Interview

tOfu interview at BLAST Slam VI: “We have made a lot of progress over time”

13.02.2026

With elimination on the line, Erik “tOfu” Engel chatted to rdy.gg about BLAST Slam VI and Team Liquids progress since he joined.

In late 2025, Erik “tOfu” Engel and Marcus “Ace” Hoelgaard joined Team Liquid. Unfortunately for the two long-time teammates, it has not been smooth sailing. With tournament results fluctuating, Liquid have yet to steady the ship, but tOfu has not wavered in his duties. As the hard support, and now captain, he looks to steer the team out of troubled waters back to the top.

As Liquid prepares to fight it out at BLAST Slam VI, we caught up with the captain to get his thoughts on drafts, the team, and the tournament.

Moving into the captain role changes how you experience the game. How has your preparation and in-game focus shifted since taking on that responsibility?

It's really about getting used to the team and everyone individually, and that just takes some time. I think everyone's comfortable with each other by now, but personally, I also try to be like more of a role model, as in show up on time, be prepared, things like that. I can't tell people to do certain things or play enough games and be on time if I don't do it myself.

I had to get more into drafting, where it's easy to do a good job, but being exceptional or really understanding takes a lot of time, which I think I'm not there yet, and it's something you can constantly improve. I invest more time to prepare or think about drafts while also making sure my play is still good. So, it's good for me in a way that I have to do all of these things, but it's also just some extra work.

Liquid's current form suggests the team is beginning to find its rhythm. What finally “clicked” within the lineup?

I wouldn't say it's smooth sailing from here on out, but yes, we have made a lot of progress over time. There are a lot of different things we've tried. One of the constants in this whole process is just people interacting with each other, vibing with each other.

There's also a lot of progress with what heroes we play, what we want to do on the map, and just getting comfortable with each other's playstyle and then trying different things in the game. We tried many different combinations and some worked better than others. I'm starting to get a good feel for who should play what and what we can combine into the meta.

Your coach is Blitz, who has been with this core through everything. How do you two divide the responsibilities for draft preparation, and in-game adjustments, gameplay, and so on?

He knows the team really well and knows how to talk with everyone, and understand them too. He knows everyone's hero pools, as well as what might be good for them or not, or what they have been successful with recently. When it comes to the official games, he's good with the draft preparation.

Then he lets me be kind of free with ideas or heroes to try. He has a lot of trust in me because I play a lot and come up with things. I think we balance each other out nicely.

Speaking of what’s good and what’s not, and about drafts, what’s your impression on Largo now that we got to see him a bit in competitive matches?

I have mixed feelings. He got introduced to Captain's Mode really quickly, so everyone started spamming it suddenly, at least for the first one or two weeks. In scrims, a lot of teams were just picking it first to see what's up with this hero.

I started spamming it in pubs and was quite successful, but I think especially in the beginning when people didn’t really understand how good of a hero he is. Mid laners and carry players might not have played it themselves, so they don't have a feel for the hero. He has surprised a lot of teams.

The numbers are a bit too strong right now. He has too low mana cost and too high damage. The cooldowns are too good, his base stats are a little too high, so he's definitely very strong but teams also figured out what works well against him. Like avoiding team fights early on or having very high bursts. Largo needs long team fights and a magic mid laner to enable him with this Croak of Genius spell.

On the other hand, as core position, like the offline Largo, he's really greedy and needs to buy his Aghanim's Scepter first item, but if he gets online, it's really hard to teamfight into him.

Looking at BLAST Slam VI, you finished the group stage here with a 7-4 record, identical to OG and NAVI, but had to go through play-ins due to the head-to-head score with OG. How frustrating was it to take the longer path despite having a good enough result to be at the top of the table?

I didn't followed the scoreboard too closely, so I didn't expect us to be in the semi-finals. After we did some maths, we followed the last games to see if we can actually make it because there was some "copium" on it. And the last series was HEROIC vs MOUZ that we intensely watched because it would have given us the top two spots.

I think it's totally fair where we are positioned. I guess, is a bit weird because there was this potential risk of not going to the playoffs at all, even though we had a good score. But I think it's fine. We got to play more games, get more practice in. The long road is satisfying in a way, because you didn't just get handed the win.

Falcons are your opponents for the opening series in the playoffs. You've played them countless times over the past years. How do you approach this particular series which by now feels like a chess match?

We know them well yeah, and we had a few days in between to prepare for this series, so I think most things are still normal in a way. We just play our pubs, do our scrims, we make sure we are on form and that we show up in good condition on the day.

I guess both teams have to prepare deeper into the drafts and see what heroes they really value, what is needed and what to ban. But the real challenge iss the best-of-fives. These series have a meta of their own. It will be interesting to see thiss for the entire playoffss. It feels very unusual, and it might be too much. I don't know, we'll see. We'll talk after the tournament.

What would be key for Team Liquid to win the whole thing in Malta?

I’d say just believing and trusting in one another. Not that we are bad at it, we have a good atmosphere and good vibes, but if we lose a game or have bad momentum, we can get into our own heads too much. So, I would just like to keep up the good spirits and believe in one another.

tOfu and Team Liquid will be in action on February 13th, at 14:00 CET, where they will take on Team Falcons. With no safety net of the lower bracket, elimination is on the line from the get go, as we witness an entire playoff bracket of best-of-five series. The winning team will go on to meet OG in the semi-finals, and take a step closer to becoming the champions of BLAST Slam VI.