Jack “Gizmy” von Spreckelsen didn’t know he would be at EPIC.LAN 43 just a few short weeks ago, but after getting invited to be part of Cai “CYPHER” Watson’s impromptu mix, Gizmy jumped at the chance to play another EPIC in the supremely talented “Verdant fe” roster.
In a year of highs and lows, the British aggro-rifler went from being a new addition to Monte Gen to quickly being promoted to a tumultuous main roster before moving back to a Monte Gen roster who are quickly progressing up the HLTV and Valve Global rankings now under his leadership as IGL.
In taking the helm as IGL of Monte Gen, the 20 year-old comes across as focused and confident in his ability to not be defined by setbacks. In a wide-ranging interview, Gizmy sat down with UKCSGO to reflect on his year so far, how UK CS has shaped him and his joy in returning to EPIC.LAN.
You’re here playing with “Verdant fe”. How did that come about?
It was actually me that came up with the idea. We were just looking for names, and we just thought it would be funny ’cause hopefully we’ll play them in the finals and it will just look funny in HLTV.
How come you decided to play with these guys?
Every EPIC there’s different mixes who want to play, and I was asked by quite a few different people. Most of them I said no to because they asked me a month and a half ago before I had my schedule. These guys made it quite a sudden plan, so I was a bit closer to my schedule so I knew there wasn’t a tournament so that’s how I had free time.
You’ve been everywhere in the UK scene. You mentioned Verdant, you’ve played the RMR with those guys. How does it feel to step back into the UK scene for this event?
It feels good. I haven’t been to a UK LAN in newly two years probably. Maybe a year and a half. So I haven’t seen a lot of these guys in person so it’s nice to meet everyone again, even my old teammates and stuff and it’ll be fun to play everyone. Having lots of fun in the games today.
I wanted to ask about your year. You’ve gone from playing with Monte Gen to being promoted to Monte for a short period. Can you talk about what your experience was like in the main team and how you feel it went?
It was an unusual experience I guess cause I got picked up and quite quickly we were having to go to these big tournaments. There was quite a lot of work that had to be done in a short time, and there was also a lot of pressure. It was a really good experience to be honest, but I didn’t think things went perfectly – obviously, if they did I’d still be on the team.
But it was a good experience, learned a fair bit and it makes the current games I play a lot easier because I’ve experienced the step-up so now whilst I’m playing tier 2 online games, it’s a lot easier compared to that.
You played Liquid and Faze etc. When you play those big teams do you feel more nervous or are you more worried about not having time to get everything right in your own team?
Most of the nerves would come from within the team. You want to do well for your teammates and you don’t want to let people’s expectations down, rather than who you’re actually playing.
Of course it’s an official but we’ve played Faze and Liquid in prac at different times, like it happens. So if anything it’s quite cool playing against them. I’m sitting across from people I’ve watched demos of or thought they were cool. So it’s just a good experience really and not too many nerves come from playing specific people.
How did you feel when you went back to Monte Gen?
It was fine, it was just the next step really. I still liked my old teammates, so I was fine to go back there. The reason I say it as well is because I wanted to stay with them. I saw potential with the players and all of the stuff. I really liked my coach as well, so there was lots of positive for the future when I went back to Monte Gen.
The main Monte roster has changed from being a Ukrainian core to a Polish core in the time since you left it. Do you feel like the Ukrainian roster wasn’t feasible at the time you came into it?
Yeah, I mean there were a lot of problems even before we [Gizmy and ryu] came in. Joining at that time, it was hard because there was only so much we could do basically. People already had ideas of how the roster would look in the future and stuff like that. I guess that was hard, but Monte is doing pretty good now with the Polish roster so it’s fine anyway.
The only real negative that stands right now is that there is no real potential of moving up to the main roster anymore because obviously they’re Polish and no one knows Polish.
Being back in Monte Gen, you guys are progressing very quickly. Your ranking has exploded from about #160 to #75 in the world. Do you feel the team is progressing well?
Yeah. We had a good run in recent tournaments. We had a slight drop-off recently but that’s kind of due to things outside of the server, like people’s situations and lives and trials and stuff like this. It’s going pretty well. We all have a shared understanding of the game and everyone is really hard-working as well. To be honest, those two aspects make it quite easy to win in tier 2. I think a lot of people don’t actually work that hard, therefore if you work hard and put effort into each game as it comes you’ll give yourself a good chance of winning. Especially if you have players who can aim well, like my teammates.
