Transcription (english) - Interview d'Eiki, août 2014

[M] Corto : For those of you who were at Le Trianon in Paris for the second edition of the Nation Wars, you all lived how the Norwegian player Eiki managed to conquer the French crowd, thanks to an impressive all-kill during the semifinals against Poland.

To come back with him on this event, and learn a little bit more about him I have the chance to have him with me today for an interview. Hello Eiki !

[KRN] Eiki : Hi !

To begin with, it seems that there is something very special happening between you and the Nation Wars tournament, already during the first edition, you managed to perform very well for your country.

I remember that you already did a great job against Poland, and at that time, only a few people knew about you, at least in France, how do you understand these good performances for this particular tournament ?

[KRN] Eiki : I think there’s two parts: first part is the tournament format which is the all-kill format. And that means that when I have Snute and TargA on my team, it’s not a huge pressure for me to win my match, but if I do win, it’s a huge positive [thing] it’s not a huge amount of pressure on me. And I can have a streak where I will certainly do well.

Also, the most important part I think was the team, Snute, TargA and me, I think they helped me a lot. In the first Nation Wars, they didn’t help me that much. There was the format and the ability to play without pressure. But also playing, knowing that if I did win, it was a huge bonus, nobody knew me so it didn’t matter for us anyway.

And the second one, it was hugely down to the help I got from Snute and TargA, they helped me to prepare so much for the Poland match.

Does this mean that you had particular preparation for this final ? You met on Skype and discussed the tactics ? Or you really played together to test different playstyle ? How did you do ?

[KRN] Eiki : You mean for the first or the second ?

How did you prepare the semi-finals ?

[KRN] Eiki : For the semi-finals, we didn’t really discussed it before we went down to France but once we were there, we started to discuss which player they were going to send out, how they were going to play and what we were going to do against it. We found out quite quickly that they were going to pick Tefel, before anything, even map vetos, was done. Snute and TargA know the Polish players personally, so they knew that the other players weren’t feeling that confident and it was probably going to be Tefel. So even from there, we started discussing how I was going to play against Tefel, because that was the plan from the start: me against Tefel.

Snute and TargA provided me with the basics build-order, and that I was going to play greedy at the beginning because Tefel goes very safe in the start. I was going for Oracles because he doesn’t like to make spores, and I was going to rush Colossus and play defensively because Tefel goes Roaches/Hydras aggressive every game. And we got basically confirmed that Tefel was going to play for Poland when we did map vetos, because TargA spotted that the Polish players were all looking at Tefel, they were speaking Polish so we didn’t manage to know what they were saying, but it was probably going to be Tefel.

Even after the map were selected, we played some practice games where TargA emulated Tefel style with Roaches/Hydras against me on King Sejong Station. That map, when I played against TargA, was played out pretty much similarly to when I played against Tefel. So I had a huge amount of preparation for the first match against Tefel. We worked together as a team pretty well.

Against Nerchio, I also had some help because they knew his style, and I was aware that Nerchio always likes to go for Mutalisks. He makes some units in the mid-game and depending on what he makes, he has a lot of different ways to go Mutas, but he always wants to go Mutas. And the most important thing I knew about Tefel and Nerchio was that they don’t make Swarmhosts at all. Normally, the best way to play a ZvP is Swarmhost, in my opinion. They need to make a lot of Swarmhosts, but as they don’t do that, I know that I don’t need to attack, ever. If I just sit and take more bases, I knew that they were going to attack into me.

With that, as well as knowing that Nerchio always wants to go Mutalisks, that was the basis of my play against him. The first map on Overgrowth, I did plan to do the same build as I did against Tefel, against Nerchio. But after scouting that he went 15-pool into three hatches, very greedy without gas, I thought that Blink-allin would be good against that, I knew that it was one of the best scenarios for [it], and also that Nerchio was not going to expect this. I also made a third Nexus and cancelled it, to try to trick him. And as Snute and TargA saw the game, they said afterward that he made something like 73 drones, so I don’t think he was expecting it at all.

