The Chocobear himself

After their win in the Highbot Winter Challenge 08/09, S.N Battalion seems to be the best ET team at the moment. Thats why I sat down with their leader hentai to talk a bit. Have fun reading !

Hello rahul, give us a short introduction about yourself.

Hi, my name is rahul and I play ET for S. N. Battalion and I’m also admin crossfire, which is where some of you may know me from.

You became captain of Team United - Kingdom this season instead of Hype. Do you think the choice was good and why ?

For me? No. For the UK? I'm not sure really. While i feel that i picked the most skilled lineup available, we all had clans to be dedicated to, but i'm sure that if the 7 players chosen weren't to play, the lineup would have done worse than we did.
Some of the players Hype would've taken would've never coped. Perhaps they would have practiced, but whether or not that would've gotten them any further than we got is a question that'll never be answered.

Some people have suggested that the maps in NC are particularly bad choices, and your poll would suggest that the majority agree. How do you feel about this?

I do think that reactor and battery are bad maps for competition. I feel that a map pool in sync with the Eurocup would be much better, something like sw_goldrush_te, radar, sp_delivery_te, bremen_b2, adlernest and supply, as this allows high level clans to compete against nations on the same maps and vice versa. The two stage nature of reactor makes it an unreliable map, and battery is far too focused on spam to be an enjoyable to play.

Speaking of success, who are your favourites for this Clanbase ET NationsCup and why ?

I'd say that the favourites this season are probably Germany and Poland. If Finland manage to pull out their strongest lineup consistently (there's massive variation in skill between the lineup) they'd also be up there. The Netherlands should really be up there but they seem to have too many players who simply aren't coping on the very top level.

Let's talk about S.N Battalion - tell me how you came together and why you are still together after such a long time?

Well, when i was in generation i really wanted to recruit perfo because he's EPIC. We didn't recruit him, and i got kicked shortly after because i'm shit, so i asked perfo to make a team with me, and we did. I managed to get a lot of the players I played with in v&e a while ago like Meez, Viax, Sight, modus, Azatej, and the splendid addition of kye to finalise our lineup! I'd say we've stayed together for so long because...well, I'm a generally brilliant clan leader, a fantastic person, and my clanmates love spending time with me. No really, we're all friends as much as we are clanmates, so we all enjoy spending time together.

Nowerdays your lineup consists just of 6 players. For those who dont know them, could you present each of the players and their individual skill ?

We've got myself, the guy who rifles, i'm probably below the rest of the team. The rest of the players are all top tier. We all shine in different ways though, for example with Rk...THE AIM!... Meez has a brilliant ability to keep his calm, Sight's in game leading is fantastic, perfo's brother helps out a lot and in particular i don't know what we'd do without viax's ability to motivate us.

You have been very successfull in your last matches, for example beating cc5 champions h2k-Gaming. What are you planning for the the future ?

We'd like to attend cc6 and hopefully disprove our title as 'Online only united' (hey mama!). Unfortunately Viax is away that week, so we'll have to find a replacement for him, but we do still intend on attending. We also intend on competing in ET masters & EuroCup, and will naturally be competing for Gold in all three.

While talking about yourself, you seem to be a teamplayer. But tell me in a few words a bit about your ET career so far ?

I've always kind of been the teamplayer i guess. My career's been a bit weird, and i've not really achieved a lot, but i've been in teams with a lot of skilled players, like pillars, SoF, cortana (briefly), v&e, generation and snb, as well as Team UK a few times. I guess the best things i've achieved are 5th in EC with snb and winning the highbot winter cup, but i'm sure there's more ahead of us with snb.

Most players of your team have already been at a crossfire lan event, as have you. Did you have any special experiences and how was it to meet all the players you normally just "meet" online ?

Well, it was different to say the least, but i spent a lot of time with people who i really didn't expect to. I met some people i'd never even spoken to online and really enjoyed spending time with like schnee & naga. I got the pleasant surprise of meeting some people who i've known from years back like Mikey and modus from pillars, and I got to meet my beloved clanmate Viax. I was surprised that some people who i really get on with i didn't particularly click with at LAN, and some i don't really speak to online i got on well with in person. Moments with maxi's hello, tyyrd's water/shaving foam incidents, the colossal turd in the toilet, henk falling over and the laughs in the cabin made it a fantastic first event, and i definitely look forward to going there again in May!

Some quick questions in the end!


SNB or Team UK ?

SNB

Beer or Wine ?

Whiskey

Windows or Linux ?

Windows

Favourite ET Player/s ?

aCoZz & marvje

Favourite ET Moment

Our win against [<<] (crajsor, NuggaN, uniX, jonas etc.) with necromantia.

Is there anything you want to say finally ?

I'd like to give a shoutout to my snb buddies, my team uk buddies, and all my other ex clanmates, as well as those of you on my crossfire buddylist. Thanks for the interview!

Interview done by essAh

#snbattalion | Team-Roster