Fnatic's interview, by Harry Wiggett.
The cup has been going on for 8 months now, how much do you think the game has changed since the beginning?
“I remember the beginning of the cup very vividly still, and I can say that the game has absolutely changed immensely since. In terms of the teams, it went from being dominated by 5/WHP (I believe they were known as LOADED at the time though), with the European team of KD Gaming seemingly knocking on their footsteps, to what the scene is now, which is dominated by FnaticMSI. The metagame's changed from something that was completely carry/turtle oriented, into several various metagames over the year and is now set into a trilane metagame, which further shows the changes that HoN has undergone.”
The journey to the final must of been a rough ride, what would you say was the most challenging match prior to the final?
“I know alot of people would expect me to say that the most challenging match was against Evil Geniuses in the Loser Bracket finals or even Winner Bracket Semifinals, however I'm going to say that the most challenging match was against Deal With It. DWi is an extremely strong North American (and Australian) team that is extremely hard to prepare for, due to their style of practice which isn't matches or scrims, but inhouses. We had a lot of trouble strategizing a game plan for DWi because of this, and at least I was worried about the matchup because of this. However, we learned as we went along and after the loss in game 1, we were able to come back very strong in games 2 and 3 to defeat them.”
Recently, we all got to witness the return of Testie to the SK team, how has his return influenced you and the fellow players?
“Testie's return came at the absolute best possible time for us. He came back when we were experiencing some extremely dissappointing losses, and were really looking like a team that might dissappear from the scene altogether because we just didn't have that synergy as fast as we would've liked. However, when we came back it was a huge morale boost for the team. He was, and is, our ingame leader and we all sort of mesh together and bounce ideas off each other, and it just wasn't the same with Testie gone, we had a missing link. We also had this noob named Cardinal solo mid against Chu's Flint Beastwood once as Soulstealer, and figured out that we really need our Solo player back because Cardinal got destroyed. Anyway, Testie is essentially a huge part of the team due to his background and experience playing in the competitive scene of Brood War. He helps to keep us calm and focused during big matches.”
cadred's Interview, by Vincent "BLDBTCHZ" Callan
It's rumoured that you are planning something special for the finals, Is there anyone we want to look out for and how much have you analysed MSI's playstyle?
“We're always looking for minor imbalances in the game that we can use to our advantage (I.e Thunderbringer and Spellshards). Even if we aren't running “New” heroes to the competitive scene, we definitely have some more tricks up our sleeves for MSI, Including a few things we wanted to do against EG which we didn't have time for in the 3 game series. As far as analysing MSI's playstyle. We've obviously spent some time doing that, and they're going to be an extremely tough opponent to match up against simply due to their experience and skill.”
