Darkwonyx at WEC: "I tried to build decks that counter Rdu, but he's very flexible"

More WEC coverage: 

Interview with MYM.Ignite

You just lost to Rdu. Tell us about the game in retrospect.

The game was equal for the most part. We were on the fifth game, down to the extreme limits, in a Handlock vs Miracle game which he won. Overall, we countered each other’s decks and unfortunately he came ahead, but good luck to him in the tournament.

You have a decent history in terms of rivalry. You’ve had quite a few games between each other but he’s basically won all of them. Do you think he has your number or is he just that much stronger?

Rdu is the strongest player out there. Against me, I’m not quite sure why we have this stats record but he plays really well against me and sometimes he builds his decks to counter me specifically. This time I tried to build decks that counter him but he’s really flexible. I’m more known as a control player while he’s more well-rounded so I sometimes expect him to play aggro to counter my control and then he brings an even better control deck. That happened in our last game – he played Miracle and I kept [card]Mortal Coil[/card] in opening hand thinking it was Backspace Rogue.

But, yeah, I think he’s just a player in general, that’s it.
 

"This time, I tried to build decks that counter Rdu, but he's really flexible."

Coming back to the tournament, there’s a new format, for the western players anyway. You use nine decks of four classes and you can choose which spec to play. What do you think of this format?

It’s pretty new and unique, I haven’t experienced anything like this before. It kind of resembles the old online tournaments where you can sideboard to counter your opponent. Here, however, you’re restricted to nine decks and with one ban you’re left with seven decks to choose from. So you have to have some standard decks to start with and some hard-counter decks depending on what you’re facing.

I don’t really like it, because it creates a snowball effect – if you win the first game, you can continue countering your opponent over and over again so I prefer the old format with four decks. It’s going to be interesting, though, since you can play anything and it’s so hard to prepare for this.

You’re still not out of the tournament. Is there anybody you’re not looking forward to meet?

I still don’t know who I’ll be facing, I think it’s either Tides or Surrender. I’d rather face Surrender in this case, because Tides is really good and I’d rather keep the western hope alive.

NOTE: At the time of this interview, Darkwonyx would already be out of the tournament, following a 1-3 loss to Surrender.

Do you feel this is a battle for national pride since this is the first global clash of such scale, or you aren’t bothered with that?

I don’t think it’s much pride for us. I think the Easterners have a huge pride test coming into this, a “We’re going to beat the westerners” mission. That puts the pressure back to us. The last time we played against the Chinese, we just 4-0’d them in 2P’s tournament and two months later they said they’re better than us. All this is keeping the competitive spirit high right now.

What about the competition between EU and NA, is there some sort of rivalry going on there? Because I think the community, at least the bigger part of it, thinks the Europeans are better.

I’m actually not quite sure about that one. I think EU is a bit stronger than NA when it comes to player diversity. We have a lot of strong players and I know some EU players have chosen to play in the NA BlizzCon qualifiers because they think it’s easier to win. I also know that NA has a lot of good ladder players and we have more tournament players. So I think the EU scene is growing bigger and bigger than NA.

"The Easterners have a huge pride test coming into this. That puts the pressure back on us and it keeps the competitive spirit high."

Coming to you personally, you’ve played multiple tournaments offline and online. You’ve had pretty good results in both. Do you prefer offline or online or it doesn’t matter to you at all?

I always prefer offline tournaments because I’ve been in eSports for four years, playing different games; I’ve competed at five DreamHacks or something and I love travelling to events. I’m a chess player as well so I actually have an advantage when I face my opponent face to face – I don’t get nervous or mindgamed as I can look at him seriously and he doesn’t know what’s going on since I’ve been doing this for 12 years.

Offline tournaments are also more fun. You get to meet the players, make more friends and the scene is growing that way.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if you can actually thrash talk your enemy during a Hearthstone game? Would that have a strong impact?

You can BM in-game – in fact I tried to do it to Rdu *laughs* - but when you start to actually talk it’s not good for you, you lose focus. In chess, for example, it has to be all quiet. If your phone rings, you lose automatically. This kind of applies to Hearthstone as well.

You’re part of a 2-man only team now, in comparison to other players who are members of bigger rosters. Do you think this is a bit of a disadvantage because the other have more team-mates to strategize with?

Yes, absolutely. When I was in Managrind, we used to have like 50 members – not necessarily only players – which you can talk to on TeamSpeak. Me and Alchemixt don’t actually practice that much together, we mostly play solo. We have our own practice partners and our own decklists but in the end it’s always better to have more players to practice with.

On the other hand, it’s bad to have too many players on a team when it comes to sending them to events, because it becomes expensive. When Managrind played in Fight Night, for example, we couldn’t send all players and that’s not always fun. You want to go to events – that’s why you’ve joined a team in the first place. To sum it up, you want to have more members on the team, as long as the organization can support them.

Last question: This is the global match between the West and the East. Do you follow Asian Hearthstone intensively?

On the first question: I do follow the Eastern scene and I try to keep up with the NEL tournament to prepare for this tournament. I have no idea what the Chinese are playing so I had to watch like 50 VODs of random guys to get some idea. When we got here, we finally learned our opponents’ names and then we found out YouTube is blocked, so you can’t even scout your opponents!

So, I feel the Chinese have a huge advantage, they can scout us and we can’t scout them – Facebook is blocked, Twitter is blocked, YouTube is blocked! *laughs* So we just came to play our decks, hoping it goes well.