Player & Team Interviews from ESGN Studio

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Author: soulwarrior - Twitter

At the beginning of the month, IHEARTHU Content Contributor Oliver “soulwarrior” Gehrmann had the opportunity to attend and cover the ESGN Fight Night series in Berlin. Throughout the week, soulwarrior was able to interview key players on both Team Dogehouse and Praise Ragnaros with regards to their play, expectations and thoughts.

If you enjoy the interviews and content in this article, please tweet the author your support at @soul_warrior on Twitter.

For your viewing pleasure, we have compiled the interviews in chronological order below;

Index:

1. Interview With Gnimsh
2. Interview With Team No Name Yet
3. Interview With Team Dogehouse
4. Interview With Artosis
5. Interview With Trump

ESGN Fight Night; Season 1, Episode 1: Post Game Interview with Marcin “Gnimsh” Filipowicz

ESGN Fight Night; Season 1, Episode 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUGhwQvmo_U

In the post game interview that aired as part of Episode 1 of the ESGN Fight Night, Marcin “Gnimsh” Filipowicz claimed that he did believe he would draw into the second Pyroblast. “Believe in the heart of the cards”, he said, simply. I didn’t feel like giving in so quickly and wanted to ask him a little bit more about the match-ups and how he felt about going up against Trump.

Marcin, in game 1, both you and Trump were bringing Mages to the table. What was your thought process at the beginning of the game, did you expect Trump to play a more aggressive or a more controlish approach?

Gnimsh: “I expected him to play a controlish Mage. He was playing a similar deck on his stream, the metagame is pretty aggressive at the moment, so a controlish deck would be well-positioned and all of that lead me to the conclusion that Trump would probably go for such a deck.”

Do you think he was expecting you to play an aggressive Mage?

Gnimsh: “Maybe not. If he did his homework, he should have expected me to play this deck since it’s won a number of larger tournaments in the past. In fact, after I won with it, the following week another player basically copied the deck and he ended up taking it down as well.”

Kripp added mid-sentence “everybody is playing aggressive Mages!”, maybe not too pleased with Trump’s choice.

So how did you feel about the game once you were sure that you were playing an aggressive Mage deck and he would be going for a more control-ish approach?

Gnimsh: “I started to feel more confident. I was expecting him to start with Mage since it’s the strongest class. I also thought that he would most likely go for the Frozen Giants or the more controlish approach, so that’s why I picked this deck for the first game. It has a pretty good match-up, so the odds were in my favor.”

This time, both Kripp and Monk chimed in and they explained that Trump would have won the first game if he wouldn’t have gone for a more risky approach. “If he would have used Alexstrasza on himself, he could have played 2 Pyroblasts the following turns…”

That would have meant that Gnimsh wouldn’t have had a chance to take the game away.

Gnimsh cast 2 Blizzard and 1 Cone of Cold. That’s why Trump thought that Gnimsh couldn’t freeze another time, so he tried to wrap things up with his minions rather than using the spells in his hand.

Once you won the first game with the Mage, did you expect to win the other two games?

Gnimsh: “Yes, absolutely. It pretty much all went as planned. Mage is the strongest class and when he brought out the Warlock, I felt good about my chances since I’ve been playing this particular match-up a lot. Also, Warlock is a little bit weaker now because of the recent patch.

“I knew how to mulligan and I knew about the key cards and when he also got a bad draw, it didn’t seem like he could turn things around.”

What about the last match against the Shaman deck?

Gnimsh: “The match against Shaman is heavily in my favor; there is very little he can do during the early stages of the game. That means my minions can put him into range of the burn spells and there’s nothing he can do against them. Shamans rarely play some form of healing, so you just wait until you draw Pyroblast or you use Fireblast (the Hero power), Frostbolts and Fireballs to wrap things up.”

“The game plan of the Shaman deck is to use his high drops to finish you off, however, he often doesn’t have enough time to end the game this way.”

You mentioned that your team is also running a Shaman deck, however, it’s looking quite a bit different?

Gnimsh: “Our version of Shaman is an auto-loss against Mage, but it has good chances against the other classes.”

Nyhx added: “I didn’t like Trump’s approach to the Shaman deck. His version is a lot slower, which is not helping him in the other match-ups a lot. It seemed like he was adding more card draw and the Mad Bombers instead and I’m not sure about these choices.”

Since you’re now sporting a perfect record and your team is still eligible for the “full swipe bonus”, how do you feel about putting your teammates in this position?