If you break it down, it doesn’t matter what you call, if everyone is shooting well you win the round. So having a mix of talent, and good understanding of the game helps a lot. That’s what I think we have on Monte Gen, and that’s why we’ve progressed so quickly.
I understand you’re IGLing for Monte Gen now. How long has that been the case?
Like a month and a half, maybe two. The exact date was after our loss against Eyeballers. (3rd of September)
Why was that decision made? AWP-IGLing is kind of off-meta now, is that a reason or was it a case of needing new ideas?
Partially. We wanted to have more impact from shield on the AWP. That was one of the reasons – to free him up and allow him to focus on his crosshair, which proved to do well because his stats went up a fair bit I think. The other reason was, before swapping to IGL I was heavily involved in prepping for games, anti-strat etc. So I was kind of pushing it. Not to be mean to shield but I was getting annoyed with some calls for example, so I was like “Okay, I think it’s time for me to swap over” and the team agreed. It was a somewhat smooth swap because I was the second-caller in game and a very loud voice so it hasn’t been that much of a change for me anyway.
Looking at the stats, you’ve one of the best vertigo teams, potentially in the world. No one else wants to play it anymore, what do you think makes you different on vertigo?
It’s just a really good understanding of the map I guess. We’ve got a really good system. Part of it comes from when I was under Viperio. It was a quite unique, very aggressive vertigo style we were playing so now I’ve brought that into this team, and taken parts of that, added in more passive approaches, and together when we play teams we understand how to play specific teams as well. It is a map where teams have different styles and they’re more noticeable. So to generalise against Russian teams, for example, we find that they might be quite heavy on playing for entries, so we can play more slow. Against slow teams, we can play more aggressive. That mix and match, being versatile based on the opponents, is something that we do really well. Through having a good vertigo system, they combine and I think that’s why we’ve had so much success on the map.
Do you see yourself as an IGL going forward?
Yes, yes I would. I’ve always been a bit wary of going to IGL because I’ve always been in active, space-taker roles in the team which can be an issue if you’re IGL. For example, you’ve seen it with yekindar when he moved to IGL with Liquid. You can tell calls will become focused around the person. So, the best example is inferno banana. If you’re the guy running up banana every round all of a sudden the calls are going to be more B focussed because that’s all you see in the map. You only only see banana, you’re not checking the map to see what the apps player is doing and stuff like that.
So that’s why I’ve always been slightly against it but in the current way I play my positions it’s been fine, and we’ve also discuss me moving to more IGL-specific spots. It would just be a test.
Do you think you’ll be a less aggressive player going forward?
It depends on if I change to those spots. It would happen if there were any changes to the players. So we can’t see into the future, but we’ve considered changing in the future. I’m not too sure. I’m very comfortable in the aggressive spots anyway currently. It’s also nice calling around being the aggressive player, because I can make the play myself and call the team around me which is a much different feeling than being in the non-aggressive playing role and telling a player to do something while your team does something else. It’s a very different experience, but I tested with both so far and I’m comfortable with both so we’ll just see what happens.
You mentioned that individuals might not be promoted to Monte now. Will it be a case that the whole team ends up going somewhere or will it be individuals leaving? Is it still your ambition to be promoted?
Specifically on being promoted to Monte, it’s not currently an option really. Even if it was the Ukrainian roster before I think I would still join them again but it’s a bit weird because I’ve already been brought back down so that option was kind of cut off for me and I guess the other players as well. As for the whole team there might be things in the works. We have had discussions about other orgs taking the roster as a whole, and there has also been focus on individual players. So what you might see happen in the future is individual players get bought out, especially after the major cycle. We can only wait and see basically, because teammates have been having trials in other teams and stuff like that.
For the rest of the year, are you playing much more for the rest of the year with a lot of teams being out of Europe [for the major]?
Yeah, we don’t have too many tournaments especially because we’re not playing the CCTs anymore because the main team is playing them. So, I think we have two tournaments next month so far and they’ll probably be done before the 15th of November. So not sure if have anything after that.
Plenty of time to think about the future then?
Yeah…
