Caliste on KC's new approach in drafts: "Make life a bit simpler for ourselves, with a clear win condition"

Game two was tense — Doggo did something crazy — but before that it was a very clean game. How are you feeling overall?

Happy that we won, and especially happy that we won that game two, because we were way behind in the bot lane and there were a lot of pauses that lasted quite a long time. So mentally it was complicated, and above all pretty unusual. Bot lane we were completely cooked, and the pauses felt like an eternity for us. So we were like, okay, we’re going to have to stay focused. Game one I’m pretty happy with. The draft was fairly easy for us and we just rolled through it in fights and skirmishes, it was pretty simple. Game two was harder. The bot matchup is quite hard, plus the fact that they can do a very fast jungle-mid, so they can really pressure us and zone us a lot. And that’s their comp, you know — they play Lee Sin, Caitlyn, Ryze, they’re going to fight in the early game, and there isn’t much that’s really stronger than that. So we’ll see.

Maybe that comeback is also good for the mental side, in the end.

That’s it, it’s important, and it’s good that we came back. That kind of game can happen, and it shows a lot of good things for a group to manage to come back from it. I was like, I’m going to try to farm as best I can, and in the mid game I was thinking, what’s the best thing I can do so my top side can carry? And I told myself, honestly I can’t do much — except if we go on the mid waves, I can try to trade back, flash in and give space. I’ll probably die, but I think it’s the best option I have to help my team.

I feel like with Busio you very often go for high-risk, high-reward plays, especially in lane, and especially when you’re in losing matchups. Is that a deliberate choice, part of the philosophy you two have for playing the lane? Or is it sometimes just a bit of overconfidence?

Ranged matchups in general are very, very volatile, especially in this meta with the aggressive junglers and the mid laners who can move around — so more Akali, Locke, Ryze. Early games can blow up very fast. And in bot lane, if you don’t play aggressive and you’re up against very high-level bot lanes, most of the time you’re just going to bleed. You bleed and you lose resources slowly. So sometimes you’re a bit forced to take risks, to go forward and try to clear a wave. And then in general, we have a bot lane that’s aggressive and we have confidence, especially from scrims. So yeah, maybe sometimes we push too far, take bad trades, get too confident. But in general: if people want to fight, we’re going to fight.

I wanted to come back to the Swiss stage. The LYON game — have you rewatched that last fight from your POV? You had the play of the year at your fingertips. Was it a misclick? A bug?

Honestly, no, it’s not a bug. There’s an interaction on Kalista — she’s one of the rare ones, maybe the only AD carry, where you can click on someone and at the last second click on someone else, and your auto attack will switch onto the other one. So what happened is that I flashed in and I was spamming my E, because Syndra had spears on her at 1 HP. And the moment I flash and reappear, she’d lost her spears, so I was like, damn, I need to kill her. So I clicked on Syndra — fine, she’s going to die. The problem is that I clicked too fast on the Wukong, and the auto attack switched onto the Wukong. So I didn’t kill Syndra, then I got polymorphed and I died. It’s just my bad. But I was really surprised, because in the late game especially it’s very hard to do that, since you have a lot of attack speed and the auto goes very fast. I was like, what just happened? How am I not killing her? And then I watch the replays back and I’m like, come on, that’s not possible. So yeah, I was really disappointed. But anyway, we should have won that game before that.

I feel like every time you lost in the Swiss, it came down to a couple of clicks in a fight. Is that what came out of those two games for you, or did it just make it more frustrating?

Of course, we talked about his W on Renata. You’re at Worlds, so the team fights are at a very, very high level, and normally, if you take away the stress and the pressure, players know how to teamfight, know how to use their spells. But with the stress, things can happen. We reviewed both games, against BLG and LYON, and we told ourselves that yeah, we could teamfight better. But in general, we told ourselves we’d maybe go for approaches with team fights that are a bit more…

Simpler? More direct in the draft?

Honestly, the game against LYON, we just have to win it. There’s no failure there, the draft is good, there’s no issue. And even against BLG we have to win — I’m not saying it’s the draft, far from it. We’re realising that the top teams right now really draft a lot for teamfighting. They don’t hesitate to just not take the big matchups, and instead draft simple, clear, precise teamfighting, then stack the drakes, fight on the drakes, fight on the grubs. Pretty simple things. So we told ourselves that in general, without saying too much, we’d always have. Make life a bit simpler for ourselves, with a clear win condition. Either play through the sides, or play through the team fights.

We saw you drop your head a bit after that ON hook at the end of the BLG game. Just to reassure people — you’re not demoralised, you’re keeping your head up, you’re still confident?

