kmrn: "We were ready to play on 200 ping at 4 in the morning"
Dust2.us' own Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore caught up with Kamron "kmrn" Manii of Akimbo following his match with Nouns that eliminated his team from playoffs at Fragicago 2024. The two spoke about the match, almost playing the East Asian RMR CQ, his absence from the NA RMR CQ, and the state of ESEA Advanced, among other topics.
Please note that the full interview can be found below on YouTube, while the transcript has some key snippets from their conversation.
I'm here with Akimbo kmrn following their elimination at the hands of Nouns. So Nouns was always going to be a tough match for you guys but how do you feel you stacked up to one of the top teams in ESL Challenger League?
I definitely feel like we won the veto we were pretty happy to play Mirage, Ancient, and we were going to play D2. We kind of got slashed on Mirage but Ancient was definitely close, there's a couple of clutches that if they went our way or we don't lose we would have definitely had the chance to take a map off them.
I mean it felt good, we're just recently playing with kralz we only started playing with him like a week ago and we still feel like we could have we put on a pretty competitive map at least and definitely had a chance to at least take it to a map three. Unlucky seeding what are you going to do?
Running into the number one seed, a team that's going to be heading to the RMR in short order is definitely a strong challenge. But speaking of the RMR you guys had a fairly confident run at the RMR Closed Qualifier yourself. The team played a great game against NRG, it was a 13-10, and then thjey beat Limitless. How do you guys feel about your run at the RMR CQ?
They felt pretty confident I think. They definitely did a really good job on short notice cuz I wasn't able to play the whole thing but they really put together good T-sides. I think we've been getting better as we played with time. Even going into playoffs we had little hiccups at the start and it's hard because English isn't their first language so we missed a couple comms here and there but I think we really have the talent to compete with like top teams in the region.
Of course, excuse me I forgot that you had missed the RMR CQ was that really frustrating for you? For what it's worth I think Pol0 did a fantastic job as a stand-in but it is a tough tournament to miss?
Yeah it was, it was really hard I really wanted to be there for the boys and I've had some time just like some personal stuff going on in my life so there's a lot of like things I wish I was there for and I haven't been and I feel like if was there for more amount of time I feel like we could have shown a lot more progress but we're feeling good gearing up, we're up 2-0 in playoffs right now, in the upper bracket so we're feeling really confident just trying to keep our best foot forward.
With the team even playing the NA RMR Closed Qualifier was a special circumstance with valve giving you guys special permission to even play it, because for those who don't know, you have three Mongolians on your squad so you technically should have had to play the East Asian qualifier. When you guys found that out what was your reaction?
Yeah, we chuckled a little bit. I remember when hyza was with us he sent a picture in our chat and he's saying "yeah guys we're going to Asia," and we're all asking "what is going on?" and it was a little bit of a joke but we really happy to get moved to the NA one and we think we stacked up really well against the other teams.
If push came to shove were you guys going to play that qualifier?
Probably on 200 ping at 4 in the morning but it's a chance you only get so many times, so you got to take it when it comes. You never know what's going to happen for the next cycle.
