Reynad: "I think that EU and NA are exactly equal in terms of skill"

Alright, Reynad, I'm sure most of the Hearthstone community already knows a lot about you, but for those of us living under rocks, can you tell me a bit about yourself?

I'm a 22 year old streamer that plays hearthstone for a living. I'm best known for pioneering many popular decks that you see on ladder. I've also been working hard to push Hearthstone into the esports scene for a long time, using the money I make from streaming to salary the team Tempo Storm. We've consistently been the best performing team in the game since its inception

Tempo Storm is really kind of an experiment in both the esports and Hearthstone scene in that it's run by a player and not backed by a organization from a previous esport. Your players have been doing well, but how would you say it's been going from an organizational standpoint? If you could go back to Tempo Storm's inception, what piece of advance would you give yourself regarding the formation and managing of the team?

From an organizational standpoint it's been going very well since I hired Dan "Frodan" Chou as the team manager. I don't have a lot of time to handle a lot of managerial tasks that I should, and Dan has been immensely helpful in that regard. If I could give myself advice it would just be to hire him sooner and make more of an effort to reach out to sponsors. I'm happy to say that we just signed our first major sponsor in Twitch.tv so that lets me afford to fly our players out to more events. The hardest part is always establishing a relationship with sponsors and that takes time, but things are definitely looking up in that regard.

We have the best results in Hearthstone, we have the biggest fan base in Hearthstone, we have the highest overall views in Hearthstone, and both times we've organized an event (Lord of the Arena) we set viewership records for the game. All the pieces are there except the sponsors that make it all happen, and hopefully that gets resolved in the new year.

You're known as a pretty salty guy both on your stream and in statements to the general public. About how much of this is for show and how much would you say is your actual personality?

Nothing I say is ever for show, I'm very honest on social media and not a huge fan of euphemisms. When a question is asked of me, I answer it honestly. Sometimes this upsets people and they attribute the adjective "salty" to whatever I said. In my perspective though, it's never coming from a place of anger or spite or "saltiness". It's just my honest opinion of something or someone based on what I've seen. Most of the time I have nothing but nice things to say, but those statements don't make headlines or stir up non-existent drama.

You're known for butting heads against some other members of the community including Chakki, Admirable, Rdu, and Ekop. But by forming a team and being a big streamer, you've become a very public figure and your statements are often heavily scrutinized. Have you considered that it may be better for your career to keep some of these controversial opinions to yourself? And have you ever not liked someone in the community only to get to know them a bit more and then become friends?

Controversial opinions like what, specifically?

Like RDU "cheating" in Dreamhack for example.

20% of my 15,000 viewers in chat were asking me whether I thought he cheated at Dreamhack Summer. I know for a fact that he cheated in EU vs. China by being in a Skype call with a dozen teammates and screen sharing/talking through every play, because those very teammates told me they did. The sound proof headsets we used on the Dreamhack stage didn't work, and they had us play music through our cell phones so as not to hear the casters talk about each others' cards in real-time. On top of that the two times he was messaged by friends during a game was when Leeroy was drawn by his opponent, an important card to know of when you're making decision based on whether you're dead next turn or not. The third time he was messaged his friend literally told him what cards his opponent had in hand in Romanian.

So the question posed to me at the time was whether I thought RDU cheated or not. Given that I knew he had done it before, and there were plenty of chances to do it here, I said that I think it's more likely he did than that he didn't. I also think that given those facts, any rational person would think it was more likely he cheated than not. The difference is everyone else is so concerned about protecting their image that they bend their statements around that.

Do I know he cheated for sure? No, and that's why I never brought it up again after that. But when I was asked I answered honestly.

And have you ever not liked someone in the community only to get to know them a bit more and then become friends?

As for Admirable Ek0p and Chakki, all three of them publicly insulted me on social media before I knew who any of them were. Other streamers at the time were known for being entertaining, or bringing over huge fan bases from other games. I was the first Hearthstone streamer that became popular just for being good, and making some of the best decks in the game.