Last map against Nerchio went more to how I planned it out, and I used my knowledge of him : I went really greedy early on, so I think I had a small advantage in the early game, but what happened there was that I scouted that he made a Roach Warren and Hydra Den, but I knew that his plan was always to go Mutas. So I kept scouting with Hallucinated Phoenixes, and eventually I found the Spire. And that Spire tells me something: I know that if I attack, there’s two things he can do, he can –maybe if he doesn’t see it [the fact that it was scouted]– go Mutas anyway, because that's his plan with his Spire. Or he has to make Roaches or Hydras and a lot of units, and delay the Mutalisks. So that’s why I attacked, and when I saw that he had Hydras, I just recalled and took a fourth base, and then I forced him into a unit composition that he doesn’t want to play. And then it just turned into a macro-game where I always scouted what unit composition he was going for and tried to counter it. It was a pretty good game, but I thought that I was in control, most part of it, because I knew what he was going to do.

The game against MaNa was really strange, it was crazy. I knew about MaNa, we talked about it, we talked about every games in the team. For MaNa, we thought like he always likes to open safe, and especially against me because he thinks that I’m a weaker player, so he was going to open very safe. And a safe build in PvP is 3 Gates Blink with Robot, so I was expecting that from him. What I did against that was pretty much the hard counter, which is 1 Gate Expand into Robot and Immortals. So the best case scenario for me. Something funny about that is that it’s the exact same Build-order that I beat him with at the last Nation Wars. That just shows that the Polish team didn’t research us as much as we researched them.

It’s quite impressive to see how much you've prepared the event and how much you thought about the games.

[KRN] Eiki : Yes. But a problem that probably stands for not enough preparation was that I never played on Kamala Park before. So what happened when I got out of the early game and we went into the mid-game, I didn’t know anything about the map so I didn’t know how to defend my third base, I didn’t know where his army could go throughout the map. So when I tried to force an engagement, I couldn’t find his army, which is why he managed to go for a basetrade when I was super far ahead and had the game won.

It turned out it was such a weird game where I knew that I had a way stronger army, I killed off most of his. I knew that I couldn’t make a Nexus, I didn’t have enough money. You don’t ever want that in a basetrade, not saving enough money for it was a mistake by me. But also, I just tried to scout over the map to find his Nexus because I knew that he also probably didn’t have enough to rebuild is economy. I thought I scouted the whole map. We didn’t know how to play the map before, especially for me, I didn’t feel where his base could have been, I didn’t know where the area was land and where it was air.

So I got so frustrated and it was terrible. It was a terrible feeling because I knew that I should win, and when I killed more and more of his army, and played more and more defensive, I started to worry, because I knew that I won the game, and I knew that so many people were watching, and I felt so stupid! And I couldn’t find that Nexus.

But in the end you found it.

[KRN] Eiki : Yes I found it, so I won the game so it wasn’t that bad. But I was scared for a while.

And what about Mexico ? Did you have time between the semi-finals and the finals to talk about it as much as you did for Poland ?

[KRN] Eiki : The problem is that we were playing the first match, so we didn’t know who was going to be our opponent. I think we were expecting France in the final. France underperformed the Nation Wars in general, but Mexico played very well. MajOr was extremely good, I think we were okay with both opponents, but we didn’t have much time to talk about it, we had other things to do. Me in particular I was super tired, the night before I slept maybe two hours. I slept two hours and then I played four really exhausting matches, so I was super exhausted, I just wanted to go home and sleep after the semi-finals.

We also had to do some things: we had interviews with a Norwegian website or newspaper, so there was a guy that we went up at 8pm and had an interview with him. And we just relaxed, we talked a bit about it, we didn’t really discuss it strategically like we did against Poland. We weren’t as prepared against Mexico, and we didn’t really know that much about them that’s a problem because Poland and France, both of them, TargA and Snute know a lot about the players. They know how they play, how they feel about the different match-up. Mexico we knew nothing about them, they don’t even play on EU server, that was a problem for us. So we just went into it kind of blind, the only thing we thought a bit was who they were going to send. We just thought about which map was better for ZvT, because we knew that MajOr was going to be the big problem, and I don’t feel that confident against Terran in PvT, so it was basically about finding the best maps for Zerg vs Terran.

