Latest / Start the game already! / [ENG] Magazine Ep. #12 May 2026

Transcript

[ENG] Magazine Ep. #12 May 2026 · Start the game already!

• 0:11
  Welcome back to another Age of Empires magazine.
• 0:13
  I am your host Chris, and I am joined by none other than the
• 0:17
  wonderful Daniela. Hey, Chris, how's it going?
• 0:21
  I'm doing great. Are you doing great?
• 0:23
  I came online on Discord and I wrote you that we can start the
• 0:27
  recording a little earlier, and I saw in a little window on
• 0:31
  Discord that you've been playing Age of Empires for 11 hours.
• 0:37
  What kind of marathon did you do?
• 0:39
  It's a bug. It's a bug, I promise.
• 0:41
  I saw it earlier and I I played last night before bed and I
• 0:46
  closed the Oh well actually that explains something.
• 0:50
  I closed the game. I don't have the game open right
• 0:52
  now and it still shows that I have Age of Empires open.
• 0:56
  But usually I close the game and I don't manually shut down my
• 1:02
  computer because it just goes to sleep after a while after I'm
• 1:06
  inactive. But when I woke up this morning,
• 1:10
  I saw my screen still bright like it hadn't gone to sleep.
• 1:14
  So I think there's some part like in the background somewhere
• 1:19
  that the game is still open. So I'll, I'll have to to see
• 1:24
  about that. I thought you were doing some
• 1:27
  kind of weird 24 hour stream, but then I saw that you weren't
• 1:30
  streaming at all so I figured maybe you're playing rank games.
• 1:34
  No, yeah, look, Oh my God, I lost so much, you know,
• 1:36
  yesterday night as well. Like no, no, no, I promise you I
• 1:39
  wasn't playing all night. But now yeah I'm I'm opening
• 1:43
  Steam and it it shows me to stop Age of Empires so it's obviously
• 1:48
  like running in the background or something lol.
• 1:52
  So OK, that makes a lot of sense and I was scared for you.
• 1:55
  I thought you were pulling in all night, or maybe you had
• 1:57
  tournament work or? Whatever, I lost my mind.
• 2:01
  Yeah, well, I've been at work for my whole 8 hours and I saw
• 2:05
  you online before I went to work and now I still saw you playing
• 2:08
  Age of Empires 2 after I came back, so I was kind of worried,
• 2:11
  but hey, you never know. Not anymore.
• 2:14
  Unfortunately. There was a point in my life
• 2:15
  where that would not have been unheard of.
• 2:19
  But really, 12 hours of? Probably 1 view on probably.
• 2:24
  That is sick. But not not anymore.
• 2:27
  I'm getting, you know. I don't think I could ever do
• 2:30
  that. I think like a couple.
• 2:33
  First of all it has to be team games if I'm playing for that
• 2:36
  long because in one V1 I would just lose my mind.
• 2:39
  But even then a couple of hours is Max and then I need something
• 2:42
  else. I got a punching bag, tested it
• 2:47
  yesterday for the first time after my 3 losses in a row.
• 2:51
  Wait, do you have like a real punching hanging from your
• 2:54
  ceiling? In the basement, yeah.
• 2:56
  And I love it. I love it.
• 2:58
  It's just like a 5 minutes wait to release all your frustration.
• 3:05
  I love it. Goddamn Smurfs.
• 3:07
  Yeah, punch looking God picker. Do you know the wizard?
• 3:12
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh.
• 3:15
  Boy, he needs a punching bag I because I think his table is his
• 3:18
  punching bag. I was even.
• 3:20
  I collaborated with the wizard. I was coaching him on stream.
• 3:22
  No, I lost my mind. Chris, don't I need to see that?
• 3:27
  No, you don't. He's back.
• 3:28
  He's back playing age. Of yeah, only on Monday, I
• 3:31
  think. Well, yes, yeah, I saw him
• 3:33
  yesterday as well, so that was Monday, but still.
• 3:36
  Oh my God, I'm is there any record of?
• 3:38
  Unfortunately, too many of them, yeah, like he he chat loved it.
• 3:42
  But like The thing is that he his whole entire personality is
• 3:46
  just like raging on stream and the way he would enjoy doing
• 3:51
  that. It was like, oh, can we like do
• 3:52
  a collaboration? He didn't care about genuine
• 3:56
  advice to improve. He just wanted to do his thing
• 3:59
  and rage basically because that creates content for him.
• 4:02
  And he was like, OK, Danielle coach me.
• 4:07
  But he would not listening at all to any advice.
• 4:10
  Like he would just like do the opposite.
• 4:11
  Kind of like trying to tilt me as well.
• 4:14
  But I I would get so mental sometimes.
• 4:18
  Oh my God, yeah. That sounds that sounds like
• 4:21
  pure entertainment. I need to see that.
• 4:23
  Oh my God. So tell me, what's the wizard
• 4:26
  like when he's not streaming? Did you talk to him off stream?
• 4:30
  Not not on voice, but I I do think he's like just this
• 4:35
  character on on stream. Yeah.
• 4:38
  It it's hard to imagine someone that I could goes to in a
• 4:43
  supermarket with a long robe and a long beard.
• 4:46
  Yeah, just for fun. Oh my God.
• 4:51
  Yeah, like a giant wizard hat. Think he's very entertaining,
• 4:57
  but he's also very like hard to watch for a long time.
• 5:02
  Man, seeing you coach him, that must be amazing.
• 5:05
  So I'm going to look that up. Oh boy.
• 5:08
  All right, so let's get back to the magazine.
• 5:10
  We are actually here to bring you all the news from Age of
• 5:12
  Empires Two from the past and the upcoming month.
• 5:15
  There's a couple of bullet points I'd like to mention for
• 5:18
  the program. One of that is the qualifies of
• 5:20
  the Brazilian dynasty land and also Wallets 5, which we'll be
• 5:24
  talking about. Then we finally get the full
• 5:28
  announcement of the League, of which you are conveniently one
• 5:31
  of the hosts, So you can tell us a bit more about that.
• 5:35
  And then there's the you can tell us, you can say as much as
• 5:40
  you want. And then there's also the public
• 5:45
  update preview that we are briefly going to be covering.
• 5:48
  There's also some news from the franchise as well.
• 5:52
  The new Age of Mythology DLC has already been released and a new
• 5:56
  DLC for Age of Empires 4 is coming out in a couple of days.
• 5:59
  So this is going to be a segment where you'll not be joining me
• 6:03
  anymore. You'll just stay for the news,
• 6:05
  But I will be talking about that for a short amount of time.
• 6:09
  And I'll end the episode with the tournament outlook for May
• 6:12
  2026. And Oh yeah, I forgot one topic
• 6:16
  that we added just recently, which is the tournament calendar
• 6:20
  that has been announced and we want to talk about that as well.
• 6:24
  That's going to be the program. Thank you all for joining us
• 6:27
  today. And we'll start with the news
• 6:33
  and we'll start with actually something I haven't mentioned in
• 6:36
  in the program, just a brief reminder of Red Bull Wallolo.
• 6:41
  It's just really a short bit of news because the two of us have
• 6:44
  already covered the entire event in length.
• 6:47
  But for anyone who has not listened to our Red Bull Wallolo
• 6:50
  special episode, Hera did win the actual tournament in a
• 6:53
  historic final against Theory, which almost went the whole way.
• 6:58
  Hera won five to three in a never before seen reverse sweep,
• 7:03
  being down O3 against Dearie in under an hour.
• 7:07
  Yet Hera turned it around in a way only he can and won the
• 7:10
  event in front of more than 3000 viewers in the Royal Albert Hall
• 7:15
  in London, framed by a spectacular show and pocketing
• 7:18
  $50,000 as his prize pool. Again, we've dedicated almost 2
• 7:23
  hours in a podcast recapping the tournament and going through the
• 7:27
  finals, so check out the podcast feed and have a listen if you
• 7:32
  haven't already done so. Now tomorrow, more recent news
• 7:37
  wallets 5 qualifiers. This is the tournament hosted by
• 7:40
  Mem TV that's coming up in just a couple of days, $75,000 on the
• 7:45
  line. One, we won tournament and we
• 7:48
  will discuss the main event of course in our next episode, but
• 7:52
  we still can't discuss the qualifiers of which there were
• 7:56
  two rounds previously invited based on tournament ELO are
• 8:01
  Hera, Leary, Viper and YO for the main event.
• 8:04
  So we had two qualifiers to figure out who else is going to
• 8:07
  join these four players and that is through the 1st qualifier
• 8:11
  ACCM, Louis, MBL, Sebastian Sito and Tato.
• 8:16
  And the second qualifier concluded yesterday and promoted
• 8:20
  Barles Classic Pro Winchester as well as Frickin, Andy, Mihai and
• 8:26
  Hart to the main event. So I have not seen too much of
• 8:32
  the qualifiers but I have seen Cast you the last day.
• 8:36
  So that's basically what I know, which means we should be on the
• 8:41
  same knowledge level. What was your impression of the
• 8:44
  qualifiers? Again, I'm kind of the same on
• 8:48
  this one. I can't.
• 8:48
  I can't tell too much because I had two very, very busy weekends
• 8:53
  and I was only able to cast on Mondays last Monday.
• 8:59
  And so I only covered half of the decider matches for for each
• 9:04
  weekend. Weirdly enough, everything that
• 9:09
  I covered mostly were kind of stompy.
• 9:13
  They were like either like 3 O or three one or, I don't know, I
• 9:18
  I don't think I can look back to this qualifier thinking about a
• 9:21
  set and be like, Oh my God, yeah, that that was such a good
• 9:24
  set. It went 232 but again I only
• 9:27
  casted 6 sets out of the across 2 qualifiers so I'm not the most
• 9:33
  reliable person when it comes to to describing it.
• 9:40
  I like Warners, it's one of my favourite tournaments is in
• 9:42
  terms of map formats. Like it's so broad, it's so you
• 9:49
  know, it has all the categories. It can range a lot of maps, no
• 9:55
  repetitive because usually, for instance, my point, my problem
• 10:00
  with a lot of 1V1 tournaments is like, take a close map player,
• 10:06
  maybe, I don't know, running versus syscon.
• 10:10
  Syscon is an open map player and you just give them the map pool
• 10:14
  and it matters so much who's the who's the host, who's the guest?
• 10:20
  I mean, they each will have their own home maps and then the
• 10:25
  admin map is going to be random from the remaining ones.
• 10:30
  So since it's random, it's definitely going to favour
• 10:32
  either syscon or running depending if it's open or
• 10:36
  closed. The fact that you picked a map
• 10:39
  and now that category is blocked is a thing that I like a lot
• 10:44
  about Warlords. You you, you can have, for
• 10:47
  instance, 2 super open maps like yeah, semi open and open just
• 10:53
  more or less the same hybrid and water sometimes can share some
• 11:01
  some maps as well. But still my my point is that
• 11:04
  you're not going to get Arabia and Atacama in the same set.
• 11:11
  Yeah, well, shouldn't we get back snipes for maps and
• 11:15
  civilizations? Sure, yeah.
• 11:18
  Why don't tournaments have that anymore?
• 11:22
  Snipes could be like, I don't know it because now they have
• 11:27
  admin bans, I guess. But like if, if it's admin
• 11:31
  banned and a snipe, you can get way too unlucky.
• 11:35
  Like let's say that you you practice on or on two or three
• 11:39
  maps and you're very convinced that yo, those are my maps, that
• 11:44
  I'm going to perform perfectly. And then like 2 of them are
• 11:48
  admin banned and like the third one is sniped by the other
• 11:51
  opponent. Well I guess admin bans
• 11:58
  especially for the civilizations makes sense because we just have
• 12:01
  so many. But I always like the psychology
• 12:04
  of sniping your enemy civilizations after they have
• 12:08
  been picked because you kind of change the draft of your enemy,
• 12:14
  but not without a comeback mechanic, right?
• 12:16
  Because they will draft after that.
• 12:18
  So I don't know, it was a different kind of drafting
• 12:21
  system and I I very much enjoyed it.
• 12:24
  And now I'm kind of missing it. Yeah.
• 12:27
  But I know what you mean. Warlords 5 map pool is diverse
• 12:30
  and I think it is more diverse than it has ever been before,
• 12:35
  even though if I remember correctly, there has been some
• 12:38
  map issues with Warlords 5. Wasn't one map removed?
• 12:44
  And like replaced with another. One, yeah, but I think that was
• 12:50
  a follow up to the show matches, I think and to the players
• 12:55
  feedbacks. I'm not 100%.
• 12:58
  There were two maps. There were seasons and something
• 13:04
  else. Seasons was replaced with
• 13:06
  immersion. Oh yeah, right, immersion.
• 13:10
  And I don't remember the other ones.
• 13:14
  Well, it doesn't really matter, but the two maps had to be
• 13:17
  replaced. I however, I have to say that
• 13:21
  step in I've. I looked at the map updates in
• 13:27
  the tournament server of Mem and it's just crazy how fast and how
• 13:35
  often TW is updating the maps. Like whenever something is being
• 13:40
  played and they notice any kind of irregularities or bugs, TW
• 13:45
  would once the the gameplay has finished, a couple of hours
• 13:49
  later he would get an update out for the map pack and everybody
• 13:54
  gets an updated version of each map.
• 13:56
  That is so amazing to me, the time and that the the effort
• 14:01
  that TW is putting in as a map scripter.
• 14:03
  Absolutely. Like he, he is probably one of
• 14:06
  the best in our scene. And yeah, he's he's very valued
• 14:11
  by everyone, as he should be. He's a good admin.
• 14:15
  He's a good map scripter. I might be biased.
• 14:18
  He's my friend, but he definitely, definitely should
• 14:23
  be. Well, he's not my friend and I
• 14:25
  still praise him for so I think it's objective.
• 14:28
  OK, that cancels out then there. Are a couple of things in the
• 14:34
  qualifier that we should talk about Some drama, but.
• 14:37
  Drama. First, let's dramas drama in a
• 14:43
  tournament that can't be. No Astor tournament with dramas.
• 14:46
  No one heard about that. First, let's talk about the fact
• 14:50
  that both Doubt and Jordan didn't make it is I mean both of
• 14:56
  them have not been in an recent ASTI tournaments.
• 15:00
  Are they are they out of it? Are they not?
• 15:04
  Do they not have it anymore in them to to qualify for a
• 15:07
  tournament? What is your professional caster
• 15:09
  opinion? I'm not really sure what's
• 15:11
  happening in my professional casting casters opinion.
• 15:17
  I think it has to do something with the times changing so much,
• 15:23
  with so many more new rising players showing up in the scene,
• 15:30
  with how high the competitive level is getting.
• 15:35
  Yeah, I I think after a point it's hard to keep up with it.
• 15:40
  That's, well, essentially you're saying they're not good enough.
• 15:45
  Well, it's hard to, it's hard to say that someone is good enough,
• 15:49
  but they didn't qualify. Like I, I, I think based on
• 15:53
  their previous results, obviously they proved that they
• 15:58
  could qualify in the past, but I don't know, maybe there weren't
• 16:03
  the, the competition wasn't as high.