Gnimsh: “I don’t feel they will be feeling any additional pressure; I think they should be more motivated now. At this point, we have an edge and it’s looking very promising for us, so they should relax a little bit more and go into their matches more confidently.”

Alright, thank you Gnimsh and Team Dogehouse for this short interview. Best of luck for the remaining matches!

[su_divider]

ESGN Fight Night; Season 2, Episode 1: Pregame Interview with Praise Ragnaros (Team No Name Yet)

ESGN Fight Night; Season 2, Episode 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUGhwQvmo_U

At our first ever “Fight Night”, “Team Other Team No Name Yet” was able to overcome team “Dogehouse”, with Kripp, Strifecro and Monk winning their respective matches against Artosis, Nyhx and Ekop.

Last time, the North American team had only little time to adapt to the time difference. Things certainly looked better for them this time, so I asked them whether this had played a role at all, considering that they won their first team match despite the slightly less favorable odds.

Monk: “I think it might have made an insignificant difference.”

Strifecro was able to elaborate on that: “Well, almost all of us have weird sleep schedules, so it doesn’t throw us off balance as much as it might affect people that are used to a more regular sleeping pattern.”

For some reason, everyone then looked at Kripp, who is somewhat known for his unusual sleeping schedule. One thing that I read a couple of times prior to the tournament was that people didn’t expect Kripp to integrate as well into the team as most of the other players. I straight asked him about that.

Kripp: “I think that most people who think that I’m a loner get this impression because I rarely play Constructed. When you’re playing Arena, it’s very hard to do it together with someone else, so people jump to the conclusion that I prefer to play alone. When I’m playing other games, I love teaming up with friends and figuring out the best strategies together.

“That’s why I enjoy being a part of this group; we’re all having a great time here.”

Generally speaking, are you guys happy that just a few days prior to this event, a new patch was released?

Strifecro: “Yeah, that was definitely on our minds when we were travelling here. We have played a lot of last minute matches to get a better understanding of the new metagame and that definitely helped.

“I think that the other team was a bit slower to adapt to the changes. So even if they were better prepared prior to the patch, we turned things around over the course of the last few days and came well prepared.”

Monk: “I think the patch is a lot bigger than people think. There are just so many small things going on and together, they have a big effect.”

Kripp: “Most of the fast decks have lost a little bit of speed, so the control decks have an easier time dealing with them.”

Monk chimed in again: “Also, people used to be more scared to play some costly creatures since Mind Control could then turn things around. Since the card’s cost has been changed to 10, that’s no longer as much of an issue as it used to be. Before, you’d drop a Ragnaros, they could then Mind Control it and that meant that you just lost the game.”

[su_divider]

ESGN Fight Night; Season 2, Episode 1: Pregame Interview with Team Dogehouse

ESGN Fight Night; Season 2, Episode 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUGhwQvmo_U

We’re back for the re-match between team “Other Team No Team Name Yet” and team “Dogehouse”. After a great start with Gnimsh’s 3 - 0ing Trump, the other members of team Dogehouse couldn’t really follow it up and they came a little short of expectations.

I sat down with them prior to the event to talk a little bit about the changes they applied to their decks.

Ekop: “I’ve added The Black Knight” to pretty much all of my decks! There were so many Taunters standing in my way the last time and I think it’s a great way to net some card advantage and get rid of the larger stones that opponents throw in my way.

“I’m feeling confident that it’s the right call and that it can make the difference this time.”

Artosis: “I’m playing 3 cards different in 2 of my decks, but everything else is the same. Marcin is making the same changes. We’ve changed the Druid deck a lot, however. Oh, and we’re dropping the Shaman deck.”

That sounds like you were in fact applying a number of changes. Were you unhappy with the Shaman deck or why did you drop it?

Artosis: “It’s not that easy. Basically, we think the metagame will be really controlling again. We made a few changes to the Druid deck to make it even better against the control decks, so we can now easily smash them. Since the Shaman is strongest against aggressive decks, it seemed like the right call to drop it completely and instead play something that will do well against control.”

So you don’t think that it was the decks that were responsible for the losses you took?

Artosis: “I have to admit that I committed to some misplays; I could have won against Kripp. If Max would have played a little more aggressively, he also could have won. Jan on the other hand had terrible draws and there was really nothing that he could do in his games.”

Max, care to fill us in?

