messioso: "100 Thieves qualifying to IEM Cologne is heavily dependent on whether we buy a core"

Back on November 20th, 100 Thieves hosted an AMA on their Discord for fans to ask questions about the organization's plans heading into 2026. The organization's brand-new Counter-Strike 2 division was of course a focal point for discussion as fans are eager to hear about 100 Thieves' plans following the signing of Håvard "rain" Nygaard on November 13th.

100 Thieves graciously provided Dust2.us with a transcript of the audio AMA so that we could share some of the more interesting insights from Graham "messioso" Pitt and Sean "sgares" Gares. Questions and answers have been edited clarity and length.

To the CS squad, is it a realistic and target goal to qualify for the IEM Cologne Major?

messioso: As people may be aware I'm sort of, I wouldn't classify myself as an expert in the VRS, but I certainly have a very deep knowledge and understanding of how the VRS works, and obviously that's the fundamental ranking system that will determine whether we do qualify for a Major, IEM Cologne, or any future events. I think it's heavily dependent on whether we were to buy a core, or whether we were to build the team from scratch. I think being realistic, if we built a team without a core, making it to the IEM Cologne Major would be a miracle run. Essentially, it possibly would be plausible to make it, but I think it's unrealistic just because if you look at our timeline, we're realistically not going to be in the server until January, and the cutoff for the Major is most likely going to be the first week of April, which would give us three months of play.

Assuming we start with zero invites, it's a very steep climb for that. So I think that would be unrealistic. You know, if you put ourselves in terms of buying a core, then I would say it would be the goal 100%, the core is likely going to be ranked high enough that we would expect to be qualifying for the Major straightaway, and that would be part of the expectation. So I think ultimately it comes down to the path that we end up choosing as to whether it's a realistic goal or not.

sgares: To add on to that, it's not that we don't want to try to make it, so actually listening to Graham say that just now hurt my soul. Like, it honestly cuts me deep because I know the streak Graham has of going to IEM Cologne, and I've talked to him about it, and it means a lot to me too, but I have to be realistic. And what he said is the realistic scenario, like we're going to go for it, but it's a very lofty goal to have out the gates, basically.

With 100T having a team in Europe, what support is in place to not run into logistical issues similar to the acquisition of the Australian Roster in 2019?

sgares: That's a great question, so I'll take it because I'm aware of a lot of these pitfalls in roster construction. That's why I have my ideas, but I think it's more valuable to get the smartest person in the room, Graham, and have him in the area so the players can communicate with him. As a team manager, he can be at events. I can't be that person. Making sure sports psychologists are in Europe as well is a problem I've seen past teams run into, and something I'll avoid. Every pitfall I've seen, I'm going to avoid. Making sure it doesn't operate how that operates. I think Australia is a different beast compared to Europe, but it won't be anything like that, for sure.

messioso: To piggyback on that as well: some people may be forgetting that 2019 was when they picked up the team. We all know what happened in 2020. From my memory of the situation, I was on the outside, and I vaguely recall what happened. They picked up the Australian team, which was based in North America at the time. The team was meant to be based out of LA and play in the North American leagues, and then travel to Europe for events. COVID happened, and the majority of the CS ecosystem existed in Europe, so the team had to be based away from home.

Then they ran into additional visa issues because Australians can't stay in singular European countries for more than 90 days at a time. They were moving around all the time. It became incompatible with what was originally planned for the roster when they were picked up. That was the main issue. We're in 2025 now, and those issues are long gone. Being realistic, we're building a European team that's going to be based in Europe. We won't face a lot of those logistical challenges that, for example, even I was experiencing with Complexity for the past four years, with North American players trying to spend a lot of time in Europe, because the players will most likely be from the European region already. We don't anticipate facing the similar challenges that that team faced. Hopefully, we'll avoid it by not being in the position to ever place them.

How do you plan to make sure CS2 roster do not fall under pressure of the start and big boom around 100T? How do you plan to break through the Tier 2/3 scene? Watching teams like BC.Game is seems like it's not that easy

messioso: Yeah, that's a good question, and I think it all comes down to expectations, right? I don't think a lot of people are aware of these things until you actually experience them. It's when I learned that there's different forms of pressure even in the top levels of esports, orgs like 100 Thieves and Sentinels have a different level of pressure than an org like Cloud9 does, and I hope everyone in the chat understands what I mean by that, right?

