Florence on CLASIA: "He calls, he frags, what can he not do?"

Right after their Big L win, Dust2us' very own Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore was able to catch Sebastian "Florence" O. and they both talked about the preparation for the grand final, the stand-in situation of Phantom Troupe and the rumor going around about Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski giving them a hand in the legendary LAN event.

You are a back-to-back Big L champion, how does it feel?

Feels great, honestly, because this time we were going in with my ECL team plus CLASIA standing in. We didn't prepare much. We had our stratbook on us, but honestly, we were kind of pugging it halfway, doing our strats halfway, but we played way better teams than last time and it felt like a small LAN at the bigger LAN.

The highlight of that improvement of teams in the Big L is facing off against the British squad 7AM in the final. What can you tell me about that match-up?

I asked stamina what their best maps and worst maps are. Honestly, our Nuke is pretty good, we were confident on it, but since CLASIA is standing in we can't really do much because it's a very structured map, so we had to ban it and stamina told us that we should pick Inferno because it's puggy and it's very free, but it went into OT and didn’t go as planned. They played very much better than us on that map, but we were confident in every single map that we played.

Ancient, the second one, CLASIA just went off, I went off, Cryptic went off and we were winning clutches and we won two clutches on a 1v4 or something. So Ancient was just pure individual [skill] and then on Overpass, we practiced that map for so long with so many rosters that we're just very comfortable in there too. All maps were very close and props to them for making it an interesting game.

You said CLASIA is a very important part of the win and you've got a chance to play with him again at this event after last playing with him at the previous Frag Chicago. Tell me about playing with him, what kind of qualities does he have as a player?

I don't know what people think about CLASIA, but he brings on a lot, especially in the puggy environment, because obviously, he doesn't know our structure. He's in all of our team chats and everything, so he sees us discuss our stuff. He knows what kind of things we do on our team because these are my closest friends, so I trust them with that. He kind of knows a little bit about it, but he brings in pretty much everything. He calls, he frags, what can he not do? He's a very emotional person, but it's good because he's pointing out our mistakes and we're fixing them on the spot.

freshie wasn't able to make it. Can you go into some details about that and was his absence felt on the team?

Yeah, obviously freshie's absence was felt on the team. He's a very unique person. He couldn't make it because his passport is being processed by the Canadian government and with the current influx of people trying to immigrate to Canada, his passport is being processed for quite a while. The first time he sent it in, he didn't send in too much information so he had to reapply at the beginning of the summer and it takes like three to four months, but hopefully, we're going to go to the next Fragadelphia event with him.

I've heard going around the venue that there was a chance you guys were turning up to this event with EliGE. What can you tell me about that?

Well, I did ask EliGE if he could stand in, but his schedule didn’t work. He said it'd be fun to go to a Frag and we were actually talking about the Chicago one before Cologne or something, but he had to go practice.

Does that mean you have a pretty strong relationship with EliGE?

Yeah, he's one of my closest friends and he helps me a lot in-game and out-of-game. He's a very interesting person to talk to and I really appreciate, appreciate him, Tony [CLASIA], and GooseBreeder for being my friends.

You guys didn't perform up to your expectations in the main event. Does winning the Big L give you some more confidence as you head into ECL?

It does, it does. We had a very tough bracket and we obviously didn't win any best of threes, but it still felt pretty decent playing against these teams. It's a great experience playing against Apeks and oNe, who we can't beat. This is a little confidence boost for the ECL season. We have three matches next week and I'm pretty excited for that because we did get moved up, but I feel like we kind of still deserved it. We were one best of three away.

Unfortunately you guys recently lost your organization. With that in mind, are we gonna see you guys at more LANs coming up in the following month?

Yes. We were under Kinship because we're just friends with the org owner and he gave us just as much as he could. Everything else was paid for either by elsewhere or by me. I told the boys that if we need to go to LAN I can always afford it because I work in an internship for my college, so I get bonuses from that. So obviously LANs are a very big important part of this team and we're going to get many more.

Phantom Troupe are currently 1-1 in ECL, following a win over Unjustified and a loss to MIBR. Florence and co. will be looking to improve upon that record tonight, as they're set to face oNe later today at 07:00PM.