Thanks for putting some time aside for me Dids, I suppose we better start with this week’s match up against Orgless and Hungry. I was wondering whether you could share your thoughts on the series, just as a whole?

Um, I think it was pretty close on some of the maps, like the Oasis, um the Gardens and the City Centre. The City Centre, they surprised us with the Mei. We didn’t expect the Mei to be in our spawn by the time we got to the start of the point.

No one expects the Mei.

He like, he did the roll out where he like jumps on the car and ice blocks halfway across the map. [chuckles]

I’m not going to lie to you, we got some insider information, which was like “watch this player roll out on city centre”. We half knew something was going to happen, but we didn’t bring it up on broadcast because we didn’t know if they were going to do anything or whether it would have any impact. The fact that it caught you guys off-guard.

It’s a really risky play, but it payed off. So, fair plays.

It worked out for them, and I really enjoyed that series. I especially enjoyed you on Rialto.

[chuckles] I didn’t even see the guy, he was in the perfect spot. No one checks that corner when you go left. I think, maybe they watched a vod, so they knew I always go left side, and we had no one scouting from the right. The comms at that point were pretty chaotic, so I couldn’t hear anything, like movement from footsteps. Everyone was just talking about what to do and stuff.

I’ll give you the heads up, they were crouch walking from across the bridge to get into that position. I’m assuming when you went round that corner, you were strafe walking a little bit, so you weren’t properly rotating? It did provide a really entertaining moment, so I’m not gonna shoot it down.

It was pretty funny [chuckles]

I’m glad you can laugh about it in hindsight. It was the map you won against them, Rialto. Something that caught my eye was that you were the only team to play both high grounds. So you hold the bridge, then rotate to the high ground in the courtyard area. Was that a coach Promise special, or something you worked out as a team?

We had Promise and a few of the other guys on the team work it out. We’ve only done it for a couple maps because I’ve only been in the team for like two weeks. I joined at the very start, I was originally going to skip this season, but they needed someone. But Rialto, we had the plan to hold the first point high ground, and then rotate to second point, we have three positions we can go to. Set plays we can do on that map, and other maps. It’s not like setup for us, we kind of just try to improve as solo players and trying to work on that instead of strats for every map.

To simplify it, you have a multiple choice selection and you just try to pick the one that works best in that moment. So you’re not having one strategy, it’s almost like a “build your own adventure”?

Yeah, exactly.

Promise recently got some additional support from Shu, how’s the former That’s a Disband coach getting on in the team?

It’s pretty good, we all get along together. We have Renegat as well, the French guy, who’s recording for us as well. He’s doing pretty good work. So we have three guys helping us out, so it’s pretty fun. Pretty cool as well.

As a throwback, I think the first time I encountered you was Insomnia60?

I think it was epic21? Was that before i60?

I can’t actually recall. I just remember you at Insomnia 60 with the MnM roster at the time.

I60, Singularity showed up, so they had Kragie.

[chuckles] Oh yeah, Singularity Gorillaz.

I think Shax, was it Shax and Kragie? I think was at I60. I know Kragie was there, just unsure about Shax. You look at them two guys now…

It kinda makes sense how they won it. So they had Shax, Scaler and Kragie. Those are the ones that would be notable on that roster.

I suppose you had more success at I62, of course you were on Jesterheads and you ended up winning that one. Have you noticed a different feel in teams, from hopping around the UK circuit? How does that contrast to competing in a Contenders roster?

It’s a lot different. When I’m hopping around teams for like LANs and stuff, I don’t usually go unless it’s paid for. It’s so much easier for me. When you’re playing in these mix teams, you don’t really play beforehand or scrim. Well the teams I go with anyway. It’s a lot more relaxed than contenders. Contenders, you actually have pre-planned map strats, like we had on Rialto and stuff like that which I really love to do. I love making strats and having different flank angles that I can take and setting them up and stuff. That’s probably the main difference between contenders and hopping around teams for LAN mixes.

Just a little bit more organised. I also think there’s a little more at stake in contenders?

Yeah, definitely. I think that’s the thing. A lot of people relax in… well the kind of people I go with to LANs and stuff. Just go as a mix, just go have fun and see how we place.

No tryharding at Insomnia for you.

I was always really nervous on stage. I’m still working on that, I think i’ve got a bit better this contenders. But last contenders, I just choked so many times. The camera’s on me, shaky aim.

How did you place last Contenders?

I played Season 0 and then Season 1, I was playing with DOSE with Hayko, BenBest, Hidan and Ube and I think we missed out by one map or one round. So we didn’t manage to get into trials.

So you’ve played with BenBest before, was that one of the main reasons you came into Young and Beautiful?

The main reason was because I was going to skip this season, because my wrist is like f***ed at the moment. So I haven’t played for like two months, I’ve played like two ranked games [chuckles]. They were really desperate for a hit scan player, so they messaged me. Everyone else they tried to get got poached by other teams, so I was kind of like the last hope.

If you want to put yourself as the last hope, you did beat British Hurricane last week. That’s not a bad last hope.

It worked out good, I guess. I think the first three weeks of contenders is gonna be teams trying to workout what play style best suits them, and finding out which comps they’re best at. I think that’s one of the main reasons we won against Hurricane. I think they were expecting tank plays, and we just came out with double sniper. I don’t know if they played much against double sniper in scrims, but you could tell by the second week that they had kind of figured it out a bit. Especially in scrims as well, they definitely figured out how to play against it. People are changing up their play style in scrims again. It’s fun, it’s pretty cool to see teams having one play style figured out. Then they try another thing.

