Interview with KaBuM! LEP, the Top Laner of the WCG Brazil champions

Continuing with our coverage about the Brazilian competitive scene, which is growing day by day, we publish today our second exclusive interview with a Brazilian pro-gamer. Pedro "LEP" Marcari, one of the more talented and known players from Brazil and with his team, KaBuM! e-Sports, won the WCG Brazil 2013 and, recently, the silver medal at BGL Arena #3 talked with us about the their squad, their expectation about the Season 4 at Brazil, the hiring of SuNo and W1nged by Keyd Stars and the creation of the Brazilian "LCS".

Check the original Portuguese interview Gabriel "gabrielpumba" Melo has done here.

To start this interview, i would like for you to introduce yourself to us and tell us a bit about your career as a gamer and also about your “offline” life.

KaBuM! LEP: My name is Pedro, i’m 18 years old and I live in Ribeirão Preto, my nick is Lep, however I’m also known as Irelia, I used to play for Awake, Insight, Nex Impetus and I currently am playing for KaBuM.

KaBuM’s division was created in October with the hiring of a team playing against Nex Impetus, where they got the bronze medal at CBLoL 2013. In your new house, you guys were able to conquer the WCG Brasil title and in most tournaments you guys participated in were always placed between the four best teams. What did you think about this season? Did you feel that in 2013 you guys did a good job and it was a good year or you had the feeling that you wanted and you could have done more?

KaBuM! LEP: Well, i don’t think i’m 100% happy. Because I reckon it always is possible to do a bit more, and of course it’s impossible to win every game in a scene like ours where all our teams have more or less the same level and especially in 2013, where each team won a championship (Pain won CBLOL, KaBuM won WCG, Keyd won BGL Arena and CNB won International Challenge).

Recently the main teams from the national scene, including yours, made important changes in their line-ups. With everything that happenned, in your opinion, the Brazilian competitive scene regressed a bit to evolve more in the future or not? What do you think about this?

KaBuM! LEP: I think everyone evolved, all teams got better, some more and others less. I believe that our scene got better compared to last year but i still think the teams are more or less equals.

Your team, since December of last year, have been though some changes. The first was Dans leaving for Manolin, and now Bit, who became Manager, Manolin and Digolera were replaced for Danagorn, Dans and Ziriguidun, respectively. What did you guys think when you were making this new team? And why you didn’t try to contract promising players from our scene, like you did with Manolin?

KaBuM! LEP: We looked for players with characteristics that we wanted the team to have this year, like friendship and dedication. I believe those 2 things makes a difference in a lot of teams, and ziriguidun, even though he played some offline championships, he is still considered a promising player from our scene, and we didn’t look for other players because we already knew dana and dans and we also knew that they would be great players for our team and there was no reason to let other team pick them up.

When we interview Brazilian players, we usually ask them to make a brief analysis about their team and teammates. Could you do the same for us? telling us, especially, about your new teammates?

KaBuM! LEP: I believe the strong points that i can tell from our team is our strong synchronization and union, and about my teammates: Tin has a big champion pool, knows how to roam and have a good lane phase, danagorn also has a good champion pool and he has been playing the same role for 3-4 years resulting in a lot of knowledge about the jungle, ziriguidun is one of the most hardworking players that i played with, he also studies a lot about the game, which a lot of players don't do, dans has great mechanics and map awareness that lot of AD’s don't have, because he used do play as support, so he is able to warn and tell us things that is not even his role, but he does because of this.

Actually, one of the biggest discussion in the Brazilians server is the fact that our Solo Queue isn’t as competitive as it happens to be in the “main” regions. In your opinion, why does this happen? And do you think if every player took ranked more serious, Brazilians could have more strong and powerful teams?

KaBuM! LEP: I think the problem isn’t with pro players, because i see most of them playing serious, it’s rare for them to not be playing serious, and our solo queue isn’t so competitive because there isn’t a lot of good players, some games are very imbalanced because the competitive players are way better from players that only play Solo Queue, but i think if we had better players, maybe we would be stronger.