Also we tried to sell the idea that I was going to play first, I pretended to be really confident and not tired. I didn’t show anyone outside the team that I was really sleepy inside. I think we managed to make them believe that I was going to start again. That’s why they sent out Maker. I asked them about it and they confirmed it as well. Maker was sent out as the first player to snipe me. We did manage to win the mind game as well, because we knew that what Maker was going to do against TargA was probably double eleven racks as a proxy. So the first match, we had full control, even though we didn’t prepare much against them.

After that, JimRising came out against TargA. It was a really strange game. Because we anticipated JimRising’s build, I think he went 14-14 speedling, and that’s what we thought he was going to do. So what TargA did was the direct counter to it. But then what happened was that JimRising saw that TargA scouted him, so he went for an expand. But he went for an expand that was not on a typical location, and TargA barely didn’t scout it. He totally overreacted to what he thought was an all-in. And then he got super far behind, and lost the game. But JimRising played it well, it was a good game by him. Then we sent me, because there was no reason to send Snute when I had, in theory, a pretty good chance against JimRising.

That game was on King Sejong, it was a weird game, he managed to throw me off in the early game with an hatch block, then he played really strangely from there, he made a third base inside his natural so he didn’t take a third [base]. He also got really quickly lings upgrades, I was really confused. What I ended up doing was a mistake, I made two Forges to match his upgrades, which is kind of good against some styles, I think it’s good against Ultra, it’s good if he doesn’t do what he did which is Swarmhost. I think it can be good against Swarmhost if I’m able to be aggressive, which I wasn’t, because he was good at counter attacking, with lings and some Roaches. I did defend that pretty well but the thing about Swarmhost is if they get some time, they can establish a lot of bases and then defend them easily. You need to have the tempo advantage to get Swarmhost. And that counter attacks took that away from me, I did one huge mistake, which was attack its fourth base without having a recall. At first I thought it was going to be enough, but after three rounds of Force fields, I didn’t have anymore, so I lost all my sentries.

And that was the moment in the game where I knew that I probably lost. But I kept playing from there, and something really weird happened: his Swarmhosts were out of position but I moved my army around a lot and I didn’t have Observer speed so my Observers were super far behind the rest of my army. So when I came to the Swarmhosts, I didn’t have any Observer with my army, I thought I didn’t have any at all, that they have been sniped, but it came afterwards. So I made two more Observers because I thought that I didn’t have any, but then they arrive. And because of that delay, he managed to fight my whole army with locusts and Mutas at the same time, they traded pretty well, that was also very bad for me, and then he managed to snipe my fourth base, and then he was just too far ahead, and he managed to win with Mutas.

I was really sad about that game, it was not a good game by me. Maybe it was because I was tired, maybe because…

…His playstyle was…

[KRN] Eiki : …Weird ? Yes. It was a mixture of that. But I just didn’t play well enough. Then Snute came out, and when you are in a team with Snute, you know that even if you lose… He is so good, he was easily the best player of the whole tournament so I wasn’t that worried. I was really sad about my own performance, but I knew that Snute was really solid. And he showed that in his game against JimRising, he played so well.

It was just perfect, decision making, super solid play. When the game ended, he did win a Roach attack where had maybe five more Roaches than JimRising. And I thought that he was going to kill the third [base], which he could have done. But his decision to just go after natural and engage was just so good. And every time he engages when he should and disengage when he should. That was a perfect game in my opinion. And then, came the best game of the tournament in my opinion…

It was so stressful this game…

[KRN] Eiki : I was sitting on the edge of my seat, cheering the whole game. The early game went so bad for Snute, I thought he’d lost. The first fifteen minutes I was sure he had lost the game because he was so unprepared for the Hellions that came in and just killed like every drones at the third base. He was behind for such a long time, but his play was incredible. His unique control with the Swarmhosts, Mutas, Vipers, then came the Infestors, which were incredible.

It was so good, I think it was a super high level game, it could have been in Proleague. Snute made some mistakes, he could have had more Spines at the exterior bases, Hellions made more than they should have done. And, what TargA was talking about, is that maybe he could have gone for a ling run-by into the main at some point of the game, so they were some things he could have done, but the things he did do, he did so well. Like executing the different micro things, and everything, it was so good. And MajOr played super well, it was such a good game.

