Coming in as the ultimate underdog, nouns have delivered some insane upsets and are now the only North American team to have made it to the finals weekend at The International 2023.
We couldn’t miss the chance to talk to nouns during the breaks in Seattle and learn how they approached The International 2023, what makes them special and if there is any special meaning attached to the fact that they are the only NA team to reach top 8.
Luke "Yamsun" Wang and coach Filipe "Astini" Astini sat down with GosuGamers during the break between the group stage and playoff weekend to answer a lot of questions regarding the tournament, the format, the meta and their road to TI12.
Congratulations on making it to the upper bracket and to the main stage! How does it feel to prove all the doubters wrong?
Yamsun: Feels very good, definitely. I know a lot of people, every news publication, streamer, personality, etc, they all said we would get last place in the groups. So it felt very good to prove them wrong, it gave us a lot of confidence that we could do really well in this tournament.
You were one loss away in phase one of the group stage from potentially being eliminated. From there to the upper bracket, what was the discussion that happened between the team when you found out Tundra had picked you?
Yamsun: I don't think it was any discussion. We just accepted that the stronger team thought that we would be the weakest one, so they would obviously pick us. The fact that Tundra picked us didn't really change anything for us. We knew that if we went in and executed our game plan, we would do really well and I think everyone managed to perform to the best of their ability in that series and that's why it looked so convincing for us. I am very grateful that everyone stepped it up, including myself and the coach, and it really felt like all our hard work paid off.
So there was no extra motivation from the fact that they picked you?
Yamsun: Not really, because there wasn't that much time to breathe. We had like a day break before we had to play that seeding series and we were already so happy that we made it out of the group stage to begin with, that we were like "hell, yeah, we can beat anyone."
We tied with every team in our group, except for LGD, with whom we had a really close game as well, and that also gave us a lot of confidence that our strategy was good enough to beat any team. So, it didn't really affect us that much that Tundra picked us. Last year's winners? Felt like it was easy. They also had Nine in the same position as me, who switched from a core role to a support position. Based on that, I thought it would be an interesting match-up and I felt I could do more than him in that regard, to impact the game. 
What was the transition like for you? Are you 100% confident on your gameplay right now?
Yamsun: Following the Bali Major, we decided to make a change in the team because we felt that the dynamic wasn't going to work for us the next time we would be in a high pressure situation.
So, I noticed that K1 was a free agent and I've known him for a long time, we are pretty good friends. He had faith in me to do well and he also liked everyone else on the team, so it was pretty easy to make that decision. At the beginning, I had a lot of motivation to grind and really understand the game from a new perspective, because I played carry for most of my career.
For one DPC season I played in the 4 position, it was in the Black and Yellow team, where I made room for EternaLEnVy. That was already interesting to me because we had a lot of upsets that season. I remember specifically that we took a game of both TSM and Quincy Crew, back in like 2021. So, I already knew that switching roles wasn't an impossible task for me.
I tend to think that I'm a player who doesn't have too much pride or ego in certain ideas or ways to play. I think I fit well with what the team needs and especially on our team, we have people who are very vocal and have ideas about the game and I think it's pretty easy for me to fulfill what they need. That in itself made it easy for me to make the transition.
I don't think I'm the best position 5 player yet. I think I have a lot to work on, but I think I can contribute enough to help us do good things in the game and win against any team.
“I don't think I'm the best position 5 player yet. I think I have a lot to work on, but I think I can contribute enough to help us do good things in the game and win against any team - Yamsun”
You guys are playing very unique drafts – is this the OG of TI12?
Astini: Hopefully. I guess you are considered unique if you are winning with your unique heroes, right? If you are losing with them, it's not that fun. I hope we can keep performing well and we can show good strategies. We still have some that we haven't shown yet and I hope we will get to use them and that they will work.
If we are the OG of TI12 or not... I don't know. It's up to you guys, who are watching, to judge, but I believe we need way more results to be called that.
How many new heroes will we see from nouns?
Astini: There is one hero that's not been picked nor banned in the groups that we will definitely see throughout the rest of the tournament. There's no way that that hero is not going to show. So, at least one new hero. And there are a few things that we are trying. Like some support heroes in the core roles, some core heroes in the support role and if we don't get to play these, we will most surely see them from other teams because the news is spreading way too fast.
Yamsun: Because of this week's break that is in between stages, I think it's going to be a very drastic meta shift. I guess that's the unique part about this tournament. It kind of feels like it's a different tournament each week, after each stage. So I think the audience will see a lot of new things as people try to come up with solutions to what happened in the previous week.
“It kind of feels like it's a different tournament each week, after each stage - Yamsun”
How do you like the current meta? Have the last few balance patches changed the viable hero pool significantly?
Yamsun: The last few balance patches have definitely been in our favour. We were in a bit of a rough spot before the last few updates dropped and I think having these things change and giving people time to adjust to the meta is a good thing for the underdogs. People don't know what to expect playing against them.
There is this thing where Gaimin Gladiators won three Majors this year and some DreamLeagues and they kind of get targeted by Valve themselves with these balance patches. Valve made a lot of their strategies weaker, so that's one thing that explains why they are in the lower bracket now. For a team like that, obviously, these changes are not that beneficial.
