Vega.Mag: "We have to finish first in wildcard"

So how are you feeling today?

I'm feeling very good and excited.

How was your team's preparation for The International 5? You guys have a bootcamp I assume

We have a bootcamp in Moscow for 10 days and we played a lot of scrims, watched a lot of replays to prepare for the wildcard qualifiers

Speaking of wildcard, the wildcard qualifiers have really interesting teams this year. Who do you think will pose the biggest challenge for your team?

We are not underestimating anyone but I think CDEC is really strong. We saw some of their replays recently because they played a lot and they were very impressive. MVP.Phoenix to me is the dark horse and we also think that Archon can show us a thing or two as well. But yeah CDEC would be toughest team.

Have you scrimmed against any of the wildcard teams?

We only scrimmed against teams who are already in TI because we don't want to show any of our strategies.

Do you guys usually scrim against one specific team a lot or do you usually scrim with whoever is available?

We train with many different teams and we try many stuff in these games. I think it is not so good with just one team.

Okay tell me how is TI5 for you so far. I'm not notalking about in-game stuff but rather the treatment Valve has been giving you.

This year's TI is pretty amazing. The fact that they have these practice rooms is just so awesome. I think that is the best improvement they have so far and I do prefer this year's TI in comparison to the previous years.

Did you grab a lot of the food they prepared for you outside the room?

Yes of course! In fact, after we finish th food on our floor, we go to other floors to take their food.

Yesterday, all the teams received an email from Valve detailing the stats and tendencies of each team. There are pros and cons to it. Have you read the document?

Actually no. I was playing Dota the whole day. We did not even go to the players party yesterday and we just stayed in the hotel and play.

Well regardless, I'm sure you will see it a bit later today. How do you think this would benefit your team?

There are a lot of websites like Dotabuff that provides the same stats but it is hard to prepare against a lot of the teams. Take us for example, we played our last official game a few weeks ago and we have changed the way we draft. So it is hard to predict, most teams will and probably have changed the way they draft.

So you think that the release of the stats analysis would not have a big impact on your team because it has been a long time since you played an official game.

It will have an impact for sure but you can prepare for it. There are a lot of other stuff that can help you as well like Dotabuff and Datdota.

Are you confident that you will finish first in the wildcard qualifiers?

I am confident that we can win this and or at least finish top two. We will see.

Would you prefer to go into group A or group B?

Group B. We have to finish first.

Do you have any shoutouts to any friends or family back home?

Yeah. Thanks to my friends, our fans and special thanks to our sponsor Vega and unikrn.com

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