Behind The Scenes - Brokenshard - “Bo1’s are wrong, you don’t learn anything from Bo1’s ”

Timestamps :
00:00 Introduction
01:50 LCS Finals
05:35 Thoughts on the EU Region overall
07:30 MSI and IWCI

First Blood Podcast

10:00 how did come up with the podcast
11:37 What did you like about that idea
12:40 did you thought about talking about other Esports ?

Challenger Scene
13:26 What do you think about the current challenger teams
14:57 Why do the teams disband
16:15 What do you think about the current format?
19:40 Predictions for the relegations matches
20:30 are there any upcoming teams you want to talk about ?

Team Dignitas
23:00 How was your experience as a Jungler for Dig.EU
27:00 How did it come to coaching ?
28:20 what is your coaching phylosophy ?
30:00 Did your previous coaching experience influenced that decision ?
   Prolly's coaching
33:30 What can we expect now from Dig.Eu ?

35:00 Twitter Questions
42:00 Fun Questions

Alex Ich subbing in for TDK on LCS Summer Promotion Tournament

Alex Ich subbing in for TDK on

LCS Summer Promotion Tournament

Former Gambit Gaming midlaner Alexey “Alex Ich“ Ichetovkin is in talks to be a substitute for Team Dragon Knights in the NA LCS promotion tournament.  He would be replacing korean midlaner Seo “Kyle” Ji-Sun.

This move comes after Kyle’s rather disappointing performance in the Grand Finals of the NACS playoffs against Enemy Esports.  Kyle’s small champion pool  and somewhat unreliable playstyle have been difficult for TDK to work around this split, he played Lissandra all 4 of his final games.  Yet, despite this, TDK managed to land themselves in the finals of the challenger series and it will be exciting to see how they perform with the legendary playmaking mid.

Alex, currently on Team “Misfits” alongside Team Dignitas jungler Alberto “Crumbz“ Rengifo, has subbed for Team Dragon Knights before.  He, along with Misfits support Maria “Yuno” Creveling (playing on ADC) ended the weekend with two best KDA’s in the challenger series.  While Alex’s mechanics seem to be closer to their previous glory than many critics have suggested, he has yet to be truly tested.  TDK is willing to stake their organisation’s future that the Russian still has what it takes to help them get into the LCS in one high-stakes, all-or-nothing, do-or-die best of 5.  I, for one, am eager to see how Alex performs against top-notch Winterfox mid-laner Eugene “Pobelter” Park.

Promotion Tournament on the 25. or 26 April.

I will be interviewing tomorrow Ale Ich and Misfits owner Chris Badawi.

 Written by - Alexandre "DrPuppet" Weber

Behind The Scenes #1 Duncan"Thooorin"Shields Interview - "I think the CS:GO scene is better than the LoL pro scene"

Hello Guys,
I made a few weeks ago an Interview with Duncan"Thooorin"Shields about the state of eSports and Counter Strike Global Offensive, you should take a look !

What is Prismata -could it be the next eSports Game?

Other night I was browsing through Kripparian's youtube page and I stumbled upon a video called
"[Prismata] Kripp Teaches & Plays Prismata" and all I could think about was "What is Prismata?"

Prismata is an easy-to-learn, fast-paced hybrid strategy game that borrows familiar elements from real-time strategy games, collectible card games, and tabletop strategy games, combining them in a radical new way. One might call it turn based Starcraft, just without a map. What makes this game different from a card game, like Hearthstone or Magic The Gathering is that instead of having a deck of cards you have workers and build orders. In your rounds you spend your resources, build out your economy and battle.
All the game mechanics are beautifully animated and if you aren't hyped already you should check out the Prismata trailer.

Basic Gameplay :

In every round of Prismata you get your set of basic workers and a random set of dynamic workers. You will get the same basic workers and a different set of dynamic workers every game. Dynamic workers are more expensice than the basic workers and bring in stratefic diversity to the game. However, to be able to play your workers you need to build up a solid economical income. To be able to do this, every player start the game with 6 Drones and 2 Engineers on the board. In Prismata you have four different types of ressources: Gold, Lightning Bolt, blood, sapphire and emerald. They are produced by certain basic workers and are needed to build more expensive workers. Drones gives you gold, engineer gives you lightning bolts, Condout emeralds, Blastforge sapphires and the Animus gives you blood at the start of your turn, actually it's pretty simple. Anyways all resources except for the gold and the emerald disappear at the end of your turn, that means if you didn't use your gold it will carry over to the next round, but your blood,sapphires and lightning bolts not. The combat system in Prismata is as easy to understand as the economic system. You need to understand two things first. Number one- there are blockers and non blocker units. Number two- there are Units that can regenerate their life and there are some units that cannot.
Droids are, for example blocker units and they have one blue cross (blue cross is the symbol for regenerable in the game), but if you use your drone to generate gold you won't be able to block an attack with this drone on your opponent's turn. Besides that there are units that gives you attack each turn. Anyways what differentiates Prismata's combat system to a lot of other games is that you can chose your block order. Deciding your build order wisely can win you games, then in order to win the game you need to destroy your enemies workers and resources. That's basically how the game works but if you want to learn more about Prismata's gameplay you should check out these two videos.





