Kikis interview

Q: **How would you summarise the 2018 year?**


A: I know I should tell you a sweet story or a comparison but I'll just say that it was an escape from a hole that was being digged for the last 2 years. More precisely, since I left from G2. That's when my career started going downhill. In Vitality I was able to go back on the right track and to the next level.

At the beggining of the year I created a team - Szata Maga. This project failed though, because my midlaner was taken to the LCS immediately after the team was created (Selfie). Then I joined Illuminar Gaming, and we completely stomped Polish tournaments. Afterwards, I received an offer from Vitality and thanks to that I'm now playing on the top level again.


Q:  **How did it feel when you were slowly getting to the top?**


A: I'll tell the story from the very beggining. At that time, at Illuminar, we were having a 2-month break. Most of the players went on holiday but I stayed home and played soloq 12h per day. I was just hoping that I'll get an offer from LCS and I wanted to be ready to accept it. And I got it. My initial conversation with Yamato looked like this:


Yamato: Yo, homie what do you do atm?

Kikis: Nothing. I just play soloq and I'm contracted to Illuminar but they allowed me to look for offers.

Y: Can you come to Berlin?

K: Yeah, sure

Y: I'll call you tommorow.



And the next day I received an offer to be a substitute jungler. I went there and shocked myself and everybody around me. The coach was shocked the most. He was impressed by my game knowledge and mechanical skill. He also praised my aggression and confidence. I played against the best junglers in Europe on my second day in Berlin and I just styled on them.


Q: **How did the process of becoming the starting jungler look like from the inside?**


A: After a few days everyone realised that I'm more useful to the team than Gilius. I was expecting to play only one game that week but I played both. Even Gilius was surprised to see this. He was shocked and it affect him a bit. In his AMA on reddit he said that he wanted to change teams but the transfer failed. Of course, Yamato knew about everything so when Gilius showed that he doesn't wanna be a part of the team anymore, the decision was made to move me to the starting jungler position.

I knew that I'm doing very well when I received MVP 6 times in a row. I saw that we have a chance to go to Worlds but a month before, I thought that I won't be back in the LCS until 2019. When we lost against Schalke, I knew that we still have a chance, but I stayed composed until our game against Misfits and the final, where we needed Fnatic to win. Jiizuke was very emotional during the Misfits game and he was sure that Fnatic will win but I was just patting the guys on the backs thinking "please don't lose, Fnatic".



Q: **Are the games that you dont play more stressful?**


A: The FNC vs S04 series was the most stressful series of my life. I had zero impact on the result. It was horrible, I was so stressed for a few hours. But after the last game was finished, I let it all out. I forgot about everything and just cried. I even forgot everybody that came up to me to congratulate me. I was just so happy. I couldn't believe that I qualified to worlds after all these years. We celebrated with a proper party and then we focused on our bootcamp in Korea.


My time in Koera went as expected for the most part. My first time in Korea was 7 years ago but I didn't have enough time to even see anything there. On the bootcamp I saw a lot of cool things and tried a lot of food.  I love Asian food.

After the bootcamp in Seoul we went to Busan, that's where the group stage was played. I was expecting more hype. We learned a lot on the 4 weeks long bootcamp, I learned more than during my 3 months in the LCS. I'm not gonna be kidding, European junglers are not the best junglers in the world. Of course, our team improved a lot too, we focused a lot on macro.


Q: **How was it in Busan?**


A: When we got to Busan, I didn't feel that it's Worlds time. I thought that everything would be happening around it, I was expecting constant noise. It was the opposite. Before the first game, I felt a little bit stressed but when I sat in front of the computer, I felt like on the EULCS stage. I just didn't feel any difference. The place where we were playing wasn't too big and there wasn't too many people either. I was playing against one of the best teams in the world but I actually felt comfortable.

I was convinced that we'll show up good and we'll win a few games. We were surprised that we won against RNG, we thought that we were gonna win against C9 and then try to win a game to get out of groups but C9 turned out to be one of the best teams of the tournament.



Q: **Why did you leave Vitality? People accuse you of leaving for money.**


A: Money is one of the aspects that decide about transfer moves. Every player looks at money because our careers are not that long. But do people really think that I would change my team only because of that? Vitality is an organisation that has money and they even received 20M euro recently. People who work there are great and they treat their players very well. Money wasn't the problem.


Q: **So what was the problem?**


A: It was a matter of not fulfilling a few conditions. Both sides of the negotiations didn't agree on a few things so we made a joint decision to not renew the contract. I was looking at my offers and one of these was Rogue. I was interested in this offer because of the way that they approach everything. The manager explained the entire project to me. He showed me an awesome presentation. I realised that they want players who will trust them and work hard.

Also, I looked at the names that stand behind the organisation - Imagine Dragons, Steve Aoki and more. People here have a lot of ideas and there's one thing that will be announced soon and I'm involved in it. They have a lot of plans to create content with me. You'll see what kind of person I am and it'll be easier to contact me. It was all said to me so I knew that they have specific plans about me and Poland.

It's a chance for me to start from the beggining and stay here for a long time. It's really frustrating that I constantly change teams. It's not like I'm choosy or something. I don't wanna be stressed about negotiations over and over again. Here I have a chance to become the face of the team. There's no star player in our team. We can make our own brand here.


Q: **How do you rate your teammates?**


A: The team is made of players that I consider to be good. I know that they didn't have a chance to show up. I've known that HeaQ is good for like 1.5 year now but he didn't have the right teammates to show it. Wadid is obviously awesome, he was in the semifinals of worlds so I know that he'll do well with HeaQ. Sencux was really good in 2017, this season was a bit worse for him because of reasons that I can't tell you. I know that he'll get back on the right track now. Profit wasn't on good teams either and he always played well.

No one in our team has a good opinion in the community. It's our chance to make a brand for ourselves and make history. We all signed deals for 3 years so in the first split the organisation told us that they'll be happy if we get to playoffs but we aim higher. The beggining will be difficult but we'll work very hard to show that we wanna be one of the best teams in LEC.


Q: **You didn't talk about the coaching staff**


A: Fredy is our coach. I'm just getting to know him but from what he said I noticed that he's not a coach that has a very strict rules. He won't be sublime and I'm not expecitng a situation where he will make a speech that will make us fall from the planet. He'll be focused on aspect that we should improve. We have a lot of people that will help us out of the game. I'm talking about sports psychologists, cooks and a lot more.


Q: **Who was responsible for building this team?**


A: I was the second contracted player here. I was involved in the negotiations since I was allowed to - from the beggining of the free agency period. I was told then that I can be the captain, who will be leading this team because I have a lot of experience. It's a general assumption. We didn't need any star player because I was already in the team. Every new player was discussed about with everyone on the team - coaches, players and analysts. If I wanted, I could veto somebody. I had a really significant voice regarding the team.


Q: **You're on a bootcamp in Korea right now. What are you doing there?**


A: We will be here for 20 days: 3rd dec until 21st dec. We wanna get to know each other. Only our ADC and the toplaner played with each other before. We need to synergise because we'll have only 2 weeks in January to do it. We're starting sooner because we wanna catch up to teams that have been playing with each other for a longer time.

Additionally, there's more teams available to scrim in Korea because there's a tournament right now. A lot of teams in Europe are on holidays.


Q: **What place will Rogue take in the spring split?**


A: I can guarantee playoffs.


Translated from: http://eweszlo.pl/post/kikis_w_rogue_mam_szanse_zostac_twarza_zespolu