Taking the very last train to the GosuCup finals was Malaysian player Zi Song "Lalasong" Hee. The Hearthstone veteran has been struggling to find success in the gruelling bracket but finally got it as he conquered the final budget cup.
"I would've never made it without my practice group," Lalasong confessed in our interview with him, showing appreciation for his fellow card slingers and the tournament that made him several new friends.
So, congratulations on taking the very last train to the GosuCup finals! Feels good?
Feels very good. That was the last chance and I was like in super tryhard mode, luckily RNG stood on my side this time.
I know you're a GosuCup regular but that last cup must've put you under a lot of pressure.
Well, besides the ticket to the grand finals, me and some of the players from Malaysia have something like a Malaysian pride. Our initial plan was to push Malaysia to the top, but it failed so hard, haha. And then we changed to, "hey let’s just try to gather as much points as possible and not be the last one."
Well, that's a sort of commitment, I guess! How well do you know Dennisgosu, Troll and Kaka? Did you forge bonds while competing for GosuCup spots and Malaysia points?
Both Troll and Kaka are in our practice group (around 10 people) and we practice a lot together with Zivilia, Exonator, MiniNinja, Chongger, but sadly the latter couldn’t get through the qualifier. To be honest, without the group I don't think I could’ve gotten through the qualifiers by myself.
On the other hand, nobody in the Malaysia community actually knew Dennisgosu until now. Such a mysterious player.
"I wouldn't have made it to the finals without my practice group."
You should get to know him, he is the guy who won the most-visited cup out of all! That should mean something.
Yeah, he actually just replied to me on GosuGamers and gave me his battletag. This is probably one of the best thing about this SEA cup you held, you can get to know more players around your region. Since SEA players play on NA server, most players I added are from totally different time zones and it’s really sad to see everyone from your friendlist offline when you’re playing.
I also invited him to join our practice group for the finals! Be prepared, players from other countries!
I've been talking to other players from your local scene as well, but how threatened are you by Philippines and Vietnam? They did perform excellently, after all
The Philippines and Vietnam do have a lot of strong players. One of the players from this GosuCup tournament that I give most respect is Genji. I mean, who would have thought of a budget fatigue mage! And then I got the chance to add Vietnamese player Infernity from ladder last October, and I was impressed by his style of reaching legend every season with different class, while I'm sitting here only reach legend with rogue, druid and warrior.
But I secretly feel like Malaysia have the upper hand in SEA cups as SEA legends invitational final brackets always filled with Malaysians.
You're in a quite a diverse group of players with Exclusiveee, Superpogi and Wufflerman. What do you know about them? Who scares you the most?
Well I don't know much about Exclusivee and Superpogi. For now, Wufflerman scares me the most. If I'm not mistaken, he's the guy that revealed he's playing in EU before he return to Singapore right? I mean, SEA Hearthstone scene is really behind compared to other regions.
"Moving SEA to the Asia servers will help the scene develop."
With that last thing you said in mind, how do you weigh SEA's chances for the World Championship this year?
Very slim. I think it’s very hard for us to get qualify for the main event. Most of us are playing on the NA server but this year Blizzard placed SEA in the same region with Korea and Taiwan. Based on the point system, collecting points in NA is already harder than Koreans and Taiwanese who collect their own points on the Asia server. And last month (Jan 2015) which is the first month you could collect points on ladder if you got top 100 legends, there are only six SEA players who managed to snatch some points.
Would it be the correct decision to relocate SEA players to the Asian server where they'd actually compete with KR and TW which are considered weaker than NA by most standards?
I would definitely support that, to relocate SEA players to Asian server, so that the points system would be fair for SEA players.
I actually hoped that they would really relocate SEA servers to Asia servers. Not only for BlizzCon, it would be easier for the SEA scene to develop as well. There was this one time we tried to make a friendly showmatch with a Taiwanese HS group, but we could not proceed as we played on two different servers. And I couldn't join Asian cups as they only allowed Asian server accounts, and most of the cups which use NA server run at inconvenient times for SEA.
If I were a full time player, I could play ZOTAC at 7 in the morning on Sunday or Monday but for those who have classes or working, this server and timezone problem totally kills their gamer dream.
"I secretly think Malaysia has the upper hand."
I want to go back to the upcoming GosuCup finals. To be in coherence with the BlizzCon theme, they will be played in a conquest format, replacing the more widely used deckban. How much experience do you have playing this format? Is it a step in the right direction?
I only practice a few conquest matches with my friends after I've got the invitation for GosuCup finals. I have totally no idea how it would turn out right now, but during the practice session, I found out all of the players actually brought only high win rate decks with not a lot of tech cards like freeze mage. I can only say that I'm looking forward on the new interesting changes that it will bring to tournaments.
The GosuCup finals are also made of both players who won regular and budget tournaments. Do you think the former have an advantage over the latter?
Yes. From my experience of getting wrecked in GosuCups so many times, I think that regular cups are tougher. There are more deck and class choices in regular cups, while in budget cups you would never see strong control archetypes except for Priest. And I think it's a good call for GosuGamers to choose three qualified players from each regular cup and only one from budget cups.
Well, at least the numbers are on regular winners' side but let's see this Saturday. As you said, winning budget cups sometimes indicates that a player is very creative, as in Genji’s case.
Yeah I'm really looking forward to this Saturday, I wished to see more unusual decks from SEA communities, so that the world will noticed SEA regions and give us more support! I am considering bringing one unusual deck myself, but it still need more playtest at the moment.
I look forward to see you competing for sure. The end of the interview is for you! Closing words?
Well, I would like to thanks GosuGamers' crew for the hard work and opportunity, I can't even imagine how hard it must be to organize tournament for a different timezone! Also, shoutout to the teammates that helped me a lot throughout the tournament, iambiscuit, fizdarth, liveforlife, cros, akira, chongger, kyze and also dontmad. Last but not least, thanks to my understanding girlfriend who sacrificed Valentine's day for me to play the last GosuCup qualifier.
And here are the Asia rankings.
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