‘dunc’ in the throes of masterminding the new Infused lineup at a secret location yesterday.

ShoX — There are changes afoot for the bridesmaids of the European TF2 scene, Infused. With a slump in form, inter-team issues and some disappointing results a change was probably long over due.

I caught up with loquacious geordie  dunc for the 411; after the break we’ll get the Infused side of the Mike ragequit, the situation with JoeyC and a tale of two scandis.

The Interview

The word on the strasse is that Mike ejected his toys from the pram and stormed off. I’ll be honest my JoeyC shit stirring piece earlier this month was very nearly aimed at Mike. What happened? Would you take him back?

It’s an odd one, the Mike scenario. We’ve been playing very poorly for a long period of time now; at least six weeks or so, and it’s quite clear that Mike has been frustrated – understandably so; we all have. When we lost to Epsilon for the eighteenth time in one week I was really quite close to sacking it all off and going professional in My Little Pony Online.

We were playing against Team Germany. Won a couple of early rounds, took them for granted then lost mid after mid. On one mid, Mike killed the medic. Seb started setting up the defence without realising, then when Hat pointed out that the medic was dead, Seb asked why nobody had called it. Mike exclaimed that he had, I said “you killed the med, but you didn’t call it” and then suddenly he was gone – off IRC, Steam and Mumble. Seb rang him, he picked up and immediately hung up.

None of us had any problem playing with Mike again, but the last thing we wanted to do was pander to his ego. We asked him to apologise and his response was something along the lines of, “you should apologise to me for being disrespectful by not hearing my calls”.

In the end, it’s all worked out the best for us and probably Mike. It can’t have been fun for him to get so frustrated and his attitude wasn’t particularly conducive to a positive playing environment for us either.

I’ve seen you playing with Darn recently, is he within the recruitment crosshairs or do you plan to let him live a bit longer first?

Yeah, Darn registered an interest with us when he saw that Mike had gone. Again, it’s something that has worked out nicely for us, as Darn has given us an infusion (LOL) of enthusiasm; a different calling perspective and some zany ideas for improving our teamplay.

How do you rate your chances of keeping Darn conscious long enough to do something useful at i46? That boy is a serious lightweight for a Finn.

It entirely depends on whether or not he can bribe people to buy drinks for him or not! As long as he’s at least partially sober for the semis onwards we’ll be fine; everyone knows cookye carries this team anyway.

An artists depiction of darn, 12 seconds after arriving at i46.

Amen to that! I got a pretty reasonable response to my poll about JoeyC with just over 2/3rds of people backing my view that he isn’t playing well enough when stood next to Cookye. How did it go down within the team?

To begin with, I think he was a bit shocked. Joe is one of the coolest, most mature guys in the scene though so after a day it was as if it had never happened. I think he probably agreed with the sentiment, just maybe not the way in which he came to terms with it..! Unfortunately for him, that wasn’t quite the end of it..

Where did you go from there?

There was never any intention of replacing Joe, especially with it being so close to i46. However, when Darn joined, he asked if there was any chance that we would also consider recruiting bybben.

I’ve got to be honest, the buck stops with me for considering this replacement. bybben is my all-time favourite player to play with; his teamwork, comms, attitude and playstyle are utterly phenomenal. He looks good when you watch him, but until you’ve played alongside, you won’t fully understand just how good he is.

I deliberated for a couple of days but came to the hideously-selfish conclusion that without major changes to the team, we wouldn’t be able to compete at i46. I spoke to Joe and let him know what I thought, and he was both gracious and mature about it. We’ve worked a deal out for him to still attend i46 (hotel and ticket) if he wants to, so hopefully we’ll still be graced with the presence of another kaidus-level stoner.

Joey isn’t a massive bastard is he? I might need to keep my distance. 

Hahah, no, he looks like an intelligent Justin Bieber. He can sing, too!

It sounds very much like you’re running the show now, you just can’t help yourself, can you?

Seb is still in total control of the team. It’s his team and in my view he gets far too little credit for our success. Granted we’re not the best team in Europe at the moment, but you can apportion a large chunk of responsibility to Seb for the competitions we have won, thanks to his calling and of course his huge deathmatch ability. Since our aforementioned period of performance-instability however he has found his interest and dedication somewhat waning, so I took it upon myself to make the changes. Besides, he’s certainly not the kind of dickhead that can replace a player – especially not one as lovely as Joseph Carter.

Finally, some decent freakin’ gossip. Thanks for taking the time! Any shoutouts?

 No problem. Shoutout to the Infused Management, they’ve been really supportive with these changes. Their ethos reflects our own, we all really want to win i46. Shoutout too to our sponsors, Tt eSports, Club 3D, IN WIN and AOC.

Infused

The updated roster looks like this;

numlocked
 Hat
dunc
Darn
Cookye
bybben

Bonne chance, bitches!