Season 13: Premiership Interviews #5 Fuo

Admirable: Oh dear! Oh dear! Oh dear! Admirable what have you been doing? Five weeks have passed since the last ETF2L Season 13 interview was published… and that is a long time in Team Fortress 2. We’ve witnessed the final match of the main season, the playoffs loom large on the horizon and we even said good bye to the CHINESE MAFIA somewhere along the road, but today I will finally say hello to my next conquest, Fuo of Quarantine.  Hello!

Fuo: Hellooo!

A: I will redeem myself slightly by saying I have been trying to organise this meeting for a several weeks.  How would you rate my organisational skills?

F: Hmmm. 10!

A: 10 out 10? Is that 10 out of 100?

F: About a 10 out of 1000. Yeah.

A: Wow. Terrible! Terrible! But ah, please forgive, please forgive me community.  Ah traditionally my opening gambit has been some garbage about what hats and items you are planning to equip Season 13, but your season is over brah!  So I’ll flip it and ask you what are you wearing right now, you beautiful man?

F: Ooh! I was wearing those beautiful Halloween items with a little bit of pink going on… that demoman soul… that’s beautiful. The giant eyeball hat… I love it!

A: See you are just so innocent. I mean what are you wearing right now, bro?

F: Oh! Oh dear god! Hmmm I couldn’t tell you that… because I’m not wearing anything at all!

A: Lovely. Lovely, I knew I could get a reaction from that one. Aaah! I’m a bit rusty at the old interview thing, but you are making me feel good; you’re playing my game, man. This is excellent! We’ll get down to the main interview, the proper questions now. Obviously you are pretty good at demoman and…

F: Pretty good!

A: Being a superstar demoman is… it’s a tall order for an Englishman.  Come on, you’re living in the shadow of giants like Byte, numlocked, kaidus, Randa and Hildreth can’t be easy, man?

F: It’s definitely not, it’s… it’s all about hmmm… I think the main difference between demomen is all about the melee skills. It’s like most demomen have the Bottle nowadays but honestly think the Pan it’s just a much better choice in my opinion. It’s just the sound is just a lot more… you know… a lot greater effect; it really gets in to the mind of your opponent.

A: Yeah dude, but you can’t have a Strange Pan. How you gonna count your kills on a Pan, idiot?

F: God damnit! That’s the only problem with the the Pan, yeah…

A: Wow. Right, let’s see if we can talk some trash; how do you think you stack up against the other Premiership demoman? Do you see yourself more as a calculated Byte or a reckless kaidus?

F: Aw I’ve always wanted to be kaidus in my mind, he is a beautiful man. Ever since he got that Sober Stuntsman jump, you remember? Like in the highlander game? That was amazing. Yeah that’s pretty much who I look up to be as a demoman.

A: The last two seasons for you have been, I guess, a breakthrough… like you’ve really started to grab people’s attention with your damage output and just… your slightly more aggressive play. Is that something that you’ve actively tried to do? Do you train hard? Are you an MGE hero?

F: Uhm… yeah! I would say I guess I’m more known as a like being a more passive demoman, but yeah lately I’ve been trying to do some more random shit and getting killed a lot more in the process… sorry for the language… uhm yeah it’s just all trial and error I guess.. and yeah going a lot more aggressive at random times… it’s what people don’t expect.

A: Sorry for the language? You don’t have to apologise to me! I swear more than any motherfucker up in this bitch!

F: Ha!

A: Haha! Enough about you man, let’s talk a little bit about your team…  at the end of August you lost half your team, parting ways with Nace, BeaVerN and boomeh.  With Season 13 looming large, you quickly replaced them with an interesting mix of nationalities in zappis, Kalhó, ERECTUS and Tarkus, only for Tarkus to get banned and ERECTUS to flake out on you, prompting you to pick up Qun and lime and yet somehow you have still managed to fifth…  finish fifth in a very competitive chasing pack this season. Has it just been dumb luck or is there actually something more to Quarantine than BeaVerN’s hacks?!

