i37: Interview with Element ptEERR

After an exciting first day of games here at MUltiplay's i37 LAN event, we have had our fair share of shocks, defeats and upsets. Leading the way were the English side Team Element, who managed a shock 17-7 win over high seed Team Infused.

Infused have been practicing hard over the last few days in the aftermath of their disappointing performance at the-eXperience, where they finished 17th-24th, having only narrowly escaped the group stages off the back of a default win.

I sat down with element player ptEERR to get the inside story on the day's shenanigans.

Hi Pete, can you first introduce yourself to our readers?

Hi im Peter "ptEERR" Nather, and I'm 18 years old. I've been gaming since i was 12 with Call of Duty 1, and I started getting more competitive as I played more games, CoD:UO, CoD2 and currently CoD4.

How was your trip here, did you have to travel far? Were there any major hiccups along the way?

Thw trip itself was pretty good. I had a job interview yesterday, and I was supposed to go for an induction day today but my team said i was baiting so I had to come down here instead. But other than that everything was fine.

Very recently we saw Youthink brought into the team to replace Trotz. Trotz had been playing with you for some time, and has helped make the team what it is today. Was this a hard decision to make? Why did you make the change so close to LAN?

It was quite a hard decision really- it wasn't something we did easily. Trotz had some issue with the clanbase admins which meant we couldnt win games and had some trouble there. Management put us under pressure to get it sorted and since Tom (youthink) had just been removed from druidz, he seemed the natural choice for our new 5th.

This was your first competetive LAN event personally, as well as the team's first LAN event. How has your online preparation been going?

It's been quite tough. All of us in the team have been training very hard to get us where we are now. We had a bootcamp but only half the lineup actually turned up, which wasn't too useful.

Do you think your online preparation was sufficient, or did you join the ranks of frantically pcwing masses on thursday evening, trying to get those strats just pitch-perfect at the last minute?

It's hard to get prepared for the lan due to the shortage of good teams available. And the shortage of time we as a team had, with Tom only in the team for a week and george only in for 2-3. We haven't had much time to gel and have found it a strugle simply because we couldn't get into preinvite. We had to rely on clanbase to test out all our tactics. However, our manager Kevlar has been a huge help, pointing out where we've been going wrong and the such like. He'll come on at midnight after having worked at his full time job all day and ask us how we've been doing and so on. You couldn't ask for a better and more dedicated manager.

When the groups came out this morning, what did you think when you first cast your eye over them, and yours in particular?

We didn't see infused in it first, because they got a bye in the first round. But other than that we weren't to worrried about any of the other teams in the grup. Most of them are pretty unknown.

Looking at your group, other than Team Infused, who do you think are the main contenders for the playoffs?

Fifth gaming we had heard a lot about, but in the end they were simply ok, not anything special. And they weren't very good sportsmen. We went over to say good game afterwards and they basically told us to fuck off. We've got X'Evo tomorrow, and we don't really know much about them other than word of mouth, but I think they are a contender.

Going into your game against Infused, what was going through your head? Did you believe beforehand you could beat them, as convincingly as you eventually did?

We were worried, we thought we'd get a really a tough game. Of course we were aware that we could well lose the match, but we went in there knowing we could win if we kept our confidence up, and in the end we did and it paid off.

The game was on mp_crash. Did this play a big factor in why you won? Have you spent a lot of time working on crash, or are just as good on all the other maps?

Crash was one of the first maps we did strats on. It isn't our strongest map, but it's in our top 3. I think that it did have some effect, but at the end of the day we gelled as a team and they didn't, and so I think we could have taken them on any map.

You started off, of course, with the knife round. You lost and Infused chose the sometimes considered easier side of defence. What impact did this have on your game plan?

I think it just reconfirmed our idea that they were a good team and we knew we had to pull of something special on attack. That said, I also think it was their biggest mistake- me and tom are really aggressive on attack and it showed eith us going 6-1 up. They did bring it back to 8-4 at the half though, but by then we really had the momentum and had the adrenaline pumping.

As the game went on your lead grew and grew, until you hammered down that final nail into the Team Infused coffin at 13-7. At the end of the day, was your win down you playing exceptionally well, Team Infused playing sub-par or something completely different?

We were up 11-4 at one stage and were getting round after round after round. Then they called a timeout when ono's pc broke, and they must have used the time to have a team talk or something, because after that they got their act together. They began getting back on the scoreboard, but by then it was too late and we had the confidence to finish them off 13-7.

As of yet, you have not lost a single game this LAN. How far do you think you can take your winning streak?

In the group stages I think we can take it all the way. We only realy have X'Evo left to compete against, and they only just scraped a 13-11 win over a team we beat earlier 22-2, so we are pretty confident. In the playoffs I think it is down to who we come up against. If we keep this up we can easily meet or even beat our seed, unless we come up against teams like Dignitas and fnatic.MSI early on.

Now you've had a day to check out the competition, who do you think will comprise the Top 5 once it's all over here in Stoneleigh?

1. Dignitas 2. TCM 3. fnatic 4. YYT.AMD 5. YYT.NL

But enough talk about the tournament, and onto the other side of LAN: the social aspect. Have you enjoyed meeting up with all the people you've met and got to know online?

Deadly forces! They are such epic people to be around. We also met the management for the first time, and Di Indianer. But yeah, I've known some people here for over a year and have only met them for the first time today. It's been interesting to see how some people change. Some people have big egos online but here at LAN they are completely different.

Do you and the team have any plans with what to do with your friday and saturday nights yet?

We're not really doing much tonight, we're just going to hit up the tents and get a good night's sleep ahead of tomorrow. We'll have a bit of a party tomorrow- there's the pub quiz and we'll probably grab a pint or two as a team later on. It all depends on how well we do in the playoffs.

Honestly, where can you see yourself placing in the final standings?

I reckon if we get the teams we want then we can get 6-10th. Once again, it's all down to which teams we meet. If we come up against the top teams early then its going to be hard to reach our seed but I think we can manage it.

Thanks a lot Peter for your time, do you have any final shoutouts to give?

Just to the management of Element really! Quik_sh0t from South Africa who taught mennace all he knows, Kevlar, catfat and all our other epic managers. Fatal, wellsy, enigma, shoutout to druidz for giving us tom for our team! Deadly forces for being legends and you can have one as well wargasm!

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