Unless you’re Angry Titans.

I hate quad tank.

[chuckles]

I don’t believe it should be a viable team comp. Triple-triple or quad tank.

You sound just like ZP last season.

I hate it. It’s watchable, you can watch it. It’s much easier to spectate, that’s for sure.

Absolutely, because they’re all in one place. Quad tank gets some flak from some people, others rate it highly because of the minutia to the actual play. Obviously, you said you don’t necessarily enjoy it, is that because you’ve had to try it yourself? Or you don’t like playing against it when it happens to you?

I kind of like, just refuse to play it.

What, against it? Or with it?

Playing as quad or triple. I’m just like “yeah, I don’t want to do that, you know.” I want to play a DPS hero, because there’s like 16 or so DPS heroes. How can you play none of them?

{with extreme levels of sarcasm} But we need four tanks in the game for some reason, ok.

I look forward to the day I see you on a tank in Overwatch Contenders.

Not gonna happen. Not gonna happen.

You’re not the only British DPS to enter contenders this season. KSP is starting for Bazooka Puppiez. I might be shooting at the wrong target here, but do you feel as there’s a rivalry between you and KSP?

Not really, I mean. I guess there is for people on the outside. He’s on team UK, which is cool. I took two months off, so I was kind of trash, I suck in trials as well. I can’t trial for teams. I just suck, I just choke, any trial I have.

But you didn’t have to trial for Young and Beautiful, so you just got direct entry this time.

Pretty much, yeah. I played like one block, and I was like “ok.”. I think I played like two hours with team UK and then I didn’t play the first week or two, because I had RSI (Repetitive Strain Disorder). So I couldn’t play with my wrist. At that point, when I was back into it, I was playing with YaB. Scrims conflicted with scrims for team UK. I only managed to get two hours with them. I think it’s way better if you just pick KSP, because I’m kind of a risky player at the moment because I don’t know if my wrist is gonna get worse. Or get better. KSP is a lot more relevant at the moment, because he’s played a lot more than me in the last few months as well. It kind of makes sense to go with KSP.

The injury just came at the wrong time in the annual calendar for yourself.

Pretty much at the worst time.

During Overwatch World Cup selection, start of contenders season two. Regardless, you’re putting in some good performances. So hopefully your wrist can make it through this season of contenders, then you can rest up between season two and three.

I would like that, because I was going to skip this season and just do next. See if I could find something then. I don’t really play outside of scrims, tournaments. After three or four hours, I can start to feel my wrist just absolutely going.

Moving onto the 7Lions roster, you said that KSP was a good pick up. What do you think of the roster as a whole? I asked ChrisTFer last week, “If you had infinite slots, are there any players you would’ve liked to have seen on there?”

Infinite slots? I would say Fusions for sure. I think the main reason Fusions wasn’t picked was that, I know Chris had a really good understanding of the meta really early on. I don’t think Fusions did. After he played against us in the first week of contenders, I think when they saw what we were doing, he caught on as to how he needed to change his play style. He did it so fast, he changed his play style really nicely. Especially against us in scrims and stuff like that. So I would’ve liked to have seen Fusions, but I think both of them play it pretty well at the moment.

So you understand how the contenders format works. If you get into the top four of your group, you then face someone in group B. Who’s the one team you’d hate to face specifically in your top eight, quarter-final match?

In top eight?

So from group B. You’ve got: CIS Hope, Gigantti, Eagle, One.PoinT, We Have Org and Copenhagen Flames. They’re the six teams in group B.

I think it’s between CIS and Gigantti.

That sounds about right.

Because both play like tank comps. CIS kind of variate between what they play, and Gigantti are playing a lot tanks at the moment. They have really interesting strats. I don’t know if you’ve seen much of them on stream yet. But they… uh, yeah.

Are they just styling on kids in scrims then?

Let’s just say. You play against them first point and you’re like “hmmm… yeah, that just happened. Ok.”.

In a good way for you? Or a bad way for you?

In a bad way. You’re just like “huh… I’ve never seen that before.”, well that’s interesting.

So while you’re in the scrim, you have to try to understand what happened, then find a way to beat what just happened.

Yeah. You’re like “What even is that?”, you know. If we played against them, I think they’re the most unknown, with their hidden strats and stuff. I think that Gigantti will be the ones that will surprise you the most.

Looking a little bit closer, you have Angry Titans next week. Is Young and Beautiful going to give them their first map and/or series loss?

Umm, possibly. I think this week in scrims, we’ll see what it’s going to be like. But I definitely think we can take a map. Hopefully, I think.

You’re sat behind them at the moment. They’re on a 2–0 scoreline, you’re on a 1–1. You’re above British Hurricane. If you beat Angry Titans, you should take first place, because of the head to head interaction. Is that something you saw happening?

No, it’s really close. Like the five teams. You’ve got Angry Titans at the top, then you’ve got the five teams.

Everyone else is on 1–1, except for Bazooka Puppiez.

It feels like a really balanced group. Group A, compared to Group B.

Oh absolutely. That’s one of the things we’ve been talking about on broadcast. That we just don’t know how this group is going to go.

It’s interesting, but I think it’s good. Because you can tell a lot of the teams are trying different stuff. Changing their play style week by week.

Well thank you very much for your time, and good luck with the rest of Contenders.