F: Hmmm I’d say… yeah it’s all BeaVerN’s hacks really… OK not really… I think a lot of our picks were kind of last minute but I think the team that we did get together in the end has been quite strong to be honest. It’s like zappis is a very, very, very good underestimated scout I’d say… and Qun is great, lime is an excellent soldier, Kalhó is great… and I think we form a good bond together I guess, yeah.

A: So you are saying it was just blind luck then…

F: Yes… haha.

A: From my casters perspective I’d agree with you, I think zappis has played a crucial role in your Season 13 campaign, he’s obviously an experienced player but it what has it been like a year since he played in the Prem with CKRAS… like how did he actually come to be in your roster? Do you have some sort of connection there or is it just random tried out for your team?

F: Uhm I think it was just a random trial to be honest yeah. I think we’d heard some random rumours about his amazing excellence maybe… but yeah just a kind of random trial I guess yeah…

A: Damn! No funny story there, really…

F: Unfortunately not, sorry!

A: I’m really scraping the bottom of the barrel here, c’mon throw me a bone, man! Like uh… wow. I’ll go for the jugular then I’ll just throw out some drama here and see if I can get a reaction from ya… like…  I would count yourself and Kritzonite as the backbone of the team, obviously you’re really the only two remaining players, and if we say zappis is your star player, I think I could take a punt here and say that the rest of your roster is pretty expendable. Are you gonna axe these scrubs for Season 14? Will we even see Quarantine in Season 14?!

F: Aha… uhm I really do hope so, let’s hope that Natural Selection 2 doesn’t just kill TF 2 altogether… uhm I’m not really sure to be honest…

A: Wow you’re not even going to defend your teammates? You just outted them live on ETF2L!

F: No I love everyone! God damn!

A: There we go! That has just set the cat amongst the pigeons, there’s gonna be some fallout on your mumble in the future…

F: I never said that! I never said that! You’re altering my words here!

A: Yep! Yep you fell for that one, man. Ehm… you mentioned Natural Selection 2 there and I would really like to talk about that, but this is TF2! Ah… you guys have been playing it quite a bit obviously… I’m in a team with BeaVerN for the ENSL 1^st Season… is it really gonna be the end for Team Fortress 2? I’m gonna keep playing, are you?!

F: Aw I’m gonna keep playing yeah… until like you know there’s like million dollar tournaments maybe… then I’ll maybe switch!

A: Well like… there is a rumoured resurrection for Team Fortress 2 at Assembly Winter in February 2013, is that on your radar? Have you guys considered it? Like… I’m pretty sure some of you attended the last Assembly event, right?

F: Yeah! We definitely did, yeah. Uhm it was quite a far below for some of us, but we did travel to Finland, it was… ehehe… our last event didn’t go quite as well, but if we went to the next one we would certainly do a lot better.

A: Obviously zappis is Finnish, you can count on him, but are you aware of it as a team? Have you talked about it or considered going?

F: We haven’t talked about it, no not yet, but if we were I should think we would be able to, yeah.

A: Obviously it’s just rumours and I am just firing up the hype machine there, but it seems quite likely that it will happen. I think we’ve got some good people working on it, so stay tuned for that in the future, ETF2L! But… in the immediate future we have the ETF2L 6^th Cup kicking off.  We’ve got a selection of unlocks and custom maps in there, have you seen it, man? Does that tickle your fancy? You gonna sign up?

F: Ooh! Unlocks! I haven’t actually seen this… what are some of the unlocks?!

A: What is this?! The Prem teams just don’t read the news?

F: Well, no…

A: It’s gonna be a… uh… you know the big traditional ETF2L Cup? It’s one of those, man, but they’ve got a smaller map pool… it’s Badlands, Gullywash, Process, Quay and cross haunt… Croissant? I can’t pronounce that… fuck sake!

F: Oh really? Yeah, I’ve been looking at Quay… Quay looks like a really good upcoming map.

A: For unlocks we’ve got some of the actually game changing ones… or useful ones… I think we are going the the Escape Plan, the Gunboats, the Boston Basher, the Pain Train and the  Overdose for the medic I think. Do any of those sound like your cup of tea?

