Onlinegamer takes a close look at Power Gaming

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Those with a keen memory of TF2 team rosters will sure enough remember the majestic Crack Clan led by Juho “Moose” Pättö, and sporting such amazing players as Punpu, Kyynel and Hymzi – winged by scout pair Jambo and Glufse. The team became known as the eternal second best, never being able to completely outmuscle the then still undefeated (in ETF2L) Team Dignitas.

This powderkeg of quality did however wither away. The departure of Punpu to the finnish army. The departure of Hymzi to Illegal, via a short retirement. The loss of the scout pair – both to retirement. Moose himself, like Kyynel – longed for a retirement. The team was however patched up with Snifz as soldier, and cool clan scout pair wltrs and Pizza brought in. Demoman Bash came to fill Hymzis boots. During this time, Crack Clan also became Power Gaming.

The team however did not last, and folded. All of the great names from the classic Crack Clan were now effectively retired – perhaps with exception of Punpu who was simply away.

It didn’t take long though for Moose to return to the game. The second highest rated finnish team (after the recently folded CC/PwR), “Illegal“, were being picked up by the Power Gaming organisation and along with it came Moose who took up the post as non-playing Team Manager. This is the very event which leads up to the main theme for this article. Namely the new, old, talanted and posslibly bright-futured line up of Power Gaming.

The new Power Gaming now fields: Moose (manager), vallone, cookye, haza, kyynel, punpu, mafu and hocz. The only remaining members from last seasons line up (that is, the former Illegal squad playing with the PwR tag) are vallone and hocz. A short summing up of the new faces: Cookye has been brought in from Special Attack. A team which as risen rapidly through the divisions and now stand at the doorstep of division 1. To guess that Cookyes inhuman aim has something to do with it would not be a far fetched one. Kyynel and Punpu are coming from the already discussed “classic” Crack Clan and little needs to be said of these titans of TF2. Haza is currently semi-active, but has most recently been seen in the roster of the team with countless name, the dunc team. Then there is mafu as demoman. The nonamer of the team, if such a thing can be said of him. It is not because his skills are unknown or untested, but because he has not been active in any team for almost two years. His last team venture worth mentioning was the disastrous Oslo Lions which folded almost instantly after its formation.

Lets ask Manager Moose some questions

What is power gaming (the MGO) and what do you do in it, and what do you do in the squad?

-”Power Gaming is a multi-gaming organization that supports several games simply for the love of esports and the games themselves. We are backed up by a private investor so right now we don’t need to rely on sponsors as much as other teams. That also leaves us free to support smaller games like TF2 fully.”

So its actually a private person paying for everything?

-”Yes”

-”Personally, I played for this org for two years or so, and the people behind the scenes wanted to keep me involved even after I stopped playing actively. And so, right now I’m one of the managers for the organization, though so far my involvement has mostly been with the TF2 squad.”

-”So far I’ve handled many of the responsibilites that any team captain would do, without actually playing myself. I’ve also tried to help the squad with my tactical experience. In the future it would seem that I’ll be travelling to LANs more often to help our different teams on them and when our homepage is finished, I’ll be writing content on it for various games.”

Would I be right to assume then, that you are the engineer beind this recent, huge, team reconstruction PwR has undergone?

-”Well, the team would have completely crumbled down if I had not acted. Both hymzi and fluffy would have left in any case. It was not entirely my decision to cut olliii and paavi as well, but it surely seemed like a smart thing to do with kyynel and Punpu being available.”

What goals are you trying to achieve with this team construction?

-”Our goal would of course to be the best team around. There’s a lot of work to do to reach that with a completely new line-up, but I think it’s entirely possible considering how talented each of these players are. The second goal from the organization is to make TF2 more viable as an esports game.”

I would love to go further into the topic of how to make TF2 a more viable esports game, but to stay on the topic of the article, on a more player-individual level now: compare Hymzi and mafu. Pros, cons, etc.

-”Hymzi was a super aggressive player, who sometimes went huge, and sometimes let the team down completely. I’d say it’s probably easier to play with mafu as a team, but hymzi’s raw skill was next to none. I’d rate mafu’s defensive play highly. It’s very hard to get close to him, something that is completely different from hymzi. All in all, both are great players and I wouldn’t settle for any less.”

If hymzi magically came back from the army in 1 month, would you put him back in?

-”I don’t think so. Not unless something weird happens with the current team. I also built this team with the personalities of each individual player in mind and mafu fits in there perfectly. Hymzi… not so much.”

So what about Haza. Since you added him, I guess he fits, but will he play? When?

-”Haza’s our backup. He’ll play when someone from the main line-up is missing and he’s happy with the solution because he wouldn’t have the time and motivation for more.”

Moving on to the new kid on the block. Tell the story of how Cookye came to PwR.

-”Well… before we considered cookye, my plan was to have Haza scout with vallone. However, when Haza told us he doesn’t have time to play as a starter, it became obvious we’d need to find another Finnish scout. We considered maybe three or four different players, but in the end cookye felt like the strongest player by some margin. He first caught my attention with the accusations that were raised against him after he released the famous frag movie. I remember thinking then that this guy is either a real talent, or a cheater. But unlike many others, I didn’t draw any conclusions from just watching one frag movie. Instead I followed some of his matches with SpA, and asked to see a collection of his PoV demos before we made the decision to recruit him. This convinced me and the others strongly enough that we took him in and at least right now I’m glad we did. It is my opionion that he is a genuine talent, and hopefully he will continue to grow as a player in this more experienced company.”

