Yeah, there’s always so much uncertainty, it’s so funny. The whole period of two weeks it’s like constant rumours. You’re not really sure what’s going on and everyone starts getting paranoid as well. They start wondering ‘am I getting talked about to be replaced or could they be preferring this guy over me?’

It was both the quality of the core three players, Shad, Zarmony, and Cris, I think are just really, really good, having played with and against them for a while now. I just thought they were great players, so it was a great opportunity to play with them. Then also getting to play with QuackNiix is pretty amazing. So in trials it felt like a really good fit. Having his shotcalling just seemed to make us play a lot better.

Yeah, he'll be doing all the drafting and shotcalling

I think if all goes well, we definitely have the potential to do well and make LANs. Even though it was a bit of a surprise in Phase 1 that they did so well, I think if you look at the players, they are really good and very capable of being around the best.

Well it’s actually really hard for us to scrim at the moment because Quack still has to practice with Fnatic for the Mid-Season Brawl. It’s a problem for most of HGC though because most new rosters for next split have at least one player who’s playing for an MSB team, so it’s really hard at the moment to scrim with new lineups because the old lineups still have to practice for the MSB.

Yeah, and there’s nothing stopping the six new rosters from scrimming each other. Whereas for EU it’s only the Monkey Menagerie who—I don’t even know how seriously they’re going to practice this split because it sounds like they just wanna meme—but it’s only them plus the crucible teams who have no one from the Mid-Season Brawl in their lineup. So they’re the only ones who can really scrim before the MSB.

It’s just the impression a lot of people are getting. Like, did you see the drama with GranPkt leaving that team? Well, in his view it’s because he’s the main one that wanted to take stuff seriously, like practice and compete for LAN spots. Whereas the rest of them just wanted to chill and have fun, and sit in that spot between not getting sent to the crucible, but also not having to try hard enough to get into LAN events.

It’s a pretty bad look but if they can still stay in HGC even without fully tryharding, then I guess they still somewhat deserve to be there just on skill.

It’s hard to predict really. Like, if you look at Fnatic, that’s a real wildcard because they’ve picked up someone who’s outside of competitive, but LastHope is a really, really good player. It will be interesting to see if they can translate it to competitive because if they can, I think Fnatic can be really good this split. I think these are good changes for them, bringing scHwimpi back and bringing in LastHope.

Then I think Team Liquid could actually do a lot better. People have been sleeping on Arcaner a little bit. He’s been playing off role since he came into HGC, but when he’s on ranged DPS he’s really good, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him carry them to a higher standing.

I’m kind of interested to see how Diamond Skin does because on the one hand, I think having an all German-speaking roster could help in terms of communication and synergy and stuff, but I think from maybe an egotistical point of view they could miss me a little bit. I also think they will miss Roskmeg. I think he’s a really underrated player as well and it might be a case where they won’t know what they had until it’s gone.

I think it’s such a weird time to have the roster transfer period, like before an event. I think a lot of people feel that way, but it does make it tough. Especially for the teams going to MSB, you don’t wanna burn bridges so much that it makes your LAN prospects completely terrible and ruin the team environment. At the same time, you do have to look forward to the next split and treat the event like it’s secondary.

I think it’s just an awkward time to do it and, having never experienced a rosterpocalypse before, I think it’s really tough for players sometimes. People are quite in the dark and they don’t know what’s going to happen; they don’t know about their job security. So it’s just tough. Until you experience it, you don’t really appreciate how nerve racking it can be to be in that situation.

I’d probably have more faith in EU if two of the three teams weren’t dramatically changing their roster. I think Dignitas is still in a really good position and could do well at MSB, maybe even win it. As for Fnatic and Method, I think they’ll be good enough to beat NA but I don’t see them winning the tournament as they are.

I think Mindfreak could definitely pick up map wins, but the way the format is, you really need to pick up at least one or two 2-0’s to make it out of groups. So if they have a really good showing against a Chinese team and pull out a decisive 2-0, I think they could get out of groups. I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility because they looked good at the Intercontinental Clash and the players are quite good, so I hope they do well.