Dirt Nap Gaming League of Legends Team Places Second at SoCal League Open LAN Event

Ntee: Can you please tell me a little about yourself and your role on the team.

PawnGypsy: My name is Adrian “PawnGypsy” Mandee and I am a freshman in college attending University of California, Irvine. I play top lane for the team and my favorite champions to play are Lee Sin and Riven.

Ntee: Who are the other members on the team and can you tell me a little about them.

PawnGypsy: The other members of the team include: Chris “LovelyChris” Lee who is a freshman in college and plays the role of the team jungler (prefers Udyr or Mao Kai), Tony “Flappy Bearfish” Pham who is a junior in high school and plays the team’s AP mid (prefers Anivia or Gragas), Jimmy “LoopyNess” Le who is a freshman in college and plays the team’s support (prefers Janna or Leona), and Kenny “Raging Kenny” Mac who is a junior in high school and plays the role of an AD Carry for the team (prefers Ashe or Corki).

Ntee: How did the team come together?

PawnGypsy: Well, I knew LovelyChris and LoopyNess from high school, we were all pretty close friends. We started playing League of Legends together and with our other friends as well. After playing with some of our friends, we ended up meeting Flappy Bearfish and Raging Kenny when we started to realize we enjoyed playing together. Here we started to enter small tournaments here and there and play together for fun when we realized we can play at a competitive level together with enough practice. That’s when I decided to step it up and become the team’s leader and try and take it to the next level.

Ntee: How did you end up representing Dirt Nap Gaming?

PawnGypsy: We faced a team named Rage Gaming in eSports Monthly and I ended up talking to the team’s leader a lot. Through our various conversations I was told about Dirt Nap Gaming which is when I started talking to smaCkexe. After joining the community and playing for some time, we ended up being sponsored by and representing Dirt Nap Gaming.

Ntee: So from my understanding, the Dirt Nap Gaming team won second place at a LAN event at USC. Can you please tell me more about the event and some of the competition you faced?

PawnGypsy: We played at the SoCal League Open at USC where we ended up seeing and playing against some well-known players in the League of Legends competitive scene. We ended up placing second in the tournament so needless to say, we won most of our matches but the toughest match we had in particular ended up being our first match. In this match we faced a mixture of mTw.NA, 4NOT.Fire, and former EG member ClakeyD. In that particular game, the enemy team ended up trying to change the metagame up a little bit by sending an AD Carry/Support mid, and swapping that lane over. We responded by sending an AD Carry mid as well and running double AD with Vlad as the solo lane. We ended up doing well early game but positioning and passive playing allowed the enemy to catch up. That’s when we decided we needed to rethink our team fight strategy and started to focus down the players who did the most damage (in this case I remember it was Atlanta). By repurposing our strategy, we were able to take the lead and win the match!

The tournament followed a Round Robin format and with our toughest match past us, we were able to play consistent enough to place second. Every single team was respectful and I was able to befriend a lot of the well-known players in hopes of being able to scrim them in the future.

Ntee: Sounds like you guys are shaping up to enter the competitive scene with a big bang. How would you describe your team’s playstyle?

PawnGypsy: We see our team’s playstyle as a mixture of CLG, m5, and TSM. Similar to CLG, when dragon spawns, we don’t necessarily go for it unless we feel we have the clear advantage to do so. If we don’t think we can grab dragon and make it out clean, we won’t bother going for it. We do try to play aggressive in the jungle and use team synergy and coordination similar to m5, as this was something we found very impressive and effective. Last but not least, we also believe and follow TSM’s strat of “gank mid, win the game.” Here LovelyChris ganks mid often and tries to get “Flappy Bearfish” which gives our team a good advantage. I’d also describe our play style to be aggressive in terms of harassment but passive to the point where we won’t jeopardize losing creep score for a kill in most cases.

Ntee: Sounds like you guys are well aware of your strengths and weaknesses and try to take advantage of the team synergy you’ve built up to go for the win. With second place in the SoCal League Open, what are your team’s plans for the future?

PawnGypsy: After placing second in the LAN tournament, we decided that we want to try and break through into the competitive scene. As of right now we are competing in the IPL5 qualifiers and are trying to do well in hopes of being given the chance to go and competitive with the popular League of Legends teams at IPL5.

Ntee: That seems like it would be a tough feat to accomplish and I wish you guys the best of luck (we at Dirt Nap Gaming all do). That being said, what are you guys doing in order to prepare?

PawnGypsy: Well everyone has different schedules so we end up practicing late at night around 9:00pm or 10:00pm PDT but we try to get in at least one game every day. On weekends we try to practice more, for example, this upcoming weekend, we plan on competing in Go4LoL. It isn’t as much practice as I’d like for our team to have but it seems to be good enough for now.

Ntee: That’s great. Well with second place under your belt and constant practice, it seems like you guys are on the route to success. Is there any way fans and those who are interested can get to know you guys or play with you guys?

PawnGypsy: Thanks!To answer your question, yes! I stream quite a bit (stream link) and LovelyChris (stream link) is beginning to as well. Fans and those interested can show support by watching us while we stream. Additionally, Chris and Kenny both enjoy participating in the Dirt Nap Gaming community Game Nights which take place on Tuesdays and Thursdays if our team isn’t scrimming. You can get a chance to play with them there. You can also follow me some of us on Twitter. I'm @fubamandee, LoopyNess is @jimmynle and LovelyChris is @fukinchris.

Ntee: Thanks for taking the time out to answer a few questions and rest assured we at Dirt Nap Gaming support your future endeavors.