And the end of it was so cool as well, the Fungal just killed the whole army. It was a perfect ending. It was the perfect timing to say “gg”. At the most hype part of the game he gg’s out.

For the crowd it was perfect, everybody was shouting.

[KRN] Eiki : Yes, I think I lost my voice at that game.

I can imagine, most of the people who were in the theatre lost their voice at that time.

[KRN] Eiki : Then, last game was just pretty much perfect play by Snute. He went 15-pool and made some early lings to sneak [Reapers] around, to kill SCVs, but that didn’t work out super well because MajOr anticipated it and defended well. It was pretty even from there. Then Snute went Roaches against Hellions/Banshees which was really good for Snute, and then he attacked with it. And TargA was saying “Ah, please don’t attack!”, but he did and that worked out pretty well because he kept MajOr back and killed some units, and then he had more Queens and Roaches to defend, so it was a solid play by Snute, the whole game was very good by him.

Yes it was very impressive. For the last game, it was as if for MajOr it was really hard to play a new game after the one he just lost.

[KRN] Eiki : Yes, I think the first game was really exhausting for both players, but harder for MajOr.

There was also one aspect that you probably liked during the day, it’s the fact that the French crowd was really impressed by your play. They were shouting your name each time you were on stage, I was wondering how it feels for a player like you to feel such a strong support during the day ?

[KRN] Eiki : It was absolutely amazing, I’ve never experienced anything like this before, maybe Snute and TargA have been on big stages and have seen huge crowd before, but I’ve never experienced any of it, so I was very overwhelmed and surprised, and so happy. And I think it actually helped me in the games as well, I played above my normal level in some games. Before the first game I was super nervous, I was telling Snute and TargA that probably I wasn’t going to win, that I was like “I’ll do my best”, I was actually not confident at all.

But once I was on stage, there was this amazing crowd, this amazing venue, everything was so cool. I was super nervous and super excited. And after winning the first game, my teammates came up to me and said like “You’ve done your job now, do your best, you can all-kill, we think you can do it. You’ve done your job, no pressure”. And that’s how I felt, I didn’t have any pressure. And even between each games, I never thought that I was going to all-kill, I thought that I was going to lose every time. The support of the crowd, the cheering, I think it fueled me, it gave me some extra motivation to play super well.

I looked at the APM tab, I mean APM doesn’t really mean that much, but it certainly means that I was excited because I had around 40 more APM than I usually do at each game, it was such an amazing experience, so flattering to stand on that stage and hear people chant my name. It was amazing.

From the inside it was also impressive. It’s interesting that you say that it really helped you to hear the cheering of the crowd, because I was also wondering whether it would have been an additional stress for you or not.

Because for some people, and I guess for example for the French team, the French crowd was probably expecting much more from the team, and maybe for them it was harder since the beginning because they knew that, and maybe they were afraid that they would disappoint.

You didn’t feel any stress at all during the day about that ?

[KRN] Eiki : Not in the semi-finals. I just felt that the crowd was supporting me and I didn’t feel any pressure from that. I thought that I'd already done a good job, but I was motivated to keep trying to do better. I didn’t feel that they were going to be disappointed by me losing, because I was pretty much nobody, I don’t have huge expectations coming in.

I didn’t feel any pressure from it. I think it was different for French players, because if I lose in the first game against Tefel, people says “Yes, that’s expected, Tefel is a good player”. If the French players lose, like Lilbow is constantly top 16 GM, he is super good, Stephano of course is a legend, and Dayshi is considered by many as the best French player, he is amazing as well. So they have a huge burden to bear from the pressure, but I didn’t have anything.

For me it was just positive, for them maybe it was just added pressure.

You said earlier that TargA and Snute really helped you a lot during this tournament, and actually helped you to win the games, do you think you will learn something from this experience with them ? And do you think it will help you in the future to perform better ?

[KRN] Eiki :  Yes I think they taught me a lot about preparation, I didn’t really believe that it was going to be so easy. Snute just kept saying “Just defend, stay on 3 bases, and max out, that’s all you have to do. Just defend”. And I thought “No, he’s going to do something else”. No, they did exactly what he was predicting. So I think that just knowing your opponent and preparing is something that helps you a lot. I think I can take that with me.

