Hiko: "Attending more LANs is the number one priority"

Our resident Brit took some time to chat with Rogue's Spencer "Hiko" Martin in Copenhagen about the event

A rare picture of a hat-less Hiko

Your journey in the main tournament at Copenhagen Games came to an early end, what was your experience of the event from the group stage?

Well I definitely can't say it was perfect, we only had a three-team group so we only had to win one best-of-one to make it to the playoff bracket. So the first map we played went pretty smoothly, there was a bit of a delay but not too much. Then we were expecting to play the second one a few hours after that, it took a little longer than expected but I'm not sure how long it took. Then we started that best-of-three against Untitled later than we thought we would have to, managed through the first map pretty smoothly. When the second map hit I think we were up 12-2, well technically it was 12-1 and we were about to win the round to put us to 13-1, and then it was either only me or me and another person from our team and two of their guys crashed with the "No Steam logon" error or something. They then ended up winning the round, we paused and were told it was going to take a couple minutes to fix. Turns out it took a few hours. We were paused at 12-2 for about three hours and we didn't have much communication with the admins or anything, we didn't really know when we were supposed to play so we ended up ordering food, thinking that we'd get the food by the time the game is over and it'd be fine. Turns out we got to wait long enough for the food to be delievered and then ate before having another hour or two to kill after that. It definitely wasn't great. Last year Copenhagen Games had a lot of problems, I was here at the one in 2012 with Quantic, and it had just as many delays that year too. I guess it's just something to be expected from this tournament at this point, I don't want to write off an event completely for having delays but there's only so many times it can happen in a row where it's like something must be wrong here. There must be a reason why not many tier one, good teams come to the event. That said, without the delays it's a good atmosphere. It kind of reminds me of like a DreamHack kind of thing, just a sweaty nerd party with computers everywhere.

ALSO READ CPH Games: Rogue get Tricked; fall 2-0

How did the delays affect your gameplans and how you treated the day?

We were expecting to play at least another best-of-three last night, I'm glad we didn't have to although we didn't get as much sleep as we wanted. Fortunately we were bootcamping in Copenhagen for a few days before this, so we had time to adjust. I'm sure that if we had just flown in for this event we would have been even more jetlagged so it would've been pretty bad. The delay was definitely rough, especially because we didn't know who we were playing against, so it wasn't like we could spend the time preparing for it. It would've been nice if we had something to do, but even so the internet was down here so we couldn't have even done some work for Tricked or whoever our opponent was going to be. It didn't affect us that much going into the Tricked game, but it definitely took it's toll on us yesterday having to go to sleep after a 13-14 hour day and only having played three maps.

Unsurpisingly, it was cadiaN who pushed for the team to attend

After your game against Tricked you're out of contention for the Main tournament, and into the B-tournament. So your goals are to just play and win?

Yeah, I mean money is the goal. At this point we're just trying to get something positive out of this. Unfortunately we didn't have the greatest showing against Tricked, both maps were close and we could've came back and we slipped up on Inferno. But things are as they are. We'll still try to play as hard as we can in the B-tournament, test a lot of our strats. We probably won't play any top level teams until towards the end, so we'll have a bunch of games that'll be just play it loose, win it out. Maybe tomorrow, if we get that far, then we'll actually try to win.

What caught your eye about Copenhagen Games and brought you to this event in the first place?

It was pretty much pushed by cadiaN, as he's from Denmark, I know he was sort of starting to feel homesick and getting tired of being in Las Vegas pretty much alone, so it made sense for us to come out here since he had to come back anyway. I'd be lying if I said I wanted to come to this event, just based on my experience from 2012 and knowing how it was last year it definitely wouldn't have been my first choice. It made sense logistically as cadiaN had to come back anyway so we thought we'd come with him. I know he's staying back for a few days after this to hang with his family for a bit. After that he'll be back and we'll be on our EPL grind again.

ALSO READ Rogue remove ryx, add gMd

Speaking of EPL, you've started off your season well compared to the previous season. How does that increase your confidence / differences in how you have played?

Our team is stronger this time around, both individually and tactically. When cadiaN first joined our team last season, he joined half way through when we had already dug a hole for ourselves. Having to use a stand-in for wrath as he was too young to compete for the first half, making a roster change and then we decided we didn't want to keep wrath so we had to use another stand-in for the relegation tournament, so props to Uber and shinobi as without them we wouldn't have been able to make Relegation and stay in the league for this season. We tried to take it as seriously as we could but things happened and it didn't go the way we planned. Moving into this season, we've had a strong start taken a map off of SK and very close to taking a map off of Liquid, as of our record right now we are still in playoff contention. If we win out, I think we're guaranteed a playoff spot. We are currently in a playoff spot, but that's mostly down to us having played way more games due to taking this week off to come here. I think we have Renegades, Cloud9 and Dignitas as our last three matches. If we win three or four maps out of our last six I think we can make EPL Finals. This year especially, attending more LANs is the number one priority. Last year we only went to two LANs, ASUS ROG in California and EPL Relegation. We're definitely looking to improve our team and increase our chemistry. I personally love coming to LANs, people like to troll me, say I suck. "Hiko in 2018 xD" and all of the other memes these days. But I think I still have what it takes. I enjoy coming to these things. If I didn't enjoy it and didn't feel like I had what it takes then I wouldn't do it anymore. Moving forward I think we have a bright future, just need a little time to refine what we have.

ALSO READ Rogue win Copenhagen Games [B tournament]

Hiko and Rogue would indeed go on to win the B tournament, securing a 2-1 victory over Vexed. The team's next match is currently scheduled for April 24th against Renegades, followed by contests against Cloud9 and Dignitas to close out their EPL season.