Still on the topic of ranked, it is very normal to see, today, Latin players playing in our server. In two championships we had the opportunity to play against them, International Challenge and IEM 2014, Brazil was able to get 14 victories and 6 defeats. Do you reckon with this “invasion” and training constantly, Solo Queue and in teams, they can learn to play against us, and in the future, win against our teams in big events?

KaBuM! LEP: I think they can get a lot better with us in some things (I believe the lane phase from Brazilians is very strong because everybody tries to solo someone constantly and this makes you very good at handling the pressure) and i think they may be as good as us someday, however I believe we are still a lot stronger than them.

Recently, you and your teammates played the third edition of BGL Arena of League of Legends. In this tournament. KaBuM! surprised the community with the silver medal and become the first team to defeat the new Keyd Team in a official match. Was this the result you expected since KaBuM! was one of the teams that have changed over?

KaBuM! LEP: Yes, we expected for this result due our strong pace of training and due our good results we obtained in the all of our scrims since we made the changes at our line-up.

The BGL Arena #3 was the first tournament after the wave of modifications in the Brazilian teams. What did you think of the BGL? And about the Korean players, what did you think of them? Did SuNo and Winged play the way you imagined?

KaBuM! LEP: The BGL Arena is always a disputed tournament that always has only four participants, who generally are the best Brazilian teams. I think we lack a bit of grace in the BGL because we haven't contacted the publich as IEM Global Challenge, Brazilian Championship, but this doesn't decreases the reputation of the tournament. SuNo and Winged are great players but i don't think they are far above of the Brazilian players. We trained so much against Keyd Stars before the tournament and we knew their potential. The BGL Arena #3 was which we expected, with all of the games played very fierce.

Not very far away from here, Latin teams have already started playing the qualifying rounds for the big tournament that will be realized in this region, Latin American Cup, In some countries, like Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Mexico, there is their own nacional leagues, which resembles LCS. Other teams participate in the Circuit of Legends, weekly tournament like Go4LoL but with a big prize in money. Riot Brazil has yet to release any information about our competitive season. What do you expect for this year? Do you think we will have a league, even if it’s online, or a big event like CBLoL last year

KaBuM! LEP: Well, BGL announced that there will be a league and from what I know a big event for CBLOL -- and I believe we will also have theInternational Challenge and some others tournament that we had last year, i expect to have more events with time and this will increase the value of our scene even more.

What are the expecations of KaBuM! for this season?

KaBuM! LEP: The best possible, with training and working a lot, I believe we can have good results and get where we want, we know our opponents are very good, but, I believe if we work hard, we can get good results.

Last year, in Dota2, we saw two big teams, Natus Vincere and Alliance, making a bootcamp in Asia to learn how to play against Chinese teams, which were, at the time, the most feared teams in this game. Thanks to this both team got the best positions in the World Championship of the game. Today, in LoL, the scene to be beaten is the South Koreans. Do you think that, even a team from Brazil, playing a whole season against Koreans, playing even an edition of OGN, they will be able to end the utter, monotonous dominance from korean teams?

KaBuM! LEP: I don’t know if it’s possible to end it, but if a team stays 1 season in Korea and even plays one OGN, I believe this team would get very strong and would be able to get good results, i think it could work.

To finish, i would like to thank you for the opportunity, wish good luck for your team in tournaments and leave this space for you!

KaBuM! LEP: Firstly, i would like to thanks GosuGamers for this, i want to thank KaBuM and our sponsors like HyperX, Philips, EVGA, SteelSeries and NVIDIA. I would like also to thanks all our fans who, winning or losing, still continues to support us

Interview & Translation by: Gabriel "gabrielpumba" Melo and Ricardo Pereira (from Portuguese into English)

Formatting & Editing: Gabriel "gabrielpumba" Melo

Proofreading by: Michale "DreXxiN" Lalor

​Photo Credit: KaBuM! e-Sports and Agency X5