It's clear that this event is one of the most competitive in some time. The lack of top European and British sides here certainly has something to do with it as the vast majority of teams are made up of mixes, one team looking to turn a few heads will be Crack Clan.

The organisation has a reputation for bringing through new talent since the former management team upped sticks for Power Gaming. The most recent example was their acquisition of the former Space Pandas team ahead of i38, a shrewd move as it turned out given how well they performed at the event, almost seeing off top seed Fragmasters Toxic on their way to a fourth place finish. The core from that team are now representing Demonic and are in direct competition with this new look lineup.

The team have some experience and have proven themselves as more than capable players in the past, this event will be their first together as a team and they are keen to show it won't be their last by finishing well. I caught up with them in one of the very few short breaks they received from this hectic schedule.

Well we've had about three weeks of practice since we completed the lineup so it's not been too great. Compared to some of the other teams like OX and eXelon we've had no where near enough practice. Everyone in the team is a more than capable player though and we're all learning pretty fast, I think we have played enough now to get the basics down and do well. A lot of the stuff we do is just on the fly stuff anyway, strats don't really work for us haha.

Yeah definitely, I mean it depends how well we all play on the day but individually I feel we can beat anyone here - apart from the obvious Verygames. At the end of the day it's just a game and you're just playing against five other people, anything can happen. We've beaten some of the "better" teams before online so we definitely have what it takes, it's just whether we all hit top form.

I think OX can do pretty well, they're a really good team and have been around the block before - even though they've lost their caller. I don't really see them getting anything less than third, eXelon though we don't really rate. We've beaten them before and they weren't all that special, I think they might struggle to make their seed, if anyone from the four qualifiers does badly it will be those guys. choong: Yeah we beat them in Xplicit before too.

choong: Yeah of course, I expect a lot of people to be interested on how I play but that's what I like. I've come to prove people wrong and prove that I am a good player, and I think this team has more potential than we had with Xplicit so I really hope we can do well this event.

choong: The long and short of it is that mean and fludie were caught with snd_restart in our configs and because of that the team was kicked. It was silly though in my opinion. About half way through the day on Saturday Damage came to check our PC's and found snd_restart in our configs. It was proven in every demo that we didn't use the command once but after speaking to FiRe they decided to disqualify us. Personally I just think they tried to make an example of us and were a bit heavy handed with the punishment, but, shit happens I guess.

Well I don't want to name any names but I definitely think that they were pressured into the decision, a lot of people were just unhappy that we beat them and we were "unknowners"..

Dignitas just didn't work out..

orcl: Yeah it's been a bit of a shambles and it's frustrating more than anything because you come here all geared up to play and just get hit with delay after delay. We've started now though so we're not too fussed.

acky: Yeah I mean they couldn't really have planned for the removal guys dropping the server so it's not like they can be blamed THAT much. Sure they have failed to plan it properly but that happens every time, this even was special circumstances so you can't really moan about it.

symo: When it comes to being under prepared you can't really expect much when the admins are all volunteers, they do a good job and you can't ask for much more than they already give.

choong: Yeah it's not an ideal situation but everyone is on the same boat so there's no one team with an advantage.

acky: Like with some European LAN events they play it out in one night, meaning they're playing games at like 3/4 in the morning. We can't do that as you'll be totally running on empty by then.

acky: Well when I joined I brought Jai with me and we had the goal of using Jai's experience to help the team progress and finally make the step up. But after the MCM expo I think we were all just really downhearted. Jai wanted to stop playing competitively and I just felt like finding something new and some new people to play with. I still like all the guys but the team just wasn't working out, after we left they just decided to call it a day.

acky: It was amazing, we literally just got everything we needed to progress as a team and I'm just sad it didn't work out. They're by far the best organisation in the UK in my opinion, don't have a bad word to say about them.

All: Demonic.uk. Definitely. I think they are a really good team and they've come here on the same sort of level as us, those guys just under the top teams so it would be nice to knock them out of the tournament.

zeo: Infact, screw that, Verygames.

We got Rive haha. They had watched us in the groups in de_inferno and just knew exactly how we'd play. I think we could have done really well at that event too, it's a shame we got Rive after beating TLR though :(

All: Sixth place would be nice. I mean if we reach that we're not going to just stop and chill out "oh we've got it now lads don't worry" but that's the target. Anything less than that and we'd be pretty disappointed.