Interview: VG.Black^ - 'iceiceice vouched for me'

The ever so friendly born-to-carry player Dominik 'Black^' Reitmeier rose to fame while playing Anti-Mage for mousesports back in 2012. The mostly German-based team belonged to the top tier of Europe, and were on the verge of really establishing their name when they fell apart at The International. The team rebuilt and reclaimed their position but once again fell apart in 2013 at the following International.

In the aftermath of the event, Black^ shipped over to China to join LGD International in an attempt to rejuvenate the team. However, the team never really picked off and disbanded in December the same year. Black^ remained in China in search for a new team and eventually joined the young bloods of CIS Game. With the CIS squad, he took second place in the Chinese TI4 qualifiers and secured himself and the team a trip to Seattle. However, at the play-ins they were eliminated by Team Liquid. Afterwards, the players of the team were bought by Vici Gaming, the runner-ups of TI4.

The interview will be available as video after the event.

Hey guys, this is Skim from GosuGamers. We're here at WEC 2014 and with me is the one and only Black. Black, how's it going?

Not too bad right now.

Well obviously, you just won against EG. Tell us about the games. Did you actually expect to go 2-0?

Obviously we didn't expect to beat them 2-0, but yesterday we had a long hotel meeting about what I want to draft and how they like to pick, how they like to play. And we just picked like that and it worked out pretty well.

In general, you only joined the team quite recently or rather the whole team formed only quite recently, how much practice time did you get?

I arrived on the third and then we got two games in of practice and after that we came here right away, pretty much.

So the team just started clicking? Obviously you had to be clicking and synergizing to beat EG.

In our practice games, we were doing quite well as well so, for now it's going well.

Well, people in the community are worried about communication issues seeing as there are three Chinese players, obviously icecice can speak Chinese fluently but how about you? Do you actually notice something like that or is it not a problem?

Obviously I am not fluent, but it's more than enough to understand everything they say in Dota and strategy-wise, who is missing, what to do, it's pretty much not a problem. Outside of the game, obviously, I am not fluent at all.

What does "top is missing" mean in Chinese?

"Top is missing"? "Shaanglu miss".

Okay, and "come gank" or "come push"?

"Laishaata", "Laaitue".

Do they constantly shout that, just these keywords and key phrases?

Well, it's not really like key phrases, it's actually pretty short but "Laishaata" means "Come kill him" pretty much. So it's not really a keyword or anything.

Well, you don't need more info than that: "Just come kill him"

"Laishaata Homien" means that "Come kill him from behind", stuff like that.

So, like back-stabbing stuff.

Yeah.

Ok cool. How did it get together with you and Vici? After you left CIS or after CIS kind of disbanded it was obvious that you'd have to choose a new team but there were also a few rumors that you'd actually join a Western team. So how did it get together with Vici?

That actually came quite late. It was half a month ago, we started talking and discussing about everything and then when Sanbing(iceiceice) decided to join the team, he vouched for me to join the team as well because we wanted to do something in the following time. And that's pretty much how we got together.

Nice, and it seems to be working out. You only have two games of practice and two games now in official matches. Do you actually think that's enough to beat like teams that have played much more games like LGD, Na'Vi and have a lot more practice matches.

It's obviously gonna be hard because I think in this tournament pretty much everyone's rusty because there was a long holiday. So, this tournament is really unpredictable because I think everybody has the same skill level, they all didn't practice that much. So I don't think it will influence much.

Talking about you personally, this is gonna be your second year in China. Are you looking forward to that? Are you maybe, even a bit sick of Chinese food or just a big China fan?

Honestly, I really like this place, this country in general, because food is really good. The Dota is really good. And, the air's bad only in Beijing, other than that the air's not too bad at all. So you can do whatever you want to. All the things people said are bad about China, I don't think they are true. So I really like this country.

Were you tempted to come back to the Western scene, or even come back to Germany?

I mean, if there is an opportunity, sure. But it's just that I personally believe I can improve much more in China and much better than I could in the west. That's why I wanted to go to China all along.

Many Chinese players or many legends retired after TI4. China placed five teams in the top eight at TI4. Do you think they can keep this level of Dota up even though many many important players retired or do you think it's gonna need some time to regenerate?

There's a lot of new talent coming like InJuly, InFlame and June. All those people are really good, they're really good players. So it could definitely happen again. But I think last year, because Alliance won, maybe the West got a little lazy because they didn't practice as much, whatever and China kept on going really hard. So I don't know, things might change, they might not change, future will tell.

Speaking of the future, do you have any real plans? Have you planned ahead for what you wanna do in a few years, or are you just gonna go with the flow right now?

Right now, it's gonna be going with the flow because I can't really predict what's gonna happen in the next year or even the mid of the next year because roster changes might happen and I have no idea. It's gonna be really hard to predict.

Sounds reasonable. Well Black or Rotk, thank you for the interview. Do you have any shoutouts?

I shoutout to all my fans and supporters. Without you, I wouldn't be here because you believed in me all along. So, a big thanks. I hope I can, we can keep this going and actually win this tournament. That would be pretty big and pretty nice. Thank you all.



Note: Spelling of Chinese words may be inaccurate.

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