• 16:05
  The they, I, I don't know. It feels like every year we get
• 16:12
  more tournaments and more funds and to, in my impression, my
• 16:17
  impression is that there's more new players eager to just
• 16:23
  compete for it basically to, to, to prove that they have a chance
• 16:26
  as well. And like, I don't know, I'm I'm
• 16:30
  looking at well, Lewis already. I don't think we can call Lewis
• 16:36
  a rising player already. He's still rising, but he's
• 16:39
  already in my opinion, like top ten probably.
• 16:42
  But it's like Lucho is very close to to that line as well.
• 16:48
  This tournament. Siskan had incredible results in
• 16:52
  the qualifier. I mean, he was getting super
• 16:55
  close. He made it to the to the decider
• 16:58
  match a player Benanji German. Everyone was asking in my chat
• 17:04
  is this a decider? Who is Benanji and I never heard
• 17:07
  of this player? Yeah, I'm going to talk about
• 17:12
  Benanji because I talked to him after his settlement, so I can
• 17:16
  tell you a bit more about him. I think he's a very interesting
• 17:18
  player. Yeah, the Taiwanese 1 Blue.
• 17:22
  A lot of new people showing very promising results.
• 17:28
  Neo's, in my opinion, OK with his controversies and
• 17:32
  everything. Like he, I think he's a, he's a
• 17:34
  young player. I think he's super young.
• 17:38
  He's very young. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 17:41
  Again, just all of this hungry players to improve and get
• 17:46
  better. And I feel like when you have
• 17:49
  been already establishing the scene for a while, and I don't
• 17:55
  know, it's kind of your job to try to keep it up.
• 17:57
  But it's not an easy job. And sometimes you just can't.
• 18:00
  I guess I I I'm not sure. Yeah, well, I mean, it's the old
• 18:06
  guard, right? So it does make sense that the
• 18:09
  younger generation is slowly but steadily taking over.
• 18:12
  I think it's much slower in Age of Empires too than in most
• 18:15
  other E sport games because the the game knowledge that you
• 18:20
  acquire throughout so many years of playing the game constantly
• 18:24
  and just knowing about all the bazillion interaction that exist
• 18:28
  in the game and how mash ups turn out with so many
• 18:31
  civilizations. That is.
• 18:33
  I think in a game like Age of Empires 2 experience will always
• 18:36
  be very valuable. Even if your skills decline like
• 18:40
  your mechanical skills and somebody else is mechanically
• 18:44
  better. Just the pure game knowledge and
• 18:47
  experience, how to act and what to prioritize in certain
• 18:51
  situations and stages of the games will always puts you in an
• 18:55
  advantageous position as somebody like Dalton Jordan.
• 18:59
  But it seems like we're getting closer to that point where
• 19:04
  enough younger people are getting enough experience to
• 19:07
  rival them and maybe even force them out of major tournaments
• 19:11
  like it is happening right now with Dalton Jordan.
• 19:14
  But you know, there is another aspect aspect to this and that's
• 19:18
  for me as a long time viewer, I always prefer to have a Jordan
• 19:24
  and a doubt in an STA tournament and they are not in it.
• 19:27
  And instead we have players like Lewis and Classic.
• 19:31
  I know Lewis is different for you, and to me Lewis has always
• 19:35
  been kind of a meme player, so. Well, he started like a meme
• 19:39
  player. He still is a meme player.
• 19:42
  He's a, he's an extremely good, successful top player, but the
• 19:48
  whole discussion around him, his way of communicating with other
• 19:52
  pros and his streams, even whenever I watch them, they feel
• 19:58
  meme ish. So I'm not drawn to it, you
• 20:00
  know? And to be honest, I kind of feel
• 20:03
  like this whole meme thing about Lewis's backfiring.
• 20:07
  Would he not be so weird as a person?
• 20:11
  I think he would have much more like he would be much more
• 20:15
  popular or popular in a different way.
• 20:18
  It's not like people like him right?
• 20:20
  But he they mostly like him the same way that people like the
• 20:24
  Wizards, because he's meme. But I'm not, I'm not sure
• 20:29
  anymore because like, OK, he's trolley, he is trolley and
• 20:35
  always cracking jokes and stuff. But I I think a lot of people
• 20:39
  like that about his dream. They do.
• 20:42
  I will be honest, I didn't like Lewis at first.
• 20:46
  I thought he's arrogant. He is, isn't he?
• 20:51
  How is he not arrogant? Because when you're going to
• 20:55
  listen to his stream for a bit more with the perception,
• 21:00
  everything this dude is saying is just it is strolling on a
• 21:05
  high level. And when he's like, that was my
• 21:08
  issue when I started, we're starting to watch him.
• 21:11
  I was taking him seriously. Like Lewis would just drop a
• 21:17
  bomb in the chat, like say something really dumb for assist
• 21:20
  and like the whole chat would explode.
• 21:23
  And then he's not even looking at the chat like he's going to
• 21:25
  play his one V1 Like he's just going to the chat is like, no
• 21:30
  way. What How is that?
• 21:32
  And then like the chat starts to like discuss that between each
• 21:35
  other and such and suddenly he has one of the most actives chat
• 21:40
  on twitch. Like it's oh.
• 21:42
  Yeah, but it comes with the price it.
• 21:44
  Comes with the price, but like he's, he's not doing he's not
• 21:47
  doing bad. I mean he's averaging like 4 or
• 21:49
  500 viewers on a daily basis. And I don't think those are only
• 21:53
  people that watch him for, for his funny takes.
• 21:58
  I, I, I do think that a lot of those people are, are people
• 22:03
  that were there from the beginning and are interested and
• 22:07
  invested into, you know, his way to the top.
• 22:13
  That may very well be. Maybe I'm the weird one because
• 22:17
  I get put off by his weird takes and I'm not that interested in
• 22:22
  all those weird takes. It's definitely something for
• 22:26
  everyone, I agree. Yes.
• 22:28
  And so he probably did this way more in the past.
• 22:32
  And that is when I got to know him and how I kind of felt like,
• 22:37
  OK, I kind of know what he's like and I'm not interested in
• 22:40
  him. So I have no connection to Lewis
• 22:43
  despite only knowing that he's kind of memish.
• 22:46
  Yeah. He's, you know, I remember the
• 22:48
  times when Hera was very young and he started streaming and he
• 22:52
  was he he was very toxic. And his chat was awe.
• 22:55
  It was God awful. He was the worst chat in all of
• 22:58
  Age of Empires, too. And then he, you know, turned it
• 23:01
  around, but it took him quite a while to do that.
• 23:04
  And he completely had to change his approach with in his
• 23:08
  community interaction, his chat interaction.
• 23:10
  And I remember that it was quite the fight for him to get a new
• 23:15
  image. Oh.
• 23:15
  Absolutely. Absolutely.
• 23:17
  But I don't, I don't. Yeah, I think.
• 23:19
  And I feel like Lou is doing the same thing.
• 23:22
  He's fighting for a new image. Not so hard not not because I
• 23:28
  also feel like it wasn't as well, obviously in the sense
• 23:32
  that Hara was way younger and it was also another.
• 23:39
  That was. Another, another time where like
• 23:43
  a lot of things would be more allowed or like a lot of the
• 23:50
  stupid things that you you could say would pass that today, for
• 23:53
  instance, on Twitter you would get, I don't know, instantly
• 23:55
  banned for. Well, wait a minute, you have
• 24:00
  not seen a stream of arthosis, right?
• 24:04
  I did, I did, I did. It's super funny.
• 24:06
  So I think there's a lot you could do on Twitch without being
• 24:11
  banned. Well again it depends because
• 24:15
  like if a new person is starting to watch, if a new viewer starts
• 24:20
  to watch Arthosis and they don't know the stuff around his
• 24:23
  stream. And for instance if like I don't
• 24:27
  know he he goes into the TOS area.
• 24:31
  I think if you report him he can still be sanctioned by by
• 24:34
  Twitch. Yeah, I I think he was banned
• 24:39
  twice. So he's not, he's not
• 24:42
  untouchable. No, no.
• 24:44
  But it was both for things that made no sense.
• 24:49
  It was not for the Mario erotica or whatever graphic things that
• 24:53
  are happening there. It was just for some weird
• 24:56
  reason. Yeah.
• 24:57
  Anyway, what I was trying to say is that there's a couple of
• 25:00
  newer plays in this in the lineup for the main event of
• 25:04
  Warlords, like especially classic Pro.
• 25:07
  Mihai and Lewis, I would say, are not part of the your usual
• 25:11
  players in these kind of tournaments.
• 25:13
  And there's doubt missing and there's Jordan maybe missing.
• 25:17
  I have no connection to these new players and if I see a set
• 25:21
  between Mihai and Classic Pro I will probably not watch it
• 25:24
  because I have no connection to. It but what do you mean you have
• 25:28
  to turn into my stream to hear the natural immersion that comes
• 25:34
  with the set to listen the national anthem of Romania
• 25:40
  banging in this audio while waiting to get into a game.
• 25:47
  OK, then I'll be there because of you, but not because of the
• 25:50
  players. You know, I'll, I'll make you
• 25:52
  like Mihai. Don't worry.
• 25:53
  Like if you like Lewis or not, I I don't care.
• 25:56
  I'll make you like Mihai. Yeah, this is also not
• 25:59
  criticism. This is just an observation,
• 26:02
  right? Because it's a great thing that
• 26:03
  new players and different players are in a tournament.
• 26:06
  That's their chance to build up a fan base.
• 26:09
  The other players have also done this by being new at some point.
• 26:13
  It's just for me, it's kind of sad to see that Doubt is.
• 26:15
  I like a few qualifiers. Before I thought, well, this is
• 26:22
  an exception. Next time Doubt's going to be
• 26:24
  there for sure. And now I feel like this is it's
• 26:28
  going to be probably an exception if Doubt is going to
• 26:30
  qualify or Jordan is going to qualify in a future tournament.
• 26:35
  And that's kind of making me sad as a long time viewer, You know,
• 26:39
  I feel like time is passing so fast.
• 26:42
  I think this is where we're a tiny bit different because I
• 26:47
  joined the scene maybe 3-4 years ago and like I I didn't discover
• 26:56
  and learn the game by watching any of the, you know, doubt
• 27:03
  Jordan Viper, all the gang, you know, tattoo.
• 27:08
  I know and respect them from like later on.
• 27:12
  I know they are very good players as such, but I'm not as
• 27:16
  effective as as affected as you know your regular viewer.
• 27:20
  For instance, if when one of them is not making it like I'm
• 27:25
  on the opposite side where I get so excited for the new players
• 27:30
  making it for seeing new faces, not the same people all over
• 27:33
  again and even more so, I so doubt lost against classic pro
• 27:39
  right? I want to take a second and say
• 27:43
  how happy I am that Classic Pro made made it into an S tier
• 27:47
  event because for the last couple of S tiers, I felt like
• 27:56
  he either had to give an admin win like the second round in
• 28:02
  because of a power outage or like other issues in his country
• 28:10
  that like couldn't allow to to play.
• 28:14
  Like I'm very happy for him. Like I I think Classic Pro
• 28:18
  showed a lot of potential in the past and it, yeah, was finally
• 28:25
  his chance. Yeah.
• 28:27
  And I think it's important that the talent is has this this kind
• 28:33
  of approach to the situation because I am as a private person
• 28:37
  who is just consuming and watching the games, you know, I
• 28:39
  can have my own opinions and be old school and stuff and be be
• 28:43
  sad That doubt is not there. But I need the talents, the
• 28:46
  casters to hype me up for new players, to tell stories about
• 28:50
  them and to, you know, get me familiarized with these players
• 28:54
  so I can build up a connection, which I don't have yet.
• 28:57
  But yeah, maybe this tournament is going to be a chance for
• 29:00
  that. Yeah, you might be surprised.
• 29:05
  So there's Benanji, a German player, very young player, I
• 29:08
  think he's called Levy. And he, he was a surprise during
• 29:14
  the Warlords qualifier in the second round because he made it
• 29:17
  all the way into the deciding set and he played against
• 29:22
  frickin Andy and he lost all three.
• 29:25
  But it wasn't as one sided as the the result might suggest, at
• 29:31
  least in Game 2. I think it was quite close and
• 29:35
  he probably should have even won that game.
• 29:39
  And he's an up and coming player.
• 29:41
  So how much do you know about Benanji?
• 29:44
  Nothing really. OK, so he's super interesting.
• 29:49
  First of all, he's currently enrolled in his studies, so he's
• 29:53
  not a full time player. And I talked a little bit about
• 29:57
  his ambitions with him and what kind of player he is.
• 30:01
  And he sees himself as a anti meta, very aggressive player,
• 30:05
  which I think he could showcase during this qualifier.
• 30:09
  And he also put a lot of that. He basically put his whole free
• 30:14
  time that he had available into preparing for this event.
• 30:19
  And well, I think it's just such a nice story seeing an unknown
• 30:26
  player putting a lot of effort and obviously talent together
• 30:32
  and actually make it almost making it to the main event,
• 30:35
  making it into the final round of a qualifier for an St.
• 30:38
  tournament. So if there is any inspiration
• 30:41
  for any up and coming player, then this should be the one.
• 30:45
  He was up for a long time. He was actually only a team game
• 30:49
  player, but I think two or three years ago he started playing one
• 30:54
  we once and that was when he was around 1400 ELO in one we once.
• 31:01
  And then he had been playing his ass off.
• 31:05
  He's been playing what he wants. He's realizing that he's doing
• 31:09
  good, that he can climb the ELO very fast.
• 31:12
  And he also only, you know, he he realized that team games
• 31:17
  aren't that fun for him anymore. And that's why he transitioned
• 31:20
  into one V once. And he also played a lot with
• 31:23
  his dad and his brothers, you know, and then he started to
• 31:27
  have a skill difference to them. So he needed something else.
• 31:31
  So that is such a nice story, isn't it?
• 31:34
  It's like, you know, I can relate to that.
• 31:37
  I'm not as good as him and I will never be as good as him.
• 31:39
  But for some reason he just had, you know, this isn't fun
• 31:42
  anymore. Let me try one.
• 31:44
  We once. Oh, I'm pretty good at it.
• 31:46
  And he climbed the ladder fast. He he invested more into one we
• 31:50
  once and he reached the 1900 Elos and that's when he started
• 31:55
  to play community tournaments and to start to train with other
• 31:59
  people. And that is something for the
• 32:03
  past half year, for the past six months, he started to have
• 32:08
  ambitions and he found his own own games playing style and he's
• 32:14
  about to be better and better. And that is his goal right now
• 32:17
  to just get better. He's he says he's continuously
• 32:22
  in the top 100, but he wants to become a pro player, even though
• 32:27
  he sees himself like a semi as a semi pro right now is in such a
• 32:33
  short amount of time coming from that background with no other
• 32:36
  RTS background, he's he must be so talent.
• 32:41
  I mean, yeah. And like, I'm happy he's
• 32:43
  starting to finally explore that talent.
• 32:47
  Like, I think, yeah, I think that's the hardest, one of the
• 32:52
  hardest thing of things for somebody.
• 32:55
  And I think sometimes you have to be extremely lucky to just
• 33:01
  find something that you're very good at.