Yeah, I’m still confident. It’s just that I was really super disappointed, because on top of that it was one or two days after the game against LYON. So you think, "Ah, that’s not possible, it’s happened again." It drives you crazy to lose like that. Against LYON I had that moment, that last team fight, where it was really close and I was like, it’s so close, it’s not fair. And against BLG I’m thinking, we should have won. And then the game literally ends on me getting hooked, and we die, and it’s the void, it’s nothingness. You’re like, what’s happening? It’s just sad. But I wasn’t demoralised, it was just very hard in the moment, very disappointing, and the next day it was better. You refocus, you think about what’s next.

We hear a lot of very good things about you in scrims — the Asian players all seem to speak well of you. For you, have we seen the real KC, and maybe even the real you, that you see in scrims at this tournament? Or does the pressure make you a bit nervous?

For me it’s hard to say. Scrims are very different from officials, there’s no stress, so players just fight, they’re much more comfortable. There are also more drafts that are stronger in scrims than in officials. So in general we ramp up a lot and we’re playing better and better. But if there’s a game that matches our scrim level more, it’s the game against AL, and LYON. Those two games — obviously before the fight where we lose. In general we’re a team that’s aggressive, that isn’t afraid to fight, and we’re strong in lane. And that’s mainly what happens in scrims. So I think that’s why the Asian teams are like, this is a team we weren’t expecting that from. But in general, I think we’re almost at our level, or at least not far from it. We just have to keep going like that and be confident. If we get into the games on stage with the same mindset and the same confidence as in scrims, I really think it’ll go very well against a lot of teams.

With all the pressure that comes with being here, do you still manage to step back, realise you’re living your dream on this stage, and just enjoy the moment? I’ve seen you enjoying it off stage with the Koreans.

In play-ins it wasn’t great, I think I was stressing too much, especially the first match against C9 — I was putting too much pressure on myself. But as soon as we got to the Swiss stage, it went much better. And I think it was just being able to play the big teams, which is really what I wanted. To play great players, great teams. That took a lot of pressure off me, and the play-ins helped too. Honestly, since I arrived in the Swiss stage, I have no stress, no pressure, I feel very, very good on stage. And yeah, I’m enjoying the moments.

So of course, when you lose, everyone is very disappointed and it’s hard to enjoy the day — you just want to go to the next one. That’s the competitor’s mindset. But otherwise I’m happy to be here, happy to be able to scrim the best teams in the world, to be here with my team. We have a good group, we laugh a lot, we have a good time together. And I’m completing sidequests on the side, too. I talk a lot with the top ADCs in Korea and in the world. And honestly, it’s very funny. We laugh, we make TikToks. They’re very nice, very cool. I don’t know why they’re so kind to me, but thanks to them.

Which team would you like to draw now? Do you have a preference?

Honestly, I have two answers. I think I’d prefer to play MKOI, because we think they’re probably the most manageable team of them all. All the teams at 2-2 are going to be pretty dangerous and pretty strong, and there’ll be a lot of pressure, so it’s going to be a really dangerous match. But the second option is just… in any case we have to beat everyone, and we have to fight our demons. We have to play well, draft well, have no stress. So if we want to reach the quarterfinals and be good, we have to win against anyone.

You can’t say it, but maybe a top team, then?

For me it doesn’t really change anything. The goal at the end is to win. So obviously, as I said, the first option is to play against the team that looks the most manageable to us. But otherwise, you just shouldn’t think about it too much, just play — and anyway I think we can beat all those teams at 2-2 if we play well. So we just have to turn up confident, play at our level and roll.

Like KC, you’ve skipped steps in your career: you won your first LFL, your first EMEA Masters, your first LEC, and you reached a final in your first international event. Isn’t doing a deep run here the way to honour the club’s story — and your own?

Honestly, yeah, I’d love that. In any case, we’re all aiming to go very, very far, and we know we can go very, very far.

You think it’s doable?

Yeah, we know it’s doable. And anyway, I think it’s the LCK teams who are saying it for us, you know. I think we can really be very, very good, we can be very confident, we can be a really dangerous team. Now, like I said, it’s up to us to put in the work, to be confident on stage, to have the same mentality as in scrims, to not be afraid to take risks and to play with the discipline we have in scrims. And I think it’ll go well.

A word for the fans before we let you go?

First of all, a big thank you for all the support. It’s really nice to see all the excitement and all the support there is around this Worlds. On my side, I’m trying to give my maximum to deliver good performances on stage and to make sure we can have a good run, a respectable run for Karmine Corp. And just a big thank you for the support — we’re giving it everything, and we’ll see you again soon.