Nem: “Finui is the apEX of the UK scene”

Belfast Storm improved on their performance from the previous iteration of EPIC.LAN which saw them place 9-12th. Their shock exit to the Penjymin mix at EPIC.LAN 43 lit a fire underneath the players translating into a string of good form in UKIC and ESEA. Most impressively Belfast Storm made the UKIC Division 1 Season 4 Finals last year. Whereby, they narrowly lost a nail-biting triple overtime third map against Verdant, the core that is now ALASKA. More recently in the 5th season of UKIC, Belfast Storm came into EPIC.LAN 44 with a 3-2 record placing them in second and 8-4 in ESEA main.

This good form translated to a top six finish at EPIC.LAN 44 which aligns with the seeding that placed them fifth. However, speaking to UKCSGO Luke “Nem” Mear feels Belfast Storm were underestimated. This feeling of going into the event being underestimated means that their top six was a disappointment to the squad that had their eyes set on a finals appearance.

Nem was joined by Lucian “devi” Manolache in this interview. A man of few words and a few beers briefly contributes to the mental vibe within Belfast Storm. The star rifler dropped an impressive 1.384 rating across 17 maps of play according to Finn “mischief” Farrer’s post-event stats sheet. A big proponent of the success in recent times, Nem talks about devi‘s impact on the game but also touches on Connor “Finui” Finucane’s leadership and his deep understanding of Counter-Strike.

How do you feel about your run at EPIC.LAN this time?

Obviously it was quite a disappointing end against Dusty and it was miserable because we had lots of tech pauses. I feel like we played very good Counter-Strike, Especially the guy [devi] next to me, He’s unbelievable. You’ll see him in the stats you’ll see him in the news, you’ll see him in the future.

I’m happy we did better than previously. Though we couldn’t have done much worse than last time, we could have been better this time. We wanted to play ALASKA in the final, we wanted to beat them.

Talk to me a little bit about those tech pauses, how did it affect your play?

There were a few rounds where we had the momentum and then obviously we lost that momentum when they had to reset. Especially with the long pause towards the end with people standing and others going to the toilet. It was obviously frustrating but you can’t blame them for third-party issues with their PCs; it was just frustrating.

Tell me a bit about your energy levels for this LAN. Yesterday, you had probably the longest day out of any of the other teams ending at 11:30. You then had a very long best of threes today. How do you feel that impacted your performance?

I think we are all used to it, we’re all OAPs, and we’ve all played a lot of LANs other than Gabi [devi] here. He’s relatively new to it, but he pugs all day every day, we don’t fatigue. As much as you hear pro players say they fatigue all the time, ‘it’s really difficult playing a long time’, grow up. At the end of the day, grow up. You’re here to play a BYOC LAN you’re here to play a lot of games. You play all day, every day, we are amateurs, semi-professionals. If we can do it, grow up.

Talk to me about the roster a bit, between this LAN and last you switched out Tsutskam for Stop_it, how do you feel that has shifted the dynamic?

Obviously, a lot of the positions have changed because Stop_it has mainly played star roles and now has to change his own positions, to accommodate the anchor positions of tsutskam. The firepower, without a shadow of a doubt, has increased.

Let’s just say he gets very excited when he plays. Which is good because it obviously keeps the vibes up but sometimes we have to try and calm him down. At the end of the day, it is a positive. tsutskam has his own ways and he wouldn’t really change his ways because that, in his own mind, is the correct way. Not necessarily always wrong. However, the way that we wanted to play and the idea that Finuii had for the game, would have sometimes clashed. Hence why we changed him.

What’s the vibe like inside the server are you quite an emotional team?

Nem: You [devi] can answer this one

devi: I’m too drunk

Nem and Devi laugh

Nem: I would say I’m a big factor in trying to hype everyone up. For example in the Dusty game earlier we had a big break in between. We weren’t playing the way that we should be. So I’m sitting there, we took a tac pause and I’m shouting at everyone. Obviously not in a negative way more of a case of just saying: ‘Focus on what we are doing we are here to play the fucking game, we’ve worked on what we worked on. So let’s fucking do what we do.’

Nem and devi in Unison: Plaaayyyyy the round.

Nem: I would actually say Finui is the apEX of the UK scene, his brain for the game is unbelievable, but he loves a moan. I’m trying to keep him in check and trying to keep his vibes up at the same time as the rest of the team. devi, he’s a very talented player, but he does get annoyed sometimes.

devi: After losing the first maps.

Nem: Yeah 100% that’s why I was trying to hype you [devi] up as well.

There was a lot of controversy around seeding and matchups this EPIC.LAN, do you feel like that impacted you?

Not necessarily because we still have to play some difficult teams. All the top teams had to play difficult teams.

Hot take: I personally think the seeding was a bit of a disaster. A lot of the same friendship groups do their own seeding. The way they do it is they grab a player from each team to do the seeding, however, there’s a big friendship group within the UK scene. We’re not part of that friendship group, we do our own thing.

So the way I see it personally is they have almost like a dictatorship on the way that the seeding is voted. We spoke to ALASKA about it and they said that we should be second seed. They were shocked that we weren’t the second seed because we had taken them so far in UKIC and beat the other teams. I don’t think we really cared (about being seeded fifth) but we kind of expected it because, for that reason, people underestimate us.

The post Nem: “Finui is the apEX of the UK scene” appeared first on UKCSGO.