• 33:04
  Because like, I don't know, sometimes it, it might not be
• 33:07
  something that you thought you would ever like.
• 33:11
  Or I, I, I, I don't know, like this is something that I often
• 33:15
  think about and I find it so interesting that you never know
• 33:19
  where your your life could go. Like a couple of years ago was
• 33:23
  like just chilling doing my PhD discovered this game like this
• 33:29
  while I was while I discovered my game before starting my PhD
• 33:32
  because I was playing campaigns while writing my dissertation
• 33:38
  for my masters. That sounds like
• 33:40
  procrastination. It was 100% procrastination.
• 33:44
  Had you told me that in three years from now you will be a
• 33:52
  full time streamer commentating this game, I would tell you
• 33:58
  you're crazy. And I'm not saying that to to,
• 34:01
  you know, say that all. You see, I found what I'm good
• 34:06
  at. I don't think that I'm naturally
• 34:08
  good at this. Like I had to work a lot to
• 34:12
  become a caster and I am still improving and I'm still working
• 34:16
  hard on a daily basis for at this like the the amount of
• 34:20
  times that I have to like relook into things from attack tree or
• 34:26
  like again, to, to look into how something works And it because
• 34:31
  like, I'm not, you know, naturally drawn to video games.
• 34:34
  Like it doesn't always stick to me and like I find it hard to
• 34:36
  remember or like, no, no, no, no, I this is not for me to say
• 34:41
  like, oh, look, I found something that I'm good at.
• 34:43
  No, I don't think I'm good at this.
• 34:44
  I'm just working for it. But now imagine just like doing
• 34:50
  something that you feel like passionate about and you enjoy
• 34:54
  and just discovering. Oh, wait, wait a minute.
• 34:56
  Actually, I'm quite good at this.
• 34:58
  Like how how? I don't know, rewarding that
• 35:01
  must be. I'm happy he's I.
• 35:03
  Wish I knew. Yeah.
• 35:07
  I'm so happy for him as well. I mean, it's obvious he's
• 35:10
  gifted, but it is also obvious that he is putting in a lot of
• 35:15
  effort and time into this project.
• 35:17
  So it's not just being gifted, right?
• 35:19
  It doesn't. It's, it's not.
• 35:21
  And that dedication that is impressive.
• 35:25
  So I'm, I'm, I'm going to put a marker on his name and very
• 35:30
  closely observe his progress throughout the next years.
• 35:33
  And I'm hoping to see him. You know, for me, it's like he's
• 35:37
  German. So of course it's the same As
• 35:41
  for you with Mihai. Does make sense.
• 35:44
  Yeah. OK.
• 35:46
  Now drama. There has been a lot of drama
• 35:49
  involving Warlords 5 And I think what's most prominent is that
• 35:54
  Nikov has been disqualified. Do you want to tell the story?
• 35:58
  Should I tell? The story, you should tell the
• 36:00
  story because again, this is a story that I heard after because
• 36:04
  I, I was in my cousin's birthday party.
• 36:06
  So like I was entirely away. Like I just read the discord
• 36:10
  afterwards. Yeah, I'm going to make it short
• 36:13
  because MEM has made an official statement in the Discord, and
• 36:17
  he's also published a video trying to contextualise why that
• 36:22
  decision has been made. I'm laughing.
• 36:26
  I'm laughing because now you mentioned the video and I just
• 36:29
  remembered that I had started watching that video 1 evening in
• 36:34
  bed and I had fallen asleep like 5 minutes in like a log and.
• 36:40
  I cannot fall asleep to me. And I woke up, I was super tired
• 36:44
  and I woke up like 2 videos later because I have autoplay on
• 36:49
  and I was like watching some very tassium video like about
• 36:55
  God knows what. And like I just opened my eyes
• 36:59
  and I turned to my husband and I asked you like, what was I even
• 37:03
  watching? Like why am I here?
• 37:07
  He just like started to love. He's like when I came here, you
• 37:10
  were you had started watching member men's videos like ah,
• 37:14
  true. That reminds me.
• 37:16
  I need to rewatch it. Yeah, go on.
• 37:18
  Sorry. Yeah, I'm not sure if you have
• 37:21
  to rewatch it. So Long story short, there has
• 37:25
  been a fallout between Nikkov and Neos, the aforementioned
• 37:29
  young French player. It all started, I think even
• 37:33
  before the games when it came to deciding what server they should
• 37:37
  play on. They could not decide.
• 37:40
  There had been an admin decision made but that was not accepted
• 37:46
  by Neos and so there was a lot of back and forth going and it
• 37:51
  was obvious that these two players would not get along.
• 37:54
  Both players were acting not very mature and but the set has
• 37:59
  been played and during the set they were even chatting and at
• 38:03
  one point Nikhov had decided to go AFK, which was could be
• 38:08
  proven because there was no APM. And also after the game or in
• 38:15
  between games, I'm not sure, Nikhov had been using poor
• 38:21
  choices of words. Let's say that there's been some
• 38:23
  insults and that was also public and so very bad behaviour.
• 38:28
  But but from both of them just Nekov worse than Neos.
• 38:33
  In effect that meant that in correspondence with the sponsors
• 38:38
  words edge. The team beside MEM had decided
• 38:42
  that Nekov would be banned from the second qualifier and Neos
• 38:47
  would receive a formal warning. Niekhov later had published a
• 38:53
  statement that he formally apologized for his behaviour,
• 38:58
  that he accepts the penalty and that he wants to improve.
• 39:02
  So I think this whole topic is done.
• 39:05
  But it also meant that Niekhov could not participate in the
• 39:08
  second qualifier. And I think overall everybody
• 39:11
  agreed that this decision was smart.
• 39:13
  Even though it appears that Memp, the poor guy, had received
• 39:17
  some very harsh messages from fans for of Nikos.
• 39:21
  I guess I'm criticizing this decision.
• 39:23
  But you know, this is something that always happens to public
• 39:26
  figures like Mem whenever they have to make a rough decision.
• 39:29
  So my very irrelevant take on this is I'm glad they came to a
• 39:37
  harsh decision that is penalizing this kind of
• 39:40
  behaviour. And I'm happy that Nikov is
• 39:42
  mature enough to accept it and that he had done so publicly.
• 39:47
  And I, I'm always ashamed of people from the community that
• 39:50
  I'm a part of that are aggressive towards decision
• 39:54
  makers and, you know, talents and hosts.
• 39:56
  That should never be the case. So I'm happy that members, you
• 40:01
  know, stable enough to get through this.
• 40:05
  And with that, I think this topic is closed.
• 40:08
  Yeah, summed it up pretty nicely.
• 40:13
  I will I. Tried my best.
• 40:15
  I will say a couple of things. First of all, what what Nikov
• 40:20
  did is obviously not OK and and acceptable in an S your
• 40:24
  tournament. I will say related to the fans
• 40:30
  being super. Fan fans in quotations, right?
• 40:35
  No fans, Nikos fans that attack mem I mean.
• 40:38
  Yeah, that's why I'm saying in quotation marks, because can you
• 40:42
  call them fans, to be honest? Yeah, like I will say that's
• 40:46
  generally accepted in, OK. I don't want to like generalize
• 40:53
  too much, but all the Latin American community or or like a
• 41:00
  vast majority of it is very die hard fan to to their favorite
• 41:05
  player or or streamer like I that's a.
• 41:08
  Stereotype, right? That they are very passionate.
• 41:11
  Yeah, yeah. But I have a very hard time
• 41:16
  sometimes casting Lutro or Hussiel or even Nikov or or
• 41:29
  other other players because I have to moderate the chat
• 41:36
  heavily. And then like they're just
• 41:38
  talking between each other in Spanish and they're asks not to
• 41:42
  talk in Spanish because like my mods, most of them don't know
• 41:46
  Spanish. And like, I can understand it to
• 41:48
  some extent, but like, I'm not going to, you know, use my time
• 41:52
  from casting to just read the chat and like see if it needs
• 41:55
  moderating. So like you ask them not to
• 41:57
  speak in Spanish and then like then they get rolled up and then
• 42:01
  they start cussing. Like how how am I not allowed to
• 42:05
  talk in Spanish if I'm Spanish? Like it's just it's such a pain.
• 42:10
  Like I remember it was MB L MB L playing versus.
• 42:17
  I don't FedEx, I think, and I think no one was casting and
• 42:22
  FedEx was not streaming. So everyone was watching MBL and
• 42:29
  again, it was just a mess. The chat was just an absolute
• 42:33
  mess. Like you can't, you can't keep
• 42:35
  them under control. Like you, you can't speak sense
• 42:38
  into them. Well yeah, I guess that's what
• 42:42
  happened to Mem as well. I mean, Mem himself is, how do I
• 42:47
  say this? He is controversial sometimes in
• 42:50
  his own opinions and how he makes them public and with his
• 42:55
  community. I mean, even he starts
• 42:57
  interviewing people in Spanish all of a sudden in live events,
• 43:00
  in STA tournaments, which is weird to me.
• 43:03
  I, I was never sure whether he does that, you know, with the
• 43:07
  hosts knowing that or not. But you know, I don't know, I
• 43:12
  think it's not just Latin America, I think it's the
• 43:14
  Spanish people as well. They are very passionate when it
• 43:16
  comes to sports. And this is also not just an Age
• 43:18
  of Empires 2. This is very well known in all
• 43:21
  sports, like especially football.
• 43:23
  They're super passionate about that.
• 43:25
  But we shouldn't mix up passionate people with those who
• 43:29
  are aggressive or insulting people or threatening people.
• 43:33
  Those are always alien in sports and it's just very bad
• 43:38
  behaviour. Yep, I agree.
• 43:41
  I will say though, that from my previous interactions with Neos,
• 43:45
  he does act like a spoiled brat. Like I don't know what's his
• 43:48
  age. I don't know what's I swear to
• 43:52
  God, like I, I don't have my my interaction with him.
• 43:55
  Like I don't, I don't know this person.
• 43:57
  I don't, I don't know anything about him.
• 44:00
  I know he's French and I know he's young.
• 44:01
  I don't know how young. That's a dangerous combination.
• 44:05
  Yeah, I I'm also not someone that can go over the, you know,
• 44:14
  argument of like someone acting stupid because they're young.
• 44:17
  I'm like, oh, forgive it, they're young.
• 44:20
  No, because like when I was young and stupid, and I will.
• 44:25
  So I'm stupid sometimes. But like, I usually rely on the
• 44:29
  people around me and on friends and family and on other people
• 44:32
  from the society. If my friends and family are
• 44:34
  failing to do so, to slap my wrist to tell me like this is
• 44:38
  not OK to behave in a society otherwise, you don't.
• 44:41
  You don't evolve. You.
• 44:42
  There's no point where you learn, OK.
• 44:45
  What I did is not OK. I should change that.
• 44:48
  If you get away with it, yeah. Well-being young is not an
• 44:54
  excuse to behave poorly. Right.
• 44:55
  Absolutely. This is a this is a professional
• 44:58
  environment, and whether you're young or old, you should act
• 45:01
  accordingly and in good spirit and fairly.
• 45:04
  So if you're not, you should receive punishment.
• 45:08
  That's it. Yeah.
• 45:10
  But not a slap on the wrist. You know, other kinds of
• 45:12
  punishment. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 45:15
  For instance, I remember there was a Midwick Madness.
• 45:19
  Neos was laid to his set. We had a thing in the the
• 45:23
  handbook like if you are late for 10 minutes, admin win for
• 45:28
  game #1 and the way the draft would work is if you have the
• 45:32
  admin map as game one and then each of the opponents have their
• 45:37
  home map in a best of three, for instance, right?
• 45:40
  OK, so Neos is late. He shows up almost after 20
• 45:45
  minutes. So he was almost very close to
• 45:50
  the second admin loss, but. So it's an admin loss every 10
• 45:56
  minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 45:59
  But we're telling him, OK, you can start drafting now that
• 46:01
  you're here. Game #1 is an admin loss for
• 46:06
  you. OK, so him and his opponent
• 46:08
  start drafting, they finish the draft and I see him hosting for
• 46:15
  the admin map and I'm like admin map is not going to be played
• 46:18
  because admin map is for game one and game one is an admin
• 46:22
  loss for you. You can either pick your home
• 46:24
  map or the opponent's home map, which is very logic in my
• 46:29
  opinion. Where where I'm standing from.
• 46:31
  That sounds very straightforward and very logic.
• 46:36
  In every single set admin one admin map is game #1 map.
• 46:40
  And that game one was a loss. So he goes on like, ah, but I
• 46:45
  drafted for that map. I was not aware.
• 46:49
  Like I, I just use my drafting thought process process to draft
• 46:56
  for that map. OK, but that map is not going to
• 46:59
  be played. Oh, but I didn't know that and
• 47:03
  then he like just went like I, I was he was again stalling just
• 47:08
  like how I felt he was doing with Nick of when picking on the
• 47:11
  server. He was we were just explaining
• 47:14
  both me and the admin were explaining that OK you're not
• 47:20
  going to play that map, you are free to pick.
• 47:22
  Ah, but I don't have a sieve for the other maps because I only
• 47:25
  drafted for the OK with you drafted 4 sieves for one map
• 47:29
  like that map is not going to be played let it go and no and he
• 47:32
  was just stalling and stalling and stalling until I said like
• 47:35
  OK this my I'm saying this one more time that map is not going
• 47:40
  to be played and then he blocked me on discord like in my own
• 47:45
  torrid I'm smart yeah nice did it.
• 47:48
  I was like, OK, well I guess this is so like he is very.
• 47:55
  And it's so funny to block the host.
• 47:57
  Yeah, OK. I mean, it sounds like an honest
• 48:04
  mistake that he made when he drafted in the wrong way.
• 48:08
  And I mean, it's only natural to, you know, ask if it's still
• 48:13
  OK to use that map. But if a tournament host or an
• 48:15
  admin says no, then you should always accept the decision.
• 48:18
  And that is something that people have to learn in their
• 48:23
  early ages. And that is something that is
• 48:26
  much easier once you've gained enough experience in life that
• 48:30
  there are just things out of your control or you made mistake
• 48:32
  and and you need to accept your mistakes.
• 48:35
  He's probably still in that phase where he is fighting
• 48:37
  everything that is not going his way because he feels like that
• 48:40
  is a divine, I don't know, conspiracy against him.
• 48:46
  We've all been there. Maybe he's been there for a bit
• 48:48
  longer than most people. Still, it's important that
• 48:51
  tournament hosts like you or Mam and you know, even in accordance
• 48:56
  with sponsors, they treat him just like everyone else is
• 49:00
  treated in these professional settings and he will learn his
• 49:03
  lesson if he wants to be part of the community.
• 49:06
  Yep, I agree. So that is not all the drama
• 49:10
  that has been in World of Five. Actually, something happened
• 49:14
  that I didn't even know happened.
• 49:17
  So I'll hand it over to you to tell the story.
• 49:20
  Yeah, OK. So basically what happened is I,
• 49:24
  I was kind of like looking over discord waiting for the second
• 49:30
  qualifier, you know, groups, brackets, etcetera.
