RheingoldRiver brings reports from the MLG floor in Anaheim

Throughout the event, I got to talk to a few of the players.  First, on Saturday, I spoke with LemonNation, Cloud 9's support player.

Rhein:  Congratulations on your revenge win against CLG!  How nervous were you going into the game?

LemonNation: I was nervous.  They beat us last time, and they're very strong competition.  We're gonna lose sometimes, so I could see it happening today, but we pulled through.  It was good.

How much has the 3.8 patch affected you as a team?

I don't think it affected the match as much, except that we had to ban Nunu.  But the fact that we had the match before, we basically knew how they played, and we just banned out Tristana, picked Janna, banned out Jayce.  And it seemed a lot easier this time than last time.  We saw how they beat us and fixed it.

Did you practice level ones after your last CLG game?

Yes.  That level one was kinda...derpy.  We went to their red, and then we just sat there; usually we don't.  We'll ward their red, then we'll leave and go somewhere else.  But that game we decided to stay there, kinda randomly.

How do you feel about the Sona changes?

They were warranted.  She was very OP.  She's still good.  I'm not quite sure how good.  I'd put her at least below Thresh and Lulu.  I don't agree with all the play that Blitz is top-tier, I know some people like EDWard think he's super top-tier, and I don't agree with that.  But Sona's definitely up there.  She's definitely a tier-one support.  I'm still playing her.

As a team, you push down toplane and get early turrets a lot.  How reliant is your overall strategy on that?

I don't think we're reliant on it, but I think we do that better than any other team does right now.  We know how to 2v1, we know what exactly we should be doing, and we just know how to pressure it better than any other team seems to, at least in NA.

How about the rest of the world?

We've learned a lot of that stuff from Koreans.  So I'd say that most Koreans know at least as well or better than us.

If you were going to go into OGN tomorrow, would you use the same gameplay strategy?

Yes.  It's really hard to tell how well it would work against them, like where we would stand.  I could see us being in the middle, or even below all of them.  We're obviously not gonna be at the top.  But I have no idea where we would be.  We've never scrimmed against any Korean teams, so it's hard to tell.

What teams are you looking out for, either worldwide or in NA?

I think currently Dignitas is actually extremely strong.  They were beating us in scrims more than we were beating them this week.  Their strat with Ashe---I think if they'd picked Ashe in the game vs Vulcun they would have won, but they chose Varus instead.  Dig is really good when they have actual strats that aren't just normal play.  Right now, they have an actual strat, and they're really good at it.  So right now they're really strong.

Specifically, how did you feel about the AP Yi?

It's really good.  Like I said, we scrimmed against it a lot, and it's beaten us a lot.

Any final shoutouts that you want to give?

I'd like to shout out to our sponsors, CrunchyRoll, Astral, iBuyPower, HyperX, and Cooler Master.

On Sunday, I first interviewed NydusHerMain, support player for FXOpen, after his team won the challenger event.

Rhein: Congratulations on your victory!  How does it feel?

NydusHerMain: I still can't quite believe it.  It was an exhausting series, but I'm really happy.

How were you able to come back from your 0-1 start against Complexity and second-game loss against Curse Academy?

We just ended up playing more solid.  Against Complexity, the reason why we lost was because of sloppy early game play so we decided to play safer and started to win off that.  And against Curse Academy, the reason why we lost was because of champion picks---Ahri countered Lux in midlane and we counter-picked ourselves---so we ended up just focusing more on who we wanted to play and countered their comp.

Why so many Janna picks?

I can answer that with one word: Kennen.  We picked Janna to counter Kennen, and then in game 3 against Curse Academy we picked Janna so that they couldn't pick Janna themselves to counter our Kennen.

A common theme among your games seems to be that you die and then the rest of your team cleans up the fight because they blew so many resources on you.  Is that your team's game plan?

I think people just hate me.  Seriously though, I don't know why people focus me, I mean it's amazing that they focus me because then my team just wins.

It occasionally seemed like you had some communication issues.  Is that something you're working on as a team?  And who is your shotcaller?

