[Pika]Pikachu is a team who has gone through a lot of growing pains recently. Constantly changing members since the DreamHoN Summer Championships has hurt their team synergy and the only remedy is to scrim as often as possible, which sometimes is hard to do when you have things to do in life. School, work, even family events all cause problems for teams who seek to be the best. As much as everyone wants to do what [sG]Stay Green is doing and all move into a house and practice every day to be the best, it's not realistic for everyone.

Many believe Nir and Buch of team Pikachu to be among the best at their roles in all of HoN, though this doesn't come without practice, something their team has lacked recently. With the addition of SemiJew before Cycle 4, they are now looking at securing a position as a top team.

I sat down to talk with Nir in between scrims the other day to talk about their Cycle in Gold Division as they had dropped down in Cycle 3 due to a forfeit in the first round. As disappointing as that was, they tried to make the best of a bad situation.



How did you and the team go about preparing to play in Gold Division once you saw who you would be facing? I know you guys didn't want to be down in Gold, but were you surprised by the competition in the early brackets?

Nir: Well, we basically knew that if we won against [aL]Absolute Legends we would have a 99% chance of facing off with [Dmsn]AnotherDimension in the finals. Absolute Legends was the team that we feared the most and we didn't expect AnotherDimension to be as strong as they were.

Have you guys been preparing to fight the tough teams with your new roster? You just added SemiJew to your roster last Cycle. How has he fit into the team so far?

Nir: We have had a bit of problems with being able to scrim last Cycle which affected our game play. We switched it up as of Monday. As for SemiJew, he is improving but he hasn't played in a long time so we kind of need him to get over the hump regarding what all the new heroes can do and how he should play in this meta.

Similar to what we see with LezzQQ right now, I assume many new or returning players to the competitive scene will have these problems.

Nir: It's getting way better and I definitely see us winning Gold next Cycle.

Good to hear that confidence, would you say last Cycle was just a bad draw in the match ups for you guys or was it more the fact you couldn't scrim the week before?

Nir: It's a mix of it all. I feel we had the hardest way to the finals. When we went to the Loser’s Bracket after losing to AnotherDimension, we had Absolute Legends, [PUDG]Dendis jungldevos and the loser of the Winner’s Bracket finals left.

It was hard to see those brackets form, as all the Diamond teams would fall into the same Loser’s Bracket to have to knock each other out. Meanwhile, we saw [SdS]SdS go uncontested through the other bracket.

Nir: Exactly. A team I don't really know about kind of had a free run in the Loser’s Bracket . But all in all, if you want to be number one, you should be able to beat any team out there.

You guys have gone through a lot. I remember seeing you first at the DreamHoN Summer Championships and you guys were doing quite well there. I always enjoy seeing the other teams as I find their games much more exciting and less predicting to a degree but you guys have had a good run lately despite the problems.

Nir: Thanks. There has been a lot of changes but I can tell you that we are going to stick to MisterP, TPSPriceless, SemiJew, Buch and myself(Nir) as the main five players. We have been the ones playing the last month and I don't see that roster changing anytime soon.

Here's hoping you guys can become as strong as [LION]Lions eSportsKlubb has been lately as a mid tier team making the step up to top tier teams. What do you guys think you guys have to do to prove yourself or catapult yourself to the same success Lions is at right now?

Nir: We need to keep our focus. In most of our best of three games, we tend to completely dominate game one and then lose the next two games, regardless of our opponents. We can't underestimate our opponents no matter who they are. The last few times we have faced [coL]compLexityGaming or [tdM]Trademark eSports we always seem to lose 2-1.

It's hard to break that mold sometimes, but with practice I'm sure you guys can do it and start winning those crucial best of three's.

Nir: If we can do that and not get too overconfident, I think we will get up in that top 8 spot for starters and then improve it from there. Possibly, we can "pull a Lions," if you will. We have been playing about four hours a day as a team for the last four days and we are going to continue tonight. We won't accept another cycle of Gold.

That's always good to hear Nir. Moving on a bit, are you excited for what HoN 3.0 is bringing?

Nir: I haven't given it much thought, to be honest. I started drafting for our team so my thoughts have really been going towards that as of late.

Looking at next cycle, what are your predictions for Cycle 5 with the new [f20]FyKu 2pt0 lineup, [C1K]Call It Karma, Dendis jungldevos and [QsQ7]QsQ 777 all fighting to get back into Diamond.

Nir: Depending on the bracket and seeding, I would have to say: Pikachu first with Dendis jungldevos, QsQ 777 and FyKu 2pt0 in the top four. Hopefully, FyKu 2pt0 in the finals.

You guys are ranked 18th, so you won't qualify for the first Garena Star League qualifier. Will you guys be striving to make the second qualifier?

Nir: Yeah, we have to aim for the second one. We had to win Gold last cycle to make the 16th spot. If we win Gold Cycle 5 and get top eight Diamond in Cycle 6, we should be around top 13 I think. So that's our aim and it's not "that hard" to get if we focus the next few weeks.

If you get first and if Dendis jungldevos gets 2nd place, then they will still be ahead of you.

Nir: Yeah, true. But I'm not that worried.

What are your predictions on Diamond in Cycle 6?

Nir: [MlST]Team Mistral and [YoIo]CutForBieber are going to get knocked down, and probably [oo7]We Are Spies as well, at least depending on brackets. I've only seen We Are Spies play once so they might just need more experience. I don't want to make too many predictions and look like a fool in the end.

No worries about that. I say enough that makes me look like a fool myself!



Nir had to get into his scrim after this, so the interview was cut a bit short. That said, it's good to see Pikachu starting to play seriously again with their new roster.

• Nir


• Buch


• SemiJew


• TPSPriceless


• MisterP

- Crowslaw
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