Since the interview made live last night was a lot more complete and a lot more recent than the one TL staff made i spent some time on it and put it into writting. Here it is:
Artosis: Hey Nony!
Liquid`NonY:What's up Artosis?
Artosis: Well, I’m up, you’re up....to RO4. How does that feel?
Liquid`NonY: It feels great. It was a huge hurdle and I've passed it. So I feel really relieved.
Artosis: We gotta go over some of these games. First off i want to go over game no.2 . How did you feel about that win? When he canceled the Command Center?
The probe is Chuck Norris smurfin'. Hi's solely presence makes idrA GG.
Liquid`NonY: Well, at first i did not realize what was going on, pretty much like everyone else, and than I realized he miss clicked and hit Esc on the building rather on the unit. I thought about it for a second and I was like " he could have stayed in and fought for it", but in a build like that you can't afford to make such mistakes. Even if you build a Supply Depot late, when you are fast expanding it might lose you the game, but cancel the Command Center it's far worse so I think he was pretty screwed.
Artosis: Yeah, he definitely was. At any point in time did you thought that your probe killed the Command Center with a critical hit :D ?
Liquid`NonY: Hahaah, no. That did not cross my mind .
Artosis: Now let's look at the Destination game. It really seemed to me that you moved in too quickly with those 2 zealots and I though you are going to go for some brilliant speed-zealots, forcing him to make turrets faking DTs. Do you regret going in so quickly and not thinking of what maybe Artosis though of?
One step away from a brilliant strategy....
Liquid`NonY: Yeah, I actually did not plan to do that strategy. I planned to do one gate proxy, harass and then take it into the late game. But than I thought I could probably finish it right there so I did more proxy gates. I think I could have won, as everybody seen, and could have work but I messed up the execution. Probably due to the fact that I did not practice it at all . Your idea with the speed-zealots would have been much better.
Artosis: Well game one; let's get back now a little. IdrA did a 2 fact-vult drop. This is something no one seen IdrA do. Did it really catch you super duper off guard?
Isn't this a happy moment in the probe world?
Liquid`NonY: My thinking going into the game was “I have the DT drop that I can do, and it's going to land at around 7 min into the game, and looking back to our 1st series, he still did not have an academy building, his ebay was not done either”. So I thought “if he does the same build this DT drop is just going to kill him so I think it's looking pretty good”. Than we got into the game, it was vertical positions, and I'm thinking "you know, he almost beat me on Andromeda anyway, and in vertical positions he could definitely could have beat me, so maybe he will just play it safe”. But when the drop ship came I pretty much realized that he just completely countered my DT drop and there wasn't much I could do at that point.
Artosis: Now this last game that we just saw here. What do you want to say about this? You proxied 3 gates, stopped probes at like, I don’t even know, 25. You just barreled him over there. What do you have to say about that build? Where did you come up with that?
Liquid`NonY: My plan for the series was actually to take Tornado, Destination and Fighting Spirit into mid-late game. I focused a lot on dropping mid game harass and building an advantage for the late game and knowing how to finish a Terran opponent late into the game and I never actually got to do any of that . So going in Fighting Spirit I thought “crazy things have happened in the series so far, but it's 2:2, Fighting Spirit is a pretty standard map, we are going to see the classical game that everyone wanted to see”, but then he does that build and in my practice games, whenever I saw a Terran do that build it just occurred to me "what can they do to proxy gates" and every time I did proxy gates against this FE Terran build, they couldn’t do pretty much anything . They don’t have many options. As you can see the goons starts firing up the bunker, SCVs have to repair, more goons come, and more SCVs have to repair. There is just no money for the Terran and zealots are going to kill SCVs. So when they bring a bunch of SCVs to help with the micro it's not like a just have goons, in which case SCVs would be great, but I had the zealots mixed in too and I don't think I ever lost a game against an A- or higher Terran that did that build. So I was pretty confident it would work, and in fact thinking back to game 2 when he was going to do the same build the same way, I thought it was fortunate that I did not have to do the proxy gates than, cause he would have seen what my counter is to that FE build. So I got to do the counter in the 5th game and it worked and I don't know if would have worked one time or if it would have worked twice, but it was good that I got to save that for the last game when it mattered the most.
Artosis: Indeed it did. Now you didn’t play for about a year. How so good yo, why so good, how so handsome?
Liquid`NonY: Haha, i don't know man. Iccup is an incredible resource and it’s really fortunate that i can just log on and play progamers with little low latency when every I want to. I’ve always been a mechanical player, so my mechanics came back to me pretty naturally and I just had to catch up on few of the latest trends and just start working on some builds that will work and that’s all it takes. Took me about a month
Artosis: Alright, now. Let's talk now about some other matches that we’ve seen. First off, Ret got knocked out. He might have been your hardest opponent. His zvp is kinda legendary. And now we have Sen against Mondragon on the other side of the bracket, with both of them, by the way, known for their Zerg vs Protoss. Which one of those would you less like to see in the finals?
Liquid`NonY: Uhm, I think i have a better chance against Sen actually. I have always respected Mondragon and especially his ZvP of course. I think Mondragon is a very clever player and I feel like Sen is more of a mechanical player and I’ll know what I’m getting into if I’m playing Sen and I just need to play my game and outplay him. With Mondragon I feel like he is the kind of guy that might outsmart me so going into a bo7 I like a straight up game with a guy like Sen rather with a guy like Mondragon who is very clever and has the mechanics too and might and have some tricks up his sleeve.
Artosis: Hmmm, Mondragon the magician. We just saw JF vs White Ra . Did you watch that match in intense, intense anticipation?
Liquid`NonY: Yeah I watched that, it was a fun match.
Artosis: It was a fun match wasn’t it? JF is your next opponent and he has a pretty good pvp i have to say. His reavers are pretty scary. What do you have to say about going against him in the next round?
Liquid`NonY: It's amazing that he made it to the top 4 cause I still think that he is operating on a very limited practice and without being condescending or something, I think we can all see he plays a little sloppy here and there and it's not the amazingly solid JF that we’re used to. As long as he can go on another week without doing a ton of practice I’m feeling pretty good against him. I don’t feel like I am facing 100% in shape JF even thought he managed to take out 2 great players, GosI[Terran] and White-Ra, I still feel pretty good about it.
Artosis: Excellent. Well are you going to win the TSL? That is my last question for you. Are you the Champion already?
Liquid`NonY: I am already the Champion. I am so eager to show my pvz in the finals, and I feel confident about playing JF next week, and unless he is a wizard that will double up his skill in a week, yeah, I’m the TSL2 Champion haha.
Artosis: Wow. You’ve heard it here guys, TSL Champion Nony. Well, thank you very much Nony. Anything to say to your fans? And by the way, Tasteless says “Hi!”.
Liquid`NonY:: Thanks for supporting me, especially Mister Rekrul and Mister Zephyr . I hope now that the other great American player is out of the way we can all stand behind Nony as he becomes TSL2 Champion. Thanks to TeamLiquid, thanks to PokerStrategy.com. They don’t get enough credit, this whole thing would not be happening without them. It’s an amazing event so thank you guys!
Artosis: Alright, thank you for the interview and good luck in the next round!