NiP take ZuppehW full time & qualify for DreamHack Winter

Coming into the Overwatch Open Ninjas in Pyjamas were forced to make a substitution as former flex support Seita was unable to attend. They brought in ZuppehW, who performed the role admirably and helped them to an EU Semi-Finals finish. Seita has now dropped out of the team permanently as he is unable to attend LAN events for personal reasons; the newly official NiP roster with ZuppehW went on this weekend to qualify as the first team for DreamHack Winter.

ZuppehW was discovered by the team because of his ranked play. He has occupied the #1 spot in both Season 1 and 2 of ranked, finishing 2nd overall in Season 1 behind Nevix, and was known for his Ana play even before she was favoured by teams. He had minor esports experience before joining NiP and the Overwatch Open was his first ever LAN.

Talking to ZuppehW about that event, he said:

It went well for me. I could perform and so on, but of course it was really exciting and there's was a bit of me being unsure how would it go. Like I got picked up by NiP 6 days before the event and travelling to USA for the first time with new people and having this really well hosted event to play made me a bit nervous as one might suspect.

He will be travelling with the team to his second LAN soon, as NiP won the DreamHack Winter online qualifier this weekend. NiP defeated NWA 2-1 and Misfits 3-1 to win the final two matches and qualify first among the European teams. Teams attending OGN or APAC Premier were notably absent.

The game against NWA saw NiP lose on Route 66 after a failed offense, but they came back heavily on King’s Row and Dorado to win 2-1 overall.

Hymzi gave us his thoughts on the Winner’s Bracket Final against Misfits:

Against Misfits we didn't really change anything from what we did in OWOpen, we just played our own game and tried to minimize mistakes. At OWOpen Misfits played really well and "small" mistakes costed us couple maps that were ours to win. We changed our composition depending on what heroes our opponent were playing. While 3x3 was really good, it had it flaws against fast engages and since we wanted a composition that could pretty much deal with anything, we had to tune it a bit and ended up with the 4x2 & 3x2x1. You can quite comfortably play the 3x2x1 (with hog) against any hero comp, but you MUST keep track on what ultimates enemies have and position yourself accordingly. Beyblade/NanoReaper is probably the most scary one but not impossible to deal with, it's quite obvious when enemies try to set it up.. you just scatter around and try to get damage done with your frontline while your backline kites him. As for Mei you just have to bait the walls & ultis. When you've played against Mei a lot you kinda start to see the spots where you're gonna get screwed if you end up being walled out, so you just have to play around those and same goes with her ultimate. Really looking forward to Dreamhack Winter as it's going to be my first DH event ever. I expected us to get through the online qualifiers and Misfits as well. As for the BYOC qualifiers it kinda depends who's going to attend, but I would assume that at least Dignitas, LDLC & NWA are going to attend and make it through.

Earlier today, Misfits beat NWA in the Lower Bracket Final 3-0 to secure their position in the $50,000 DreamHack Winter tournament. There are only two online qualifier spots available for Europe and these have now been filled by NiP and Misfits. Two teams will also qualify from a North American online qualifier. Four more teams from any region can qualify through the BYOC tournament at DreamHack Winter.

The Ninjas in Pyjamas roster is now: