Revel Jachro on playing against NIP: "I've never gotten beaten up and enjoyed it before"

At the end of day one of Fragadelphia x LVL UP EXPO Vegas, Dust2.us very own Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore caught up with James "Jachro" Brooks following the team's one-sided loss to NIP in the Group E upper bracket finals. The two discussed the beatdown by NIP, how they compare to some of the best ESL Challenger League teams in NA, Revel's position in the NA scene, and day one's myriad number of tech issues, among other topics.

The full interview can be found below on YouTube, with key snippets underneath.

You just came out of an unfortunately one-sided loss to NIP, a 13-0, 13-2 I believe. What can you tell me coming out of that game?

It was one of the most fun games I've had. I've never gotten beaten up and enjoyed it before, but this is a first for me. Playing against a tier-one European team, we've scrimmed a lot of NA ECL teams and it's never felt like that. It's never felt that perfect from another team.

Getting to the event's elephant in the room, we had a lot of tech problems today. As one of those teams that came in with everyone at 11am, what was it like to be stuck in that quagmire and sit there for five, six hours waiting for matches to start?

I think at Block, we sat for nine hours so we're used to it. I've gone to almost every FRAG for the last three, four years so tech issues are a part of it. I've been to conventions for Nerd Street events back in 2018 and they had delays like this where the venue has things that are out of their control.

FRAG did their best to accommodate when the venue has issues like this, but I'm not too upset with them because I can't be. They're always super chill. They explain everything in detail, they're super transparent about it. They never give us a problem, they treat us with respect.

I had no issue waiting because I understood their doing their best to fix the problem and I didn't try to let it affect our game. We've had it affect our game in the past and we were like, "All right, everybody relax, we'll take our time, if the deadline's unexpected we'll play when it comes."

Turning the focus back to ESEA Main, last season the squad finished somewhere in the 40th-60th range. Which was not a result many would expect from a relatively pedigreed Main/Advanced squad. What went wrong in Main playoffs?

I think in the upper bracket, we came in a little overconfident because we had come from Frag Block where BLUEJAYS was gassing us up a little bit. They were giving us compliments, we played really well against LAG, and we were feeling ourselves a little too much. Even the night we got eliminated from Main playoffs, we 13-5'ed Chicken Coop in the Dust2.us qualifier. So, we were feeling ourselves a little too much to where we were like, "We're so good against these ECL teams."

And then we forget that the Main teams are little more random and we're not always gonna be perfect, and we're not as well-rounded as we should be. We learned to take things one game at a time. I think we were skipping too far ahead.

We were like, "We have to make Advanced because we have people who have played a lot of Advanced." We have madss who's been salaried for teams. We felt like we had to be in Advanced, and we expected it. Instead of playing the games one at a time, we just expected to get there automatically.

Revel were eliminated in day two following a rematch loss to SUPER EVIL GANG in the lower bracket final of Group E.