ShoX — The summer months bring both sunshine and a considerable amount of boredom for the hardcore, sun dodging TF2 players. It’s no surprise that we’re starting to see teams come back together ahead of the impending autumnal weather. A team who are using the summer months wisely are the current PwR Community Team who, after a pretty comprehensive rebuild are looking to move up in the world.
I took a little time to catch up with Hys, the highly secretive clan leader behind the soon-to-be-ex PwR community team.
Hys* (* May or may not be Hys)
Hello contestant number 1. What’s your name and where do you come from?
I’m not too keen on giving out my name all over the web having studied web security at university, it puts a very different slant on how I perceive the web. But what I can tell you is I live in England and my family originates from Serbia (formerly part of Yugoslavia).
PwR was previously OX Gaming and correct me if I’m wrong, but you weren’t the leader. What caused you to step up and how are you enjoying leading a team?
No I wasn’t the leader. I joined a team that appeared to be very stable, established for well over a year at the time with reasonable success winning back to back promotions in div4 and div3 EFT2L. At the beginning of the season our leader called it quits as he was unhappy that the lineup was changing from what was originally a full italian lineup to a mix of European players. Just before he quit, he kicked the medic at the time histerim and the team became very unsettled.
I guess you could say I took over the team because no-one else stepped up and seeing so many teams drop from the divisions I was determined to prevent another from doing the same. It hasn’t been easy to keep things going and I would be lying if I said I didn’t have my moments where I felt like giving up. My players from season 9 deserve a lot of credit for pulling together and finishing the season irrespective of how poor our results were. I would say post season I am enjoying re-structuring our team and selecting the players that I believe will make this team much more competitive in season 10.
You’ve recently made some pretty radical changes to your team, could you walk us through your current lineup?
First and foremost I’d like to point out, our current lineup is not finalised, we have only played together a few times; so don’t be surprised if you see another change or two.
kurt – Medic
hys – Soldier
KLar – Soldier
Thy – Demo
droso – Scout
quad – Scout
Topgear – Backup
It seemed like a good move to bring in both KLar and Thy as both are playing for Team Germany with kurt and had a strong campaign in the ESL Nations Cup making it to the final. KLar has proven to be a very interesting prospect on soldier and one to look out for over the coming months as he gains more and more experience.
Thy of course already has excellent experience playing with BBashers and winning MaxLAN. Quad formerly of redCode, has been searching for his next mousetek ever since they folded and we will do our best to strive towards this. Droso is a player that we feel can support quad and has featured in multiple lineups before we “settled” on this one and has performed consistently well throughout.
Watch out for kurt, Thy and quad at Summer Assembly in different mix teams. I may even feature at i43 as a caster for VanillaTV.
I guess you’d pitch yourself as low prem right now, do think you’re capable of breaking into the top5 inner sanctum of TF2 with this team?
I think it would be very naive of me to say that we are low prem right now. Definitely with some time we will work our way towards breaking into prem, but for now we will set our sights on top division 1. Our ultimate aim is to of course break into the top 10 but top 5 is a little ambitious for now. I guess we’ll have to see how we are progressing or improving in the following months.
Who would you displace if you made it into the top 10?
Based on “June’s Cadred TF2 Top Ten” we of course will set our sights on teams like myRevenge and SNSD. That won’t be easy because these are teams that have played together for some time (especially myRevenge). I think its just a matter of time and patience. But that’s what we’ll strive towards.
You’ve progressed pretty effortlessly through the GPS cup and find yourself facing what looks like fellow low prem team ‘Concept’ in the final, how do you rate your chances? Is there anyone in their team that particularly worries you?
Without being disrespectful to teams in our half of the bracket, I think we were fortunate in our draws in comparison to our counterparts. However, having said that, we have been playing without Thy as he’s on vacation. I think our chances will be much greater upon his return and I certainly think we’ll have a great game on our hands. But there are two players that stand out to me, t0dA and kiler4fun.
So, you reckon you’ll win?
This team knocked out Mister (aka Mixter) and SNSD on their way to the final, but we are confident with Thy back we have a good chance.
Anything else you’d like to add? Any shoutouts or profound political statements you’d like to make?
I would like to say i had to make some pretty tough decisions along the way to re-structure this team and have pissed a few people in the process. But I’m not an experienced leader and learning as I go along as well as trying to grow with the team. I would like to thank and wish Traxantic , Giusepinho , tek36 and Shampoo the best of luck with their future conquests. I really recommend these players to any div2 team that aspire to win their division next season.
You can keep an eye on PwR’s progress in the GPS Cup, Here
Originally published on VanillaTV (vanillatf2.org) on 2011-07-21 by ShoX.
Recovered from the Internet Archive (archived copy) as part of tf2esports.com's preservation of VanillaTV's TF2 coverage. The original site is no longer online. All rights remain with the original author; reposted for historical reference.