• 49:34
  And then I see where you're messaging discord in the
• 49:39
  question section Mem high. Why haven't I been added to the
• 49:44
  tournament bracket where the one of the admins explains to him
• 49:49
  that anyone that didn't make their schedule round in the
• 49:51
  first qualifier without communication has not been
• 49:54
  included in the bracket? So I'm going to explain what
• 49:57
  happened a week prior to that. From my understanding and after
• 50:04
  reading the discussion between the two, my understanding is
• 50:07
  that and after Winchester's message, because Winchester kind
• 50:11
  of described broadly what had happened.
• 50:16
  There was a Russian land and they were all playing on land in
• 50:21
  the land Vinchester and and Dark had not signed up, I think for
• 50:29
  the first tournament, for the first qualifier.
• 50:32
  Sorry, because they said that, oh, we're going to be at the
• 50:35
  land, so we're only going to play the second one.
• 50:38
  Warrior, however, talk with the organization explain them like
• 50:44
  probably hey, I'm going to have to playing a best of three
• 50:48
  qualifier that day. He was told that he can he he
• 50:53
  knew that he's going to have time.
• 50:54
  So he did sign up for MEMS Warlords qualifier 1 and they he
• 51:01
  played a game versus Shiksil and Warrior one.
• 51:04
  And after that game he was told by the people at the land that
• 51:10
  we're very sorry you can't finish your set.
• 51:13
  Like there there's something was happening on the set.
• 51:15
  There has some issues. Some had to move some stuff
• 51:18
  around like we need this equipment.
• 51:22
  You you can't finish your set like you need to leave in 10
• 51:26
  minutes. So Warrior told his opponent,
• 51:30
  I'm being told by the LAN whatever organizers that I can't
• 51:36
  finish the set. I'm giving you no, I'm offering
• 51:39
  you admin win if you want after he had already won the first
• 51:45
  game. And well Shixo said OK.
• 51:51
  And I even think that I'm not sure if he told him like in
• 51:56
  game. He said like please communicate
• 51:59
  with the admins because I know Discord is also banned in Russia
• 52:02
  or like it's not they don't have discord, they don't have access
• 52:05
  to Discord that easily. So he asked Shixo to communicate
• 52:10
  with the admins. Shixo said, OK, can you please
• 52:12
  log into Steam to write everything again here so I can
• 52:18
  take a screenshot to send to the admins.
• 52:21
  So again, he made an extra effort.
• 52:23
  He, he logged into Steam, he wrote all of that, like Shixo
• 52:29
  later on even posted all those screenshots.
• 52:34
  And then Shixo told the admins, OK, Shixo took a screenshot of
• 52:39
  that. He tagged administrator, he said
• 52:42
  he won first but had to go and left and said admin win for me.
• 52:47
  And Ryimbo answered with OK, one of the admins.
• 52:52
  So there clearly was a communication of the situation
• 52:56
  with the admins. There wasn't an investigation of
• 53:00
  what happened. So the from the admins point of
• 53:02
  view was like, oh, he just left. They didn't like look more into
• 53:05
  it. They didn't ask extra questions.
• 53:07
  They were like oh, he had to go. He gave admin win, OK, but then
• 53:11
  they took all of this as basically you signed up for a
• 53:15
  qualifier, you took someone else's spot and then you don't
• 53:19
  show up, which then this race controversy.
• 53:24
  And so he was automatically not allowed to participate in the
• 53:29
  second qualifier, disqualified basically, but without any
• 53:32
  communication either. Like we had the communication on
• 53:36
  Discord, you know, because of what happened to Rana, Nikov is
• 53:40
  disqualified, blah, blah, blah, blah from signing up from
• 53:43
  qualifier 2 and from this tournament.
• 53:46
  We didn't have that communication with Warrior.
• 53:48
  Like it was just a bracket showing up and Warrior was like,
• 53:51
  I signed up, why am I not there? He wasn't even communicated this
• 53:55
  decision. So I 100% agree that someone
• 54:04
  signing up for a tournament and not, you know, showing up
• 54:10
  absolutely hurts someone that wants to participate and it's
• 54:14
  not given a chance because they didn't make it in the brackets.
• 54:18
  However, I don't think this was the case though, because there
• 54:21
  was communication. It was not like it was not like
• 54:23
  he knew that he's not going to have time.
• 54:27
  Like he communicated with everyone and you know, you, you
• 54:30
  was assured that he's going to have time.
• 54:32
  But like, you know, technical difficulties can always show up.
• 54:36
  Like I can agree to play a best of three versus you in 5
• 54:40
  minutes, but I don't know, in 5 minutes my Internet drops or
• 54:46
  like there are technical difficulties with other sets and
• 54:50
  other players all the time. I don't know.
• 54:53
  So it's a, it's a, it's a very weird, it's a very weird
• 54:58
  situation and in my opinion, probably not the best handled by
• 55:03
  the admins. Yeah, exactly.
• 55:06
  So I went through the chat messages and once again, this is
• 55:13
  it's, this is something that is specific to MEM tournaments.
• 55:16
  And I'm assuming this is a language barrier, but you know,
• 55:23
  member also has times when he's choosing his words very poorly,
• 55:28
  when he's accusing somebody of accusing him of lying.
• 55:31
  Yeah, like even like snap back never happened.
• 55:33
  Snap back as vintage. Are you calling me a liar like
• 55:37
  that? Is so unprofessional.
• 55:39
  There's no reason for that. I agree, I think it wasn't
• 55:44
  handled very well. It is a weird situation.
• 55:47
  From what I gathered from the messages that the Russian
• 55:52
  players have told us that they were actually told that they
• 55:55
  would have much more time during that LAN event.
• 55:58
  So it was probably safe to assume that he would be able to
• 56:03
  finish his set that he then couldn't.
• 56:07
  It's also clear that this is some kind of very specific
• 56:12
  situation that is not something that you can anticipate at the
• 56:15
  handbook. So it comes down to handling it
• 56:19
  when it happens. And yeah, seems like it wasn't
• 56:22
  the best, best showing of the admins.
• 56:25
  Yeah. Still, it's hard to say what to
• 56:28
  do, right? It's it comes down to
• 56:31
  interpreting the handbook and the rules.
• 56:34
  And that is something that admins can do.
• 56:36
  They can interpret it in a specific way.
• 56:39
  However, if I were to exclude a player who's signing up for a
• 56:44
  qualifier, I would always let the player know why he's being
• 56:48
  excluded and maybe even give a short, you know, explanation.
• 56:52
  And then all of this wouldn't happen.
• 56:53
  You know, Warrior wouldn't show up and say, hey, wait, why am I
• 56:57
  not here? Why do I need to ask about why
• 57:01
  I've been excluded? Why have I not been provided and
• 57:04
  information about that? Yeah, definitely a delicate
• 57:09
  situation. And like, I, I, I don't know, it
• 57:12
  feels like a lot of the times a, like taking a decision, I don't
• 57:18
  know, you might just take the wrong decision.
• 57:20
  But I, I feel like you need to reassess the situation
• 57:25
  afterwards. And if you realize at any point,
• 57:27
  like, oh, you know, maybe I was too, too quick to this decision.
• 57:33
  Like I, I think not just in tournaments, but in life, I, I
• 57:39
  think it's very important to know when to admit your
• 57:42
  mistakes. Yeah, exactly.
• 57:45
  And. The thing is, as a tournament
• 57:47
  host like MEM, you always want to protect your admins, right?
• 57:52
  Even if they made a wrong decision, because those are
• 57:55
  people who are working for you, usually for no money at all or
• 57:58
  just very little money. You know that is so.
• 58:02
  And you depend on these people and you trust them.
• 58:06
  And while Mem is lacking in communication skills at times
• 58:11
  and he's just overprotective and, you know, he, he needs to
• 58:16
  rethink how he, he is publicly speaking and writing, He
• 58:22
  probably does that to protect the people that he, that, that
• 58:26
  are working for him. So I kind of get where he's
• 58:28
  coming from, but that doesn't make it better, right?
• 58:32
  It's it's just as you say, if you are working professionally,
• 58:36
  you always need to be able to take a step back, reassess the
• 58:38
  situation and very carefully choose your words and maybe even
• 58:42
  apologize for a decision that is not very good.
• 58:46
  Yeah, no. Oh boy.
• 58:49
  Lots of drama. Lots.
• 58:51
  Of Drama Tournament hasn't even started yet.
• 58:53
  Yeah, though I'm expecting that the main event will have less
• 58:56
  drama. Yeah, what can happen?
• 59:00
  Yeah, maps are fixed and all players are hopefully there.
• 59:05
  God, imagine somebody's not showing up for an St. tournament
• 59:08
  main event. That's got to be rough.
• 59:11
  OK, St. tournaments. There is another St. tournament
• 59:15
  and you happened to be one of the hosts now last time.
• 59:19
  We've already talked briefly about the league but then you
• 59:22
  weren't able to share all the details with us because not
• 59:25
  everything had been announced. But that has changed in the
• 59:27
  meantime. So stage is yours, Daniela.
• 59:30
  Tell us everything we need to know about the league and tell
• 59:34
  us why we should watch it. You should watch it because team
• 59:38
  game tournaments are great and it's my tournament and you
• 59:41
  should support me. Yeah, it's not just my
• 59:44
  tournament. I'm hosting this with our base
• 59:46
  and CS team and I'm very excited for it and I don't know, just
• 59:53
  ask me everything. Now I can talk about everything
• 59:55
  with you guys which you feel free to send questions to us or
• 1:00:01
  like to just drop by and chat and ask them there or like just
• 1:00:07
  straight up DM me or join the tournament discord.
• 1:00:10
  And so on. So yeah, basically just the Long
• 1:00:14
  story short is that we have a $75,000 price pool, which is. 75
• 1:00:21
  freaking $1000. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty, pretty
• 1:00:25
  cool. It's going to be distributed per
• 1:00:29
  22 divisions to just basically illustrate the league format.
• 1:00:36
  We're going to have two, two divisions with 9 teams in the
• 1:00:40
  top one and 12 in the second division.
• 1:00:46
  And those 12 will be basically split into two groups.
• 1:00:50
  And it's going to be a basically a round Robin with those two
• 1:00:55
  groups over the five weeks. And then the same with the top
• 1:00:58
  division. Of course, it's going to be a
• 1:01:00
  lot of things to cast, a lot of a lot of content.
• 1:01:04
  I'm hyped to see what teams are signing up.
• 1:01:07
  I want to see who's making to the top.
• 1:01:09
  So who's making it to the top division?
• 1:01:11
  The most important thing to discuss here is that the top
• 1:01:15
  division will have the final live at the Garrison 2026.
• 1:01:23
  Which is amazing. Which is absolutely, yeah, It
• 1:01:26
  hasn't happened in the last 15 years.
• 1:01:30
  You mean for a team? Game for a team, game for a
• 1:01:32
  Yeah. Yeah, what an achievement.
• 1:01:35
  Also, you know, one of the big criticisms of past team game
• 1:01:40
  tournaments has always been that players had not that much
• 1:01:45
  motivation of playing. Not just because you know there
• 1:01:47
  was 1 dominating team, but also the prize pool was also usually
• 1:01:51
  not high enough. Because if you break it down to
• 1:01:54
  all the team members, they are not getting that much money out
• 1:01:58
  of the pot, especially if you distribute it throughout all the
• 1:02:01
  teams with $75,000, albeit they are distributed in two
• 1:02:07
  divisions. But still I think there should
• 1:02:09
  be a cut big enough, especially for the winning team to have
• 1:02:13
  extra motivation to give them, give their best and also put in
• 1:02:17
  the training sessions. Yeah, it's going to be.
• 1:02:21
  It's going to be nice. I'm very excited about it.
• 1:02:25
  I think the only thing I'm not excited or not looking forward
• 1:02:28
  to it is the scheduling aspect. Because of the Rage Forest
• 1:02:33
  tournament. Yeah, and like that, that's the
• 1:02:36
  thing. So usually you have you have
• 1:02:40
  issues scheduling team games. I know that I've casted team
• 1:02:45
  games before. I, I was, I myself was a, a
• 1:02:48
  supporter and a caster of the rage Forest community and I was
• 1:02:53
  very close to, you know, what was happening behind the scenes
• 1:02:58
  with organising that, with how tough was to basically gather 8
• 1:03:04
  people from all the corners of the world.
• 1:03:08
  In our case, it's going to be 6. But still we are spread
• 1:03:12
  everywhere in this community. And yeah, it, it was tough.
• 1:03:16
  It was tough to schedule team games and now add another major
• 1:03:22
  tournament. I'm saying major, especially for
• 1:03:24
  like the top division, because I, I know that a lot of the
• 1:03:27
  people will play there. I know Viper's going to have a
• 1:03:31
  team for sure. Doubt's going to have a team and
• 1:03:34
  and so on. So it's going to be tough to
• 1:03:37
  schedule, I'm sure. And it's a bit, it's a tiny bit
• 1:03:41
  annoying to me that we haven't had a teen game tournaments in
• 1:03:44
  so long. And now great that Rich Forest
• 1:03:47
  is is coming back and now league has been announced.
• 1:03:50
  But during the same time, it's a bit, yeah.
• 1:03:55
  Yeah, I I mean, I guess that happened because the league is a
• 1:04:00
  Microsoft sponsored tournament. Yeah, it's not.
• 1:04:03
  Like. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:05
  We can't really move ours. Right.
• 1:04:08
  And the Rage Forest community is very like, they have their own
• 1:04:13
  community and they don't really care I guess about other events
• 1:04:16
  happening. So yeah, I'm curious about what
• 1:04:21
  that means. I I'm guessing everyone's going
• 1:04:23
  to prioritise the lead of course, and people who are
• 1:04:26
  playing in Ray Forest usually don't really have to practice
• 1:04:29
  for it, right? So they're just going to show up
• 1:04:31
  and play and then leave again, I'm just really hoping that they
• 1:04:34
  are prioritizing the league when it comes to scheduling, but I'm
• 1:04:38
  sure they will. Speaking of which, are the games
• 1:04:43
  going to be live? Yeah, like that.
• 1:04:46
  That's the that's the goal. I mean, for the top division,
• 1:04:51
  we're going to have four days of streaming from Thursday to
• 1:04:55
  Sunday, two days, 2, two sets per day.
• 1:05:00
  So if players want to stream their point of view, they're
• 1:05:04
  going to have to schedule in one of those available slots.
• 1:05:10
  They will have to have two minutes later because that's a
• 1:05:13
  Microsoft rule of course, as your tournament etcetera.
• 1:05:17
  But is it allowed for the for the games to be played before
• 1:05:19
  that and you cast racks as well, OK, Because I think that's
• 1:05:23
  important, right, because of the scheduling issues.
• 1:05:25
  Of course, like it is going to be, of course it's very much
• 1:05:29
  encouraged to to schedule it live, but I I know that's not
• 1:05:34
  possible. However, I do think that a lot
• 1:05:38
  of players want to get some content out of this as well.
• 1:05:44
  Well, at least Onimaru will with that roster.
• 1:05:48
  So, yeah, so the schedule is the division starts in what, August
• 1:05:55
  10th, right? And it'll last for about a month
• 1:05:59
  in the round Robin. And then we've got playoffs
• 1:06:02
  starting a week later on that weekend, 19th and 20th.