This ended up bringing a lot of hate and jealousy from players in the community that felt like they deserved more attention but weren't willing to work for it 13 hours a day like I was. They weren't going to hate on a streamer like Kripp or Trump because they are entertainers. A lot of the semi-pros, just like in any competitive endeavor, felt like they could do what I do better an. As a result they ended up insulting me on social media. Admirable, Ek0p, and Chakki all did this before I knew who they were. My philosophy has generally been to ingore them though, and rarely have I brought them up.

The only other time I've brought up something controversial was when I talked about Fight Night on Reddit. I said they were funded by a company with a shady history, but also made a lot of assumptions about who was in charge that ended up being incorrect. This angered a lot of people in the community. Lo and behold, a few months later they withheld payment from many of their players and employees. Some people moved to Germany for the opportunity and never saw a cent. The point of this is to say that when I say controversial things, it isn't from some childish place of spite or anger. My opinions are all based in fact and what I know to be true.

Well that's certainly more of an answer that I bargined for. Let's move on to a bit about Hearthstone. First of all, you're one of the only NA players to try to qualify on EU. You mentioned it was partly to avoid Tides but was there any other motivation? Also, in other esports there's concepts such as region locking. Do you think Hearthstone will need to implement these types of rules eventually?

If I held some of those opinions back I would certainly make fewer enemies, yes. There are plenty of things I refrain from saying because they serve no purpose other than to make someone angry. But when a question is asked of me by a fan, I'm going to answer them honestly. When somebody insults me on social media, I'm not going to give them a hug and a kiss on the cheek the next time we meet. I don't think it's fair to expect me to.

I think that EU and NA are exactly equal in terms of skill, and don't feel like region locking would hurt or benefit anyone. If they choose to go that route, sure, but I don't see how it would change much. I played EU for two reasons. First, as you mentioned, I would dodge my teammate Tides. Second, because the NA qualifiers happened first, I wanted to see how Tides did with the decks we made for him before I submitted them myself. He went 5-0, then I went 5-0 so I'm happy with the decision. We likely would have had to play against each other if we both played NA.

The decks certainly performed very well. What was the deck building process like and how did you finally settle on those decks?

It was a long process over the course of 4 days. Tides was winning WEC in China at the time and flying back sick, so it was just Reckful, Hyped, Gaara, and myself doing most of the testing.

Hunter was broken, and the format didn't have bans, so we needed to find a version favored in the mirror that could still beat other decks like priest. Reckful and I found that in the Hunter mirror, whoever played more early creatures won 100% of the time, so that got us playing Undertaker + Leper Gnome. Reckful had the idea of Sludge Belchers and we quickly realized that it's amazing in the mirror, and one of the best cards in the game. The only favorable way to interact with it in the entire game is Shadow Madness so we ended up playing 6x Sludge Belchers in our 3 decks. So Undertaker / Belcher Hunter was out of the way, but Reckful streamed in accidentally. He went like 20-1 on stream, which opened the usual can of worms where every other pro started playing it claiming they independently came up with it. That made our Hunter mirrors a lot harder since 50% of people had belchers at this point, but nothing could be done to improve the deck more at that point.

Miracle rogue had one of the best natural matchups against Hunter, as well as doing well against the Zombie Chow midrange decks people tried to counter Hunter with, so we started looking at that. I had the idea of putting belchers into it because the card is broken. While it doesn't immediately draw a card like Azure Drake, it gives you an extra turn which ends up getting you that draw anyway (like Sap). It also ended up breaking the mirror match open, and we assumed other players would gravitate towards Miracle too so that was important. Tides and hyped didn't like the belcher idea at first but we played mirrors and I was winning even without coin because of belcher. Hyped ended up suggesting I cut the 1 Gnomish Inventor for 1 Conceal and that was the deck.

I wanted to play Handlock since it beats every non-Hunter deck. Our other two decks were great against Hunter, so as long as we got past that Handlock should be able to sweep. It's a deck I've played longer than anyone alive as far as I know so rather than playing many games with it, I just played the exact 29 cards I knew I wanted + 1 big game hunter instead of the first Defender of Argus. Handlock ended up carrying for me personally, while Rogue carried for Tides.

In the course of testing I tried porting the Undertaker + Zombie Chow + Sludge Belcher package that Priest uses into other classes like Paladin and Warlock, but ultimately those decks were underpowered compared to the 3 decks we picked with broken mechanics.

