decided to pick Inferno even though it wasn't the best pick to do against Renegades, but we need some confidence back on that map.

By playing an official you can correct the mistakes, and the mistakes we did in the Major we didn't do this time. On the T side we could execute with 25 seconds left, we baited out grenades, which we didn't do at the Major. Maybe that's why it was a little close because they had a good start on T side with 5-0, and they played really well.

Since the Major, SK didn't have that great results with summit and now here. Do you think we could still see a return of the SK - FaZe rivalry that we had last year? Will it be back in 2018?

Yeah, I definitely see SK returning. I mean, they had to play with felps at the Major, came back and had one or two weeks to prepare for summit. You really have to see how they lost these tournaments, they lost to Liquid in the deciding match twice, so maybe they have a bad matchup against Liquid, like we have against SK, and then they lost to Cloud9 in the upper-bracket final of summit. These two teams have been on the rise, Liquid is an unknown factor still I would say, so I think it's hard to read into these results.

I guess you have to see in Katowice, if they don't reach the final, semi-final, then I think there is a small dip in form, but if I know SK, this is just one tournament and they will be back in form and winning titles here and there.

It's either Natus Vincere or Astralis in the semi-final and then potentially the final ahead. What's the feeling like?

I feel like it's a good matchup no matter who we face in the semi-final. For the rest of the tournament, once SK is out it is obviously easier for us, even though I really want to play SK, it feels like I don't have the chance to play them sometimes.

But besides that, Na`Vi - Astralis is going to be a good game and no matter who we face they are probably out for some blood. Since we beat Na`Vi two times in a row now, here at StarLadder in the group stage and in the semi-final of the Major. Astralis haven't beat us in a BO3 since Katowice last year. I think they really want a BO3 win instead of just BO1's.