• 1:06:05
  And then we'll have, well, 1 1/2 months of a break until we'll
• 1:06:10
  get to see the live event at the Land Final in Germany, in
• 1:06:14
  Hamburg at the Cinemax. Yeah, venue, which is amazing.
• 1:06:18
  Are are you going to be there? Not that I know of.
• 1:06:25
  Well, if you are, come visit me as well.
• 1:06:28
  In Willow, but I I don't think so no, like I was.
• 1:06:32
  I was told the final of the national tournament at a land
• 1:06:35
  that's always sit on the end Eve.
• 1:06:40
  I haven't heard any anything about the Garrison like I I
• 1:06:43
  doubt that I will be there as a caster since like it's always
• 1:06:48
  kind of like the same people. Yeah, I I don't think I'm going
• 1:06:53
  because like, as I said on stream as well, I would love to
• 1:06:57
  be there for just to just witness the final of my
• 1:07:02
  tournament, you know, but me going to to a land wouldn't just
• 1:07:08
  be, you know, travel expenses, accommodation, like all the
• 1:07:12
  expenses. It's not something that I could
• 1:07:16
  afford to do at every land being a small streamer still.
• 1:07:21
  But also it's paired with the fact that I'm it's a double
• 1:07:25
  loss. Like I'm also while I'm there,
• 1:07:26
  I'm not, I'm not working, I'm not casting the games on my
• 1:07:30
  channel. I'm not so like I'm not working
• 1:07:33
  and I'm spending money. Yeah, yeah, it.
• 1:07:36
  Makes sense. So it's some sort of like a
• 1:07:38
  double loss. Like, yeah, of course I would
• 1:07:40
  love to see the live final. But it's OK.
• 1:07:45
  Maybe this is my chance of, you know, proving that I'm a decent
• 1:07:49
  caster with this tournament and maybe this is my chance to grow
• 1:07:54
  as a as a streamer and maybe, maybe get there someday.
• 1:07:59
  OK, I've got another question for you because I have not seen
• 1:08:03
  any maps like do we know what the maps will be?
• 1:08:07
  Did you know the map pool? It's not finalized yet.
• 1:08:10
  Basically, we know some maps like I can 100% assure you that
• 1:08:16
  Arabia, Black Forest Arena, Nomad are going to be there.
• 1:08:20
  We're we're going. Those are the most important.
• 1:08:22
  Ones we're going for classic maps or fan favorite.
• 1:08:26
  I'm saying fan favorite or player favorite, especially
• 1:08:29
  because the players are going to give their opinion on the rest.
• 1:08:36
  So like, we're going to select a couple of maps and then give
• 1:08:40
  them like 10 maps. OK, out of this ones, pick five
• 1:08:44
  that you guys like the most. All right, that's that's I think
• 1:08:48
  that's good for team game tournaments.
• 1:08:51
  Usually the players know best what game, what maps are fun to
• 1:08:55
  play and also which could be fun to watch as the viewers.
• 1:08:58
  Especially since we don't get to see that many play team games.
• 1:09:02
  I think the only time we see team games is if players are
• 1:09:04
  playing rage forest and that's always the same map.
• 1:09:07
  Or, you know, Tuesdays when only Mara starts their team game.
• 1:09:10
  Tuesdays, but. That's it.
• 1:09:11
  So I yeah, it does. That system makes sense for me,
• 1:09:16
  especially in team games. Yeah.
• 1:09:17
  Anything else we should know about the league?
• 1:09:20
  Let. Me think a bit about it, not
• 1:09:23
  really. I think I everything else is
• 1:09:27
  pretty much out there in the open, very straightforward.
• 1:09:31
  Great, well and if people have questions they know where to
• 1:09:35
  reach you. You streaming basically
• 1:09:37
  everyday. So just head on over to
• 1:09:39
  Daniela's stream and ask her. True, that's what I said.
• 1:09:42
  Like shoot a message or a question everywhere, anywhere.
• 1:09:48
  Everywhere. Best on Reddit and Daniela's
• 1:09:51
  check. Yeah, yeah, like I, I got to say
• 1:09:53
  like I made the, the Reddit post and Oh my God, I, I was so
• 1:10:00
  thrilled to see the lover. It got like the genuine, genuine
• 1:10:08
  response. I mean, like it only two or
• 1:10:11
  three days. I, I, I opened the post just now
• 1:10:13
  I see it has almost 700 up votes.
• 1:10:16
  Like the comments were filled with like a lot of people being
• 1:10:20
  super excited to have a A-Team game tournament back.
• 1:10:24
  Like it's, yeah, it's great. Yeah, we haven't had a team game
• 1:10:29
  STR tournament in for how long? I mean MEM was the only one
• 1:10:32
  making them right? And of course there was what was
• 1:10:35
  that 2 V 2 tournament? Didn't David T-90 have a 2V2
• 1:10:41
  tournament or am I wrong? I think they did.
• 1:10:45
  Yeah, but that is, Oh my God, that's so many years ago.
• 1:10:49
  What I'm saying is it's about time.
• 1:10:51
  Thank you for doing this. OK, let's move on with our
• 1:10:56
  topics. Speaking of E sport tournaments,
• 1:10:59
  the tournament calendar has been announced.
• 1:11:01
  It has made an announcement showing casing the tournaments
• 1:11:04
  for the next fiscal year that is public and online on the Age of
• 1:11:09
  Empires website. Everyone can look at it.
• 1:11:12
  I've linked the tournament calendar in the show notes if
• 1:11:15
  you want to take a look at it for yourself.
• 1:11:18
  This of course includes all the franchise, so Age of Empires One
• 1:11:22
  Till Four and Age of Mythology. And as we are used to spoiled
• 1:11:28
  that we are privileged as we are.
• 1:11:30
  Age of Empires 2 is of course getting the main cut of the
• 1:11:32
  Microsoft funding. Is there anything that stands
• 1:11:36
  out to you? The tournament in the Polish
• 1:11:40
  castle like Poland gets land tournament.
• 1:11:44
  That's that's exciting. Yeah, that one is When's that
• 1:11:50
  going to happen? Next year.
• 1:11:53
  Next year in 2027? Is that the royal blood?
• 1:11:56
  Or what was it called? Yeah, Yeah, that's it.
• 1:11:59
  So that's going to be in April next year in in almost a year
• 1:12:02
  from now. It's sponsored by World's Edge.
• 1:12:05
  It's who's hosting that Fusion E sports league I know nothing
• 1:12:10
  about. That I didn't know anything, but
• 1:12:12
  apparently yeah, they're doing stuff in E sports scenes.
• 1:12:16
  Good. Great to draw more more eyes to
• 1:12:21
  the to the scene. It is.
• 1:12:25
  It's kind of funny that the qualifiers are being played in
• 1:12:27
  January and the main event is in April.
• 1:12:29
  I usually prefer it when qualifiers and main events are
• 1:12:33
  close to one another, but I guess once again this is just
• 1:12:36
  because, you know, scheduling and stuff and other tournaments
• 1:12:39
  happening. Yeah.
• 1:12:41
  Yeah, so they are promising more information later this year and
• 1:12:45
  I'm excited to hear about that. Anything else?
• 1:12:49
  I'm very happy that sudden disaster is going to be back.
• 1:12:52
  That's a fun tournament. I feel like 20 KS of it.
• 1:12:55
  It's one of the best much though.
• 1:12:57
  I don't feel no, it's, it could be more.
• 1:13:00
  I think that's one of the most fun tournaments that we have.
• 1:13:02
  All right, sudden disaster. Is so awesome.
• 1:13:05
  I have so many favorite games that are coming from Sudden
• 1:13:09
  Disaster 1 and 2. Man, I just love that concept
• 1:13:13
  because it makes games shorter and much more and and exciting.
• 1:13:18
  Love the creativity from players.
• 1:13:19
  I love how there's comeback mechanics that are wild and
• 1:13:23
  people are making use of it. I'm throwing all my money into
• 1:13:27
  that. I want to see more money so that
• 1:13:29
  people come up with even better strategies.
• 1:13:31
  I think 20, it's probably, I mean, you're right, compared to
• 1:13:36
  what work goes into other tournaments, it's, it might be a
• 1:13:40
  bit much, but maybe this is this is just the top that it should
• 1:13:45
  get and it's it's very well deserved in my opinion.
• 1:13:50
  Yeah, OK. Fair enough.
• 1:13:52
  Yeah. OK.
• 1:13:54
  So other than that, we know there's going to be another T-90
• 1:13:59
  Titans leak. I guess that's always a good
• 1:14:01
  thing. Are you?
• 1:14:03
  Let's let's look at it from another perspective.
• 1:14:05
  Is there something missing in your opinion?
• 1:14:11
  I don't think so. Then I get like I I don't know.
• 1:14:13
  Well, my one view on tournament that I applied for is missing.
• 1:14:20
  Oh, you want to tell us more about your idea?
• 1:14:22
  Yeah, like I it was. Have you watched Quintessential
• 1:14:27
  Cookout last year from GL? Yeah, it was basically that, but
• 1:14:32
  the V2, it was an idea that we, you know, applied with Danger
• 1:14:41
  Duck as an admin. Like he he does all of those
• 1:14:45
  chaotic crazy maps. Last year or the year prior to
• 1:14:48
  that, I also had another idea about something like Master of
• 1:14:53
  the Chaos. Again, chaotic maps.
• 1:14:56
  I like it. Sounds like some disaster.
• 1:14:57
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was rejected back then
• 1:15:02
  because it was the last one rejected.
• 1:15:05
  It really wanted to approve it, but it was afterwards rejected
• 1:15:09
  because I have no, not enough reach and not enough money.
• 1:15:12
  So now I had money and more reach as well, because I grew my
• 1:15:17
  channel quite some, quite some since last time I applied.
• 1:15:22
  So I had more reach and I also had some money left, like, you
• 1:15:27
  know, the money from Midwick Madness.
• 1:15:30
  So, you know, I brought something to the table, but now
• 1:15:33
  it was rejected on the basis that we already get a tournament
• 1:15:37
  and there were a lot more other hosts that applied with
• 1:15:41
  multiples. And then like if they would have
• 1:15:44
  allowed me to, there have been an issue that the others don't
• 1:15:47
  get to. And yeah, it's just a mess.
• 1:15:50
  So basically because you got the league, you can't get the other
• 1:15:53
  one. Yeah, Long story short,
• 1:15:56
  basically, but what we were proposing was something like not
• 1:16:00
  a lot. Was just something fresh for
• 1:16:02
  like 2 weeks, 8 year tournament. Like just something crazy and
• 1:16:07
  fun. Wasn't something like 3 months
• 1:16:10
  of another ass tournament. OK, yeah.
• 1:16:15
  So looking at the calendar, I see a gap between December and
• 1:16:19
  like between Sudden Disaster too and the T-90 Titans League.
• 1:16:25
  Think there's only the Garrison, which is in November, and then
• 1:16:28
  there's nothing in December and nothing in January except for
• 1:16:31
  qualifiers, I guess. So either there's something
• 1:16:34
  coming that has not been announced yet or I don't know.
• 1:16:39
  No, I think why is there a gap? Well, I think that's just going
• 1:16:41
  to be TTL. No TTL is going to run.
• 1:16:44
  You mean the qualifiers? Well, the qualifiers, but I, I
• 1:16:48
  think because, like it's written like that, like qualifiers, but
• 1:16:52
  it's the entire silver league. Like I think they refer to
• 1:16:57
  bronze and silver as qualifiers because like you qualify for I I
• 1:17:01
  think that's the case. Like I, I think people kept
• 1:17:04
  saying that in my stream as well, but like, no, I think it's
• 1:17:08
  the the entire league is, is probably seen as the qualifier
• 1:17:14
  for gold because like if not, if it's just like some qualifiers,
• 1:17:19
  then when is bronze and silver going to be played?
• 1:17:22
  Because then you jump. Think you're right?
• 1:17:24
  Yeah, because then it jumps to gold and platinum.
• 1:17:28
  So I think from December till March it's only going to be TTL
• 1:17:32
  again. Yeah, actually I think you're
• 1:17:35
  wrong because it's not treated as a qualifier.
• 1:17:37
  I think they are treated as separate tournaments, but those
• 1:17:41
  are being A tier tournaments, whereas the the Platinum League
• 1:17:45
  will be an S tier tournament, which is weird because that's
• 1:17:49
  why they're not showing up in the tournament calendar anyway.
• 1:17:52
  There was months a blank, but apparently they seem to be
• 1:17:56
  important enough so that you don't put another rest of your
• 1:17:58
  tournament into that blank space.
• 1:18:00
  But they are not treated as tier tournaments because of the prize
• 1:18:03
  money and they are treated as separate tournaments.
• 1:18:05
  So it's it's kind of a weird thing, but you're right.
• 1:18:07
  January will be T-90 Titans League.
• 1:18:11
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:18:13
  Also, December was always the spot for either or or the
• 1:18:18
  beginning of January. I think that was always when NAC
• 1:18:20
  happened and later on the game of Legion tournaments, so who
• 1:18:25
  knows what's happening. Yeah, it just seems what
• 1:18:29
  there's. This.
• 1:18:30
  Gap OK, so that's I think that's it for the tournament calendar.
• 1:18:36
  Still exciting tournaments, nothing new except for the
• 1:18:39
  league, but and of course the Polish land event that's
• 1:18:43
  actually close enough for me to go there.
• 1:18:46
  Maybe I will. Also regional qualifier for
• 1:18:49
  barrels. You've got like one person.
• 1:18:56
  Yeah, OK, let's move on. Speaking of regional qualifiers,
• 1:19:02
  so there was a Brazilian dynasty qualifier.
• 1:19:04
  This is a land tournament that's going to happen in Sao Paulo in
• 1:19:08
  Brazil, hosted by Onimaru Esports with a price below
• 1:19:11
  $45,000. This is A1V1 tournament and it
• 1:19:16
  will take place in the first week of July.
• 1:19:19
  So before the Warlords qualifier there were two rounds of
• 1:19:22
  international qualifiers as well as a third national qualifier
• 1:19:26
  for this Brazilian land. The only invite to the main
• 1:19:30
  event was given to Hera, understandably so I guess the
• 1:19:33
  other players all had to qualify.
• 1:19:35
  And those are ACCM freaking Andy Leary Viper Yo in the first
• 1:19:41
  round and Louis your boy Sebastian Sokuma.
• 1:19:46
  My boy didn't make it. Wait, who's your boy then?
• 1:19:50
  No. Hard no, no, no, no.
• 1:19:52
  Oh, you're right. You've got too many boys.
• 1:19:55
  I know. You always refer to Louis as
• 1:19:59
  your homie and Heart as your boy I guess.
• 1:20:01
  No, like I like everyone's my homie.
• 1:20:04
  Like, come on, Everyone's my like, I I don't have any beef
• 1:20:09
  with anyone. Like I Yeah.
• 1:20:13
  You're too nice anyway. So Louis, Sebastian, Sarakuma,
• 1:20:18
  t.A.T.u and Vinch made it in the second round, and then Nikov in
• 1:20:23
  the regional qualifiers, which were not that regional.
