After a year-and-a-half as MOUZ's in-game leader, Ludvig "Brollan" Brolin is back to rifling on HEROIC. The team is in the midst of a campaign at Stake Ranked Episode 3, where they reached the upper bracket final after a messy series against Phantom, and the Swede admitted in an interview with Teodor "tedd" Borisov for HLTV that limited practice time together is contributing to that shakiness.
"We have no practice room, basically, so it's pretty hard to adapt and try to come up with new things mid-tournament," Brollan said. "And we didn't have a lot of practice at home, so it doesn't help. But you need to accept that it's like this."
The 24-year-old also spoke about his departure from MOUZ, receiving the offer from HEROIC, giving up leadership duties, and his impressions of Christoffer "Chr1zN" Storgaard as an in-game leader.
"Chr1zN has huge potential, as I said, but you can easily see that maybe a little bit is different between tier-one and tier-two, and of course he will just try to learn as much as possible, probably with doto as well," Brollan said.
Listen to the interview on HLTV's Spotify channel.
First event with HEROIC here at Stake Ranked Episode 3. Just had a very close series against Phantom, surprisingly enough, so how has it been going for you so far? You just joined the team a week ago and you're already playing a LAN with the boys, so how's it going so far?
It's going pretty well. Of course, we didn't have that much practice; we only had six days, or maybe five at least. But yeah, I guess Phantom haven't practiced, so they're going to be running and gunning basically with some random stuff, and it caught us off guard a lot of times.
The communication was maybe not on point today, but it will come. I'm happy we won at least; it was a little bit of a scrappy game, but I'm happy we won.
I had a bit of a look, and it turns out this is the first tier-two LAN that you're playing since 2022, so technically the first one in CS2 as well. How different is it to the tournaments that you're used to? You've played just two best-of-threes, but again, a different level of opposition, maybe a different setting, so is it a little bit difficult to get acclimated to it?
Yeah, I will say maybe more adapting to the tournament because we have no PCs, right? And we have no practice room, basically, so it's pretty hard to adapt and try to come up with new things mid-tournament. And we didn't have a lot of practice at home, so it doesn't help. But you need to accept that it's like this.
I think the tournament is on a good level; maybe the heat is pretty bad, but the teams are... I mean, maybe unexpected that Phantom won versus paiN yesterday, I think paiN should maybe show up on a better level, but outside of that, I will say [it's] what I expected of the teams so far.
Let's address the elephant in the room: you played the Major with MOUZ, and then it felt like, for a little bit of time, it wasn't a sure thing whether you were going to stay on the team, if you were going to leave, and eventually you ended up on HEROIC. So could you shine some light on that entire MOUZ situation? When did you find out that you're not staying? Was there a chance that you were going to stay for this season as well, and what other offers did you have, if you had any offers bar HEROIC?
I mean, I had some offers and some interest from other teams. To be honest, MOUZ... they had said basically that they were going to go other ways, and wanted to do an announcement around me and these things. Then I really just accepted it and tried to move on from it.
Of course, I had some interest from other teams, but as I said in an interview here, they wanted to go for another player, or some teams didn't have the budget for it as well. But yeah, it is what it is sometimes, and HEROIC basically gave a good offer for me and I really have trust for the organization and trust in the players we are playing with.
It's just that, for myself, I just need to have more discipline of the... not the level of the game, but I came from a really structured team, a really on-point, same team, like we know exactly how to play things, and now it's maybe a little bit more rusty. I know it's going to happen, that we're going to play more in the lower level, but I'm trying to have more discipline myself, maybe less frustration with things in these hectic situations, but so far it's a learning process and we just need to take it game by game and then we have more practice when we come home, for example. We have a really hectic schedule now with Stake, then we play BLAST, and then we see how other things are going.
Another thing that is a little bit new, other than the team, is the fact that you're not the in-game leader anymore; you were an IGL in tier-one for one-and-a-half years, ever since you replaced siuhy at the start of 2025. Was looking and going into another team, going back to being an IGL, something that you wanted to pursue, or were you more than happy with being a rifler? And does the fact that you are a rifler mean that we're going to see a little bit more of the old-school fnatic star player Brollan on the server?
I was open to both roles for a lot of teams, or some teams of course, but ended up as a rifler for HEROIC. I'm happy to be back in this role; it's really fun. Of course, I think the in-game leader role is really fun, but it's really, really stressful.
To be a real leader, there's a lot of work you need to do, so it's maybe a little bit more chill now to be a rifler. Being a leader, you need to work hard, you need to figure out how to play with the team, and you need to just adapt to everything. But when HEROIC came with the offer, I think it was a really good fit for me, and that was what I basically needed: something refreshing.
Are you going to be the number-one star rifler of this team?
So far, I'm probably not the star rifler in the positions. I'm more of a lurker now, maybe a bit of an anchor on some maps we're playing. To be honest, we're trying to figure out how we want to play still; I'm not sure how it will be in the future, but so far, it's good.
It's just that we need maybe a little bit more voice in the team, especially in the pack and these things. For example, susp hasn't been playing in the space-creator roles for a long time, so he'll just get better from this. I think that's it. We'll figure out how everything will work out.
Going into this team, you get to work with a very young and not-as-experienced-as-you in-game leader in Chr1zN, but one of the brightest talents of the, let's say 'tier-two' space, right now when it comes down to the IGLs. How are you helping him? How do you find him? Are there specific things that you've been able to already identify that maybe you didn't know before you became an IGL, that you were able to figure out, and help him? Do you feel like you can help him and the rest of the team raise their ceiling a little bit and believe that you can potentially push into the top 15, top 10 with these guys?
I would say Chr1zN has a lot of potential, but at the same time, you need to basically improve all the time, and he basically said to me that he wants to improve from myself. Like, I give a lot of feedback, to be honest, and we talk a lot with it and I try to do it more.
Sometimes when you get this feedback, you maybe forget it, and it was the same with me in MOUZ, for example, but outside of that, you just need to do the basic stuff. Just work hard as an IGL, play the freezetimes, play the midrounds, and toy with the enemies a lot.
I will say that Chr1zN has huge potential, as I said, but you can easily see that maybe a little bit is different between tier-one and tier-two, and of course he will just try to learn as much as possible, probably with doto as well. We just need to improve everything, and I think he, as I said, has a lot of potential for it. He wants to really learn, and I appreciate it. I'm really happy that someone wants to basically come to me and wants to learn. It's a weird situation because I've never been the guy with experience in the team, so yeah.
Phantom
Thomas 'TMB' Bundsbæk
Nico 'nicoodoz' Tamjidi
Kamil 'KEi' Pietkun
Kacper 'Kylar' Walukiewicz
Jan 'cej0t' Dyl
Dawid 'lunAtic' Cieślak
Teodor 'tedd' Borisov
Ludvig 'Brollan' Brolin
HEROIC
Ludvig 'Brollan' Brolin
Linus 'nilo' Bergman
Tim 'susp' Ångström
Antonio 'MartinezSa' Martinez
Christoffer 'Chr1zN' Storgaard
Joonas 'doto' Forss
MOUZ
Ádám 'torzsi' Torzsás
Lotan 'Spinx' Giladi
Dorian 'xertioN' Berman
Oldřich 'PR' Nový
Adrian 'xelex' Vincze
Dennis 'sycrone' Nielsen
Christoffer 'Chr1zN' Storgaard