Finnish 1.6 has always had it's fair share of teams fighting it out at the top, however the past few years have gone by without many noticeable results from the scene.

In the second half of 2009 we saw former Crack Clan - renamed as Power Gaming - pull a couple of great results out of the bag, a good showing at the WCG where they narrowly lost out to eventual winners AGAiN was followed up by a fantastic run at WEM at the end of the year where they made it all the way to the final, losing to the mighty fnatic, even though they had a substitute for the event. The player that was substituted was none other than Joona "natu" Leppänen, a player who has been at the forefront of Finnish 1.6 since the start. Even after a spell in CS:S - where he played for 4kings alongside countrymen Angeldust, GoD, Odiouz and Eversor - he came back to the scene as strong as ever.

Just last month, after his team performing so well at WEM it was announced that they would be folding as some of the team were required to attend National Service, a normal thing for Finnish people. It's not taken him long to find a new team though as a few days ago he joined up with team Soltec as he hopes he can continue the form he showed in the latter stages of 2009. We sat down with Joona for a few words about his previous team, missing WEM and how he thinks his new team will do.

Well the player pool in Finland outside of the guys who went to the army is unfortunately slightly slim so it's a bit of a working progress to actually build something together. There are still quite a few if's and when's to be answered before there is anything that can be said. I'm personally definitely up for cooperating with Power Gaming which is a great organisation - but if that is going to happen - I really can't say at this time. Time will tell what shall happen.

It was definitely bit of both. I was very happy for the team and I have absolutely no doubt in my mind we would've done just as great had I been there - something anyone could see if they watched our bracket games at WCG. I just had to make an adult choice of staying home and choosing work over competing - which happened to backfire on me as we´ve been on a strike ever since WEM started.

Bo3 single-elimination is definitely the right way to go - luck has way less effect on the score than what it does on a single mapper where one single bad break can kill you. I think against AGAiN we just played an awesome game apart from one single half which eventually cost us the game. I think it was a great indication together with WEM what we could've become in 2010. Unfortunately we'll never know now.

I mean it´s like combining casual life with a hobby you have - it isn't THAT hard. Of course when events are coming up, my days tend to get quite hectic and tiring. My boss at work is very understanding and grants me off days to go on events without much trouble, my girlfriend also has more understanding over it than one could imagine so I think it's worked out fine so far.

It's the competition aspect that makes me play. Everyone loves to compete and get the adrenaline it gives you. Also I think I've managed to keep up with the always changing style of play to keep up with the younger kids. Also I took a year off in 2008-2009 and came back with a fresh mind and interest for the game and I started playing the game for the sole purpose of enjoying the competition. The money doesn't matter to me nowadays.
It has made the game much more fun for me actually.

All you need to do is watch demos from 2002-2006 and see how the pace has changed, how many new tricks players have invented and the general level of skill has risen up to completely new heights. It's safe to say that some of the champions of old times would have absolutely no chance against some of the best nowadays - even if they had kept playing. Players are just so much faster than back in the days.
Also you only had a handful of teams that had a chance to the top - now you have maybe five times more teams practicing their hearts out to get up there and who stand a chance.

Well since I think most of the people have read what happened I'm just going to say that we were unhappy with the complete inconsistency of ruling and we found it absurd they were allowed to field a player who'd already qualified to the finals with another team. Even if no biased decisions were made - they need to have more of an international base of admins for exactly these kinds of situations when one of the teams happens to be German.
End of the day, I think it's an endless discussion and therefore quite unnecessary. I hope they have learned how to make things better since we need strong organisations within esports to make the boat float.

Well I guess the nation wants to keep an image that we're prepared should anyone threat our independence. On this case, it was quite inevitable since some of them had already postponed it for years to be able to play CS professionally.

I think it's the big picture that needs to be observed here. I've been very lucky to have had the opportunity to travel in 3 different continents and have met and made friends with many many great people around the globe thanks to a "violent computer game". In my opinion the ignorance towards bad general mental health affecting individual to act based on any games or movies in real life is absurd.
If you are a generally healthy individual, you are able to say what is real and what is not. It's just the easy way to accuse any kind of violent entertainment.

I don't think I really had a hero of any kind. When I started getting better in this game - the fan culture wasn't exactly what it's like nowadays. It all progressed so fast for me that all I did was concentrate on my own things and playing the game. If I'd have to choose someone though, I'd say it would have to be my friends who were really good in CS more than 10 years ago. They showed me the game and look at how it all panned out.

Hard to single out just one of them but I would say NGLone in 2007 when we came from an underdog position to take 1st place against fnatic in the finals with 69N-28E tops the list. The whole 4 month stint when we won NGL, Asus and WSVG was very memorable.

UK just simply didn't have proven talent that they needed in 4K at the time. At the same time I had made friends with some of the players during events and we all got along great socially, which is a really important thing in a cs team. It was just the right place and time for both parts which lead to the conclusion of me joining the team.

It was just an coincidence. I knew some of the boys in that team and I didn't have much going on after mTw opted not to renew our contracts after the EPS season. So I decided to give it a swing even though my PC made playing the game at home quite unenjoyable. I liked the LAN experience in Source as well. It was a good experience and I think I did fairly well especially on LAN with proper equipment, some people seem to have a differing opinion for some reason though.
I took a break after the Source stint for a whole year pretty much. In April of last year, there were some roster changes in Finnish CS teams that inspired me of starting a new lineup with naSu & co.

I think it was just generally badly organised. Unfortunately it all was surrounded one person and that just doesn't work. You need to have multiple people calling the decisions. There was some horrid budget management and bad calls were made. I don't even know the exact details. All in all I enjoyed it and I was treated nicely so I'm glad I got to experience it all.

I do not think that is a valid option given the fact that UK 1.6 is quite non-existent from at least my perspective. Power Gaming though is a great organisation, no matter if they're British or not :)

natu has recently formed a new team, Soltec (Image: SK-Gaming.com)

Fact to the matter is that the Finnish military system is what cripples the amount of gamers in Finland. When you're bound to go to the army when you´re in the "prime age" to play e-sports competitively - it is bound to have an effect on the quantity. That being said, I think there are players just like the guys in Playzone and a bunch of others who could break should the right circumstances occur.
Unfortunately most of them - if not all - lack the major experience from playing in "game winning situations" in big tournaments which I find to be one of the key factors between winning and losing. You can practice as much as you want, but the wrong call in a crucial situation might kill you completely.

Well I can't say I wouldn't mind something new for the CS scene but I´m one of the more sceptical people. Replicating stuff in another game-engine is definitely a hard task and especially when we're talking about a game such as CS 1.6 that has been around for years - it’s hard to please a crowd like that. I haven't had the chance to test it but I will give it a spin once it's been released.

I'm going to be boring and answer fnatic on both occasions. Who wouldn't wanna play with a team that doesn't place outside of top3 almost ever?

Images thanks to SK Gaming and mymym.com