• 1:20:26
  Because people from South America can participate.
• 1:20:30
  I think even Mexican players could participate in it.
• 1:20:33
  Yeah, so it was whatever. That region.
• 1:20:35
  Is it was Latin America? Oh, oh, OK, Latin.
• 1:20:39
  America, yeah, it was countries that are in Latin America, OK.
• 1:20:46
  I guess that makes sense, I would have preferred it if the
• 1:20:49
  regional qualifier was limited to Brazilian players if it's
• 1:20:53
  happening in Brazil only, but I guess that's life.
• 1:20:58
  Turns out that at the end no Brazilian players will be at the
• 1:21:03
  LAN event and also no homie, no boy heart is missing.
• 1:21:09
  Yeah. That is a surprise, right?
• 1:21:12
  Yeah. So I have a couple of things to
• 1:21:14
  say here. I don't mind the a bit of a
• 1:21:18
  broader qualifier or regional qualifier.
• 1:21:25
  Yeah. But then, if that, if they did
• 1:21:27
  that, I'm sorry that I'm interrupting, then they should
• 1:21:30
  have excluded those players from the international qualifiers.
• 1:21:35
  But like, let's go back to Lin Yuenko.
• 1:21:38
  That was the case, right? Was it?
• 1:21:40
  I don't remember I. Think so?
• 1:21:42
  I think the Chinese players or what is it?
• 1:21:45
  Was it Chinese or Chinese mainland players?
• 1:21:47
  They had their own qualifier and nobody else was participating
• 1:21:51
  and in. Yeah, because I think Yo was
• 1:21:57
  invited, right. So and Vivi and Lyx were in the
• 1:22:02
  final of their regional qualifier and there were no
• 1:22:05
  Chinese players in the main event.
• 1:22:07
  Yeah, I'm going to look it up now.
• 1:22:09
  No. In the main event.
• 1:22:10
  Vivi made it because he was the winner of the the Chinese
• 1:22:14
  mainland, no? No, no, I I I'm sorry, I
• 1:22:17
  misspoke. I meant in the international
• 1:22:18
  qualifiers. None of the Chinese players have
• 1:22:20
  participated. Yeah, only Sorakuma, but he's
• 1:22:24
  Taiwanese, so they were excluded from the international
• 1:22:27
  qualifiers and were only allowed to play in the Chinese mainland.
• 1:22:30
  Qualifiers, OK, then that makes sense.
• 1:22:33
  But then again, like, I don't, I don't really get why you would
• 1:22:37
  exclude them. Like like I, I can definitely
• 1:22:40
  understand that it's more chances for them then for the
• 1:22:44
  international players, much like just do 3 qualifiers instead.
• 1:22:51
  But in the same time, like it's nice to have some representative
• 1:22:54
  because like, you know, this is going to lead me to my next
• 1:22:58
  point because you were saying that, OK, why didn't we have a
• 1:23:02
  qualifier just for Brazil then? And then what, who who would
• 1:23:07
  have made it? Who's the best problem to go?
• 1:23:10
  Yeah. And then he gets stomped by
• 1:23:12
  everyone. For a week, No, no, no, I
• 1:23:16
  wouldn't. No, I don't agree with that.
• 1:23:20
  I think if the GAO or Miguel or any other Brazilian player would
• 1:23:24
  make it to that LAN event, yeah, they would probably not be the
• 1:23:28
  favourites, but they would be underdogs.
• 1:23:32
  And that would be so beneficial for the LAN event, especially if
• 1:23:37
  there was a live audience, you know, that would draw people
• 1:23:40
  there. They would get hyped, they would
• 1:23:42
  get cheered on and they can overcome whatever fear they
• 1:23:48
  might have or insecurities they might have because they would be
• 1:23:52
  fuelled by the energy of the fans of their, you know, there,
• 1:23:56
  there is a, there is a story of an underdog there and now we
• 1:24:01
  don't get to hear it. But like, I, I don't know, I
• 1:24:04
  feel like I would rather watch a, a closer stronger matchup
• 1:24:08
  than watch another 30 because I, I don't know, I just don't feel
• 1:24:13
  like Dokao is right now at as tier level, at Len as tier, as
• 1:24:22
  tier level. And if we're looking for
• 1:24:24
  instance, again, I'm going back to Lin Yuan and I'm going to
• 1:24:27
  compare him with Vivi. I think Vivi is way stronger
• 1:24:30
  than him and Vivi won one single game the entire week.
• 1:24:36
  If anything, Vivi just brought more drama to that main event.
• 1:24:39
  Vivi is has always been not so very good at land events.
• 1:24:47
  But you know, I think you're making a valid point.
• 1:24:50
  But then have no regional qualifiers if you're if you want
• 1:24:55
  the best players to be at the event, only have international
• 1:24:58
  qualifiers. OK, yeah, I'll agree.
• 1:25:00
  So this is a weird middle way. Yeah.
• 1:25:03
  But any, I, I don't think our community or our pro player
• 1:25:07
  scene is not so big that we have representatives of every country
• 1:25:13
  in the world and many. So I guess it makes sense to
• 1:25:17
  have a wider read. I'm not that emotionally
• 1:25:19
  invested into this. I'm just saying as a fan, if I
• 1:25:22
  were a Brazilian fan, I would have liked to have a Brazilian
• 1:25:26
  player if I already had regional qualifiers, you know, if there's
• 1:25:30
  no regional qualifiers, I wouldn't care.
• 1:25:32
  But like that, I don't know, just sounds like wasted
• 1:25:35
  potential to me. I guess they had their reasons
• 1:25:38
  and also this is something that I have no connection to.
• 1:25:42
  But maybe there is something as a Latin American identity and
• 1:25:47
  that is a like it doesn't really you don't have like national
• 1:25:51
  identities as much as you have for example in Europe and there
• 1:25:54
  is more a broader identity and that is more important that the
• 1:25:58
  national identity. If that were the case that it
• 1:26:01
  would make total sense to do it like this.
• 1:26:04
  This is just something that I have.
• 1:26:05
  No, I'm not familiar with this. Also, I will say that again,
• 1:26:13
  going a tiny, tiny big back to the point where like you're
• 1:26:16
  taking a place from someone in a qualifier when you sign up and
• 1:26:19
  you don't show up, everyone was losing their minds.
• 1:26:23
  Like why is Gabby not participating in this?
• 1:26:26
  Oh yeah, why was she not? Because she didn't make the cut.
• 1:26:30
  She was seed 17 and only the 1st 16 made it and she was the next
• 1:26:37
  one in line. And then someone like Ozone
• 1:26:39
  didn't show up or like I think there was someone else that
• 1:26:42
  didn't show up at all. And like, she even made a story
• 1:26:47
  where she was saying like, oh, I, I didn't even, I wasn't aware
• 1:26:50
  that it was a TPII, thought it was leather because in the
• 1:26:52
  leather she's way higher seated. And I was like training for
• 1:26:58
  this. I I was preparing, I was
• 1:27:01
  practising versus other players and such.
• 1:27:04
  And I just saw the brackets that I hadn't made the cut because it
• 1:27:08
  was ATP. But yeah, like stuff like that
• 1:27:11
  really bother me. Listen, I'm taking back
• 1:27:15
  everything I said. It should have been a Brazilian
• 1:27:18
  only qualifier. You know, hearing this story
• 1:27:21
  breaks my heart. Somebody doesn't show up and
• 1:27:24
  some other person is, you know, training for that.
• 1:27:26
  Having that one, this is probably a one in a lifetime
• 1:27:31
  chance, depending on how much Onimaru is going to stick to the
• 1:27:34
  scene. So, man, that just breaks my
• 1:27:36
  heart. Yeah, this.
• 1:27:39
  Well, we're not making the decisions.
• 1:27:41
  We've got to live with it. Gabi's got to live with it.
• 1:27:44
  But I'm I feel for her. And related to Hart, I think
• 1:27:50
  Hart just came back extremely shaky after Red Bull.
• 1:27:54
  Like something, something happened.
• 1:27:57
  He he just felt completely out of it for the for the Brazilian
• 1:28:01
  qualifiers for warlords, Warlords as well.
• 1:28:03
  Like, OK, he's it seemed that he's starting to kind of get
• 1:28:08
  back in shape now making it into the main event, but he lost the
• 1:28:11
  first qualifier and he would usually make it in the first
• 1:28:14
  easily. Yeah, Like, I, I think he just
• 1:28:18
  had, he was even talking in his Discord that he he's, he feels
• 1:28:22
  like he's playing the worst AOE in his life and he's just like
• 1:28:27
  needing to get back on track. Well, he didn't make in the in
• 1:28:31
  the first wallets qualifier either.
• 1:28:33
  Right. Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm
• 1:28:34
  saying. Like he made it now in the
• 1:28:35
  second because he's saying that he, he, he feels still a bit
• 1:28:40
  shaky, but he's starting to get back on track a bit.
• 1:28:43
  OK, that's good to hear. Yeah, I guess he's also having
• 1:28:48
  immense pressure being in the team with Leary and Hera.
• 1:28:50
  I don't want to be business, probably.
• 1:28:53
  Yeah, dude, that's going to be so rough, right?
• 1:28:55
  And I was, I was talking about that on stream yesterday, how if
• 1:29:00
  you're a pro player at the top, there's just tournaments
• 1:29:04
  back-to-back to back and preparing and this and that.
• 1:29:08
  I could understand a player saying, you know what, I'll sit
• 1:29:13
  out of this tournament like I just, I, I need a break for a
• 1:29:16
  couple of weeks. But now when you're in a
• 1:29:18
  professional team especially, especially Vitality and on
• 1:29:25
  Yamaru, because these ones are registered, as you know,
• 1:29:28
  professional teams as well, they're properly funded and
• 1:29:33
  everything, you're kind of feeling the pressure to deliver
• 1:29:38
  good results. Yeah, I totally agree.
• 1:29:43
  I think there's so much happening.
• 1:29:45
  Actually prioritizing tournaments depending on what
• 1:29:49
  you anticipate, where you have the best chances is a valid
• 1:29:53
  strategy. I I'm not sure if you have to
• 1:29:56
  participate in each and every tournament.
• 1:29:58
  There is just so much incentive because the way we are
• 1:30:02
  distributing the prize money usually means it's worth being
• 1:30:07
  part of a tournament, even if you're not practising for it.
• 1:30:10
  You know, just just take the money no matter how far you get.
• 1:30:13
  It's good money. Yeah, I think Hera once skipped
• 1:30:17
  a tournament, right? Hera is usually skipping the
• 1:30:20
  eight-year ones. Yeah.
• 1:30:22
  Like he's not playing too much in the eight-year, eight-year
• 1:30:25
  tournaments. It, it's just feels like he's at
• 1:30:29
  a level where it's just not worth it for him from the point
• 1:30:32
  of view that because he's not allowed to stream without a
• 1:30:36
  delay since he's an, a Microsoft sponsored event, a World's Edge
• 1:30:42
  sponsored event. My bad.
• 1:30:46
  I I think he just talked a bit about this on stream at some
• 1:30:50
  point. Like he would make more money or
• 1:30:54
  like if it would be way better for him as a player, as an
• 1:30:58
  income for instance to just stream pro 1V ones while not
• 1:31:05
  putting time and effort to prepare for a tournament that he
• 1:31:11
  ends up not being able to stream it.
• 1:31:16
  At least not not without a delay for a small amount of money to
• 1:31:22
  him. You know, this makes a lot of
• 1:31:24
  sense from his point of view. Also, I've been criticized
• 1:31:28
  before for saying that we don't really have a professional
• 1:31:31
  scene. And this is exactly what I mean.
• 1:31:33
  If pro players are not if, if they are content creators 1st
• 1:31:39
  and Contenders and St. tournaments second, then we
• 1:31:42
  don't have a professional scene. This is this is very different
• 1:31:46
  from other esports. Yeah.
• 1:31:47
  Yeah, because like it's not big enough of a scene to sustain
• 1:31:51
  someone to be a full time, a full time streamer.
• 1:31:56
  And I'm not criticizing Hera for doing.
• 1:31:58
  I think he's doing the exactly right thing.
• 1:32:01
  I'm just saying that our scene is not.
• 1:32:03
  Yeah, absolutely. Like it, it is a business at the
• 1:32:06
  end of the day for each one of them and it's an income.
• 1:32:10
  And the reason why, like what he does pay pays off and everything
• 1:32:15
  is because like, he's, he's working hard, but he's also
• 1:32:19
  like, you know, recognizing his strengths and minuses.
• 1:32:23
  And in the same time, like, OK, everyone complaints about oh,
• 1:32:28
  another heroine, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:32:31
  OK, he's giving a chance to to other players to step up to.
• 1:32:39
  No, no, he's just prioritizing. He's not giving a chance to
• 1:32:43
  anybody else. He's.
• 1:32:43
  No, Well, I'm saying like number absolutely.
• 1:32:46
  Number one reason is that like it's just not worth it for him.
• 1:32:49
  But this is me saying that you know what?
• 1:32:52
  Like even better than for other. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:32:56
  Yeah, for other other players to step up then like, OK, if we're
• 1:33:01
  if we're complaining about Hera winning every tournament, OK,
• 1:33:04
  look, he's not participating in most of the eight years.
• 1:33:09
  Someone step it up. So listen, Hera is the most
• 1:33:13
  professional out of all the players in an unprofessional
• 1:33:16
  seat. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:33:18
  No, like he, he does very well what he does.
• 1:33:22
  And, and I will say that from my contact with the players so far,
• 1:33:28
  like I've even had multiple show matches last week and such, my
• 1:33:36
  approach to, to the scene is very much different from other,
• 1:33:42
  other colleagues from our other bigger hosts.
• 1:33:44
  Because like, again, I'm still trying to, you know, find my, my
• 1:33:49
  path and my way to grow my channel and grow the caster and,
• 1:33:57
  and so on. So like, I don't have a whole
• 1:34:01
  lot of contact with all of these people.
• 1:34:04
  But I will say that out of all the players, Hera was the one
• 1:34:11
  that treated me with the most respect when we had interactions
• 1:34:16
  like that. And we if there, there was an
• 1:34:20
  issue or if he had a request, like he just came to me point
• 1:34:23
  blank explain where he's coming from.
• 1:34:29
  I told him back if it's possible or not.
• 1:34:31
  Like we, we found the middle ground.
• 1:34:33
  We we were able to work it. I have a lot of people from I
• 1:34:38
  don't know, even previous show matches that like I don't know,
• 1:34:41
  are either not even responding to me when I'm reaching for the
• 1:34:45
  payments, for instance, or, and like or or or blocking a
• 1:34:49
  discretisms when I'm taking another decision.
• 1:34:53
  So like, yeah, I understand. Like I'm not, you know, T-90 or
• 1:35:00
  a a bigger host to to have yet that type of, you know,
• 1:35:07
  authority and respect in the scene.
• 1:35:11
  But Hera was the only one that treated me such.
• 1:35:17
  And he, he is a professional. Yeah.
