Call of Duty Modern Warfare(CoD4) is a game that needs no introduction to the Sri Lankan eSports community. A game that constantly clocks in over a hundred teams each year at SLCG, CoD4 has cemented its place in competitive eSports.
A game with so much history to it naturally has fierce competition. Despite this nA| Team Spite has remained at the top of the rankings.

Current Roster :

SvTuE (C)
Peace
Sylax
Ghost
Hope
Garfield
Kwickstep

We met up with captain Sameera ’SvTuE’ Vidushanka for this interview.

Q: “Team Spite” is an interesting name. Where did it come from?

A:Truth be told I made this team just out of “Spite” because everyone said we didn’t have what it took to win. 3 years later we are one of the most accomplished teams in SL esports, and I have to thank everyone who has helped us on our journey.
The team was formed in 2016 when things were looking bad for us . No one gave us a
chance . We even had to leave the clan where we initially formed the team. When I formed the first roster no one thought we would last or be able to win anything.

Thankfully the Noob Alliance admins saw our true potential and took us in, with their
support and our players we’ve dominated the CoD4 scene ever since.

Q:What’s the secret to your success?

A: Well I believe that we have the best group of players that have the ability to
work as a team. Also we’ve been playing together now for the better part of 3 years.
When a team plays together for long you develop synergy which makes preparation easy. We have our ups and downs like any team but I think that’s the major reason we’ve been able to stay consistent through the years.

Q: How much time do you guys commit to practicing?

A: To be honest , we don’t get a lot of time to practice. All our players now have work related commitments so we only have a limited amount of time for prep. We always
allocate time however possible before major tournaments.Other than that we play
scrims whenever possible to stay in touch with the mechanics of the game.

Q:What do you think makes you stand out above the rest and is there anything you’d like to work on moving forward?

A: I think our major strength is that we have a perfect balance of experience and
new blood. Some of our players have been part of the community since the very beginning, so are able to handle pressure really well.

In the past we have at times struggled to maintain precision in our plans so I would say that’s something we need to work on.

This week we dive into the battlegrounds of DOTA 2.

Dota 2 is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game developed and published by Valve Corporation. The game is a sequel to Defense of the Ancients (DotA), which was a community-created mod for Blizzard Entertainment’s Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its expansion pack, The Frozen Throne. Dota 2 is played in matches between two teams of five players, with each team occupying and defending their own separate base on the map. Each of the ten players independently controls a powerful character, known as a “hero”, who all have unique abilities and differing styles of play. During a match, players collect experience points and items for their heroes to successfully defeat the opposing team’s heroes in player versus player combat. A team wins by being the first to destroy the other team’s “Ancient”, a large structure located within their base.

PNX| Indomitus are currently #1 for DOTA 2 in the country.

Notable achievements:
Battle of the Mortal Gods Winner
SLCG 17 2nd place
KOL 17 Winner
Gamerfest 17 Winner
Acer Predator League 2019 : Sri Lankan Qualifier – Winner
SLCG’18 – Winner
SLT Esports Championship 18 – Winner
Battle of the Mortal Gods: Season 4 Winner

We got in touch with Viren ‘Hawkie’ Dias to figure out how Indomitus keep winning.

Q: Over the past few tournaments we’ve seen you play with alternating rosters. Will we seeing a stable roster anytime soon?

A:Well, the team isn’t currently active as there has been a lull in tournaments, plus I have been a little burnt out after all the marathon practice sessions leading up to the Acer tournament in February.However, there should be a tournament coming up towards the end of this month and we’ll probably discuss it among ourselves and announce a roster shortly

Q: What makes helps you to constantly stay on top?

A:Well, it’s a mixture of keeping up to date with the meta and staying in form. You do this regularly playing ranked matchmaking, reading patch notes and watching pro games. And then when it comes closer to tournaments, you scrim daily.
.

Q:How much time do you commit to practicing?

A:Up to 4 hours a day on weekdays and up to 8 hours a day on weekends depending on work and other life commitments. Ideally you want to be playing more if you’re really serious and want to go pro. But hey, life.

Q: How did Indomitus come into being?

A:Well that question would be better posed to some of the older members of the team since I wasn’t around when it was originally formed. However, I can tell you about how I joined Indomitus.

As you well know, I was in Thé Kadé for a very long time before this. It was originally a team of friends, but as time went on life caught up and several of our friends became inactive. Eventually, it was just down to 2 of the original members: Mirsab and myself. With Mirsab being unable to attend a lot of the local tournaments as he was in Malaysia, I decided it was time to put Thé Kadé to rest, and I considered retiring myself as well.

