Stefan “fuffenz” Möller has had a mixed start to the PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds PGI EU qualifiers.
Fuffenz was a star player for Rogue on day one. His heroics in the third game of the finals gave his team a crucial third-place finish going into the weekend that could decide whether Rogue go to Berlin for the 2018 PGI Finals as one of Europe’s three representatives.
Heading into day two, Fuffenz talked about his day-one performance and what he expects to see over the course of the weekend.
In that game three yesterday, you were a lone wolf facing impossible odds. What was going through your head during these final minutes?
Fuffenz: I saw the whole squad of Penta up on the hill and I was looking at how many where alive—there was like 10 alive—so there had to be a lot of snakes but I can’t shoot, I have to stay alive so that I got some more placements. I also knew about the two FaZe guys to my left, which basically meant I had three to my upper right.
Luckily for me, Penta decided to rotate north where there were three guys that I didn’t know where they were exactly, so as soon as I saw Penta got two people knocked, I turned around, saw the knocked guys and thought, “I need to get some kill points.” I started to finish those guys off, one shot the third guy and finished off the fourth, and yeah, then it was a one-vs-one.
Yeah, because you got rid of your gear and FaZe saw it.
Yeah, I was surprised Penta didn’t see me. A level-three backpack sticks out pretty badly.
Of course getting that win was a huge boost of confidence not only to you, but to your team, as we saw in game four when you got your second win. How did these victories affect your confidence after a sluggish start?
We needed those wins as we had a really bad month before this event. In the first game we couldn’t really do it as we got gate kept by Method and then Penta flanked us and yeah… but the second game we should have done better. That bridge camp that Penta did was very well executed. We were saying in that game “should we take boats?” and we decided not to and yeah, we got bridge camped.
You had a mixed day yesterday with placements across the board. What did you guys do today to be more consistent and give teams like Liquid a run for their money?
Our biggest issue is… if we get east circles, we really need to work on that and, as you said, get higher consistent placements.
We have watched the VODs, of course (from yesterday’s games) and we need play our game, and don’t make mistakes like last game… we need to fix those mistakes and we will get better placements.
In the qualifiers beforehand, Rogue came in sixth and failed to qualify for the finals originally. A team was then disqualified and that gave you a second chance to come into the final stretch. What went on at the time and what have you changed to see you challenging for those top spots this weekend?
Those qualifiers… we came off a LAN finals and we didn’t really scrim a lot because we had a lot of qualifiers and we played those. In that qualifier, it didn’t go like we wanted to. We made a lot of mistakes and that’s most likely why we ended up in sixth place. We were lucky that the other team broke the rules.
Obviously this has happened with Liquid too in these qualifiers. They finished sixth and went to the finals through VALHALLA’s disqualification.
It’s kinda funny that us and Liquid are the only teams to have won games (on day one) when we didn’t qualify naturally.
It kind of feels like you’re trying to prove your point that you deserve to be here now.
Yeah, we’re a top 20 team in EU, but how the qualifiers were made didn’t really… get the 20 best teams [together in the finals]. In the first games, the teams played one game less, which just screws up the seeding system.
From the teams that are in the finals and didn’t have the best first day, who do you look at as a potential dark horse this weekend that could pull off a shocking win?
WTSG. I expect them to do a lot better. They’re really good. In our second win, we managed to fight them off at the edge as we got the circle. They had to rush into us and we managed to kill them in that game, which basically made us win the game because if they take our spot, they would have won.
Finally, what does Rogue need to do today to challenge for those all-important places for Berlin next month?
Make less mistakes overall. You’ll always make mistakes in a game, but it’s how you handle the mistakes and how you work around them. Minimizing mistakes is our top priority and secondly, have clear comms. The comms have to be clear and good and… yeah, and pray for a bit of circle luck. You have to pray for luck in this game as you think about what other teams will do.
We know though that Penta will camp the bridge and we’ll be careful about that.
