Hello congratulations to you and Invasion on winning the open qualifiers. How do you feel about the win?
Thank you, I feel good after playing 9 games straight throughout the whole day and finishing on the top.
Now Valve chose to keep team Invasion out of the main qualifiers. How does it feel, were you surprised by the decision?
Im not surprised but just feeling a bit upset because our performances was really bad during that period of time.
If u are to be given an option of replacing a team invited for the qualifiers, which team will it be? A lot many people have raised questions with TNC being one of the direct invitees for the qualifier, especially when they are yet to grab international attention. Do you personally think their win against MVPs and Team Malaysia was overhyped?
It depends on how the invites are done by Valve, either roster stability or recent performance. Now if it was roster stability then I think we should replace TnC, if performance then we shouldn't have an invite on the qualifiers. I personally feel that their win against the two MVPs and Team Malaysia surely proves that they can be one of the best team in SEA.
On that note, what are your thoughts about a similar highly debated issue regarding your ex-teammates, Team Malaysia getting direct invitation for TI5 over Rave? Is it not contradicting Valve’s emphasize that they are looking for stable teams?
Before the invites came out i thought that both Rave and Malaysia will be receiving a direct invite into TI5. I guess team Malaysia’s winning on every single SEA tournament caught everybody’s attention while forgetting about Rave.
Moving back to your team. An attempt of revamping of the roster was made prior to the qualifiers with replacing of two players with two Australians, Lordboonz and Blackshatan. Tell us the story of how did this came about.
The main reason we did that it’s because we feel that we have only a slight chance to win the open qualifiers with the same lineup. It’s risky to change roster one week before the open qualifiers but we went for it and things are better than what i expected.
How did they respond to the invitation?
They are really excited and wanted to play with us because they were not have any team at that moment.
Why did the team decide to go for two Australian players instead of Malaysian players, considering a possible ping or lag issue can hamper the performance of the team?
sLiCKz suggested them both because they were his teammate before and he thought they were both good. They both have like 150-200 ping but they said it's playable and they are used to that ping already, so its not an issue for them performance wise.
Were they in Malaysia during the open qualifiers? If not, how did they overcome the latency issues?
They were using WTFast VPN service while playing from Australia.
Will they be joining the team at the training house for the upcoming TI5 qualifiers?
Yes they are coming down to Malaysia on the 24th May.
Can you share with us some of the special preparations the team is taking for the TI5 qualifiers? How many hours are you training a day?
We usually start our training at 4pm till 1am. We will play 2 or 3 sets of bo3 with different opponents during that time period and have some replay analysis.
Shifting to the open qualifiers, tell us something about your experience. Considering the sudden death format of best-of-one, were you nervous losing to an unknown team with unorthodox unexpected strategies?
The best-of-one stage was pretty scary, we could have lost to some unexpected strategies and drop out from the qualifiers. That’s why we took one game at a time, taking each game seriously, we have been very careful in the drafts for the best-of-one games and played really solid throughout.
A lot of notable teams like Arcanys and Underminer were knocked out very early in the tournament. Do you think it is the format or SEA does has a lot of good unknown teams who needs to be recognized?
I think it’s the format that causes this scenario because I am sure they wouldn’t lose if it’s a best-of-three. I do think there are a lot of the unknown SEA teams who are but just inconsistent.
Now there was a heated issue involving your team during the qualifiers against team K2Apes. One of your teammates, Lordboonz got disconnected and was unable to reconnect, while the match continued following a long series of pauses. An admin later intervened and restarted the match from the beginning. After the completion of the matchup K2Apes complained of unfair treatment. What do you think was the problem here and do you think K2Apes were treated unfairly?
I personally felt that they were using the rules to show that how desperate they want to win in a situation that favors them due to a connection issue. We would have waited for the opponent to reconnect even if the rules stated that we can resume after a 10 minute pause. That’s just being respectful and fair towards your opponent.
Although the main qualifier is soon, the team must have celebrated the victory. Was it a team night out or a small training house blast?
We wanted to grab some nice food but most of the shop were already closed so we had to settle for local food from a mamak stall (24 hours restaurant).
Rave is considered by many to be the team to win the qualifier. Do you agree with this or do you have another team (other than you) in mind who would put up a huge challenge?
I think Rave and MVP.Hot6 will come out on top of the qualifiers.
Have you played against either of these teams? How did it turn out?
We played against MVP.Hot6 in the scrims recently and they are looking really strong. We lost all the scrims against them.
It was a pleasure talking to you and am thankful to you to get this interview scheduled. I wish you best of luck for the forthcoming events, specially they qualifiers. Will you like to add some final words, shout out to your fans?
I would like to thank Invasion for sponsoring us and all of our fans for the continuous support during our ups and downs. Shoutout to Andy Soong, Botakai & Babyoling!