I remember reading a statistic about the average game length being the longest of any TI so far. And so, I think that favours our team because we have really greedy players. Lelis was a core player before, so he likes to farm, obviously on 4 position. K1 is the greediest and fastest farmer in the world and as for myself, sometimes I don't get to farm anything at all, but I think I still have a lot of impact by just being there.
To sum it up, I would say that this meta favours us because not only we are able to play fast and snowball to victories, but also, even if the game goes late, we know that we have a lot of players who are good with late game situations and have the knowledge and understanding to clutch up the game.
Astini: The current meta is cool. The Tarrasque - Blade Mail thing going on right now is a bit too OP and that makes for half of the games at least to be played around these items, but we are cool. I think we have a good read of the meta, so we are happy with it. I believe that this is the meta, I might be very wrong. (laughs)
How about the new drafting pattern, did you like it when you first saw it?
Astini: Oh yes, I like the current draft order a lot more than the previous one. There are so many options for things that you can do. You can have these very crazy strategies and you can make them work without the players having a crazy deep hero pool.
The carry Willow, which we saw for the first time at IeSF played by Team Mongolia, can happen only because of how the draft works now. In the past, you could not do this because you would be so targeted with the counter picks, so there was no choice. Now, you can just have your cheesy strategies and the enemy team needs to play their strategy. They can't fully counter you. It's kind of cool.
Based on what you've seen so far, who would you say it's the most formidable opponent?
Astini: I hate to rate teams. I want to be able to play our strategies, have our playstyle going smoothly and try not to think of who is strong, and who is weak. The team I'm looking at the most formidable opponent is the team we will play next and then the next and so on. If I think this team is so much better or is the best at TI, I am already losing against them.
What do you make of Azure Ray, your opponent in the first round of the upper bracket?
Yamsun: They clearly have gone a lot better since they started playing together. I know that they are a team that started off kind of a "for fun stack" because a lot of the players on their roster were either retired or on a break following last year's TI. It's clear that they still have a lot of cohesion that they used to have when they were LGD or Elephant and that they adapted pretty fast to the changing landscape of Dota 2.
They are doing very well in this meta and they've proven that they are able to compete better than the season veterans in their region, like Aster, who didn't even make it in the qualifiers. They deserve a lot of respect. Obviously\, many of the Azure Ray players are very accomplished and it's definitely nice to see veterans that can still do very well in the game.
Astini: I feel like Azure Ray want to win lanes and put a lot of pressure in the early game, which is not that common for Chinese teams. They put this insane amount of pressure in the 10 to 15 minutes of the game, but if you survive that, you still have a chance in that game. Sometimes you don't survive it.
What do you think about this new TI12 format overall?
Yamsun: I personally wish that the breaks weren't so long. It's a lot of downtime and you always feel this pressure of keeping up the work because all other teams will work just as hard to get a good result.
I would even say that the breaks are not beneficial for us in particular because we came with a very unique playstyle that people weren't ready for and that's why we were able to take some convincing wins. We stomped Gaimin Gladiators in the groups, Gunnar got a kill record in the series against LGD, and these things didn't happen randomly. They happened because we understood a lot of the things that were good about the new patch.
But now, because of all these breaks, the other teams will get the chance to sit back and be like "ok, we need to study these guys and be ready for their tricks and stuff." Most probably nobody paid too much attention to us before the tournament started because they thought we would just finish in the last place. I don't like it but at the same time, it's a challenge for every team, I'm sure, and it gives us more incentive to come up with good ideas on how to beat the teams we will be playing against.
Astini: It's kind of boring to wait for that long. We are all a mix of boredom and anxiety right now. You were playing on such a high level and you want to keep it going, then is just this ice bath. If we could keep going it would have been better.
“We are all a mix of boredom and anxiety right now. You were playing on such a high level and you want to keep it going, then is just this ice bath - Astini”
Is there more pressure to carry the NA flag in the finals weekend in front of the home crowd?
Yamsun: No, I don't think that at all. We had no expectations going into this tournament and we were just ready to play as well as we were able to. That attitude has got us pretty far and now we just really want to get as far as possible. For me personally, it's no pressure at all because I feel like I already accomplished something very significant.
I'm ready to just do my job, keep it going and I don't really care what other people think, because, again, everyone just thought we would be the first team eliminated, but here we are, in the finals weekend.
More Interviews from TI12
- Purge: "I’m looking forward to Blade Mail and tanky heroes getting nerfed"
- NatTea on hosting TI12 “It's still hard to grasp that this is my reality, that this is my career”
- Stormstormer: "Whoever invented Heart of Tarrasque meta is an absolute genius”
- Costabile: "(It's a) Loser mentality to say 'I didn't get last at TI, that's good enough"
- tOfu: “It's important that we start to feel a bit the pressure”
- Panda and kaffs: “This TI feels a bit weird”
- KingRD: “I don't want to come to TI and have to change everything
- 23Savage and Mikoto: "The game is kind of boring now"
