Sasha "Scarlett" Hostyn was in Toronto this weekend for the Kings of the North StarCraft II tournament, along with seven other top North American players. Although Scarlett has been out of the spotlight for a while, she remains one of the all-time greats in the SCII foreign scene — and she's getting ready to ramp it up, with planned appearances at DreamHack Austin and the WCS Circuit Gold Series International 2016.

So you’re coming off of a break and then returning for Legacy of the Void, right? What's your practice schedule like now?

I’ve been playing in a lot more small tournaments than I used to, and lots of NA and Europe ladder. I always play a lot better on ladder than in tournaments, like way better. I have more trouble focusing on the game in tournaments than on ladder. At a tournament I end up thinking about something completely unrelated to StarCraft, I don’t know why. I just have trouble focusing on the game.

So I do really well on ladder and I’ve been playing decently in online tournaments, but at the same time, even though I’m beating everyone on ladder, I’m not fully confident in tournaments. I’m actually going to Korea, like right after this, so hopefully I get a bit more into it then.

Are you looking forward to DreamHack Austin and the Spring Championship as well?

99% I’ll be at DreamHack Austin and of course I’ll try to qualify for the Spring Championship. I didn’t… try as hard as I should have for the Winter one, if you saw that. I started playing ladder the last night, when you needed to make top 16, and ended up 17th. I ended up getting Top 16 two minutes after the bell. I only started that day and I was like a thousand points behind. And I ended up losing to MaSa [Maru "MaSa" Kim] actually, three times right before the clock, I thought I could beat anyone, except maybe MaSa, and that happened.

What do you think about the ladder system for WCS Challenger in general?

I think it's good. The reason I’m actually playing NA now is [because of] a tournament run by feardragon [Ravi "feardragon" Pareek] called Ladder Heroes, so it's actually fun just playing for that. And then WCS is like that, but it's a bigger deal, and a lot of people focus on that. I’ve always liked using ladder as practice, even though it might not be the best idea — I just enjoy that, so I think that is better.

In your series against MaSa here at Kings of the North, you played Roach/Ravager in Game 1, but then in Game 2 went into Muta/Ling/Bling. Which one do you prefer right now?

I only play Mutalisks really. I went into Roaches Game 1 because I thought I was more ahead than I was, I guess, after the proxy didn’t work… but I guess it was just normal, like a pretty late proxy, so it wasn’t a big deal. But I tried to Nydus, off three-Hatchery, which doesn’t even make sense. I don’t know what I was thinking then, but I had no upgrades, no ling speed and Roaches, and Lair, so I thought I had to go into Roaches.

If you go into Muta/Ling/Baneling, it's very dependent on just having enough Zerglings to fight their army, and if you don’t have enough you’ll just straight up lose. If you’re behind after a certain point you just can’t play it, whereas with Roach/Ravager/Infestor you can rely on Fungals and Corrosive Bile a little bit to catch back up. The only way with Muta/Ling/Baneling is if they really screw up and forget a turret at a base, or a bunch of Banelings kill SCVs. So I felt like I was forced into it.

In Game 2, I kinda knew that he was going to do exactly what he did, a Tank drop into the second base, +1 Tank push behind the third. That’s very very very strong on that map. So if you watch the game, I only took one gas at the third, the one that wasn’t by the Tanks, and I took the faraway fourth which is very unusual. So I felt like I was in a pretty good setup to deal with it, but I just failed my macro. I had about 2,000 minerals, which is like 80 Zerglings with +2, against Marines. I would have crushed him, I just messed up.

You also didn’t have Baneling Speed when the push hit, is that a mistake or is that just how the build orders shake out?

No, you can’t really have Baneling speed unless you have a super-fast gas and Lair. In the past, people would go two-base Muta, especially in Heart of the Swarm, and then with that they obviously have a faster Baneling speed. But I feel like to play against Terran now you have to do a pretty greedy opening and get fast upgrades. I didn’t have Mutas and I didn’t have Baneling speed, and they kinda come at the same time cost — 110 Baneling speed, 100 second for Spire — so, you kinda have to hold the first push with just Zergling/Baneling. If I macroed well I probably could have held it.

How real of a team is OnFire? Are you guys looking to be more formalized, or is it just a banner for you guys to play under?

You know the #blyonfire thing, right? So it's just kinda a joke on that, to play in the [SC2Improve] team league. Neeb [Alex "Neeb" Sunderhaft] doesn’t really want to be on a serious team right now. He’s actually had a lot of offers but he’s turned down everything, like personal sponsorships... He’s like “no I don’t need it, it's fine, maybe later.” But him and State are teamless, State hasn’t been looking for a team. I haven’t tried to join a team yet, I don’t know why. But it's kinda just a fun thing to play together.

I just wanted to make it [playing in the team league] happen even if it couldn’t be with Acer. So I just organized it with the players. It's kinda fun, managing Clan Wars and doing that sort of thing. It's very different from playing, but it helps your team win the matches.

But in terms of actually looking for a sponsorship or picking a serious team, I definitely would do that if it was possible. But at the same time, I don’t want to put in the full-time effort as a team manager. So unless someone approaches, or says they want to do a little sponsorship, I probably won’t look for that, just keep it as a casual team for us to play in a team league.

Who do you think is going to break out this year? We’ve already kind of had Neeb, right?

Neeb is a god, a literal god.

Do you have any ideas of who’s next?

I don’t know anything of the Korean scene right now. European, I’d say Elazer [Mikołaj "Elazer" Ogonowski], but he’s already getting more noticed. Lambo [Julian "Lambo" Brosig] is definitely very good. I mostly know Zergs in terms of this. In NA, I think JonSnow [Jarod "JonSnow" George] could. He has the potential if he really wanted to try for it. He’s pretty good. I don’t know about anyone else.

If you had to be a unit in another player’s army, what unit and which player would you be?

Hmm. Probably an Immortal, because… they don’t really die to anything. They don’t care about anything. Neeb’s army of course. Literal god Neeb. On Fire Neeb.

Christian Paas-Lang is an eSports journalist from Toronto thanking Scarlett, and also hoping to be drafted into Neeb's army. You can follow him on Twitter.