fnatic
xertion
Blaze
darky
Airraid
proph

The favorites for the tournament, and now officially professional gaming team, fnatic need no introduction. So you may ask why I don't just end this ramble with a fullstop and skip to the interview. I won't afford you the luxury.

Fnatic are not invincible anymore. CGS showed that, Digitalsace showed that, even SLAP showed it in elements. Fnatic is the team to beat. Fnatic is to Source what the Baggies van is to heart attacks, the number one winner. Teams are responding to that now, with a variety of tactics, anti-strats personally tailored to them, some teams might find it worrying, but fnatic are responding by upping their game. In the SLAP finals after winning de_inferno in overtime against MYM on the oppositions map choice, it seemed apparant that MYM were expecting de_train. Fnatic predicted MYM would have anti strats in place and chose their previous weakest map, de_dust2. Fnatic won 16-4 and won the tournament, this is the kind of play you'd expect from the number one team in Europe. Fnatc continue to go from strength to strength and I'm going to be highly original and predict them first place winners.

I had the luxury of sitting down with the sexy hunk that is blaze for an interview

Hi fnaticBlaze, you're attending your fourth I-series LAN in a row, you've won 2 out of 3, I'm guessing you're pretty confident about adding to your haul of trophies?

Hi, yeah i-series is always good fun and we're really looking forward to another well organized tournament. We've had some things to work on after we returned from digitalsace in France, but we should be ready in time for this great event.

You seem to read my mind, Digitalsace was a shock defeat in the final against WebOne, what went wrong and what have you done to fix the problems?

Digitalsace was quite a disaster indeed, the entire schedule and organisation of the tournament was just horrific. We barely had any sleep the first night, with hours and hours of waiting on the first day. It really wears you down, we simply played the worst game of our lives there and WebOne played really really well.

We noticed after Slap that people started to focussing on counter-tacs against us, as everyone seems to wanna beat us. So we've thrown in some new tactics to shuffle things up.

Some people say you've been peforming not to your usual standards since proph has come back, is there any truth in this?

No, you don't just beat a team like MYM coming from the lowerbracket if you're not absolutely on top of your game. We are the same team, we simply are the main target for all the other teams. So their preperation for LAN's don't just include in preparing their own tactics, but also knowing ours.

In both the finals at Digitalsace and Slap LAN in the grand finals you didn't choose the map that you're considered completely dominant on, de_train, is there a particular reason for this?

Yes, MYM really counterstratted us on de_inferno. We simply didn't know what to do with it the first time we played them. After winning de_inferno in the grandfinal in overtime, we were afraid that MYM would've had even stronger anti-strats for de_train. As obviously everyone would expect us to pick that map.

A couple of days prior to Slap we were practicing de_dust2 and it went really well. We had some new setups and strats and they worked. So we decided to catch MYM off guard, on a map they didn't expect us to pick and a map they couldn't have had counterstratted because they were new tactics.

On digitalsace both teams could eliminate one map, w1 eliminated train.

So who do you see as the main rivals for the increased prizepot?

MiNT is always a strong contender on UK soil, so I expect to see them in the finals. Other than that teams such as Salvo, Reason, faxzup will be strong contenders for the title.

You're seated in the public area after last times exclusion to the world of warcraft section, this is obviously a disadvantage, what do you do to minimize distractions?

Actually it's just alot more fun to be seated between the other CS:S teams, there is alot more people to talk to and alot more things going on. We don't really get distracted anymore by people talking behind us or shouting, it's part of LAN. I just hope people will be giving us some room when we're playing, because it's always so goddamn hot at the CS:S floor.

So whats next for fnatic after i32, is CGS still the dream?

We will have to see as things go, I haven't heard of any big tournaments in 2008 yet. By the time CGS is starting a new season we will see if we're interested in entering, i can't really say right now if we'll be participating again for sure.

You're being provided PC's by packard bell, this leaves you with the interesting situation of using TFT monitors over your preffered CRT, does thia ffect you much?

3 of us already use TFT monitors at home, just me and proph use CRT's. But we've already used TFT at several events and it's not really a problem. Especially because we are still in the BYOC area and have the operatunity of really getting used to the PC's, unlike the TUP players.

Speaking of the TUP, do you think this will put teams such as faxzup at a major disadvantage?

I think they will be, if they can only use the PC's when they have matches and other players use it when they're not playing. Then you have to adjust your settings, every single time and get used to them again. That wouldn't be a big problem if your opponent has to aswell, but as most of the other teams are BYOC, I can see these teams having problems.

Which teams do you think will surprise everyone?

I expect Reason to do better than people expect and I can see xciteuk making a surprise appearance. If Ritch shows up with cotch, then maybe them aswell.

Thank you so much for your time, one last thing, how does xertion get such mirror shine on his incredible hair?

I believe he uses the semen of 30 blonde virgins.

Big shoutout to all the guys over at multiplay for making the CS:S tournamen at the i-series so huge. Big hug to the guys over at Fnatic (and the guys from wc3 too) and thanks to Packard Bell for their support.