Cloud9 aren't held to the fire by their fans in the same way, and it creates an interesting environment. I'm not going to say it's good or bad, it's different. And if things go bad, you really feel it. You really feel it. And so I understand what you mean, but it's all coming down to setting expectations with the community and being as transparent as possible. That's why I wanted to have this AMA today and be here and answer these questions and create this content and tell you guys my thought process. Because I think about setting this expectation, when someone asks, "Hey, are you guys going to be in this first Major?" If we didn't answer that, you guys would have the expectation that we are, and then would hold them to the fire if they lose their first game.

So preemptively getting ahead of those types of things is how you prevent the pressure that you're talking about. In my opinion, it's all about expectations and being transparent, and it's preparing for the worst, but hoping for the best. I still am going to hope that our team wins every game. I think the main thing is we want our partners to know. If we choose to go down a route where, for example, we don't have a call on, we don't have a VRS standing to begin with, the understanding is that it will take a few months to build up to where we want to be.

That doesn't change our long-term aspirations for where we want to be as a team. And the players we will acquire will be the caliber of players that we want to try and win championships with—that will always be the case. But there's also the underlying aspect of we know that if we choose to go down a certain route, it will take a little bit more time.

So then the second part of that question, I haven't followed BC.Game's path too much, but I do know that, for example, they're not at Draculan this week and they just pulled out of another event that I think is also happening soon in Georgia. They may not be taking the most optimal path towards raising their ranking and hopefully that's what we will do. That's obviously on my shoulders to try and do. Ultimately, you still have to win matches, regardless of taking the best path or the easiest path, you still have to go out and win your matches. So, it's a bit of Sean, a bit of me, in terms of how we execute on that. And yeah, I think right now is probably the easiest it's been in the VRS era, because tournament organizers are beginning to understand the value of having these open LAN events on the regular.

So, there's always going to be events. I've already said, "Sean, we've got three events we can play in like the first two weeks of January. Do you think we're going to be ready?" Sean's like, "Woah, woah, woah, we need to have a roster first before we can make those decisions." So, I think there's always going to be opportunities. I think that the main thing for us is that we focus on right now getting the right players that we believe we can win with, and as long as we have that, whatever events we go to, hopefully we stand a chance at building up our ranking and moving on from there. So, full focus on building a roster first, and then the opportunities, I'm sure will appear, especially leading up to the cut-off for the IEM Cologne Major, because tournament organizers will, again, likely heavily put a lot of events leading up to that deadline. So I think no matter what happens, we will be at a good place as long as we build a team that can win on the server.

Rain is a CS legend and a great player in his peak, but he will play a drastically different role on 100T. What makes you believe he will succeed in his new IGL position?

sgares: That's a great question, and it's someone that knows ball, because you don't ask that question if you don't know ball. So I'll answer it like you probably want. And this was not an easy hire, because I actually believe in top-down builds, where the head coach would have autonomy to pick the in-game leader, but we're kind of doing it in reverse here and it's because of Rain's experience. When I'm asking him questions about game plan creation and roster build-out and how he's going to conduct the first couple practices, what the power hierarchy should feel like in the team, I'm asking him deep questions, and we're not surface-leveling this stuff, and I'm not just nepo hiring him.

He has put a lot of thought into this, even before he reached out to us and we reached out to him, it's something that he was considering doing a long time ago, and has already put work into it. And I'm trying to make sure the right people are around him to foster the relationship, to help it grow, right? And that's why this head coach, assistant coach, and building out the team thing is delicate, right? I don't want to just take a pre-existing team, put Rain in it, and be like, "Good luck IGLing," because I've been an IGL, I've been a coach, and I know that those players won't trust the buy.

They won't buy in the same way that what I'm trying to build will. And that's the answer to your question: is having all of these safety nets that I know of up. And I'm comfortable in saying all this, because that's my value and why I'm hired here, but I promise you, this is something I am taking very good care of right now.