The Happy Fan Club! - Page 7

Bruce = B, Happy = H

B: Good day everyone it's me, Bruce, it's ASUS tournament and here we have Dmitriy Kostin aka Happy. Hey Happy!
H: Hey!
B: Glad to see you in this tournament, tell us when was the last time you took part in the ASUS tournament.
H: It's actually the first time I'm here.
B: Didn't they invite you at least once? You've been a great Undead player since 2006, didnt't you get any invites?
H: Nope.
B: Why is that?
H: Well, at the time when WC3 was popular and was featured in this tounament, I wasn't really taking gaming seriously, just playing for myself, so even though I had plans to do so, they never came to life.
B: You started to attend a lot of foreign tournaments back in the day, maybe this affected it?
H: It's more like WC3 got less popular here so it wasn't worth spending the whole day here for the unimpressive prize pool.
B: Well that was up to you. Ok, so you switched to Starcraft and there was an interview on Goodgame.ru, in which you told us that you were not really sure if you were going to play it, and will see how it goes, and then in a week you became a top European player, so tell us how that happened.
H: Oh it wasn't a week, and it's just a top spot on the ladder, what does it change, it's not as hard as it may seem.
B: Well that means you're on a certain level of play and you understand something about the game, actually more than a lot of other people.
H: Well maybe. Still I think I lack understanding of the game right now and I need to play at least half a year more to be on a stable level of play, maybe not of a top level player, but at least of a good one. I really think something is missing in my play, I've no idea what, though.
B: Ok so you played undead in WC3 and all the UD were complaining about balance, about some Orcs or something, like they were stronger...
H: Like? No they actually were stronger.
B: Ok ok. So why did you choose Terran, not the Zerg, you played Zerg in the beta, didn't you?
H: I played Toss in the beta. For like 3 weeks.
B: But then you were the Zerg?
H: No, I've never played Zerg. Not even once, not even in a custom game.
B: Because they are much like Undead and you think they suck?
H: No, it's just that I think Zerg is definitely a macro race and micro is not that that important for them, they have to spawn larvae, spread the creep, build up the economy, so I decided I don't want to play them, due to them being so macro-oriented. And Terran is something in between. I think the Protoss are limited in their options, they have stong units and they can just build a powerful army off 20 gates late-game but Terrans have Mules, Scans, they can lift buildings, they have a variety of strategies to choose from.
B: So you chose them based on the fact that they are diverse in strats?
H: Not only that, but...I hate being dropped, I always got upset in the beta when I got dropped so I chose Terran. The only time you can get dropped is TvT. Zerg is rarely going for drops and Protoss can go for it in the early stages of the game with the warp prism or later to harass but I don't think it's that effective anyway. Also the scans. It's very important for me. Maybe someone noticed that - I scan a lot and it's crucial for me to see every single movement of my opponent's army to be able to get in the best position possible. Reminds me of shades in Warcraft - you could see everything you want on the map.
B: So I was talking to you on the phone the other day and you told me you were not going to participate in any tournaments and in a week you signed a contract with the Empire team and started participating.
H: Oh actually it was a month.
B: Well anyways - you told me you're going to wait for half a year more before you start participating.
H: I wasn't really sure - just had no plans and actually even now - I came here without any expectations - just trying to do my best. Same goes for Dreamhack and what comes after that - no idea.
B: How's that so?
H: In WC3 I knew that I will attend a certain ammount of tournaments during the year and show some consistent performance but with SC2 - I still do not know. As I have said already - there are a lot of aspects of the game that I do not understand yet, so I'll just keep playing and we'll see what comes out of it.
B: How would you keep track on your progress without actually attending tournaments?
H: I will attend them - it's just that I don't have any plans yet.
B: You got a contract with a team - you'll have to attend.
H: I will not go into details on that contract but I should say that the terms of it are rather lax and everything I do is just my initiative.
B: So you play if you want to - you don't if you don't want to?
H: Something like that. Nobody is forcing me to do it, I do what I want.
B: What about WCG? Do you have anything planned about that or you have no idea what you're gonna attend after Dreamhack?
H: Yeah, well, if I get invited to some major tournament, I will certainly try to go, and about WCG - I will try to do my best and even if don't get a quota - I'll try to show some good performance, although I can just go for WC3 qualifiers - I'll probably be okay with a month of practice, but I think I'll most likely participate in the SC2 qualifier, as I'm pretty much done with WC3 since I couldn't make it to Blizzcon.

(Then goes the banter about the tournament, like his predictions on who will win, but as we already know that, I will not translate it)