The Finnish Power Gaming team has returned from the dead with its famous pre-WEM lineup intact. Four of the five members, all but Joona 'natu' Leppänen, had to undertake their mandatory military service but they've all emerged after the minimum term and are ready to return to high level Counter-Strike competition.

Power will be attending the WCG Finland qualifier in mid July.

PowerGaming
Samu 'plastE' Aalto
Max Oskari 'ruuit' Aspe
Tino 'tihOp' Puumala
Niko 'naSu' Kovanen
Joona 'natu' Leppänen

Team captain Joona "natu" Leppanen talked to SK Gaming about his new team:

How did the reforming of this lineup come about? Have the members in the army played any CS since they left the scene?

It started to form slowly through this past Spring actually. plastE had a knee injury and couldn't finish his military service so he was free already by March. After all the others were assigned to a 6 month service things started to progress piece by piece. We started to talk about it - first less seriously. But after I threw the idea towards the guys at Power Gaming - things started to get more serious and we felt like we had some unfinished business from late 2009. The guys who have been serving in the army haven't really played at all since early January.

What are the immediate plans? How deep will the jump be back into the tournament circuit?

We'll have our work cut out for us with a WCG pre-qualifier taking place around mid-july and should everything go as planned - WCG Nordic finals 5-8th of august in Helsinki. After that we plan on attending anything that comes around. So yeah we're definitely looking into jumping back into some serious action late this summer and after that!

With star player names in the lineup one would fan support from the outset and expectations of being able to perform will be there so how do you assess PlayZone.fi's matching up as the best Finnish team?

It's hard for me to make a judgement as I've not really watched so much of how they've been doing the past few months. They're always a team you need to play your best against to win and why would that change now. Obviously with the past 6 months hiatus, we'll need to get our act together quickly. But as far as I know they've got players who're going to their military service early July so I don't know if we'll ever get to see that or not.

With the mandatory military service having eroded the Finnish scene so often over the years, with none coming back from it successfully, do you see this reformation as significant in the sense of overcoming that trend?

I mean these guys have spent several years playing this game, they've seen all different changes this game has gone through the past years. Also these guys are exceptionally talented players so I don't see a reason why 6 months away from all this would change all of that. I think it'll be more of postive than anything. Motivation is an important part whatever you do and with a break like this I think it's needless to say we'll have a group of fully energized guys coming back to the game.

In case anyone has forgotten who the players in the lineup are provide a sentence describing each:

I think everyone knows everything I'm going to say but here goes: tihOp's one of the best AWPers out there, a huge impact for us especially on defence. Ruuit is basically a one man army who likes to dictate situations by taking charge and using his agressive-minded gamesense to his favor. plastE and naSu are pure fraggers and both of these guys can single handedly win you games. They both have exceptional aiming and clutching abilities and are the type of players who come out as winners in the most desperate of situations.

Source: PowerGaming