It’s interesting.

I think you’ve stayed a little bit in Paris afterwards, how did you spend your time ? Did you have time to enjoy the city a little bit ?

[KRN] Eiki : Right after the final, we went to an after party at Meltdown, which was great. I met a lot of people, a lot of fans, people came up to me for an autograph, and stuff. And we also talked a lot about the games, it was really cool. I also got some drinks. The funniest thing was that some guy came up to me and he said “You know, your Force fields were pretty good, but not good enough” so he gave me a drink that is called Force field. Then after we went a bit around in Paris, we saw the Eiffel Tower, and stuff. We didn’t go in it because there was so many people there, I didn’t want to [go] at all.

I was also super tired, so most of it was just relaxing. And I was supposed to go home on Monday, but the flight was delayed, and then it was totally cancelled because there was a storm in Amsterdam, a huge storm with lightning and all that shit, I don’t know how severe it was, but at least three planes were cancelled at different intervals throughout the day, all these planes were going to Amsterdam.

There was a lot of people who were looking for a new flight, not to be too critical but I’m not sure that the airport was prepared to handle that, TargA and me were in line for four or five hours, just standing there, waiting to go to the desk, where they were going to talk to us about getting a new flight, it wasn’t exactly ideal. In the end, we managed to get a flight, we were at the airport at 4:00 PM, and we left it at 8:00 or something, we were there the whole evening basically. We left later than that actually, like 9:00 I don’t know. We managed to get a flight to Copenhagen, and then to Stavanger but that was the following evening, so we didn’t get everything the same day.

So where did you spend the night ?

[KRN] Eiki : On Monday I think we went to a hotel, we get the hotel from the people who gave us a new flight. And the day after, Tuesday, because the flight was late it was 6:00 or 7:00, something like that. It was 6:00. Oh wait, no, first we went to the studio they gave us some time to practice, we were at the studio on Monday night, and we went to the hotel.

And then we went to the airport to get our flight to Copenhagen, but that flight was delayed for two hours. But we managed to get in the plane though. Then we went to Copenhagen, and because the flight was delayed for two hours, we didn’t manage to reach our flight from Copenhagen to Stavanger in time. So we had to stay a night in Copenhagen, and then in the morning, the day after, we went to Norway.

So it took like 40 hours, or something ?

[KRN] Eiki : Yes, I think it was 40 hours.

And I’ve seen on your Twitter that a cake was waiting for you in Norway, was it related to the NationWars or was it different ?

[KRN] Eiki : A friend of mine and my mother cleaned my room and gave me tons of stuff like candy and my friend also made me a cake which was a Nexus with some minerals and some Probes. This was really cool. And she also made a trophy with a 3D-printer, the Protoss symbol, you can see it on Twitter, it’s a small cake but it was really cool.

It was really cool to come home and see that they prepare all that for Monday, but I came later. The plan was they were going to meet me on the evening, like a surprise, but the plane was in the morning so they went up earlier and met me at the house. This was really cool, it was like a surprise party.

I also wanted to learn a bit more about you because actually we don’t know you so well in France, so I was wondering what is your life at the moment ? Are you still a student or ? What are your other occupations outside StarCraft II ?

[KRN] Eiki : I was in High School, but now I’m done with that because I’m 18, so I’m going to University, in less than two weeks I’ll start. So I had two months free in the summer, where I practiced a lot, and I’m going to study now, but I’m still going to play StarCraft II. I’m not going to go full-pro where I am not going to study at the same time.

And what are you going to study ?

[KRN] Eiki : Some form of engineering.

I wanted also to ask you about the Norwegian StarCraft II scene, in Norway do you have national tournaments regularly ? How does it work in Norway ?

[KRN] Eiki : Norwegian scene is not very big, but it is very tight, so everyone knows each other. There’s also some LANs, so there’s something called the bLAN which is in a remote part of Norway, where they have a pretty substantial prize pool where everyone gathers. I went for Snute and some other players there twice last year. And there are other tournaments like that around the country.

These are all offline tournaments ?

