snav: "I'm thankful to BOSS for letting me join"

After many years of playing with timbermen and the organizations that picked up that core of players, Wyatt "snav" Phillippi started a new chapter in his career with BOSS, who ended up signing with German organization BLUEJAYS at the end of February.

BLUEJAYS are having good results with snav as the new IGL in place of Matthew "Cryptic" Whitmore, and sit at the top of the ESL Challenger Season Season 49 North America. They carried on this good form to Fragadelphia x Block 2025 reaching the semifinals ahead of Dust2.us' Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore's interview with snav. The two discussed how he is feeling about leaving the timbermen era of his career behind and how BOSS ended up signed by BLUEJAYS.

The full interview can be found below on YouTube, with key snippets underneath.

Overall, it has been a pretty successful year for the BOSS/BLUEJAYS lineup since you joined as the IGL replacing Cryptic, who has since gone to Nouns. Right now you're the top squad in ESL Challenger League, had some good runs in qualifiers, and overall had some pretty confident showings against some of NA's best teams. How are you feeling about the team two months into this new squad?

It's feeling good for sure. It's been fun practicing with them and just kind of getting to know them. It feels like I've known them a lot longer than I have already.

I'm excited for the because I think we've had a few like low points already, like our last ECL game. We kind of got dominated by Marsborne, but that's kind of the lowest of the lows, so moving forward we should do a lot better, I'm excited for that.

Overall, your career has been defined by playing with the same group of players, your shane's, your dare's, your nosraC's. If there's one to describe it, it would be familiarity, whereas with this new BLUEJAYS lineup you came into a quartet that was already established, that already had a team culture, that was already familiar with each other. What's that like for you, as someone who spent so much of your career with the same guys, and then come into a completely new lineup?

It's definitely a little bit difficult because when I first joined, I felt that they're used to a different calling style, Cryptic's rather than mine. I feel it took a little bit of time to get used to or took a little bit of time for them to get used to how I call, but I think we're doing a pretty good job so far, making good progress. I'm just excited to keep playing with them.

The discussion always has been you always wanted to prove yourself as a leader, someone who can be like a bona fide star in North America, someone who isn't defined by past discretion. Does it feel good to be served with a new team where you can kind of finally move on from the timbermen era of your career?

It definitely feels great, it's definitely one of the reasons I wanted to join a new team. Joining BOSS is kind of moving on, so I'm thankful to them for letting me join when I messaged them.

One other really surprising thing about this new lineup is the fact that you were just signed by BLUEJAYS, a German organization that never had a NA team, that's been out of Counter-Strike since 2023, and their last roster was North Macedonian. How the hell did this happen? How did BOSS ended up finally getting signed by a German organization?

I'm pretty sure they just reached out to Warden through email and then we went from there. We just talked after that, I wasn't that surprised because back on timbermen a long time ago we actually talked to them at one point, so they've been interested in a North American scene for a bit. They messaged us and we just went through with it.