rain Forgot He Was IGL: Inside 100 Thieves' CS2 Gamble | BuyBoosting

rain forgot he was IGL. Literally stood there during freezetime waiting for calls — calls that were supposed to come from him. The man has been one of the most consistent CS pros since 2014, won a Major with FaZe, and now he's on 100 Thieves learning to be a leader from scratch, which is honestly the wildest career pivot in professional Counter-Strike right now.

The Quote That Says Everything

OK so this quote is something else. In his interview with HLTV ahead of 100 Thieves' Roman Imperium campaign, rain casually dropped what might be the most honest thing any pro has said this year: "Freezetime would start and I wouldn't remember that I was the IGL." Think about that for a second. Not even close to a normal adjustment period.

This isn't some tier 3 grinder fumbling through their first event. This is rain. Håvard Nygaard. The guy has probably played more professional rounds of Counter-Strike than most people have total matches in their entire account history. And his brain was still defaulting to "wait for the call" even after the team made him THE caller. Wild.

Muscle Memory Is a Monster

There's something weirdly relatable about this if you've ever role-swapped in ranked. Your instincts betray you. You know the feeling.

But rain's version of that is cranked to eleven. For over a decade his job description was clean and simple: get into position, wait for the IGL to make the play, and frag out. That's it. He is arguably the best pure rifler the Western scene has ever produced, a player who built his entire professional identity around being the guy who EXECUTES the plan, not the guy who MAKES it. FaZe rain was a machine. You pointed him at a bombsite and things died. He was diff on LAN when it mattered most. Now 100 Thieves are asking him to be both the brain and the hands, and the thing is, that transition is probably way harder than anyone on the outside gives it credit for.

I mean, think about what an IGL actually does during those fifteen seconds of freezetime. Reading the economy. Checking the scoreboard. Processing what happened last round. Deciding the buy. Calling the default. Adjusting for tendencies they noticed three rounds ago. Making sure their lurk player knows the alternate plan. That's a LOT of cognitive load for a player whose freezetime routine for 10+ years was probably: check money, buy rifle, wait for karrigan to talk.

Why 100 Thieves Made This Bet

The real question is why.

100 Thieves clearly believes rain's decade of accumulated game knowledge and veteran presence outweigh his complete lack of calling experience. And look, there's some logic there. Rain has played under some of the sharpest tactical minds in CS history. He sat next to karrigan for years on FaZe, absorbing reads and learning how a top-tier IGL processes information in real time. That's not nothing. But absorbing and executing are two completely different skills, right? Watching a chef cook every day for five years doesn't make you a chef.

The other angle — and I think this is the real one — is that 100T probably didn't have better options. The IGL market in CS2 is bone dry right now. Every half-decent caller is locked into a roster or commanding a buyout that would make your eyes water. So when you're building a team and you need someone to bring structure, sometimes you look at your most experienced player and go "congratulations, you're it now." Nah, it's not ideal. But it's what they've got to work with.

The Roman Imperium Reality Check

The timing of this interview matters. Rain opened up about these struggles specifically ahead of Roman Imperium, which tells me the team is still deep in the adjustment phase. They're not hiding it either.

There's something almost refreshing about a pro being this transparent about how rough the transition has been. Most players in rain's position would give you some polished answer about "growing into the role" and "taking it one day at a time." Corporate PR speak. Rain literally admitted he forgets to call. That's raw. And honestly? That level of honesty probably means the team environment is healthy enough for him to admit weakness without getting flamed, which is actually a solid sign for their long-term trajectory.

Funny thing is, we're even in a timeline where rain — the same rain who was clicking heads on LAN before half of today's pros were old enough to make a Steam account — is giving interviews about learning basic IGL fundamentals. CS2 in 2026 is just different.

What Your Ranked Games Can Learn From This

Here's where it gets practical. Rain's struggle highlights something that applies directly to your solo queue experience: communication structure wins rounds more than raw aim does. Full stop.

Even at the highest level of professional CS, a team without clear comms falls apart. Rain is arguably a top-20 aimer in the world (probably higher on a good day), and even he can't just "figure out" the calling on the fly. So if you're sitting in Gold or MG wondering why your five-stack keeps losing to guys with worse aim — it's probably this exact problem. Nobody's calling. Nobody has a plan beyond "rush B" or "just play default." You're five individuals queuing together, not a team.

The difference between rain forgetting to call in a professional match and your random teammates never calling at all is basically just the stakes. The dysfunction is the same. And if you're genuinely tired of loading into another game where nobody uses their mic and the "strat" is five people peeking different angles and hoping for the best — we've all been there. Sometimes the play is to just skip the coinflip lobbies and get yourself into a rank where people actually communicate. That's not giving up. That's choosing to actually enjoy CS2 again.

The Bigger Picture

Look, 100 Thieves aren't winning a Major this year. Let's just get that out of the way right now. But that was probably never the plan for this stage of the project.

The history of player-to-IGL transitions in CS is mixed at best. For every gla1ve — who went from decent player to generational caller — there are ten guys who tried IGLing and just lost what made them special. Their fragging drops. Their confidence craters. They end up being bad at both jobs instead of great at one. That's the risk 100T is running with rain, and they know it.

But rain has something most of those failed experiments didn't have: he's already proven everything he needs to prove as an individual player. He has the Major trophy. He has the legacy. He has the highlight reels. He's not some young gun gambling his career on a role swap — he's a veteran who's already accomplished basically everything CS has to offer and is now trying something new because, well, why not? The pressure is completely different when you've already won it all.

And I think that's exactly what might make this work. A player with nothing left to prove is probably the perfect candidate to absorb the inevitable L's that come with learning to call, without mental booming when it goes sideways. Rain isn't going to tilt off the planet after one bad read because he knows he's world-class regardless. He can afford to be bad at this for a while. Most players can't.

The Verdict

100 Thieves with rain as IGL is either going to be the best redemption arc of 2026 or a slow-motion experiment that quietly fizzles. I don't think there's a middle ground here.

My prediction: 100T finish bottom four in EPL Season 23. They get bounced before Stage 2 matters. But rain's calling noticeably improves by mid-year, and by the time the fall Major qualifiers roll around, this roster is genuinely dangerous in Bo3s. Not title contenders — but a team that can upset anyone on a good day. Bookmark this. I'll either look like a prophet or delete my account.