ShoX — Bored of me yet? With a mixture of long standing team mates and the scraps from Team Infused in the shape of Boomeh, Greg and most recently Mike team Quarantine are attending LAN with the intention of putting the cat among the pigeons. With Boomeh’s sudden change of heart regarding LAN and Mike’s recent and controversial exit from his former team I thought it’d be good to throw a few questions their way.

After the jump we hear from Mike and Kritzonite about all things i46, who they think they’ll beat, how much Mike would love to beat Infused and why they don’t think LG will be able to compete for the top spot.

Good afternoon, chaps! Care to offer everyone a brief description into team Quarantine?

Kritzonite : We’re originally a L4D team that moved to TF2 in mid 2010. We started out in div 5 and gradually worked our way up through the divisions. I suppose the most notable thing would be the length of time we’ve kept the core group of players the same. I’ve played with Beavern for about 4 years, Knutsson for about 3 and Fuo has been here basically since we started in TF2. All 4 of us were also at i43 a year ago. Recently Mike and Greg joined, with the initial intention of helping us out for i46, and we’ll see where it goes after that.

I made some pretty harsh remarks about you a while back, describing you as one of the potentially most volatile teams in Prem. With Boomeh being touted as the most level headed player in your team does his absence from i46 cause you any concern?

Mike : If there’s any concern it’s not about being volatile at all as everyone is rather calm, we are only concerned about how we will perform, as with boomeh we were getting places and getting good results and feeling more and more confident about entering the top 4. However since these recent events have occurred we’re unsure of our skill playing with knuttson instead of boomeh as we have hardly practiced with him at all. Knuttson is just as calm as boomeh was though, imo a bit better for team morale too.

Who are you taking to i46?

 Simon ‘beavern’ Sjosten
 Henrik ‘knutsson’ Knutsson
 Jamie ‘fuo’ Woods
 Patrick ‘kritzonite’ Spence
 Mike ‘Mike’ Adams
 Greg ‘Greg’ Bushell

Numlocked seemed pretty unconcerned about meeting Qn at i46, but a little birdie tells me that you’ve beaten them pretty regularly of late. Reckon you could prove them wrong and pull out an upset? That would be especially pleasing for you wouldn’t it, Mike?

Mike : Haha I don’t know who told you that but we haven’t been beating them regularly, with boomeh I think we drew every time we played and we were happy with the results. When we first played them with Knuttson we got rolled pretty hard, however we played them the day after and it was a very close loss. Saying that, we have been putting time in talking about strats that other teams run etc and I felt that this was how we did better, it was very nice to see a fast improvement and gave us some hope that we can beat teams like them.

I’m not that bitter at all about what happened [with infused] to be honest but I would be pleased to defeat them and I think we have a chance to. Although the only reason it would be pleasing would be because we would be beating teams of their caliber and increasing our chances of doing well @ LAN.

It’s safe to say that you’re not one of the teams being tipped for the #1 spot, but I’m interested to learn which of the top teams do you think you could realistically beat at LAN?

Mike :  I think we realistically could challenge and beat TCM and LG, I’m not sure we can beat Infused but I think we have a chance.  Mix^ and Epsilon would be our hardest opponents.

 Kritzonite :  I think we can beat anyone on our day, though there are 4-5 teams who would certainly be favorites were we to face them.

Who do you think will ultimately win the tournament?

Mike :  1st: Epsilon, 2nd: mix^ 3rd: infused
Kritzonite> 1st: Epsilon 2nd: mix^ 3rd: Qn

Neither of you fancy LGs chances then? Why’s that?

Kritzonite :  Tbh I wouldn’t say i’m hugely qualified to comment on the US scene, I don’t follow it closely. My opinion is just based on what I saw in the eu vs us games, and what I’ve heard, so it doesn’t mean a great deal. therefore if I’m asked to pick a top 3 i put mixup ahead, but for all i know LG may well be better.

Mike : Well tbh I think they’re a bit overrated, ESEA 10 LAN had only 2 good teams (Them and mix^) and at ESEA 11 LAN they were the only decent team not because they were that much better but the other 3 teams just weren’t that good (all the good players seemed to be allocated evenly to the 3, instead of having a good team and 2 slightly worse teams imo p.s unlucky br0!). So as much as I love Tyrone and despite what i’ve heard about them @ LAN i don’t seem them playing too well.

Any shoutouts

Krizonite : None
Mike : Evokje

Thanks a lot, chaps!

Once we’ve pinned down someone from Epsilon we’ll be rounding off the series. Stay tuned.