arT: “We never lost [...] the passion and that is the most important thing"

Having made a statement on the international stage through placing top four at DreamHack Masters Dallas claiming series wins over Vitality and Fnatic along the way, FURIA came into the ECS Season 7 Finals looking to solidify themselves within the upper echelons of the Counter-Strike scene.

The team’s In Game Leader and sniper Andrei “arT” Piovezan is for many the spearhead of the Brazilian side with his audacious AWPing and aggressive calling. Shortly before the ECS Finals we sat down with arT to discuss the squad’s recent successes and unorthodox playstyle.

Allan: In the leadup to the ECS Finals FURIA placed top four at DreamHack Masters Dallas. Being an impressive result, what was your preparation like going into the event?

arT: Preparation wise in Dallas NRG was our main focus because although we knew that we could get other teams later we wanted to get the win over NRG first and we did not think much about the other teams. For practice is was more about our game style and we focused very much on that until a few days before we travelled when we focused a little bit on NRG. We knew it would likely be Overpass [against NRG in the Dallas group stage] so we just watched Overpass and did a little anti-stratting.

Touching again on your results in Dallas, during the quarterfinals FURIA comfortably beat Vitality including a 16-8 win on Nuke which was the pick of the Frenchmen. Why do think this was a convincing win for FURIA and could you talk through the Nuke game in particular?

I have a feeling our game style really counters by nature the Vitality game style, so I think it was something around this that made the match easy for us. Ask the others, we prepared the same way, we studied them a lot and we knew the maps but we did not really counter them, we focused more on our strats rather than on theirs. When we got to the CT side [on Nuke] we knew we had taken off a lot of the pressure off and we knew if we just play aggressive everywhere then they are going to fall because they need to win so many rounds to catch up with us. Normally we like to play aggressive and when they are under pressure it is even easier. I am not sure if we caught them off guard, they probably studied us on Nuke because of the Fnatic game [played during the Dallas group stage] and they knew we like to play aggressive, maybe they got caught a little off guard but I am not sure that was the main thing. I think we just played a really solid CT on Nuke, that is a really CT sided map and we knew if we played good overall we would close it out.

It seems fairly clear that aggression on the CT side is a staple of FURIA’s play, do you think it is important to play aggressively on the CT side and is this a philosophy that you instilled in the players?

Of course, that is the main thing about CT side and we like to play very aggressive. I always incentivise the guys to find the aggressive options, before the tournaments we try to look for every play, any good plays or different plays are fine, we try to collect as many ideas as possible so that we can use them in the tournaments. I think for every map we just find the new plays or ideas of other things that we can bring to the game.

As we have already discussed, playing aggressively on both sides is a key component of FURIA’s approach, on the other hand, does this mean that there are weaknesses in the fundamentals such as rotations and communication?

Our biggest strength is the rotations and communication, those are our base, without them we don’t have anything and we always rely on these. Our T side is more about rotations and communication than our CT side which is really strange because on T side for some maps we don’t even have tactics, on these maps we have some plays but most of the time we are doing the defaults with a lot of communication and of rotating. This is kind of how our playstyle evolved, for example on Nuke I noticed a lot of the teams like to play a certain way and they don’t expect a lot of aggression at certain spots. They are used to ramp being more calm, or door and the A site being calm with more outside aggressiveness, so we kind of catch some teams off guard.

Coming into Dallas I doubt FURIA was high on the radar of many of the top teams, do you think the surprise factor played a sizable role in your wins and will replicating your success be more difficult moving forward as teams will be study FURIA’s play?

I think this is a very important part, but it is not like we surprise now and we are not going to surprise in the future because as I said, for the tournaments and the matches we are always trying to find new things, changing up small parts and always bringing something new. I just see infinite possibilities for CS in the maps, there are so many options that the other teams cannot really counter because you cannot expect everything, you can think “they play very aggressive, we need to counter them” but how can you do that in the game, okay you can tell the A players to play anti aggressive but how does that work, there are just too many things, it is really hard to counter the aggression.

The majority FURIA’s current lineup came together back in February 2018 with ableJ joining in October. How important has it been to keep the same players and work through problems instead of making player changes?

Sticking together and working for a long time is the biggest factor for us because for our playstyle we need that chemistry within the team and when the guys are all on the same page it is easier for me personally because they know what I am doing. They know when I say certain things what they have to do and it takes some weight off my shoulders because I don’t have to talk them through everything. For example, I might say “I am going to make a play here so you guys stay close and aggressive on A or B”, here I don’t have to tell them how to be aggressive on A or B so it is easier for me.

The coach of the team is guerri, what does he bring to the team from the coaching position?

He is everything to us, he is helping us in every way because we are a very young team and as young teams you have a lot of out of game problems from being young, the chemistry out of the game is a really big part. I rely on him a lot, when we are facing opponents he is the guy who collects all the information, saying “they like to pick this map”, I trust his knowledge and he is guy that likes watching demos and seeing what teams are doing because I don’t really watch demos of anybody, I like to take ideas, he is the guy that brings ideas and anything that I like which is also good for the team we will bring into our game.

Earlier you mentioned that having a young team brings problems outside of the game. What is the atmosphere within the team outside of the server and has it improved from the team’s early days?

We have been through a lot together and recently it is getting much better because we are getting where we want, we are achieving some things that we have really wanted for a long time so it is getting better every time. We have had some loses that were very tough for us and we kept losing against smaller teams which was really frustrating sometimes but I think we did a very good job to keep our spirits up. We never lost the will to get better, the will to play, the passion and that is the most important thing. We had some steps back like any team does but we kept going very hard and more recently we have got very excited with our achievements and it keeps going up.

FURIA would go on to make the grand final in London’s SSE Arena, falling short to Vitality at the last hurdle. Although having bested Astralis across three of four maps during the group stage arT and company continued to impress on the international stage. Time will tell what lies ahead for this exciting group of Brazilians as Counter-Strike’s open circuit bared host to their ascension from relative obscurity to global recognition.

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Photo credit: StarLadder