Yeah, we're working on team communication. It seems to be our biggest problem right now, but from when this roster first formed we've improved dramatically---we won MLG!  Shotcalling currently is a joint effort but primarily heavenTime, Robert and me.

Can you give a quick recap of what you did after TAP lost at LCS relegations, and your team's history?

After TAP lost at LCS relegations, we decided to break up since we didn’t feel that we had good team synergy.  Anne, the manager of FXO, asked if I wanted to tryout for the FXO team because Zekent had real life commitments.  After the first day, I think I played pretty well in our initial games and ended up becoming the starter.  We've had a lot of roster changes.  We also wanted a new jungler because the team had bad synergy with yoda our previous jungler so after one tryout we ended up falling in love with heaventime.  Trickz, our previous mid laner, also had to leave due to real life commitments so after a variety of mid laner tryouts, we ended up with Arthelon.

Do you have any plans to move into a gaming house?

We do, but we're not sure when.

Thanks for the interview!  Any final shoutouts?

Thanks to all of our sponsors, ESFXTV, FXOpen eSports, Twitch, Imgur, and 300apm.

Later, I talked with Xmithie, jungler of Vulcun Techbargains off their incredible victory over Cloud 9.

Rhein: Can you talk for a bit about each of the three games?  The first against CLG, then you beat Dignitas, and then Cloud 9, which are three very strong teams right now.

Xmithie: The first game we went against CLG...I don't really remember that game.  It's deep down in my brain because we lost.

Doublelift was on Tristana.

Oh, yeah!  We dragged out the game too long.  We didn't force enough teamfights or objectives.  We just went for late game, which they wanted to because they had a better late game than us with Xerath and Tristana.  I think it was just mostly because of decision-making that we lost, and we've been improving that day by day.  Our coach is trying really hard to improve us.

In all three of the games, you always had very good awareness of where the other jungler was going to be.  How do you do that so well?

First comes you need experience.  If you play enough in the jungle, you'll know where the jungler is.  If the enemy is a really good player, usually you'd get two buffs; skip all the small camps, and either gank a lane or just counter-gank---or people can just keep farming, too.  You can predict where they go; you just need to know where they start: either red or blue.

What do you think of the 3.8 patch?

I really like the newest one because it's mostly ganking and counter-jungling really early.  If you get the first buff, and he doesn't, that's like a level.  And that's pretty much why we had a really snowball-y game, and I like it.

For the Dignitas game, were you expecting to see the AP Yi pick?  How much did you prepare for it?

We didn't expect him to go Master Yi after we banned Kennen, because I thought that was the core team-comp for Master Yi.  Kennen usually stuns everyone, Nocturne stops all the vision, and Ashe for initiation.  That's pretty much it.  But they didn't pick either Nocturne or Ashe, and we banned Kennen, so we didn't think he was gonna go Master Yi.  And Lissandra is a champion that is a really good counter for Master Yi.  Even if you're level 6 and the Yi can't be slowed, Lissandra has not only a slow but a snare, and a stun.  So you pretty much can get away with that if you can get a gank off, and we just killed him over and over.

You not only beat Cloud 9, but you dominated them early on.  How did you do that so effectively?

We predicted their level 1 pretty easily.  We knew what they were gonna do.  BloodWater and Zuna were waiting at the tribrush; we knew that they were gonna 2v1 and they were gonna start red.  Janna is gonna help red with Elise, and then usually Sneaky goes to the lane by himself.  And that's when Zuna and BloodWater camped in the tribrush, and I think they took him to almost 10 hp.  Sneaky flashed out and then he had to back.  And the toplane was pretty much over after that.

How confident are you going into the next split, and what teams are you looking out for?

The team to beat right now is TSM.  I think they're stronger than mostly anyone; I think they're just having a rough week right now.  They threw the Curse game last night, and that was pretty depressing for them.  I wish the best of luck for them, and we'll try to beat them again.

Any final shoutouts?

Shoutout to our sponsors: Ali and Murti, PWRClothing.com, Razer, Techbargains, and iBuyPower.

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