• 1:35:19
  Like, I'm not on anyone side. I'm not paid to make Hera free
• 1:35:25
  advertising here. But I, I just, I'm telling you
• 1:35:27
  my, my, my experience because, yeah, maybe Hera wasn't someone
• 1:35:32
  that I was expecting. I was expecting to get that
• 1:35:36
  treatment from since like, you know, usually when you're best
• 1:35:40
  player in the world, you can get that, you know, fame creeping to
• 1:35:44
  your head or whatever and start acting entitled and whatnot.
• 1:35:51
  I I don't think that's the case with him.
• 1:35:53
  So. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 1:35:55
  Well, I think it it needs to be stated that Hera hasn't always
• 1:35:59
  been this way. That is something that he has
• 1:36:01
  learned the hard way and he has opened up about that right
• 1:36:06
  there. I remember him talking about
• 1:36:08
  this many times, the way he needed to change things and he
• 1:36:12
  needed to look into himself. He.
• 1:36:13
  Learned. Actively changed, he learned.
• 1:36:16
  Exactly. And I respect that a lot.
• 1:36:18
  Me too. Also now, now that I'm I was
• 1:36:21
  thinking about the last week and the show matches that that I did
• 1:36:23
  and I had it. I, I will, I will change my mind
• 1:36:27
  and I will say that Viper too, like Viper always was just as
• 1:36:34
  respectful, just as as nice. I have Viper too.
• 1:36:41
  You know, I once wrote Viper a Discord message out of, I don't,
• 1:36:45
  I don't even know how that happened.
• 1:36:47
  Oh, actually I do remember I was doing research on a tournament,
• 1:36:50
  like a community tournament in Italy and Viper was on that
• 1:36:57
  Discord and I was trying to copy something out of Viper's, I
• 1:37:04
  don't even know what it was. Something from Viper I tried to
• 1:37:07
  copy out and I misclicked something.
• 1:37:09
  I accidentally sent him a link to a different community
• 1:37:14
  tournament because I was putting together the information for my
• 1:37:18
  tournament outlook of a magazine episode.
• 1:37:20
  So I, I accidentally sent him that link without any context
• 1:37:25
  whatsoever. And you know, that is a, that is
• 1:37:30
  a definition of spam messaging, right?
• 1:37:33
  I didn't mean to so but he wrote back to me in a, in such a
• 1:37:39
  civilized and polite way, like I'm I'm not even sure what it
• 1:37:43
  was anymore, but what is this? Can you tell me more about this?
• 1:37:49
  Like he was almost interested where he should really not be
• 1:37:52
  and block me. And I told him that it was a
• 1:37:56
  genuine mistake and that he should ignore it.
• 1:37:58
  And, you know, all was well. That was just I, I if I don't
• 1:38:04
  know, I expected to be banned from his messages.
• 1:38:07
  Or his messages, chat, discord. Yeah, usually pro players do not
• 1:38:13
  reply to my messages if they even see it.
• 1:38:16
  And Viper not only saw it, he took the time to clarify whether
• 1:38:20
  this was something important or not.
• 1:38:22
  And, you know, I just felt like that was such a nice thing for
• 1:38:25
  him to do. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
• 1:38:27
  absolutely. OK, last topic for the news
• 1:38:32
  before I let you go, and this is going to be short 1 I believe.
• 1:38:35
  So first one quick note for all the console players there.
• 1:38:39
  There had been a minor update. And I think it's important to
• 1:38:42
  mention is we usually don't talk about console here on the
• 1:38:44
  podcast, but I think this is important because there's been a
• 1:38:47
  lot of upsets in the console community because of some major
• 1:38:50
  bugs. So this minor update has been
• 1:38:53
  released to kind of soothe the console community, especially
• 1:38:57
  because there's been a crash that seems to occur almost every
• 1:39:00
  game that hits the 30 minute mark.
• 1:39:02
  There's been memes about, you know, players not even reaching
• 1:39:05
  castle age anymore. And that bug was especially
• 1:39:09
  occurring when playing on the Xbox Series X.
• 1:39:12
  There's also been reports on invisible buildings and UI
• 1:39:16
  problem, you know, not very important things when you play a
• 1:39:18
  strategy games. So it sounds kind of bad.
• 1:39:21
  The state the council is in. And especially since these
• 1:39:25
  problems are well known and have been occurring for months, for
• 1:39:29
  over 2 months now. So the devs have not found a fix
• 1:39:32
  to this yet, but they have addressed that they are trying
• 1:39:35
  to figure out what causes these issues.
• 1:39:38
  How are they? However, they have not been able
• 1:39:40
  to set a date as to when we can expect a fix.
• 1:39:44
  Quoting them now they're they're writing.
• 1:39:45
  Looking ahead, you should start to see an increased volume of
• 1:39:48
  fixes and changes in future patch notes and that serve to
• 1:39:51
  uplift the experience and console even further.
• 1:39:54
  So they have implemented monitoring tools to find out or
• 1:39:59
  diagnostic tools to gather information on the crashes.
• 1:40:03
  So if you are a console player and you're listening to this,
• 1:40:05
  make sure to send reports in if possible.
• 1:40:09
  On another note, Daniela, the deafs have released a new public
• 1:40:12
  update preview. I, for one, have not once been
• 1:40:16
  part of this. I have never installed the
• 1:40:19
  public update preview and, you know, tested it.
• 1:40:22
  I have no idea how active the scene isn't doing that, but I
• 1:40:27
  guess the public update preview is controversial in a way that
• 1:40:32
  once again the champion line is being addressed and the South
• 1:40:37
  American civilizations are overhauled once again.
• 1:40:40
  There's also some bug fixes, some fixes to unit behaviour,
• 1:40:44
  especially the new cards and some, you know, pathfinding and
• 1:40:49
  these kind of things. I've identified two major ideas.
• 1:40:53
  One is the Champion line, and the second is the changes to the
• 1:40:57
  naval mechanics. There's other, you know, changes
• 1:41:03
  like changes to the Armenians and so, but I think that's
• 1:41:05
  something that we should discuss when the actual update is out
• 1:41:08
  and not now. But these general ideas about
• 1:41:11
  the Champy changes, do you agree with them?
• 1:41:15
  The champy changes, I think they, they, I think this was
• 1:41:20
  expected. Like it was just way too big of
• 1:41:26
  a nerve and I think the champion was unusable.
• 1:41:30
  They're reversing most of the changes they they just did.
• 1:41:34
  So my number one fear now is that the champion rushes are
• 1:41:39
  going to come back. I I really hope I'm wrong about
• 1:41:41
  this but. Yeah, you were one of the people
• 1:41:44
  who experienced the champion rushes.
• 1:41:46
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:41:48
  Yeah, yeah, because I completely skipped that part.
• 1:41:50
  I didn't even touch the game because I was in Japan.
• 1:41:53
  Oh yeah, no, it was awful. OK, you know, looking at I, I
• 1:41:59
  wrote the update notes in our document.
• 1:42:03
  So looking at that, do you get the feeling that the champion
• 1:42:07
  rush is going to be back? Or do you even know maybe
• 1:42:09
  something from the people who, who are testing this?
• 1:42:11
  Because I when I'm looking at all like there's four changes to
• 1:42:15
  the champion line, that is too much information for me to
• 1:42:19
  process. To be honest, I cannot say if
• 1:42:22
  this is going to be Opie or not. I, I, I think the Champions are
• 1:42:25
  going to be back, maybe, maybe not as strong as before.
• 1:42:28
  I think to some extent we'll have to see.
• 1:42:31
  Like it's very hard for me to evaluate from just looking at
• 1:42:37
  the changes. Like I, I will actually need to
• 1:42:40
  get the feel. Yeah.
• 1:42:43
  OK. So there is a theory.
• 1:42:45
  I think Doubt is proposing this theory, but some people are
• 1:42:48
  agreeing with him that the champion nerve was actually not
• 1:42:53
  needed, it's just that people didn't know how to react to the
• 1:42:56
  champion rush. So if doubt was right, maybe
• 1:43:01
  people now know how to react to it, even though I don't know how
• 1:43:05
  they would get that idea. OK OK, but did he offer a
• 1:43:07
  solution? Did he showed first hand on
• 1:43:10
  stream how to react to champion rushes?
• 1:43:11
  Does he have a YouTube video? Because God forbid if I'm going
• 1:43:15
  now to doubts match history and I see he lost three games in a
• 1:43:20
  row to Huang Huang, who's top five nowadays by the way,
• 1:43:24
  abusing 2. Yeah.
• 1:43:25
  But that was I think that was because of the reset of the
• 1:43:28
  letter, right? There wasn't the reset of the
• 1:43:31
  ladder What No, he's abusing to be.
• 1:43:35
  Is he really? Yes, but now with Blackwood
• 1:43:37
  Archers instead of a champions. But he started with the
• 1:43:40
  Champions. But there was a ladder issue and
• 1:43:42
  lots of people were not ranked because they had to play a game
• 1:43:45
  first and then they would get their ELO back.
• 1:43:48
  But lots of people didn't have an ELO for a short amount of
• 1:43:51
  time. Ranked ladder when?
• 1:43:54
  Yes, yes, with that minor update.
• 1:43:57
  Oh, what the hell. Yeah, but you know, most people
• 1:44:00
  didn't even realise because they just played another game and
• 1:44:03
  then they would have their ELO back.
• 1:44:05
  So it wasn't lost, it just wasn't shown on the ranked
• 1:44:07
  ladder. Yeah.
• 1:44:09
  No, it's not because of that. But wait a minute.
• 1:44:13
  If if if Huang is doing that now with the nerfed champion.
• 1:44:17
  Runners. No, but but now he's doing it
• 1:44:19
  with the black, with Archers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, OK.
• 1:44:22
  But he started with that guy. Yeah.
• 1:44:26
  Can we just like talk how they're not able to do the
• 1:44:29
  smallest change or the smallest maintenance without like
• 1:44:32
  breaking something else? I swear to God, Like, what else
• 1:44:37
  would they had a maintenance and like the next day there had to
• 1:44:40
  be another maintenance because they they didn't do something or
• 1:44:44
  like, I don't know. Yeah.
• 1:44:45
  It's, it's, it's weird, it, it seems like that code is just a
• 1:44:49
  mystery to everyone, especially the devs.
• 1:44:52
  Top 10. Yeah, now I'm scared about this
• 1:44:56
  champion rush. Yeah, I don't know.
• 1:45:00
  We'll see. We'll see.
• 1:45:01
  But it was the buff was necessary in that regard.
• 1:45:04
  Now if you ask me, of all the other buffs, random Burgundian
• 1:45:08
  and Armenian buffs, no, those are already some of the best
• 1:45:14
  sieves in the game. Yeah, I, I, I'm suggesting we're
• 1:45:19
  not even talking about them because I'm quite confident
• 1:45:21
  they're not going to include that in the final update dream.
• 1:45:25
  On but. Who knows?
• 1:45:30
  You never know the ways of the deads.
• 1:45:32
  Can we talk about the naval changes?
• 1:45:35
  This is something that I know. No.
• 1:45:38
  Why? Wait?
• 1:45:39
  Why are you not agreeing with them?
• 1:45:41
  No, because they're all nerves. Yes, but are they?
• 1:45:47
  Yes, so. OK, that OK, go ahead.
• 1:45:50
  Please explain. Well dog maximum number of
• 1:45:52
  arrows changed from 5 to 0. In dark.
• 1:45:56
  Cage in their cage, yes. Like it was I my view was not
• 1:46:02
  dying because like I was garrisoning my fish and chips
• 1:46:04
  and the dog could shoot the scout attacking my view on the
• 1:46:09
  shortfish. So.
• 1:46:12
  I don't know you're. Saying.
• 1:46:14
  I'm very I'm very I'm very subjective in this opinion,
• 1:46:16
  because, like everyone hates that you can Garrison fish.
• 1:46:20
  No, I love it like I I'm sorry, I'm sorry, guys, I'm sorry.
• 1:46:25
  I'm I'm the other one out. I love it.
• 1:46:27
  I don't know why people are hating on garrisoning the fish
• 1:46:30
  on doing it too much like it stops the water completely Yes
• 1:46:35
  in fuselage, but like I'd I'd I'd lost water in fuselage
• 1:46:39
  before even with like garrisoning the fish oh so
• 1:46:42
  stomped on water we still have to like that's still idle equal
• 1:46:48
  it has. But that's still the case,
• 1:46:49
  right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:46:51
  But they just, I don't know, to kind of fight back of the
• 1:46:55
  arguments of. Well from what I've gathered is
• 1:46:58
  that the main issue is not so much the garrisoning the ships,
• 1:47:02
  but the fact that you can safely wait until your enemy has shown
• 1:47:07
  his hands as to and what kind of ships he's tacking into.
• 1:47:10
  And then you just start tacking the counter.
• 1:47:13
  And with your dogs flying arrows you can already weaken those
• 1:47:17
  ships. Whereas now you will you may get
• 1:47:21
  your fishing ships to safety, but they you know that they can
• 1:47:25
  start attacking your dogs and take down the HP of it.
• 1:47:29
  So they will still get an advantage that is important
• 1:47:33
  despite showing their hands. Yeah.
• 1:47:36
  And that does make sense to. Me it I'm not saying it doesn't
• 1:47:39
  make also like the next point it's dog bonus versus ships
• 1:47:42
  change from +3 to 0234 like Fidel gasoline.
• 1:47:48
  Yeah, like sometimes, sometimes when you're like trying to
• 1:47:52
  attack a dog, like you, you have a a Hulk and you just want to
• 1:47:59
  commit your Hulk to snipe a low HP fishing ship and like your
• 1:48:03
  Hulk just dies because there's two dogs Garrison with fishing
• 1:48:07
  chips and it just does so much damage, which is a lot of the
• 1:48:10
  time stupid and frustrating. But like again, yeah, it's fine.
• 1:48:16
  Also like can we just yeah, all of these number changes for a
• 1:48:20
  caster, they're brutal, man. Like it's just mess in my head
• 1:48:25
  now having to change all those numbers again.
• 1:48:28
  I I had just gotten used to them.
• 1:48:32
  Do you really need to know all these numbers as a caster?
• 1:48:35
  Well, is it technically? Technically.
• 1:48:37
  No, but like, yeah, there's so many.
• 1:48:41
  Questions, all these kind of things, you know, if people want
• 1:48:44
  to know this level of detail, they were probably watching
• 1:48:48
  Orndu anyway. The the The thing is, but some
• 1:48:54
  someone asks in the chat like, oh, do you know how much or
• 1:49:00
  like, no, not even do you know, just start up asking What's the
• 1:49:04
  how, how much damage does a galley do to a dog?
• 1:49:07
  And if I don't, if I don't want, like if I answer, who cares?
• 1:49:12
  Like people were just like, I don't know, leave, like I care.
• 1:49:15
  What do you mean? I asked, which I understand that
• 1:49:18
  if you want to get like that deep analysis and such, you
• 1:49:22
  should probably go and tech into the tech tree yourself.
• 1:49:26
  But I feel like if I'm not answering that question as a
• 1:49:30
  caster, I kind of failed. Like failed who failed myself?
• 1:49:36
  I don't know. I feel like to some extent it's
• 1:49:37
  my job to know. No, it's really isn't.
