Hiko: "Bittersweet that we had to fight for our spot"
After the ESEA Global Challenge was over and Rogue had secured their spot back into the ESL Pro League, Joe "tolkienfanatic" Cardali caught up with Spencer "Hiko" Martin to get his thoughts on the event and the future of his team.
You guys just successfully re-qualified for EPL, how does it feel after the myriad of issues with your roster during the season?
Obviously it feels good, nobody wants to get relegated — that would be a huge embarrassment, not just for me but the whole team. It sucks we had the problems at the start of the season, having to use three or four different people for the last two spots. It's unfortunate we were in relegation, a bit bittersweet that we had to fight for our spot.
It's definitely the lowest point of my career, but we can only really bounce back from here. We've shown some promise, I don't think we've looked that bad. We'll see what happens with the team and the roster in the future but the main goal and purpose was for us to qualify. We've done that and now all we need to do is work to get better.
You've been on a few teams since the start of last year, could you talk about the other permutations of teams you may have joined if not for Rogue?
I had a couple offers from other teams, I won't put them on blast for obvious reasons. Just historically I've been put in a role I didn't like or want, so I thought I'd try the younger, unexperienced younger player approach to see if we could get any of them to top level of NA. Like Collin "wrath" McSweegan, who was super hyped-up, even I hyped him up when I first joined. He looked like he had the promise, this insane potential you don't always see in 15/16 year olds. It's unfortunate that things went the way they did, but we'll see. I'll avoid spoiling any roster changes, but obviously he isn't here with us so you can drawn your own conclusions about what's happening there. I went for the more unexperienced approach, I won't say it failed but it didn't go as we expected.
You've had a lot of experience with European players, more so than many other NA players. What are your thoughts on the divide and the differences between the two regions?
I've always been a player that's thrived under a non-super structured playstyle. Even at my peak, I was never the kind of person who was throwing flashes, if you go back to my Cloud9 days I knew no smokes. My role was to stay alive until the end of the round and win clutches and that's what I was good at. It's unfortunate that the kind of lurker, slower playstyle got sort of phased out somewhat. I always know playing against Christopher "GeT_RiGhT" Alesund, Vincent "Happy" Schopenhauer that you always expect them to be behind you so you always wait an extra second for that lurk, that time that you wouldn't wait if you were playing someone else.
Europeans are always very loose. I kind of pride myself as a teammate as being easy to play off of, I never say no and always offer my flashes, playing more like a support player if I need to be. I think Europeans respect that more, and use it to their advantage. Most of the younger North American players are more of these Rank S PUG'ers that don't have the experience of playing with a do-whatever-you-want support player. That kind of goes against what I said about being that lurker, the person who never throws smokes, but Europeans I think know how to use a lurker or support player more than most North Americans. That being said, I haven't played with an NA IGL for years now, so I almost forget what it's like to play on a team of Europeans or an actual full team of top players like that. It's weird, but it's a new challenge in my career that I can use to reinvent myself to create a new style that I can fit with American players.
What are your thoughts on Rank S in general?
I'm one of the many who don't even play Rank S. I played it for a bit at the beginning but quickly realized it wasn't for me. I'm not an aggressive player who'd just push a smoke, I can try aggressive lurking but it quickly felt like it was just every man for himself and I didn't really gain much from that. That said, there is a pretty big skill gap in Rank S, between top and non-top players.
I think it could be beneficial and is getting better over time in terms of people trying and using it for practice instead of content. I know there is a clip of me saying "I don't play Rank S because I don't want to be in people's content" but I don't really care about that, it's just more if people use it as content or try to be funny, or try to get crazy rounds for clicks on YouTube, at that point it isn't a practice tool — it's just a content tool. It's a hard balance for ESEA to get, between players trying and the skill gap itself. But I don't plan to play Rank S any time soon.
If you were to rewind back to the start of 2017, would you think that out of the original compLexity/Cloud9 core that Sean "sg@res" Gares would be on the highest ranked team out of you all right now?
That's a loaded question. He's definitely one of the better IGLs [in NA] in terms of preparation and overall knowledge, it's not that surprising. I'm more surprised that Mike "shroud" Grzesiek has retired to become a streamer and that Jordan "n0thing" Gilbert is kind of in limbo between being a caster or wanting to return as a player. It's kind of weird that things have turned out the way they did.
With just over a month until EPL starts again, are you guys going to be taking time off, grinding or figuring out what's happening with your roster?
So roster changes or improvements will be the most important thing to focus on after this event. Michael "Uber" Stapells was a stand-in and we had some problems before with Josh "shinobi" Abastado, so we haven't decided what's happening yet.
With the Major being this month, we'll try and find practice. We'll start grinding, figuring out a roster and improving our map pool. It's actually a miracle that we qualified for Pro League with the few amounts of maps we play. We just got lucky with some of the vetoes, that's just the way it goes. Our biggest thing will be to figure out our roster and map pools and go from there.
What do you think of SoaR?
They have some good players, but they're very inexperienced. The way they play is a little different to most other teams, and I don't think that the way they play will work against any of the top teams though. Being honest, all the teams at this tournament, even my team, from the NA side of it just looked bad. Everyone that was here needs to step it up and figure out what works for them. I'm pretty sure a team like SoaR haven't played against teams like SK, Cloud9 or Liquid, the actual top teams. I'm sure with some experience under their belt they will get better but who knows what roster changes will happen to change it, especially as one of their players isn't even 16 yet.
Your team has used Michael "Grim" Wince as a stand-in at points, do you have any specific thoughts on him as an individual?
He's very young, very inexperienced. He reminds me of a young... I don't want to compare him to Aleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev but he does some things that aren't exactly standard. There's a lot of times where he'll miss an entire AK clip and then just take out his Deagle and one-deag someone. That's not very common for players who are trying to play smart. Whether if that's not him being smart or him being super confident in the fact he's going to ge the kill we'll have to see. As far as his individual raw talent, I think he has a lot of it and he's definitely a player to look at for the upcoming years.
You've alluded to Ryan "Snakes" Amann being too young to play EPL, and now ESEA has followed suit with MDL. What are your thoughts on that, considering your time spent playing with the young prodigy of Braxton "swag" Pierce?
It's weird, I think swag was 13/14 the first tournament he went to, I remember seeing his parents there and thinking "Wow, I'm playing against a little kid!" It's definitely a shift in the environment, but I don't think it's that good of a move. If these kids are playing online anyway, why try to limit them from competing and doing what they love. Imagine if we have a swag 2.0, being 13 and if he's better than s1mple. We can use David "frozen" Čerňanský as an example, these players have the talent, they don't have the experience but they'd have the offers from teams, most likely, who want to play with them who's age is limiting them. To bar young talents from playing in league only harms the grand environment in general. Swag is the case that everyone can look to, he turned out to be one of the best NA talents over three to four years competing when he was underage.
I don't think it's smart, I'm sure German law or whatever the reason ESL says it is, it's probably valid but at the end of the day we're just humans playing a video game online - why should it matter.