Alright, that's a lot to talk about. You mention Reckful as a member of your testing team but we haven't seen much of him lately in the tournament scene. How active is he these days and does he plan to compete in tournaments in the near future?

Reckful streams when he's in the mood for playing Hearthstone, but it's more of a hobby than a job for him. He's one of the most talented players I've seen though and has a lot of good instincts. He doesn't play many tournaments simply because he's been quiet until recently and nobody's been inviting him. He's also the reason I played Oasis Snapjaw at Dreamhack Summer, and an awesome guy to prepare with when we can.

I also notice that Kitkatz was not one of the players present on your Blizzcon testing team. Whenever Kitkatz is mentioned on reddit, there's always a debate on whether he actually is in Tempo Storm. First, can you confirm once and for all, is Kitkatz on Tempo Storm and if so, to what extent?

Kitkatz was traveling at the time I believe, and not in our group calls when we did testing for Blizzcon. Kitkatz is on Tempo Storm, just not officially signed. He was a free agent and looking for good practice partners. We had spoken a bit at Dreamhack Summer and I figured it can't hurt to have him on board.

Kitkatz is a good player, but I know first-hand how hard it is to perform as well as you want to when you don't put the time into preparation. I see a lot of potential in him though if he were to put more time into tournaments, streaming, or testing with the team over ladder. I think he's #2 in NA right now for what it's worth. Yesterday he mentioned he went 11-1 at rank 2 and still couldn't hit rank 1. There's a huge gap there at the moment.

Kitkatz actually choose Europe too but did not decide to play the decks both you and Tides played. Unfortunately he did not qualify. Do you think this was a mistake on his part? Also, Kitkatz woke up too late for the tournament and actually missed his first match, starting the tournament off with a score of 0-1. This is actually the second time Kitkatz has missed one of these tournaments. How much did Tempo Storm chastise him for this?

Not too much. We all have different play styles and almost always end up going with different decks. I had to spend 2 hours on call with Tides trying to convince him to play our decks instead of Paladin control and the like. Sometimes being comfortable with a deck is more important than what deck you play, so I can't fault him for playing Warrior.

As for waking up late, it sucks but what can you do. Kitkatz isn't as invested into the game as the rest of us because he doesn't play it as a job. That's definitely not a bad thing, but it means that he'll miss the occasional event. Tides for example was reigning Deck Wars Champion and chose not to play in the second Finals this week. In the end I trust my players' judgment when it comes to knowing what's best for them, and understand that everyone leads busy lives outside of Hearthstone.

Through your 5-0 sweep of the EU qualifiers, you faced an incredibly stacked bracket. Were there any particularly exciting games or close matches you thought you were going to lose?

There were a lot of close games and a couple 3-2 series. At one point I had to play Handlock against ek0p's Hunter to win a series and I expected to lose that matchup, but I had a draw that could win if he didn't have the second Hunter's Mark. He ended up not getting it, and I won.

Now, in past recent competitions, you've been taking too long on some of your turns, which directly caused you to lose some games. Many twitch viewers even gave you the nickname "Ropenad". What was the cause of taking too long on your turns, being unfamiliar with plays or just nerves in general? And have you taken measures to make sure it doesn't happen in the future?

Just sleep deprivation mostly. When I play tournaments I have a habit of trying to consider every permutation of every possible play. On ladder, on the other hand I just weigh the 2-3 most obvious plays against each other and go with the one that makes the most sense. The tournament way of thinking takes too long when I'm tired once in a while. I also think that my games get more scrutiny than most players', and have only ever roped twice.

Alright final question. Besides yourself, can you give me a ranking of the top 5 players you expect to do well at the EU finals?

I don't recognize many of the EU players besides Thijs because I play on NA mostly. Any list I make would be randomly guessing. I like the thinking behind the decks Theude played for what it's worth, and I like my own chances as well.

Alright I don't want to keep you any longer do let's end it here. Do you have any final shout outs or sponsor plugs?

Shoutout to tempostorm.com, Twitch.tv for all the support, and of course to Blizzard for backing the pro Hearthstone scene with a massive $250,000 tournament. Hopefully the game continues to grow.

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