[KRN] Eiki : Yes. There’s also some online cups, there was SteelSeries Starcraft Cup, and some other things. And there was also some kind of national championships, which one of those I won last year.

OK so it’s quite active.

[KRN] Eiki : Yes it’s pretty active, I think it’s a good scene. It’s not that big, but there’s a lot of people who want to contribute to the scene, so they make tournaments and stuff.

You’ve been playing for the team Karnage eSports for 10 months now, are you happy in this team ? Did you participate in few clan wars ? How do you like it ?

[KRN] Eiki : Yes I think it’s a great team, I have some great team mates, I can practice a lot with, like Namshar, InZaNe, PuPu, people I played to practice for NationWars and other tournaments. We have a good team with a lot of players at a similar level. They also support me, with going to tournaments I’ve gone to many LANs, they offer to send me to DreamHack and tournaments. So I like being in the team, it’s a good atmosphere and a good practice environment.

And what about clanwars ? Is it something you like to participate to with your team ?

[KRN] Eiki : Yes it’s nice. I think it’s cool to always have something you can do as a team, even though we didn’t do as well as we hoped in a clanwar we’ve played, I think we’ll do better in the next one.

I’m asking that because it seems like you really enjoyed your experience in NationWars which is a kind of clanwar, and I was wondering if it would be interesting for players to have more of this type of events in the future ? Do you think it would be good for StarCraft II to develop more team leagues and clanwars ?

[KRN] Eiki : Yes, I think it’s really cool. The concept at the NationWars was really interesting. There's not like a huge team with 12 players where they choose someone randomly, but it’s a small team where you can see them on the stage all the time, you show and you highlight the process of a team, that’s pretty cool. I think the potential of Team Leagues isn’t exploited fully, to how good it can be, as a production, but I think it’s very interesting. I think it’s fun to play, and fun to watch as well.

As a spectator point of view it’s really nice to watch that.

[KRN] Eiki : One thing is that there was a discussion about format you should have.

I wanted to ask you about that, what would be your dream team-league ? What format would you like to see ?

[KRN] Eiki : That depends a lot. There’s two main formats for the matches, one is the all-kill format, choosed by NationWars, and then there’s the Proleague format where there’s set matches, there’s two new players for each match, and there’s an ace match. They are kind of different in that different teams will win the different ones.

I think the all-kill format can be more fun to watch, but the problem is that if one team has one very good player, then they’re just going to win. I remember Team Liquid won lots of clanwars maybe a year ago, TaeJa all-killed all the teams. That is fun to watch, it’s not a team-win but more a team-with-the-best-player-wins. I’m not really sure which is best, but in NationWars it works very well with all-kill format. But in different team leagues, you would need a different format. And I think the Proleague is doing it pretty well, that they turnate with it.

It’s a kind of mixture of both types.

[KRN] Eiki : As a player, I don’t know which is better. I think players in general prefer the Proleague format where you know which opponent you’re going to play and you just play him. But I like the all-kill format more because it allows for streaks, one player can suddenly beat everyone, I think it’s more exciting. But I don’t know which is better.

Even though you’ll be a student in the next months, do you have any goal concerning StarCraft II ? Because you’ve played so good during NationWars that maybe I guess you’ve got an extra motivation for the future, so I was wondering if you had any objective that you would like to achieve ?

[KRN] Eiki : I don’t have anything specific, like I play StarCraft II, be good at it, and have fun. I’d like to get better at it, participate in a large tournament again but I don’t have anything specific. I feel like if I am good enough to be in a good tournament that I want to go and I would go. But I don’t have anything specific. Maybe I want to stream more. I streamed a while ago pretty regularly, and it was fun, so maybe I want to do that again.

That’s it for me, thanks a lot for your time it was really a pleasure discussing with you. Is there anything you want to say to the French fans that will listen to this interview ?

[KRN] Eiki : The French crowd, as I said many times, was amazing and also meeting the French people when I’ve signed things after the show, and also at the bar, just people coming up to me talking to them, it was amazing, I met a lot of great people, and a lot of great experiences so thank you to all of the French people that I met in France.

I will wish you nice holidays, at least if you still have a few more days, and see you! Bye!

[KRN] Eiki : Bye !

TinkeR