With the WoW team over in Cologne, Germany, we sat down with Elliot ‘Venruki’ Venczel for a pre-tournament interview.
After a 4th place finish in Columbus, what has the practice schedule been like?
We’ve basically kept the same practice schedule as before, five hours a night, five nights a week. There are of course exceptions for example, if we’re getting good games against good teams, sometimes we’ll practice up to eight hours in a single night. We try and play the most we can without getting burnt out, playing against the same teams over and over hour after hour can definitely be mentally draining.
Without revealing too much will we be seeing different starts?
I’d say the biggest weakness with any strategy we had in Columbus was our play against mirror matches. We’ve altered what we did at Columbus and I feel we’re a lot stronger overall in mirror matches. RMP mirror matches are a whole other game in and of themselves and what works against one team won’t necessarily work against other teams so you have to be very careful in how you play it.
Do you feel more confident heading in this tournament then MLG?
We try and always be as confident as possible going into every event and this one is no different. We have very challenging seedings ahead of us but I think our practice and LAN experience will payoff. We’ve always sort of been the underdog team playing Druid, Mage, Rogue Columbus was our first tournament playing RMP and we’ve definatly learned from mistakes we made there, If we can overcome our first couple of matches which will be our hardest, you can expect a very good standing from us.
Who do you think will be your biggest challenge in Cologne?
Our biggest challenge will be against the team we play first, TSG. They run a very strong setup against what we play but we definitely do not fear them.
Without including yourself, pick the top 2 US teams?
SK-Gaming and the second slot is a toss up for me, but I don’t think it’s a team that will be attending this tournament.
What would it mean to you and the team to represent the US as 1 of the 2 teams at blizzcon?
Blizzcon is absolutely huge for any sponsered WoW team to qualify for, even things like the ESL masters tournament are peanunts in comparison. This is basically what we’ve been playing and practicing for all year, this tournament offers by far the biggest prize pool of any WoW tournament and not to mention the oppurtunity of representing our beloved sponser CompLexity at another international event. ( and bragging rights )
Besides the tournament is there anything you would like to see while in Germany?
I actually did my final project for my Germany speech class on Cologne. They have a lot of history in the city and I would love to see some of their incredible Churches, not sure there will be time for that though.