That was when Muntha approached me and convinced me to join Indomitus to play SLCG 2017.

Q:What do you think your strengths and weaknesses are

A: Strengths – we’re a good team.
Weaknesses – we’re not a great team

Maximum Ladders 2k19 was a LAN COD4 tournament held on the 29th and 30th June at Play Arena. The tournament amassed a whopping 30 registered teams. Over the course of the two days teams fought it out on the familiar terrains of COD.

nA Team Spite came in first place after an extremely intense final where the match had to go to a tie breaker.

M-eS- IMEX took home second while Team Zu came in comfortably at third place.

In this series we try to pick into the brains of the ranked #1 team/players in each competitive game.

This week we dive into the realm of Overwatch.

Overwatch is a team-based multiplayer first-person shooter developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. Described as a “hero shooter” Overwatch assigns players into two teams of six, with each player selecting from a roster of 30 characters, known as “heroes”, each with a unique style of play whose roles are divided into three general categories that fit their role. Players on a team work together to secure and defend control points on a map or escort a payload across the map in a limited amount of time.
It’s basically a FPS combined with a MOBA.

nA|BlackWatch are currently #1 for Overwatch in the country.

Their notable achievements include :

• Gamefest Overwatch ‘17 – 3rd Place
• SLT e-Sports Championship 2017 – Champions
• SLCG’17 Overwatch – Champions
• GCOL Season 1 – Champions
• Get Nailed Overwatch League 2018 – 2nd Place
• SLCG’18 Overwatch – Champions
• SLT eSports Cafe Challenge ‘18 Overwatch – 3rd Place
• GCOL Season 2 – Champions

Their current roster is as follows:

Falca
Bouncyknight (C)
Sleepy
Jonaboy
Madhu22
Sukiribole
Ppeexxel
Deathshot
Naenae

We met up with Ruvin “Bouncyknight” Kularathna to understand how Blackwatch functions and what makes them the best.

Q: How was the team formed

A:Well Sukiribole was the one who convinced me to buy the game, after that i convinced some of the players from my COD4 team to buy it(Madhu, Sleepy and Jonaboy), we found out that Bouncy was also playing later, so since we had 6 players we decided to form the team.

Q: What differentiates you from other teams?:

A:I think we have got a solid dive comp, and most teams in Sri Lanka struggle to deal with dive. We exploit that a little better than others.

Q: What’s your motivation to keep practicing?:

A:These days none. When we started we practiced whenever we could to beat NWA, the top team at that time, that was our only motivation. After we beat them, the number of practice sessions decreased, since the start of 2019 stopped practicing as a team altogether. But I guess the team synergy we built is enough to stay on top.

Q:What do you think your strengths and weaknesses are:

A: Strengths definitely Dive comp, specifically Dive comp with Pharah, widow, winston, dva, mercy and zen. After ppeekxxel joined the team we swapped the zen for lucio. A rein Zarya comp is at like the middle ground of our strengths, it’s not as good as our dive, but we still can play it to a good extent.

Our weaknesses i’d say is bunker comp, with orissa and hog, our tanks are not experienced with it, so it’s a bit harder to play for us.

The fan favorite underdog Victorious Secret made big waves in the scene this year by consistently placing top 2 at all major LAN and online events.
Taking home the top two slots in almost all competitive Dota 2 events for 2018 they ended the duopoly held by The Kade/Indomitus + Death Sentence. Thus solidifying their position as a definite contender for the best Dota2 team in the island.
Due to personal reasons both Kevin ‘ZackPuppy’ Kadanarachchi and Kaveesha ‘Devanstine’ Kagasuru have had to step down from the active roster.
To fill up the gaps left by their absence veterans Muksith ‘Tenza’ Ajwath and Heshan ‘SathaN’ Sanjaya entered the team as stand ins.

Captain Isuru ‘Deathwish’ Lokuge had this to say about the situation :

‘ The whole of VS would like to thank Zackpuppy for the time he spent with us. Unfortunately his changes in his life meant that he couldn’t carry on playing with us, but he’s killing it in Dubai. Devanstine has chosen to take a small break and hopes to come back once he has a better understanding of the patch”

When asked about the two new additions Deathwish said this :

“They(tenza and sathan) bring a wealth of experience to the table and we hope to get as much as possible from them. We also want to thank them for helping us out at the last moment.”