With less than a week until the start of the Championship Gaming Series UK combine, Zboard have announced a 5 day team bootcamp, living in an apartment together in Birmingham.

We talked to Ben "ben0" Balcombe of Team Zboard, about how he and his team have been preparing, and what he thinks their chances are of getting drafted.

You can ask Ben any questions you have yourself during the Team Zboard bootcamp which starts this weekend, at Omega Sektor, Birmingham, where they will be training every day until the start of the combine. You can also go up against Team Zboard's Kyle "fataL" Mardel on aim_map, with a chance to win the brand new Zboard Stealth keyboard.

Cadred: Hi Ben, I think most people will already know you, but can you quickly introduce yourself, and your history in the eSports community?

Hey, I'm ben0 long time member and leader of the well known Team Zboard, I've been at the top of the UK CSS scene really since source was released and around the top of the euro scene as well, I'm probably best known for my consistent top 3 finishes at the i-series placing in the podium at all but one event since source was picked up.

Cadred: Earlier this year you picked up, and then immediately lost Ritch Gibbs, soon after he left Four-Kings. An undeniably strong player, most people agreed that it would not have been a wise choice to keep him in your squad. Having now picked up John "gandofini" Johnson, do you feel you have come out of the roster changes as a strengthened team?

Yes, 100%. No doubt ritch is a good player however he is about as stable as an active volcano, but John has given us the stability we needed as a team. We were silly to give ritch a chance really, well to be honest I was silly as I have more experience with him than anyone, but it is easy to make those decisions when you get on with someone so well in real life i.e. at LAN. On top of that, Gandofini really is a fantastic player with bucket loads of experience from leading one of Zboard's all time rivals teams AuxiliA.

Cadred: One of the most controversial changes that CGS has brought to the CSS community is obviously the change of game rules, namely the round-time and start money. How do you feel these new rules fit your team's playing style?

We all really, really like the CGS rules, to the point we don't actually play MR15 at all any more, even in fun games and mixes we still demand CGS rules. As for effecting our play style, I believe the majority of the team love to frag and CGS rules stop us becoming impatient thus benefiting us really.

Cadred: If you are not drafted by CGS, which ruleset do you see yourself, and your team, playing from then on?

While we did start playing with these rules purely for the sake of getting into CGS, which is really the reason any team has started using them, as I said, we really like them for various reasons and believe they improve the game and make it more fun!

So we would definitely prefer to continue playing CGS rules, and will head what I see as being a very strong push for it to be used in online leagues such as theSGL, CAL, ED and so on aswell as at LAN tournaments like the i-series.

Cadred: Many people seeing Four-Kings as being the first pick for either of the UK CGS General Managers, with either the Dignitas 1.6 team or yourselves as the second pick - how well can you compete with these two teams?

While I think 4kings have really put themselves in a good position, I think we have been stepping on their heals for some time now, looking back at our past results with them, we gave them a real fight on de_dust2 at i31 where HenryG came up huge and really shut us down on the vital rounds.

The consolation finals on de_nuke has been the first game in a long time we have truely lost our footing and let them take a note worthy win. Going back one more i-series you can see 4kings as Reason-Gaming where we managed to place higher, although we didn't beat them directly we took out Gandofini's AuxiliA team who really showed them up at that tournament with a 16-1 win, so when it really comes down to it, in my oppinion it's pretty obvious we can always give them a good hard fought game, and there is no reason now that we have a fully stable team we can't beat them.

As for Dignitas, it is clear to me and lots of others they don't really care about the game, I haven't seen much activity from them (however active they may/may not be) and they have made no effort to get involved with the community, that may sound like harsh words but I don't think they could try to deny that for a second.

I can honestly say I don't see them as much of a threat, it's not like they are a world class team in 1.6 like Complexity or 3D in America. I've always said that was a good thing for us in the UK with CGS in mind, imagine living in Sweden and having the likes of SK, NiP and FNATIC all switching to source.

The fact of the matter is the UK has never had a dominating truely world class 1.6 team, even in the days when 4kings were a class above the rest of the UK they had to have forgien players. However the likes of us and 4kings.css have been competing with the rest of europe in source for ages now.

Cadred: Obviously the next couple of weeks really is make or break time for you and your team, can you talk me through how you and your team have been preparing for this event?

Well we've been practing pretty much flat out to the point we've burnt ourselves out, so we're having a couple of days break before we hit the bootcamp we've just announced, we will be at the Omega Sektor for the next 5 days (from the 14th) and living together in an Apartment, this will be the final stages to bond the team and get us into tip top form.

In total we will be living with each other for 9 days, and practicing flat out, in the 5 days bootcamp I reckon we will make more progress than most teams could make in a month online, its going to be fantastic!

Everyone in the team is really looking forward to it. We were born to be a LAN team so this is perfect for us!

Cadred: OK, onto my final question for you Ben. Apart from yourself, what team do you think most deserves to get drafted, and, if different, what team do you think is most likely to get drafted?

For both those questions I could probably answer Four-kings. They've stuck together for ages now and have been performing well all around.

As for the second part of the question I think they will most likely get drafted because of the way they are percieved by the community, for example being placed high in european rankings and such - not to say they don't deserve it!

Cadred: Thanks a lot for your time Ben. I actually lied earlier, my FINAL question to you is why do YOU deserve to be drafted, alongside Four-Kings?

Well we've all given so much up for this, at the end of the day the majority of this team is not your average sterotypical bunch of geeks, most of us have good social lives and jobs/ university, girlfriends, you name it. But for those same reasons I beleive we will be good for CGS, we're loud and turn heads at LAN, if the CGS wants viewers I really think they need teams like us rather than the sterotype, especially in the UK.

We've made a lot of sacrafices for CGS, 2 members of the team putting their full time jobs on hold for nearly a month now to give this opportunity a shot, and as a unit we've given up weeks and weeks of nights out just to practice, sometimes it can be hard to keep the motivation up when you know at the end of the day no matter what, you may be fighting for a lost cause, but we've battled through it and everyone in the team is really giving it 110%.

It's been extremely stressful for everyone for those reasons and I know we would all be devestated if we didn't get CGS as at the end of the day it's a dream job for all of us, even if its not the smartest career choice, the fact of the matter is, getting paid to do your hobby, nobody in the world would turn that down if they really felt they had a good shot at it.

Cadred.org wishes Team Zboard, and all the other teams competing, the best of luck in getting into the Championship Gaming Series. You can read more about theCGS at theCGS.com.

TeamZboard.com