I was now hoping to get at the issue wether it was somehow harmful to a lot of teams when you formed this one. How many teams got robbed of their key players. I’m not sure how valid the question is, but isnt it so that Blood Pressure, SpA and illegal are now pretty much gone, or were they going to be gone anyhow?

-”I’d like to think of it as me forming a new team, in which I preferred to have kyynel and Punpu instead of kicking these two. I have nothing against them and I think they’re great guys, it’s just that it’s also that I think kyynel and Punpu as maybe the best players with their respective classes.”

-”Illegal and Blood Pressure wouldn’t have lasted alone in any case… at least not as any kind of serious team. BP just played a few matches per month for fun and Illegal had already decided to only finish ETF2L when I started sorting out the new line-up. About SpA I don’t know. If cookye himself wanted to join Power and we definitely needed a top level Finnish scout, I’d say you can’t blame us for taking him. Of course, I don’t like to take players from other active teams but in this case I don’t think we had much of a choice if we wanted to create a team with a fighting chance against the top conteders. Hopefully SpA doesn’t die because of it, at least I’ve heard their remaining members saying that they agree that cookye deserved the chance to shine in a top team.”

How important is it to have this finnish top team, to the finnish community, and to the TF2 community as a whole?

-”The TF2 community would definitely benefit from having more teams consisting entirely of players from a single nation. It gives other players from that country something to cheer for. I’d say the Finnish community is generating so many talented players today because we have two excellent gather channels, one for the experienced players and one for the players of maybe division 4 level and below. Of course the experienced players often play in the open gathers as well, and that has helped the newer ones to develop their skills hugely.”

-”We’ve also had two very successful LANs as well, and both Assembly Summer and Winter brought in a lot of new players from other games.”

I’d love as always to get deeper into the issue of developing new talents and strong communities, but to round up this interview about the PwR lineup, I’d like to play a little game of comparison. For one, could you rank 1, 2, 3, the three scout pairs from Crack Clan and the current PwR. Jambo-Glufse, Wltrs-Pizza and now Vallone-Cookye?

-”I haven’t played with or seen vallone and cookye play together enough to make such comparison. But I definitely preferred playing with Jambo and Glufse to Wltrs and Pizza. Jambo was such an intelligent player and a great caller. It’s rare to see such ability for a scout to control the flow of the game for the entire team and he’s the only one I’ve seen to do it to this level. Vallone is pretty good with that aspect of the game but both Wltrs and Pizza lacked that part.”

What about solly pairs? Moose and Punpu or Hocz and Punpu?

-”Heh, Hocz is the better fragger, and I was the better caller. Hopefully others will take my role as the main caller now. I think it would be for kyynel and vallone to do that, and also Haza when he’s playing. If they can manage that, then hocz and Punpu is definitely the optimal choice.”

On demo and medic positions we have already compared enough for today, but on a full squad basis, how do you rank this one, compared to any TF2 squad, current, or long gone, european or american?

-”I think that the players are skilled enough to be the best team in the game. It will just take some time to find the team play. That’s never going to be an easy task when you have a completely new line-up, no matter how experienced the players might be.”

After these exausting answers we find it proper to save our readers from more wall-of-texting as we now guess your eyes are either sore or outright bleeding. Adding to it, Moose had to sleep. We thank Mr. Pättö for his time and effort – but wait a moment. There are some others who might have something to say about this new line up.

What do the opponents say?

Bybben from Team Dignitas, often cited as the best scout in the game (perhaps with the exeption of the no longer playing Fojji), is first a bit confused. Apperantly he has not yet caught on to the new additions to the squad, but after a few tips and hints, he catches on and reveals his innermost secrets to us:

-”I think they will perform about as good as before, perhaps a bit better. To lose hymzi is of course a great loss, even though mafu is the replacement. Then of course, I will cry when I play against hocz+Punpu. I doubt there are any more stable soldiers than those two. It will be interesting to see how well they do when they get started.” [translated freely by yours truly]

Extremer from idk? and Lithuania. Recently coronated ETF2L champion and demoman first tries to wiggle of the hook, but after some incouragement, he agrees to comment, and writes us a nice little wall-of-text:

-”First of all, I’d like to say that I saw nothing wrong with paavi or olliii, they seemed like really good players. But I guess to make this soldier all-star combo true some sacrifices needed to be made. Next, the demo – mafu. I didn’t play TF2 back when he was in his prime, but from what I’ve heard he’s got what it takes to replace hymzi. PwR’s success depends on him getting his old form back. Cookye definitely seems like a good pick-up, after all, making the most of the American community believe he cheats is quite an achievement. Kyynel – another TF2 star coming back to the game, often considered one of the best medics in the game. As long as he stays motivated, he’ll be the backbone of PwR’s success.”

MVP (from TLR)is a player with long experience of TF”, even being a member of old Chode-squad Fracture. This is what he thinks of the new PwR:

-”Overall, I guess the new PwR lineup definately will be a contestant for the title next season. With Punpu, former soldier of the season, made a comeback on the side of hocz. Let’s see how hocz will handle the situation of not being the superstar anymore. vallone and (in the states very famous) kookye will surely be one of the best scout couples.”

-”The only problem I see for PwR is the position of the demoman: with the departure of hymzi, mafu has to proove himself as a good successor.”

Onlinegamer wishes Power Gaming good luck in their future seasons – which we hope are many.

Additional reading for the eager minds

• Team profile at ESL
• JimmyBreeze about the new line up at Cadred.org
• Americans being certain that Cookye is an aimbotter