F: Uhuh… I think the Boston Basher sounds good for the scout… but I think there’s quite a fatal flaw in there… there’s no Ullapool Caber… maybe you should be working on that?

A: Fatal flaw wow this guy is just 24/7 trolling here… I can’t interview this kid… what the hell. Ullapool Caber? It’s never happening, man. It’s never happening! Over my dead body.

F: Oh god… you need to listen to this Prem team’s feedback, man, I’m telling you!

A: Yeah suppose there will be another round of that coming up… but like looking at you say the Boston Basher, that’s a real game changer… it’s not just that a scout can build uber, but suddenly you have an extra soldier who’s not tied to the medic… like eh how… well it’s easy to theorycraft I guess how things might change, but will it be a change for the better? Are you tired of the current metagame? Do you feel that we need something fresh for maybe Season 14?

F: I think something, yeah. Well now that I think about it the Boston Basher is removing a little bit of the metagame because… yeah it’s always a subtle thing like you can notice a soldier with the medic and you know he’s going to be charging with the medic, but if you see him with the scout he’s not going to be charging… yeah… it’s… hmm… hmm… yeah I don’t like that…

A: Yeah silence isn’t really good for interviews here, so you know I’m gonna need more than just you stroking your chin there and saying “hmm”…

F: Right, I’ll work on that.

A: Ahaha! Oh I love a bit of awkwardness in an interview… but eh moving on…

F: It’s my first interview gimme some slack

A: Moving on from the 6^th Cup… I hope you sign up for that, so I can crush you in it!

F: Absolutely. I look forward to getting crushed.

A: This is an interesting decision from the admin team, you know they’ve decided to give us a few unlocks, a few custom maps there to keep things moving forward, but looking back at Season 13 they made some rule changes, some decisions to put a greater emphasis on professionalism and coverage for the Premiership at least. Do you think that those were good implementations? Did it work for you? Did you have any problems in Season 13 with rules and admining?

F: Yeah. The SourceTV decision, the always have to upload the demos… that’s a great idea in my opinion, because then a lot of teams can just learn from those demos. I think that was a really great decision. Uhm we did have one problem with one rule, that was not declaring our members’ names and then we got two minor warnings for that so then we were always on edge about getting warning points, so if we had one more we’d get point losses… but other than that I think it was mostly for the better… yeah definitely.

A: Would you like to see them take it further next season? Like I know something that was discussed in the sort of pre-Season 13 feedback was the possibility of making TF2Logs compulsory. Would that be something that would bring another benefit? Is that something that you guys already do? Do you work with the logs?

F: Yeah, we definitely… yeah we upload quite a tonne of logs on TF2Logs… I think it’s quite a great plugin yeah. I think that would be a really good addition… absolutely.

A: So… your season is over, I keep rubbing it in, man, you know just putting some salt in that wound, but are you happy with what you achieved compared to how you felt at the start of the season?

F: I think we would have liked to perform quite a lot better, but what’s done is done and we can certainly learn a lot from that season, yeah.

A: So can I get a cast iron guarantee that you guys are going to continue to play TF2? Will we see you come 2013 for Season 14?

F: Yeah. OK we will be in Season 14 and we will beat Epsilon!

A: But you’re gonna kick out Qun, Kalhó and lime because I told you to?

F: No! I love them! I would never do that. Aw…

A: OK you’ve redeemed yourself… you’ve redeemed yourself there. Eh… aha…  well I like to keep things short now, because I know some of those first interviews went on too long so let me just call proceedings to close and thank you for your time. I’ll give you one last chance to shout out to all your fans, even your non-extistent sponsors…

F: I love you all, keep playing TF2, guys… and… Tarkus, stop cheating! Thank you.

A: OK! Thanks guys I’ve been Admirable and you have been Fuo. This has been the fifth in this ETF2L interview series… we’re going to have one coming up with KnOxXx from Epsilon and one more from Retsh0ck from Crack Clan, before Season 14… it’s gonna happen, believe me! Peace out.