Another edition of the AEF interview series and this time I managed to catch up with Reason Gaming sniper player 
rzE for a quick interview about the team's preparations and expectations about the Antwerp Esports Festival, going into the tournament as one of the high seeded team's.
Heya Mark, first of all, could you tell us a bit more about yourself and your gaming history?
Hi Camiel, as you said my name is Mark Rzepka. I'm 20 years old from surrey in England, I'm 1/4 Polish, 1/4 Irish and 1/2 English. I've just finished a 3 year apprenticeship in vehicle mechanics with VW and currently taking a month out of work to attend AEF, TEX and i34 before I start work with my dad.
I first started online gaming when i was 14 playing Soldier of Fortune 2 with players such as KyoChi and FrGzR but decided to move on to play cod2 to get into competitive gaming. When I moved to cod2 I got to know Adam Vanner and played with him in teams such as Spreading Death and Magnitude. He taught me how the CoD was played, as it was very different to sof2, so I owe a lot of what I know to him.
Then CoD4 was released and I was determined to get into a top team. I first got a chance with the first Reason Gaming line-up, however, the team didn't last and thats when I found myself with exabyte. Ever since then our team has grown stronger and stronger in game and as friends.
Reason Gaming have been in a roll in the recent weeks, winning both the SGL Summer Slam and the Sychosis 2. How is nreo fitting in and why did the team part ways with Duffer in the first place?
Nreo is fitting in really well, he's the 5th we had been looking to find for a very long time, as he plays very similar to the rest of us but he has his own style and is very unpredictable. The team decided to part ways with duffer as it just didn't seem to click, he is a very good and aggresive player, but some personalities clashed in the team and we felt it was the best thing to do.
Did the addition of nreo positively affect the team's performances?
Yes i'd have to say it has. He's a very smart player and he's more than a team mate now, hes more like a friend to us. We all get on really well and have a high morale in and out of game.
With the summer LANs just around the corner, did Reason have any kind of special preparations (i.e. bootcamp), and how have the preparations been going overall?
We kind of used Sychosis2 as our bootcamp, as nreo lives in the Netherlands we didn't see the point of flying him back to England for a bootcamp just to fly back again. If we had thought about a bootcamp in Europe and got it organised it would of been nice, but we didn't have the time as I had to work.
As other preparation goes phantasy's been having inet and pc problems so we've been quite inactive as of late. However, we've managed to get some decent training in over the last few days and tried to sort out our week maps, which I feel has gone well and I hope is enough to help us to do good at the upcoming events.
Reason ended up in one of the tougher groups of the AEF, together with ESL Major Series champion SPEED-LINK and the Hungarian underdogs iNFiNitY*SkillS. What are your thoughts on the group, do you believe you have an edge on both teams?
I feel its a good group to be put in, I've not played or seen infinity skills before so it should be a nice game. As far as having an edge we've been to a couple of lans now as a team and feel everytime we go to a lan we get stronger and stronger so hopefully the groups wont be too hard. However SpeedLink are a very strong team online and I feel that their last LAN performance was a one off and I'll be expecting a very tough game from them and wish them the best of luck in the tournament.
Who do you personally rate as the main favorites at both AEF and TEX? Do you expect the Americans teams to come out on top?
In my opinion fnatic and eSuba are the favourites. Fnatic have a great team morale and a very respectable leader, they always perform when they need to and win games that some people would give up in. eSuba have been playing amazing online recently and hopefully they can take it to lan with them and perform just as good, if not better. If they do I feel they can win both tournaments. I think EG are also one of the favourites, as they are a team that the Europeans never get to play against, so they're new tactics and play style could cause a lot of teams problems.
What are the team's plans after the AEF?
After AEF we will be flying back to the UK and training ready for tex 2 days later. Over the 2 day period Lighters, Juszn and Heroik will be coming round my house for a mini bootcamp and just to chill out in between competitions and to sort any issues we have with tactics teamplay etc.
Well good luck at the event and thanks for the interview, any last words?
Cheers, I wish all the teams attending AEF and TEX the best of luck and looking forward to seeing everyone there, especially NCS as I know they have been training really hard. Finally just a few shoutouts to juszn, lighters, nreo, phantasy, heroik, Team infused and Stevy.
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