• 1:49:41
  Your job is to cast, to entertain and to yeah, but you
• 1:49:44
  know, give broad knowledge to the game flow and to anticipate
• 1:49:48
  certain things from happening. Strategy wise.
• 1:49:51
  This is where you should be, you know, more knowledgeable than
• 1:49:54
  your average viewer. But that kind of statistic.
• 1:49:58
  No, OK, maybe I'm going too deep in into to to an extreme to the
• 1:50:01
  statistics, but for instance, I, I do feel like knowing things to
• 1:50:07
  some extent do help you to to be a better caster.
• 1:50:10
  And like, you know, if I'm just showing what's happening, I feel
• 1:50:15
  like everyone can just open the game themselves and look at
• 1:50:20
  what's happening. Again, I feel like it's my duty
• 1:50:24
  as a caster to explain what's happening.
• 1:50:26
  And a lot of the times, why is it happening?
• 1:50:29
  And a lot of the times, for instance, for the units or like
• 1:50:34
  someone that asks who wins, a berserker or a Uumi swordsman or
• 1:50:41
  or legionary or I don't know. And then I realized that Oh my
• 1:50:46
  God, wait a minute, I don't know that.
• 1:50:49
  Yeah, so you know, This is why T-90 always says it depends.
• 1:50:54
  Yeah, yeah. He doesn't know and he doesn't
• 1:50:58
  need to know. And he puts the emphasis on
• 1:51:00
  what's more important, you know, the bigger fights, not to unit
• 1:51:03
  versus unit, which never happens in the game.
• 1:51:05
  Yeah. Correct.
• 1:51:06
  But sometimes, for instance, I, I think it was the the other day
• 1:51:10
  when I was casting a game and then I, I think it was a fight
• 1:51:15
  like camels versus Knights. Knights were on the hill
• 1:51:20
  casting, fighting the camels. But there were, I don't know,
• 1:51:27
  not a big difference of, of numbers.
• 1:51:30
  Like, let me think about maybe five nights versus 3 camels.
• 1:51:37
  And now I was like, sure that the camels are going to win
• 1:51:41
  because they had better upgrades as well.
• 1:51:43
  And then they didn't. And then like, I just literally
• 1:51:47
  just think out loud. I'm like, wait, how did that
• 1:51:49
  happen? Like I, I, I was sure that the
• 1:51:52
  camels are going to win, but then I'm voicing it that out and
• 1:51:56
  then like I immediately feel super unprofessional because
• 1:52:00
  another voice in my head is like, it's your job to know
• 1:52:03
  that. What?
• 1:52:03
  What do you mean you don't know that?
• 1:52:05
  Yeah. OK, so listen, Danny, I'm going
• 1:52:07
  to give you my very irrelevant 2 cents about this.
• 1:52:11
  But this this proves my point why I'm usually saying that we
• 1:52:14
  don't have casters including each and every big and small
• 1:52:20
  caster in the scene that are actually that that know what is
• 1:52:25
  important when casting. And because if you feel that you
• 1:52:30
  are failing at casting because you didn't call out how the
• 1:52:35
  fight would end, then that is the wrong priority.
• 1:52:39
  I don't think casters should call out how fights end.
• 1:52:43
  They should be describing why somebody is taking that fight
• 1:52:49
  rather than how it will end. You know, grand a strategy that
• 1:52:52
  is. And that is something that for
• 1:52:53
  example, StarCraft plays are doing much more, putting their
• 1:52:57
  emphasis much more on rather than calling fight.
• 1:53:01
  This is also why I get so upset about casters calling G GS.
• 1:53:06
  It's not the fact that they are miscalling it, it is the fact
• 1:53:10
  that they are not focusing on what is important.
• 1:53:15
  And you know, when you're doing that or when MEM doing that or
• 1:53:18
  whoever is casting and they're doing that on their own channel,
• 1:53:21
  that is none of my business. I'm not talking about those.
• 1:53:24
  Everyone should do whatever they feel comfortable in their own
• 1:53:27
  channel. But when they are casting a
• 1:53:29
  major St. tournament, you know, on a public stage or such,
• 1:53:33
  that's where I'm expecting the right priorities.
• 1:53:38
  Yeah, I can definitely understand that.
• 1:53:39
  Yeah, No, absolutely. Like it's a, it's a combo of
• 1:53:42
  everything. It's it's tricky.
• 1:53:47
  OK, Daniela, I've taken up so much of your time.
• 1:53:49
  I think this is going to do it for the news.
• 1:53:52
  I'm going to let you go now and go on to finish up the episode.
• 1:53:56
  Thank you so much for being here.
• 1:53:58
  Thank you for inviting me once again.
• 1:54:00
  I will take this occasion to tell you for sure that next
• 1:54:05
  episode, you're alone. All right, that's good to know.
• 1:54:09
  Now everybody knows I will probably be sad, but I will
• 1:54:16
  power through and then I'll just have you on the next time you
• 1:54:19
  have you are available. I will be travelling.
• 1:54:22
  Nice. Where too?
• 1:54:24
  I'm going to Italy and then to Romania.
• 1:54:28
  Europe, yeah. OK, some visiting family I
• 1:54:31
  guess. Yeah.
• 1:54:32
  Yep, Yep, Yep. Oh, that sounds so good.
• 1:54:34
  Well, enjoy your time back in Europe.
• 1:54:36
  Other than that, I wish you a lot of fun with warlords.
• 1:54:39
  Thank you so much. I hope you're going to enjoy the
• 1:54:42
  the tournament as well and see you.
• 1:54:44
  See you next time. See you when I see you.
• 1:54:49
  Franchise News for all the Apple users out there, Age of Empires
• 1:54:54
  2 is finally coming to Mac OS Age of Empires 2 Definitive
• 1:54:59
  Edition lands on Steam for Mac OS on May 28th, with Mac App
• 1:55:04
  Store released to come later in the year.
• 1:55:07
  It's the same business model As for Windows, meaning you get the
• 1:55:10
  base game that includes three former DLCS, Lords of the West,
• 1:55:14
  Dynasties of India and Dawn of the Dukes, and you can also buy
• 1:55:18
  all other DLCS from day one. Last month, the Obsidian Mirror
• 1:55:23
  DLC was released for Age of Mythology Retold.
• 1:55:27
  This DLC contains a brand new campaign set in Aztec mythology.
• 1:55:32
  You get 3 major and 9 minor gods, of which you will be able
• 1:55:35
  to witness each during the campaign, which is 12 missions
• 1:55:39
  long and divided into 3 acts. The campaign tells an original
• 1:55:44
  story that draws inspiration from Aztec mythology, so it will
• 1:55:49
  be something you have never heard before.
• 1:55:51
  Unlike most campaigns, where gods are relegated to cutscenes,
• 1:55:55
  boss fights, or brief cameos, this story actually features the
• 1:55:59
  constant physical and recurring presence of the three major
• 1:56:03
  Aztec deities. They appear actively throughout
• 1:56:06
  the narrative and are also fully playable in certain scenarios.
• 1:56:11
  All of the Aztec characters in the campaign, both protagonists
• 1:56:14
  and antagonists, are based on real mythological and historical
• 1:56:17
  figures. This marks the departure from
• 1:56:20
  previous campaigns, which featured mostly original
• 1:56:23
  protagonists and antagonists. I've finished the campaign and
• 1:56:27
  thought it was overall a good experience with no real replay
• 1:56:32
  value. I enjoyed the Aztec mythology, I
• 1:56:36
  thought the characters were interesting, and I absolutely
• 1:56:39
  loved the map design, especially when it comes to Tenochtitlan,
• 1:56:43
  the Aztec capital. The campaign did such a good job
• 1:56:47
  in interpreting the size of the city and its surrounding
• 1:56:50
  landscape. It's 100 times better than Age
• 1:56:53
  of Empires 2 did. However, the mission objectives
• 1:56:57
  have not been particularly interesting, and at times I have
• 1:57:01
  been annoyed by the fact that I was limited to the Heroic Age or
• 1:57:05
  Age 3 for the most part of the campaign.
• 1:57:08
  The God powers were cool. I especially loved creating a
• 1:57:11
  volcano for the visual effects. Please keep in mind that in Age
• 1:57:15
  of Mythology, I am only a casual player, so I have no idea about
• 1:57:20
  how the new Aztec pantheon shakes up the meta or how
• 1:57:24
  they're balanced. Even I enjoyed the mechanic of
• 1:57:27
  generating favor by sacrificing your villages, which sounds very
• 1:57:30
  rough coming from Age of Empires too, but really fits into Age of
• 1:57:34
  Mythology in my opinion. Other than that, I had one major
• 1:57:38
  issue during most of my time with the campaign, which was a
• 1:57:41
  bug introduced with the new DLC. The hot key for all production
• 1:57:45
  buildings did not work anymore, which is kind of annoying
• 1:57:51
  because it's actually a very important hot key in Age of
• 1:57:54
  Mythology. I was unlucky because I almost
• 1:57:57
  finished a campaign by the time it was fixed, but it has been
• 1:58:00
  fixed in the meantime. If you're a big fan of Age of
• 1:58:03
  Mythology and a casual player like me, the Asta campaign is a
• 1:58:07
  nice experience when it comes to the pantheon and map design, and
• 1:58:11
  a little dull when it comes to creativity in the mission
• 1:58:13
  design. But overall, you'll have fun for
• 1:58:16
  about 6 to 8 hours. And then there's exciting news
• 1:58:20
  for Age of Empires 4 as well, because a new expansion is set
• 1:58:23
  to release on May 7th. It's called You Face Legacy,
• 1:58:28
  including a new campaign set in the Song Dynasty.
• 1:58:32
  It'll be 8 missions telling the story of General Yu Fei and the
• 1:58:36
  fight for survival against the Jin Dynasty during the Song Jin
• 1:58:40
  Wars. The DLC includes a new
• 1:58:42
  civilization called the Jin Dynasty, which will be playable
• 1:58:45
  in custom, skirmish and ranked matches.
• 1:58:48
  The civilization is focused on strong cavalry and siege units
• 1:58:52
  and some unique game mechanics like mounted villages for mobile
• 1:58:56
  economies and automated defenses.
• 1:58:59
  It actually sounds pretty interesting and very aggressive,
• 1:59:03
  but we'll have to find out when we actually see the civilization
• 1:59:07
  in practice. There's also is of course unique
• 1:59:11
  units and the Jinn units include the Iron Pagoda which we all
• 1:59:15
  should know from Age of Empires 2, then some Mounted Grenadiers,
• 1:59:20
  Eruptus and Bed Crossbows which I have no idea what they are but
• 1:59:24
  we'll find out. There's also going to be 4 new
• 1:59:27
  maps and two new biomes, the Madagascar Biome and the Yellow
• 1:59:30
  River Biome which excites me a lot because I just love the way
• 1:59:34
  Age of Empires 4 looks especially when it comes to the
• 1:59:38
  different biomes. The DLC is coming out on May 7th
• 1:59:42
  and it's coming out on PC and PS-5.
• 1:59:46
  Next up we've got the tournament outlook for May 2026.
• 1:59:53
  Of course, the big headline for Age of Empires 2 is Warlords 5,
• 1:59:57
  our St. tournament for May. It's hosted by Mem TV.
• 2:00:00
  It's a $75,000 one V1 tournament that is our main story for this
• 2:00:06
  month. There are 7 map categories with
• 2:00:09
  21 maps in total and all games are played with a 9 villa start.
• 2:00:13
  The main event will start on May 7th with a group stage, followed
• 2:00:17
  by the playoffs starting on May 19th until the final match on
• 2:00:21
  May 24th. There's four groups with double
• 2:00:24
  elimination brackets. Last of each group is out of the
• 2:00:27
  tournament. The other three players move on
• 2:00:29
  to the playoffs consisting of 12 players.
• 2:00:32
  Group 1 is YO, Barles, Winchester, and Andy.
• 2:00:37
  Group 2 is Leary, Lewis, ACCM and MBL.
• 2:00:40
  Group #3 consists of Viper, Mihai, Hard and Tatto, and the
• 2:00:44
  final group is Hera, Classic Pro, Sebastian and Sito.
• 2:00:49
  So the top four players each have their own group.
• 2:00:52
  Next up, if you're from the USA, you might be interested in the
• 2:00:55
  USA Cup 2026, which is a regional online tournament
• 2:01:00
  hosted by Paradox and Ace John starting on May 13th.
• 2:01:04
  Sign ups are already closed, though.
• 2:01:07
  If you want to play in an amateur league, you can sign up
• 2:01:10
  for the 16th season of AOE leagues.
• 2:01:14
  The sign up deadline is May 9th. The league starts two days later
• 2:01:18
  and will last about two months. Or if you're more like me and
• 2:01:22
  prefer to play on the on certain maps, then let me tell you about
• 2:01:25
  the Specialist Cup too. There are four different
• 2:01:29
  divisions based on a themed map pool.
• 2:01:32
  One for Nomad, one for hybrid or water maps, one for closed maps,
• 2:01:36
  and one for open maps. You can still sign up for your
• 2:01:39
  favorite kind of tournament until May 13th.
• 2:01:42
  The tournament starts two days later, and you'll find the links
• 2:01:46
  to all of these tournaments in the show notes of this podcast.
• 2:01:50
  Fans of Age of Empires 4 can enjoy the Homestead Cup starting
• 2:01:54
  from May 12th, which is an S tier land in Serbia organized by
• 2:01:59
  Age of RTS, and this is going to be the perfect opportunity to
• 2:02:03
  see the new civilization in pro gaming action.
• 2:02:07
  The tournament is 6 days long with the Grand Final on May 7th.
• 2:02:11
  In Age of Mythology, there's still the Mythic Clan League
• 2:02:14
  running and it will be running until June 6th.
• 2:02:17
  So that's your chance to of seeing how the Aztec pantheon
• 2:02:21
  does. And that is it for this month's
• 2:02:27
  magazine. I hope you enjoyed this episode.
• 2:02:30
  Thank you once again Daniela for being on the show.
• 2:02:33
  And if you want to check out Daniela and see her casting,
• 2:02:36
  then go head over to twitch.tv/daniela under score
• 2:02:41
  AOE. That's twitch.tv/daniela under
• 2:02:45
  score AOE. But you'll also find her link in
• 2:02:47
  the show notes of this podcast. Make sure to find her, make sure
• 2:02:52
  to cheer her on during her casting journey.
• 2:02:56
  And if you want to become a podcast member, you can join the
• 2:03:00
  community just by joining the Discord server of this podcast.
• 2:03:03
  And you know, you can write messages and talk with others
• 2:03:07
  like minded podcast listeners. Like you can also send me
• 2:03:10
  messages either via Discord or even via mail at age of
• 2:03:16
  cast@gmail.com. That is ageofcast@gmail.com and
• 2:03:21
  send me your message with topic discussions or with questions so
• 2:03:26
  I can read them out in the next magazine and have something to
• 2:03:30
  talk about. Thank you everyone for listening
• 2:03:33
  and have fun. Have lots of fun with either Age
• 2:03:37
  of Empires Four DLC or the Age of Mythology to see DLC or the
• 2:03:41
  Warlords 5 tournament. Until then, you'll hear from me
• 2:03:46
  in the next episode.