ETF2L Highlander Season 8 Powered by Tt eSPORTS Interviews: Stacked

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Here it is, boys and girls. The big one. An interview with a man who needs no introduction, but he’s getting one anyway. In the words of asadawarf:

how about interviewing the king of highlander, the creme de la prem, gaben’s prophet and chief wizard of the highlander illuminaerty?!

yeah i want to hear from BEEP

tell us how STACKED, the punter’s favourite, is doing!

One guy asked and we listened: b33p is here to give us a tour of his newly renovated French Château. It’s time to talk Stacked. After a major roster revamp for Season 7, b33p and the boys missed out on playoffs by a nipple hair thanks to some missing demos and a tie-breaker loss to PremTech. Despite this, the team successfully bedded in a new wave of Prem talent with strong debuts from SUZY on Heavy, NULL on Spy and asadawarf on Medic. The team also caused a couple of upsets – notably taking all 6 points from Highpander© on Gravelpit and edging out Tourettes Chessclub 3-2 on Viaduct. Let’s see what their main man has to say.

How happy were you with last season on the whole?

b33p: Towards the end of the season we really were playing fantastically, almost unbeatable in scrims for the week leading up to our playoff game. As for ETF2L, they did a good job last season with the map pool and scheduling, as far as I can remember. Losing lakeside was the right choice, though reservoir may not have been, nevertheless it was a move in the right direction for the highlander league in my opinion.

b33p: sorex left the team to ‘make a mid team with friends’ yet ended up in a Lego-centric team with Dr. Phil in High. We’d been using NiCO god's hand since last season anyway, so we’ve got him rostered. However, wltrs is most likely going to be main with NiCO god's hand playing when he cannot.

We made the poor decision to attempt to play and somewhat help revive UGC, and to get a roster for UGC we got a bunch of Frenchies as a bit of a package deal to keep some of last season’s players, so long story short, DeGuN is our main soldier. Hidan was part of the UGC lineup and we’ve got him rostered. He’s a bit like NiCO god's hand, he’ll play when our main demo cannot – main being Exon. Two absolutely fantastic demomen who take to highlander quite easily, though Exon. is the more vocal of the two and we’ll be using him to relieve asadawarf of some maincalling duties.

rouHe quit TF2 and it has been very, very hard to find a replacement. After some trialling we got droso on board. He hasn’t sniped in highlander in a while but we’re all coming together as a team quite nicely. He is already in Salty Frogs with many of our players, so he fit in very easily and is performing very well.

We’ve stuck with NULL (aka H.A.R.D.) as main spy for the season, even though he can’t play half as much as last season, because nobody is better. It’s a shame to have to use mercs for most scrims, however.

Mista, asadawarf, SUZY and I remain in our same positions as last season, despite the pretend roster I posted last week pending Exon. joining the roster which had many up in arms, people get so concerned about other people in this game!

b33p: Perhaps if I had killed more than 11 people during Season 20 in Mid, it would have been considered.

Has pre-season been going well? Do you think you’ve given yourselves an edge over the other teams by playing UGC regularly?

b33p: We only played officials in UGC really, and our roster changed every week, so that was of no advantage. Pre-season is going well on the basis we lost some extremely valuable players and we were unsure if we could recover, but we’re actually getting things together and can finally talk about strategies and team improvement now that we have a lineup of 9. We’ll be scrimming half as much as we were last season, which may be detrimental to winning the season. We’ll see what happens.

What do you think of the map pool for the season?

b33p: I was very active in the forum feedback thread on the map pool before it was decided/announced and if you’ve seen that you’ll notice the map pool from my point of view is almost perfect. I would have preferred ashville over warmtic, and perhaps croissant over sunshine. It’s a great improvement over last season, so the league is definitely heading in the right direction by continuing to evolve each season as new maps are created and play tested. Also, updating viaduct, barnblitz and (very recently) warmtic to their latest versions has been encouraging.

Who do you think your most important players are this time around?

b33p: To be honest, I don’t know. It’s not really about that. Consider our Season 6 roster, we had some of the best individuals in their respective classes in highlander ( sorex, huhystah, smziii, Admirable) and we still came 5th. Highlander is at the latter stages of the transition from star players and DM carrying teams, to true, highlander team play beating all else. You can see this from other rosters changing too, some players who have joined prem teams recently or in the past season may have been unexpected, but it’s because they fit well with their teams and contribute to the overall success of that team. Individuals stick out less now than ever before, unless a team is being carried or OverShaDowed by one player. But as we have seen, that still doesn’t come first.

What are your goals for the season?

b33p: We’re aiming to win.

Which team do you think will be the biggest challenge along the way?

b33p: PremTech for two reasons, neither of which is because I think they are the better team. The first is that we’ve fluffed two officials against them in the past, and the second is from a purely objective standpoint that they’ve changed their roster less than anybody else and that is a huge advantage to have over most other teams.

Any final thoughts or shoutouts?

b33p: I think this will be the most competitive season yet, points will be closer and more games will split points. Should be the best season for spectators. Shoutout to you and ETF2L for your time.

Big changes for Stacked, then. With the French staging their first successful invasion since… ever, these players will look familiar to any followers of the 6s scene here in the EU with big names from Awsomniac and Salty Frogs joining the Highlander party. Exon., DeGuN and Mista were all part of the DAROUTOUTOU team that managed to topple the mighty SNSD back in Season 4, so this is a group of players that should have no problems working together. The returning names from Season 7 lend Stacked a strong core to build upon and b33p‘s confidence in their ability to win the title could be well-founded. Their week 1 opponents UKIP were dispatched with a minimum of fuss, with droso dominating on Sniper. If they can take 6 points away from Fair Enough in tonight’s official and keep the wins rolling, last season’s top 3 could well be quaking in their boots come playoffs. The one cause for concern comes from their reduced scrim schedule – this has always been a trump card for Stacked over the other teams, will a lack of practice come back to bite them when the pressure is on?

Match Overview
Fair Enough vs Stacked
Week 2 (Premiership)
Tuesday, March 31st 20:30 CEST
SourceTV: fakkelbrigade.eu:27100

koth_warmtic_b6

3 - 0

cp_process_final

3 - 2 (golden cap)

OVERALL
Fair Enough [5:1] Stacked

• Scout: wltrs/ NiCO god's hand
• Soldier: TBA
• Pyro: DeGuN
• Demoman: Exon./ Hidan
• Heavy: SUZY
• Engineer: b33p
• Medic: asadawarf
• Sniper: droso
• Spy: NULL

Big thanks to b33p for taking the time to talk to us! Next up in our series of interviews: Fair Enough.

Season 8 trailer by Jack