K1CK player Denis “Denzaay” Brendstrup: “For now, I think there is still a lot of work to do, but we’re seeing some improvement in our communication, even though Jacuu isn’t our in-game leader, he comes with clever ideas during our games.”

Coming fresh from their win in the second Apex Legends Global Series Winter tournament, K1CK has managed to find back their form after a roster swap by acquiring Jacuu. Now qualified for the Playoffs, we talk with Denzaay about their recent victory.

So first off, leading up to the tournament you guys made a roster change which saw Kimczu leave, which came a bit out of the blue to some, what would you say caused this need for a change?

Denzaay: I don’t even know where to begin with, the problem with Kimczu in our case was definitely skill-related. We took third place in Summer Playoff’s and immediately after that we ended up losing games, even though our mentality hadn’t changed a bit. I’m not going to lie, but we really lacked communication with Kimczu. I’m not saying it didn’t exist but it was definitely something that was lacking, which we thought was unhealthy for the team.

This sparked the idea of changing the roster, we then asked ourselves if there was anyone from Poland capable of playing on the high level we expect. Siebakk came with an idea of Jacuu whose team was disbanded recently. They had some past experience together from previously playing together, so we decided to take the gamble and worked hard the past 3 weeks. Jacuu had already played in other cups and scrims but didn’t have as much experience with higher-tier games before.

For now, I think there is still a lot of work to do, but we’re seeing some improvement in our communication, even though Jacuu isn’t our in-game leader, he comes with clever ideas during our games.

Touching on the practice, as you mentioned Jacuu didn’t have as much experienc yet, was there anything specific you guys practiced on?Considering you were also already qualified for the finals for OT2

Denzaay: We decided to devote ourselves to play as much as we can, to “feel” our team play at first glance. We had to squeeze as many hours in those days before OT2 as possible, I’m talking about Scrims, GLL Cups, various other lower-tier tournaments, and some ranked. In the end, I think the biggest issue was finding the correct team composition, we tried a few different things, but ended up with our standard Gibraltar, Wraith & Crypto composition with Jacuu taking over Kimczu’s role as Crypto.

From there we taught him the things like rotations, looting paths, contest defending so he fit in with our ideas for the game depending on different game scenarios. I think in the end he is a much better player, my only real concern was his ability to withstand the stress there is on the games in the finals.

Do you think that having already qualified for finals might have helped with preparation? As you didn’t need to go through the weekends qualification rounds

Denzaay: Yes, and no. Yes in terms of fighting through the hardest part of any tournament are qualifiers, especially with a new member, since that’s the most random part of the tournament, skipping that was definitely a helping hand for us. We could focus on the final games, and plan what we could do for them. Instead of praying that we don’t get contested too much during the qualifiers.
No, because you’re also not playing those games, which are good for the overall experience for us as a team. There’s also the fact that Alliance, which is the number one team in Europe, didn’t get to finals for the second time, This also definitely shows that really those qualifiers are harder than people think. During the weekend we have also been analyzing all the qualifier games with an extra pair of eyes from outside with nightraven.

Now during the finals, you guys had a fairly decent start, but come game 4 you took a massive win which propelled you up in the standings, can you tell a bit about how this game went?

Denzaay: First we saw we got a zone on the Dome, which for us is literally the second-worst zone it could end on. Moving on from that, decisions were made to loot as much as we can and then move on, rotating late through Launch Site. We ended up being pinned down by Obey Alliance, but somehow I survived getting lasered to 1 hp. After healing up, we understood that the problem might only escalate further so without a second thought, we decided to go play a lot more aggressive here, since we were low on time, and it could only get worse if other teams finally rotated into to the zone, which would get us sandwiched. It was a long fight, but a victorious one.

That really cheered us up. From that position, we farmed a lot of frags on teams who were late with their rotation. We took over the roof on the building with our teleport to secure a much better position where we had a much wider angle to shoot people from at the same time. Of course, we weren’t the only team with that idea, FotM tried to contest us, but ended up getting melted, and dying within a matter of seconds. That ended up boosting up our morale by a lot. We knew we had this so we just went like a tank through everyone, without anyone having enough force to stop us.

How does it feel to head into the following games after having such a succesfull game?

Denzaay: It felt great, we knew that if we didn’t screw up too much, we’d be sitting in the top two and that gets us a guaranteed place in the Playoffs. That sort of determined our playstyle for the following two games, which now I kinda regret.

We shouldn’t be forcing our gameplay to rely on just getting points and playing as safe as we can, It’s not our cup of tea, as we can see in those 2 last games. For example, while we were rotating on to Refinery, at the same time we were getting shot by Nessy from behind. Typically I would call to fight them till the end, but since we were so ahead of the competition I made the decision to withdraw and run away trying to take a better spot before them. That ended up Siebakk getting killed, and us later on by other teams using our disadvantage of having just 2 people. For future tournaments, we’ll try to not make our game decisions be influenced by the outcome of games before.

Now that you’re qualified, and we immediately have the following tournament upon us, which teams do you think we’ll see qualify for the playoffs in the upcoming weekend?

Denzaay: 789 and Underrated. 789 are a really consistent team and Underrated is probably the best fighting team at the moment.

Looking at the playoffs, with Championship qualification on the line as well, how do you see your chances to finish in the top 5?

Denzaay: After our last victory with Jacuu, I think we are on a good way to achieve 5th place. I’m not going to lie, that’s enough to make us happy, any place higher than that will be a cherry on top.

Lastly, anything else you’d like to add?

Denzaay: I’d like to thank our Polish community for staying with us even during our losses, but especially we would really like to thank Nightraven (@nightravenswing on Twitter) for his last-second help with our positioning problems, we really appreciate that!