sbdush on Level UP: “In reality, we’re just a roster of people who couldn’t find a team.”

There’s not much to say here. There was just a manager who put the roster together. Initially, neither WoE nor I were on it. But they had corpse—our analyst, stats specialist, assistant coach, and so on. I told him that I might “steal” a few players from their roster. He said, “Steal me too.” I replied, “So let’s just join your team, and that’s it.” That’s how this roster came together.

[When you got together, did you feel like you could really do something cool with this roster, that you could qualify for something?]

No, we definitely didn’t have those thoughts. It might sound harsh, but we’re probably just a roster of rejects. Again, to put it bluntly. But in reality, we’re just a roster of people who couldn’t find a team before the qualifiers. And the qualifiers for EWC and The International are the most important ones of the year, so one way or another, you want to take part in them. Even if it’s just participating in the open qualifiers. And we didn’t have any expectations. We definitely didn’t have any expectations for the EPL. Nor did we have any for the qualifiers: I thought we’d play a quick match, get eliminated, or not even make it to the closed qualifiers—which is, in fact, exactly what happened with The International. And that was that. But as it turned out, we qualified for the Esports World Cup. We’ll be participating in it.

I’d really like for us to advance out of the group stage. Because if we advance out of the group, they’ll extend our stay until the 20th—that is, until the final day of the tournament—and we’ll be able to watch the matches on stage. So even if you’re eliminated on the first day of the playoffs—let’s say you made it out of the group stage but were eliminated on the first day—they’ll still extend your hotel stay and give you a ticket to the stadium so you can watch the final stages of the tournament.

First of all, that’s why. And it follows from this that my hot water will be turned off on the 13th. And I really wouldn’t want to go home when there’s no hot water here. So, since they’re supposed to turn it back on on the 23rd, going home on the 20th makes more sense. But if we don’t advance from the group stage, we’ll be flying back on the 13th. That’s why I’d really like to advance from the group stage. But to be honest, I don’t know how realistic that is. It feels like, generally speaking, anything is possible. You never know what’s going to happen. Just like it was with qualifying.

I’ll be honest: I didn’t think we’d beat Yellow Submarine in the open qualifiers at the EWC, because we know those guys have been training and pushing themselves for a long time. But we, in essence, put the team together in a month. A month, plus we’re a stack. Maybe that actually helped us: we just quickly found some ideas that felt comfortable for us. And it worked out. Maybe we’ll arrive at the tournament, play our first match—against Aurora, as far as I remember—face them, learn something from the loss, and draw our conclusions accordingly. And the rest of the tournament will be easier for us.