Swisher on Rebels loss: "We just didn't play like a team"

M80 entered Katowice under tenuous circumstances, losing their IGL with maNkz taking a mental health leave, requiring coach Rory "dephh" Jackson to stand in. They also exited Katowice with a disappointing finish, losing 0-2 to Polish side Rebels after a bo1 loss to GamerLegion and a bo3 victory over Rooster. After the elimination match, Michael "Swisher" Schmid spoke with Ryan Friend about the event's expecations, how dephh in the server works with the team, and the final elimination match.

Tough way to end. The vetos weren't what we were expecting at home, talk us through that. Were you expecting Nuke to be played?

When I was going through the veto prior to the game, I thought it's probably 75% Ancient, 25% for Nuke. We were aware of it, but they had no games on it with this team. Their core, they were ORKS before, had some games on it, but not as this team. So when they picked it, it was kind of expected, since they are the underdogs in this situation, so they wanted to get that extra map that we wouldn't be as comfortable on.

And then on Nuke, you guys seemed less comfortable on the CT-side compared to the GamerLegion game. Obviously it's hard with dephh, I'm sure positions have become a little messed up there, was there anything that you felt Rebels had one over on you?

Honestly, I think they had good prep. The first round, they triple HE'd reck back site. They obviously had good prep coming into this match, or Nuke at the very least. They had an idea of how to approach it. I got super unlucky like four of five rounds and missed kills. The game was so much closer than it looked. When you can't win either pistol, you just can't win a game when you're not doing any of those things.Honestly, there were a lot of rounds that I had the opportunity to bring it back and I fumbled it.

Talking about maps, what happened Vertigo T-side? It's one of your best maps and it didn't seem to be extremely strong. slaxz- didn't seem to be the same player that he was previously. Did you feel that they prepped the hell out of you or what?

I don't know. Honestly, even prior to this game, I said they are a team that don't have a lot of reps together, so if we get to late round situations, that's where we're gonna flourish and they will not. They won pistol, we ecoed them and won the next two, put ourselves in a fantastic spot to dominate that T-half, but the next three gun rounds we got single or double entried in the first fifteen seconds of the round. There's nothing you can do about that when you're losing bad duels, duels that we discussed we shouldn't be taking. We just didn't play like a team. We weren't playing like how we always played. It was the individual decision making from almost everybody that put us in a shitty position.

There was a lot of back of forth yelling between you guys and Rebels, did the mental get affected at any point?

No. Honestly, we were frustrated. We felt there were a lot of rounds that could've gone our way that didn't. We were making mistakes, not listening to communication. People are communicating things, things were repeated four or five times, and somebody wouldn't do it. Obviously that's frustrating for us as a team. I think by the very end, it was pretty bleak. Rory [dephh] isn't feeling well either, he's feeling pretty sick today. That's another great situation on top of everything. It's a bummer, but it was fun. It's all banter.

reck had a great Nuke game.He's been one of the best support players that we've seen, and he seems to shine in M80. How important is he to this team?

He's vital. dephh was saying when he was coming into this event that yes we don't have maNkz, but technically we don't need a fragging IGL because we have the three of us star riflers and then slaxz- who is just fucking fantastic. reck is just so insane. He's been super vital to our success.

You touched on maNkz being out of the team, that's a tough situation. How is the team trying to handle that sudden loss?

It was super frustrating for all of us. It kinda had been suggested that he had been struggling a little bit, but he never really talked to any of us about anything. It's really put us in a terrible position. I understand him needing to take a break, but it put us in the worst position possible because he told us very last minute that he's not gonna fly here with us. It was a "are you kidding me?" type of thing. I understand though. You need to focus on your mental health [...] It put us in a really terrible position, but I understand we just have to move onward.

Looking onward to the Americas RMR, you have about a month to prepare for that. Without your IGL how are you going to be preparing for that?

We have another extended bootcamp after this event until the 12th of February. Basically the whole duration of Katowice we're going to be practicing out here. Obviously we were planning on practicing with maNkz, but we just have to adapt to practicing with dephh. That's gonna be pretty beneficial to us if we use it properly. Then I think we're taking a small break, then slaxz- is flying to NA a little early so we can practice a little bit in NA.

The game against Rooster was stellar. After that match did you think you had a shot to make Katowice?

100%. We knew that we fucking lucked out beyond belief with the bracket. It was better for us to lose against GamerLegion just the way the bracket lined up. It's kind of funny. We definitely felt confident after convincing wins against Rooster, we expected today to go a lot better. We did a little prep, as much as we could, we just weren't the M80 team.

malbsMd had an interview with Dust2 Brasil after the game against GamerLegion. He said you guys had nerves in that first match. Do you think it was nerves or GamerLegion might genuinely have been better?

Against GamerLegion, our T-sides are gonna struggle without our IGL. Nuke is the most IGl-dependent map in the game at the moment I'd say, so that's gonna be our most struggle map in the pool. There was a few good points but we were just kinda getting slammed on our T-side. If we had our full roster, I'm gonna be honest, I think we would've 2-0d our way through. We felt really really confident as a team.

Despite the hard losses, in consideration of all the factors going on, do you take away any positives from these days?

Definitely, I mean LAN experience is invaluable. Especially in more stressful environments like this with higher stakes. We did get more practice with dephh now that everything happened and we're going to be using him for the RMR. I'd say those are the positives.

M80 will look to regroup and strengthen their forces ahead of the Americas RMR starting in early March. There they will hope to take of of five Major slots awarded to the Americas region.