NoobG: 'I was not entirely convinced I wouldn't choke!'

Gosugamers sits down for an exclusive interview with Lasse 'NoobG' Jacobsen, Trademark eSports' carry player who had a pivotal role in their triumph at the recent DreamHoN Winter 2012!

Hi! I started out in matchmaking and used my acquaintances from there to form some low-mid tier teams. After spending some time playing smaller tournaments I ended up in [fpbs] where I slowly began making a more significant mark in the competitive scene, although not as a carry (my true calling).Following [fpbs] I joined [sGty] which I had to leave because I couldn't attend DreamHoN Summer. I believe it was 'Mynuts' that took initiative and wanted to form a team for the DreamHoN Winter qualifiers, and with some roster changes along the way we ended up with what we have now and a sponsorship with Trademark eSports.Having never been to DreamHack before this event I'd still confidently declare this one the best. I have nothing bad to say about the event as a whole other than the quality of our computers during the finals. Slightly off-topic but I have to say thanks to S2 Games for the amazing parties they hosted when we weren't playing!I was actually very surprised at how nice people are in person compared to online. I don't think I can name a single person where this didn't hold true.We did really well against Q sQuad in scrims during our bootcamp so we were extremely confident we were going to take them out once the group stages began - we played well and it tipped in our favor.I had never heard of vTi.Dynasty before this tournament and for that reason I was pretty convinced we would take them out. They did put up a fight and we did discuss internally in our team that they were actually pretty good.Haha, not to discredit Team MRR or anything, but if there was a game where we choked it was DEFINITELY that one. I don't think I can recall playing that bad in a tournament game in the past 6 months. They did play better than I expected them to, though.I didn't watch that game, but I have a really hard time believing compLexity would purposely throw a game in that situation. Orange is just a good team and they could've just as easily taken a game off of us (as they almost did in the semi-finals).I think the second game of that series was the most fun/interesting game I've played competitively in a while. This is mainly due to the setup we got to play but also because they were so much better than we expected them to be.Our early game was incredibly shaky and I was secretly preparing myself to play a 3rd match because a 15 min concede was in store; we pulled our shit together and by the 20 minute mark I was actually pretty convinced we were going to win that game simply due to our hero line-up and the fact that Tremble is a bad carry.HUGE WP to ORGE though, they've improved by A LOT. I'll definitely be worried about facing them in future tournaments!Aydin BM! Nah, I was actually pretty worried about meeting compLexity. They are so insanely good at teamfighting that you pretty much HAVE to win early game to stand a chance against them.You're obviously going to be playing better on heroes you play a lot, and implied hereto is obviously a confidence boost when you get to play said heroes.I largely attribute our success in bottom lane to Mynuts' lanepulling and us getting lucky a few times with double archer. There was no way for Moonmeander on Tempest to do better than he did when the lane never came back to him. Once I hit my Ghost Marchers he was done for :)I think the overall consensus was to just play heroes we were comfortable with and do our best. We were mostly just happy to have the psychological edge of being up one game :)I'm not the most outgoing person IRL so I was actually expecting to be very nervous in front of a crowd as big as it was. Strangely enough I wasn't even remotely nervous and where I sometimes get 'shaky' online I didn't even flinch on the stage.Even though their heroes were in their comfort zone I'm convinced our laning potential was greater than theirs; Silhouette versus Bubbles is a given, Aluna and Moraxus is extremely strong and Plague Rider is excellent for reducing your opponents farm without dying too much. Combine this with excellent play and you're on your way :)Haxxeren is always something to be looked out for ;) The items you mentioned are pretty standard when facing heavy initiation - it was definitely a conscious decision. We knew what we needed to build in order to win the game.Hard to say... an extremely intense feeling of relief? I was pretty overwhelmed though. I got up to cheer and it took me a good 15 seconds to realize I was still wearing headphones around my neck :D I'll probably buy a minifridge!Haha, I was actually not entirely convinced I wouldn't choke before I went (shoutout to Kyle), so to do as good as I did was definitely good for my ego.If I have to choose an MVP outside my own team I'm no doubt gonna go with Slickz; that guy is insane.I think compLexity as a whole choked a little bit; I don't mean to discredit them, but I never felt like they reached the potential they demonstrated in recent tournaments. On the other hand, the foreign teams exceeded the level of play I thought they were at, kudos!The only direction HoN has been going for the past months has been forward. Following the success of this event I don't see any reason why this trend shouldn't continue. Go HoN! :DThanks for the compliments! We actually had a bit of a sketchy period (not a lot of playing and bad play when we finally did) leading up to our important matches, so I'm actually a little bit surprised we managed to do as well as we did.I'm not sure if I liked the qualifier format too much. The amount of waiting to play teams that stood no chance against us was a bit over the top. This is obviously a non-issue now that we're finally placed, so I'm expecting a more enjoyable experience once the cycles begin.We hope to do well in Diamond League and I don't see why we wouldn't. We've never been better as a team and our results will hopefully reflect that :)Thank you for having me! Shoutout to John and the rest of Trademark eSports and many thanks to Razer and Raidcall!