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| Thoughts on... The Warband Native League Featuring Warhammer |
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Q |
How do you rate your teams chances in Division B? Who will be your teams main rivals and why? | ||||
A |
I think Division B will be most interesting out of the three for this season of the WNL. It’s a great mix of teams which are trying to build a name for themselves such as Men of Borr or Black Eagles and veteran teams that rely mostly on their experience like Return of Aesir or Defenders of Faith. I would place my team in that second group. I think we can beat every team in our divison, but since we are quite inactive overall and not playing a lot of trainings, we might be a bit rusty. Our hardest opponents will probably be Black Eagles. They are young Polish wolves who often talk big, but if they want to achieve something, there is long way ahead of them. With the addition of great Russian players, like ReD WaR and BlackDevil, who filled certain gaps in their roster, they are capable of beating most teams in Division B. Overall, Division B looks pretty even, so there is a lot of room for upsets. Teams like Birds of Hermes and Return of Aesir might be quite challenging too. It all comes down to who will be most consistent as rosters look pretty equal in terms of player skill. | ||||
Q |
Many say the biggest strength of Polish teams are their archers - with Virus, Blade and Matafiks you are nothing short of scary in that regard. What do you think about the rest of your team, how are you doing playing alongside them so far? | ||||
A |
We know each other really well so there will be no problems in terms of communication. The chemistry in our team is fantastic. Our roster is a bit small though when you take into account the fact that some of our players will hardly ever show up. We are going to focus on playing with our archers. Our infantry lineup is great as well. With players like Janczar and AngryNerd we got the best infantries in Division B. I’m pretty sure most of us are going to play at least two different classes each match, especially on open maps where our infantry will switch to playing cavalry. It’s hard to tell how well we will because we got players of various skill levels. On one hand, we have big names like Blade in our team, on the other hand we also have some unexperienced players like Aela or a couple of Blade’s friends who didn’t touch the game since 2011. Our unstable roster is going to be the biggest issue together with lack of fulltime cavalry players. Our main goal is to have fun - it would be cool if we manage to win some matches, if not, we are not going to cry. | ||||
Q |
What is your opinion on the general state of the scene at the moment, and the return to 8v8? Do you feel like it is the right step for us, or did you enjoy 6v6 more? What about other changes such as the removal of roster caps, and ft3 instead of bo5? | ||||
A |
Apart from the Division A players who are expected to perform well, there are definitely some new players that I haven't seen before who are tearing up the scene in the lower divisions. I’m quite surprised that scene is doing really well at this moment. There are two main factors for this. Firstly, matchmaking is doing great at keeping community alive. So big shoutout to Mynes for working on it. Great effort man, really! Without matchmaking, the community might have been dead already by now. The second factor is the return of the division system. I have been waiting for that for a long time. I’m really happy that new teams get to play on their skill level and are not treated as cannon fodder. I strongly disagree with the formats of the Warband Summer Cup and Warband Blitz League. Maybe their formats are good at showing us which team is the best as fast as possible, but obviously they are not very fun for most of the participating teams. I think another important aspect is inviting teams from other modules to Native tournaments. Announce your tournaments on their forums, talk to team captains. We should also try to reach out for to the national communities. Only like this we can get some new blood and hopefully survive until Bannerlord. As for the match size, in my opinion 6v6 is better than 8v8 for a few reasons. Firstly, 8v8 is too random. I often find myself dying from random things. Maybe that’s coming from an infantry perspective, having to deal with other infantry and cavalry at the same time whilst being under ranged pressure, but teamfights are just too chaotic in 8v8. Sometime the only thing you can do is spinning around with your shield up hoping for the best. In 6v6 I feel like fights are more organized which is good, also from a spectators point of view. 6v6 also gives more rewarding, because taking down one player before fight is almost a garantueed round win, but since you put yourself at risk you need to know when it’s worth to go for that kind of play. In 6v6 every player has a bigger value, whilst teamplay and tactics remain important as well. 6v6 is also better for teams, because it is much easier to create a team for a 6v6 tournament than for a 8v8 tournament. Especially if you want to make a good team it's really hard to start from scratch. Finding skilled and active players for every class might often turn out to be tough. However, I still enjoy playing 8v8 and if that's the way the community will go, I'm fine with that. Regarding ft3 and bo5, I would stick with ft3, because it allows for faster matches when one team is clearly better, whilst at the same time making matches longer when teams are going toe-to-toe. Flexability is the key here. And finally, regarding roster caps - it depends, as any good lawyer would tell you. With regard to the current division system, maybe Division A and B should have a roster cap, and Division C shouldn’t. There are a lot of factors you have to consider, it depends on what the hosts of the tournament want to achieve. Roster caps force people to create more teams, but some casual teams might not be able to play at all. Different rules regarding the roster cap for each division is most likely the way to go, should the admin team thinking about implementing them. It's impossible to judge across the board. | ||||
Q |
Which players will you have an eye on for this tournament, whether they are in your division or the tournament in general? | ||||
A |
In most tournaments I usually keep an eye on players that might not bet that well known yet, but have great potential to upset already established names. Sadly, I don’t see many players like that in this season of the WNL. Knights of Malta are playing a lot right now and most of their players are considered to be decent at least, but what they need is some true butchers. If some of their players can reach that top level, they can beat the top three teams which in my opinion are House Tully, Main Eleven and Unity. Normanguy has a lot of potential, but what stops him is what I call “mercenaries mentality”. There are some quite good mercenary players, but they lack experience in Native and that’s why they often die in stupid ways. But he’s improving fast so we will see. The other player I want to follow is LeRoux. One of the best archers of all time, and also a great duelist. I’m really curious to see how well he can play after such a long break. |
