niu: “YSR-04E is ahead of other carries in China in terms of meta knowledge, so victories come relatively easily to us.”
Team Resilience offlaner Li “niu” Kunbo, in an interview during the broadcast of the Chinese qualifiers for The International 2026, commented on qualifying for the year’s main tournament, summarized the match against Yakutou Brothers for the slot, and shared his future plans.
On the victory
We finally won. It felt like victory was coming too hard.
On the match against YB
Since we’d made it this far, we certainly didn’t expect this best-of-3 series to be easy for us. During the game, some of us might have even been nervous. In the first game, we picked a comfortable hero—Doom—and he played pretty well, but it felt like he was a little nervous.
As for the second map, I’d never played Necrophos before. Everyone said he was good, so I volunteered to give it a try. I played based on what the guys told me. Someone messed up in the middle of the game, but we still managed to win in the end.
On the team atmosphere
We get along pretty well in real life; we know each other well, including our weaknesses and all that. We’re pretty tolerant of each other. It’s easy for us to communicate, and we never have situations where someone loses their temper easily or conflicts arise.
Also, when it comes to heroes, I think we have an even better understanding of strong heroes than other Chinese teams. YSR-04E is ahead of other carries in China in terms of meta knowledge, so victories come relatively easily to us.
On future plans
I guess first we’ll just take a break and relax. This time, we spent about a month at boot camp. We’ll rest a bit, and then we’ll start preparing for TI—getting ready for the next bootcamp. At first, we’ll probably just watch matches and the Esports World Cup, and then we’ll start training, especially once the foreign teams arrive in Shanghai. That’s when we’ll really be training full-out. Of course, we need to try to get better, because our current level clearly isn’t enough.
On expectations for our performance at TI
As for our expectations—first and foremost, of course, we’ll try to make it to the playoffs and play on stage. And after that… well, how should I put it? We need to take it one step at a time throughout the entire TI. Ultimately, everyone wants to achieve a good result, but it doesn’t just come easily—that’s obvious. So it’s step by step—there’s no other way.
Team Resilience secured the first Chinese slot for The International 2026 by defeating Yakutou Brothers 2-0 in the qualifier final. Earlier, members of the Russian-speaking community commented on the qualifier results.
Photo by Marius Faulhaber, Esports Foundation.