Nyhx: “Against the Mage Giants deck, I wasn’t committed enough to putting it all on the line and go for some risks, instead, I played more conservatively. I was fearing a number of cards that he could have been running, but ended up not playing at all, e.g. Polymorph or a second Flamestrike.

“So today, I’m willing to take more risks and this should help me come out successful.”

[su_divider]

ESGN Fight Night; Season 2, Episode 1: Postgame Interview with Artosis

ESGN Fight Night; Season 2, Episode 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUGhwQvmo_U

Artosis just took away the first game from team “Praise Ragnaros” after taking 2 losses in the first 2 games. Standing on the brink of defeat, he unleashed the powerful Giants, turning things around and winning his match against Trump 3 - 2.

Artosis, it seems like you’re always having the most exciting matches. Yesterday against Kripp you went to five rounds and you just did the same against Trump. What’s your secret, do you drop games on purpose?

Artosis: “Opponents get lucky against me, that’s why. No, in all seriousness, the level of competition is really high at these events, so one card or one decision can easily make the difference. Almost anything can happen when you have players at these skill levels facing each other.”

Sometimes it looked like games were extremely one-sided, while the commentators mentioned that they were very close. What are your thoughts on that?

Artosis: “In my long e-sports career, I’ve seen this a lot of times. Sometimes, the people who watch don’t realize how close it really is. A good commentator can then enlighten them and fill them in, explaining to them the mindgames that are going on between the players, the options the players are having and how they will affect the game.”

Kripp mentioned that both the second and third decks that Trump brought to the table had a favorable match-up against your Giants Mage. How did you experience that?

Artosis: “Actually, before we started the first event, prior to choosing our decks, we decided to add more burn in the Mage deck, stripping it off 1 Mountain Giant. With the additional burn, we could still get there even if they put up a strong opposition.

“We also talked about what to do if we got The Coin and we figured that it would be best to bring the Archmage Antonidas out as soon as possible to get as many free spells of it as possible.

“So we really did have the game plan, everybody on the team had lots of experience with Giants Mage and the introduction of Antonidas to the deck put it to the next level.”

Your team is now one-up against the renamed “Praise Ragnaros”. Are you afraid that the same thing that happened last time will happen again?

“No, I really think we’re going to win. I’m even more confident when compared to the first series. They surprised us slightly with their decks last time, but we’re much more ready today!”

[su_divider]

ESGN Fight Night; Season 2, Episode 1: Postgame Interview with Trump

ESGN Fight Night; Season 2, Episode 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUGhwQvmo_U

Trump, you ended up losing a very close and epic match against Artosis today. After you won the first two games, did you feel like you had this one in the bag already?

Trump: “I thought like I had a 95 % or even higher chance of winning the match after the first two games. So I have to admit I really didn’t see this coming.”

Was there ever a point when you started to fear that Artosis is turning it around?

Trump: “After he tied the score, I started to get a little nervous. I thought that now I would only have a 50 - 50 chance of winning and well, I came close, but apparently not close enough.”

Can you remember a particular play that might have made the difference?

Trump: “My teammates have informed me that I made a risky play in the last game, but I didn’t even realize that at the time. Still, the majority agreed that it was probably the right call.”

At this point, do you prefer the team format since your teammates can now turn things around with you supporting them or would you rather have your revenge and go up against another member of team Dogehouse?

Trump: “Well, now I certainly prefer the team format. Working as a team has really helped improve all of our understanding of the game or at least mine in particular. Since my teammates are certainly more experienced when it comes to the Constructed formats, I feel like I’m in the right place when I’m cheering them on rather than playing myself.”

Since you’ve been playing games forever and you can’t win them all, you’ll probably know some great techniques to find your focus again and come back after taking a defeat. Can you share some advice with our less experienced readers so they can also improve their game?

Trump: “I don’t try to think of my losses too much. To be totally frank: ‘Losing doesn’t matter.’ It hurts, granted, but there’s no point dwelling on it when you took a beating. So I just try to instead focus on the next game and not be too upset about a loss I took, give it my all again and see how far I can go!”

Now that you’ve been forced to play a lot of Constructed this weekend, did you start warming up to the format?

Trump: “Oh yes, I enjoy it so much more now! It is so very deep despite the fact that there’s only the base set that’s been released thus far.

“With the changes after the patch, it’s even better than before, as you could hopefully also see when watching our matches against team Dogehouse.”

We certainly did see that the last time those 2 teams went up against each other and judging by today’s opening match between Artosis and Trump, we’re in for yet another treat.