Over the many years, Indian esports has seen many foreign players teaming up with Indian players to form some of the strongest teams in the country. But we've seldom seen a team of five foreign players voyage to India to take a shot at dominating the entire esports scene over here.
Reckoning Esports have the chance to do exactly that.
The best team in Myanmar by a long shot, Veteran was dominating the national scene and winning multiple SEA-tier qualifiers for international tournaments. They had time and again proved their worth by retaining the top spot for a long time now. Now they’ll attempt to do the same in India under their new Org.
I had a chance to sit down with the folks from Reckoning Esports, their coach and their management and spoke about Dota 2, Myanmarese Esports and their recent trip to China for WESG 2018.
Q. Hey guys, how are you doing? The team recently did relatively well in the SEA qualifiers to get yourselves to WESG 2018. Are you guys happy with the progress the team has made in the last few months?
Sh4rkyy- (Management): Hey Gfreak, we are doing amazingly good, thank you for asking. We did quite well in the SEA qualifiers and qualified for WESG 2018. We are happy with the progress but I feel that the results could have been a bit better.
Insane: Yes. Day 1 was really good for us, we all got motivated as a result. But unfortunately, on Day 2 we went on a losing streak. I still think our performance in WESG was pretty good, but the opposing teams were stronger than us.
Q. Congratulations on signing up with Reckoning Esports. Has the team relocated to India?
RapRap: Thank you. This a new exciting challenge for me. We haven’t relocated to India just yet. We are finalising the VISA approvals. We will be here before ESL One Mumbai, most likely.
Q. Why did you decide to pick up this particular team? What set them apart from other teams?
Sh4rkyy-: To be honest, this team was always on my radar after their performance against Clutch Gamers in the JDL and after I first saw their play in ESL India. I was very excited since these guys were implementing a playstyle that was very similar to MVP.Phoenix: continuous aggression and relentless ganking. I haven't seen anyone else or any other team for that fact using this playstyle!
I felt that if we could just refine this playstyle of theirs by supporting them in all aspects in the form of coaching, bootcamps and analytics they will actually be a force to be reckoned with.
This is what set them apart and I feel this is what will excite the fans rather than a monotonous playstyle.
Q. From a coaching perspective, Tell us about WESG 2018. You had a relatively good start on Day 1 taking a game off Team Aster and beating BlackJack, what went wrong later on Day 2?
Pawn (Coach): In WESG 2018-19, the team played really well against Aster and BlackJack. Their aggressive playstyle worked very well against those teams. But strong teams with veteran players, like Team Ukraine for example, came in with a 2 or 3 great strategies which they used in all of their games in that tournament, same with Team Omega Gaming
Skill-wise, the players in both teams are at the same level. But they still need to get on the same level as these teams from a strategic standpoint. We believe the team can overcome these issues. Once they get settled in at the bootcamp, after a few weeks of practice, we will be able to take on the best teams in SEA
Q. How is the team’s confidence at the moment, and how would you rate your championship chances at upcoming tournaments and qualifiers?
Leo: Great. The team is in good shape since we joined Reckoning Esports. I believe we can beat all of the teams in the open qualifiers and qualify.
Q. Tell us more about the Dota 2 scene in Myanmar. There seems to be a passionate Dota 2 community there. Are there many tournaments taking place and are there any more upcoming players that we should watch out for?
Kenji: The Dota2 scene in Myanmar is quite stable. Here, there are a lot of passionate players that are still struggling since we don’t have much support. There are not that many tournaments and even the ones that take place have a small prizepool.
But I believe there will be more upcoming players that might be as crazy as us, to become the best.
Q. What is a typical day of training like, for Reckoning Esports?
ShowTi: Our day starts at 1.30 pm SGT where the coach comes and gives us an analysis of the games we played the day before, for around 30-40 mins, along with the aim or draft that we are supposed to practice that day. Then we start with 3 Bo2 scrim matches and then 4 ranked matches in SEA pubs per day. So 10 hours a day, sometimes more.
Q. What’s more important: a great individual player or five solid team players?
Insane: I think both. We all have the individual skill, and since we have been playing together for 2 years we have become 5 solid team players.
Discuss these as a team and answer them as quick as possible.
|
Question |
Answer |
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Who grinds the most Ranked games amongst you? |
RapRap |
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Who is the loudest guy in the team? |
ShowTi |
|
Which teammate would you dub as ‘The Foodie’? |
ShowTi, he is fatty u know |
|
Who watches the most anime? |
Leo |
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Who is the laziest guy in your team? |
ShowTi |
|
Who rages the most in Pub games? |
Sometimes we all rage, but we can’t decide who rages the most. We are all calm players normally. |
Q. When not training and practising for tournaments, what do you do as a team for fun?
Leo: We play other games like Apex Legends, CS:GO and have fun. Sometimes we hang out.
Q. That's all from our end Reckoning Esports. Thank you so much for your time! Do you have any Shoutouts you'd like to add here?
Shoutout to Myanmar for having an amazing and one of the most passionate fans! Shoutout to Yuvin Esports for giving us this opportunity! #goreckoning