For starters, talk about your career and how you got into SK.
"I started out eight months ago playing public DotA with my real life friends. After playing a few games I installed WarCraft III and started playing a bit more. After some time I got into pickups such as dotapickup.euro and then hamachidota where I met up with a guy called Drayich, who got me vouched into IHCS2. This is basically the turn of my DotA career: a few later I got vouched into IHCS1 where I met up with some great team called Team_Team And I ended to play more and more with them. After a while they asked me to play MYM PriDe as a standin for them (I think that was MYM PriDe 6) which was a great oppurtunity for me! It was a bit off now and then but I played some matches and did nicely. After a while MYM Nations #1 came up and Drayich, the captain of team Sweden, asked me if I wanted to join up. And we finished 3rd which was alright in my opinion. After a long time playing as standin Drayich and the others in SK decided to give me a chance to be SK and well, here I am still today! :)"
Kim "Drayich" Larsson, previously an icon of SK and arguably one of the best team leaders in Europe. What can you tell us about his departure? Looks like it didn't affect the overall performance of the team.
"I've always been a fan of "papa" Drayich's playstyle, his leadership and his overall personality. But after our somewhat bad results in MYM PriDe 7 [where SK was eliminated by Ks and placed fourth] we decided that it didn't work that good anymore. So Drayich made a very mature step and decided to leave SK. When he left we started practicing a lot within the team, sometimes playing with standins and with Loda back as our leader. I think it went out really well after our latest results in both scrims and clanwars. Though there are no hard feelings between SK and Drayich, we are still friends and I'm looking forward to play with him again in MYM Nations #2."
How do SK practice? Do you focus on teamplay and coordination, on mastering tactics and lineups or on inventing and testing new strategies?
"We use to scrim a lot with mouz, sBack and some other clans lately. We've been trying out new sstrategies, bringing old/new heroes such as Juggernaut/Chen/Enigma back to the scene. We use to focus on our teamplay alot too. By having new heroes in a lineup you have to master both defensive and aggressive playstyles, which in my opinion makes the practice much better and funnier. :)"
How critical is practicing by yourself, for example in in-house leagues and mixes, compared to team sessions?
"Skill-wise, practicing in in-house leagues such as IHCS1 made the most of what I am today, but team practice held a part of it of course! But yeah in-house leagues made a big difference for me and I think it's the same for a lot of other DotA players in the competitive scene."
Drayich is again the Sweden captain for MYM Nations 2, who was called in the team and who are the starting 5?
"From SK it's me, Bogdan, Loda and Akke. From mouz: Drayich, Miracle and Fragalot; from TeamQ we got JesseQ and PenguinQ and finally Zebob from sBack. About the starting 5 I don't know yet, it's still unknown, we're gonna get some scrims going I guess. But it's most probably gonna be 2/3 SK players each game plus Drayich and some other guys."
Replays
Replay #1: toMpa playing Shadowfiend
Playing an awesome Shadowfiend, Tommy gets three early kills in the middle lane against Obsidian Destroyer and then overlooks the whole map thanks to his insane farming.
Replay #2: toMpa playing Dwarven Sniper
Tommy shows a new way to equip the Dwarven Sniper: morph your enemies into sheeps with a Guinsoo's Scythe of Wise and fire at them while they are helpless!
Replay #3: toMpa playing Warlock
Replay #4: toMpa playing Spiritbreaker
;-)