Developer : 

The Lunarch Studios is an upcoming Game Studio from Waterloo Canada. Lunarch studios was conceived in 2010 by a group of competitive gaming enthusiasts. The guys behind the Lunarch Studios were annoyed by clunky "pay to win" type of games and decided to go on the journey to create their own game. They were all MIT PhD candidates and used their free time to build up a game from scratch. Eventually they all left MIT to bring their game to the market and to where they are now. What is so interesting in Lunarch Studios is definetely their market strategy. They gave out alpha keys to popular Hearthstone streamers like Trump, Kripparian, Reynad and Kolento to host a small Hearthstone and Prismata Tournament. This is in my opinion a very interesting way to promote your game by hosting a Hearthstone tournament! If you want to check out some of the VODS click here.


So if you want to support Lunarch Studios, they are hosting a Kickstarter campaign to fund Prismata, if you like the idea of the game be sure to support them and if you want to stay tuned be sure to let them a like on Facebook, follow them Twitter and subscribe to them on Youtube! They also have their own Subreddit, go check it out!

Who will be the new curse mid lane ? Thought process of Curses Roster moves.

You might remember the Team Curse back in the days when Liquid122 played the support role himself and wasn't their manager. 
Or you might remember the era of CLG-rejects or the time when they made the first player import when they acquired Gambit Gamings Edward.
Or maybe you just know them as "forever 4th Curse".
You might think Curse is just contracting overhyped players or you might think "Piglet is just another Korean" thing like that, but there is a lot more thought behind Curses Roster changes than only signing a top level player. 
First of all let's consider that they only contract top players.
I mean Xpecial and Piglet, they are both one of the best in their respected position. 
They aren't only top level and experienced players, they are also really hardworking and smart players.
If we look back to these two players Curse contracted, Xpecial proved to be the right choice and I have the feeling that Piglet will fit in well and they will form one of NA's strongest Bot Lanes.
Now with Voyboy gone, will Curse be able to make such a smart roster change again ?
In the past Curse proved to always contract top level players, that are one of the best in their respectitive position, if it didn't work out they way it should have.
The Curse Organization didn't hesitate to make changes to make it work out. There has been a rumour around that Curse is thinking about signing LMQ star Mid Laner Yu "XiaoWeiXiao" Xian. 
If we consider that roster change, we might think "Yey, XiaoWeiXiao is a great player and he is one of the best choices around",
but we shouldn't forget that he is still contracted with LMQ and nobody can say for sure if he will stay with LMQ or part ways with them and join Curse. 
However if Curse can't contract XiaoWeiXiao they can look at their amateur team Curse Academy and move Lae-Young “Keane” Jang to the main roster if Curse Academy doesn't make it into the LCS.
Team Curse has a lot of open possibilities and there are a lot more talented free agents around that I'm not mentioning in this article. 
Anyways there is one more thing in common in all of these past roster changes in the Curse Line up, they are not only top players, they are also top rated personalities and have a huge marketing value.
Liquid is doing a great job with it, he looks to sign players that excel in all of this aspects Skill, work mentality and marketing value.
They are top rated players, really big personalities and hard working people. 
Combining all of these aspects He has a group of really solid players, that can be formed into a top team. 
Something he proved this 2014 season with the latest Curse Line Up. 
It doesn't matter for me who Liquid122 actually choses to be the new Curse Mid Laner I'm really excited to see what he will bring to the team, what about you ?

TBSkyen In Depth Interview - How He Started Drawing and the Importance of Content Creators in eSports

DrPuppet: Hey here is Ale "DrPuppet" from First World Pictures, I'm doing today

an Interview with TB Skyen for Summit eSports, Skyen would you like to introduce yourself first?

TBSkyen: Sure thing. I'm TBSkyen, I'm a Danish cartoonist. I draw a webcomic called Caster Comix and generally make myself a nuisance about esports everywhere I can.

DrPuppet: Hello TB Skyen, let's start off with the interview, So you got invited to Kieran Griffiths Show "Rift Talk" was this your first interview? and how was it ? :D (http://youtu.be/oYBqeJT64oU)

TBSkyen: It was my first interview, yes - at least as "the guy who does Caster Comix." There was that one time in the high school newspaper they interviewed me about the annual musical, of which THANKFULLY no footage has survived.

It was great, Kieran is a nice guy and it was fun to just sit around and have a conversation. The interview is less than half of it, actually, we sat around chatting for a good long while after.

DrPuppet: Sad day for us, I would love to read that Highschool interview one day, anyways for those who didn't watch „Rift Talk“ do you want to tell to those how you got into drawing ?

TBSkyen: Well, I wouldn't say I ever got "into" drawing so much as I didn't get OUT of it. Give any child a crayon and they will turn any available surface into art, most people tend to grow out of it because it's "childish" and kids want to be grown ups.

But anyway, when I was 11 years old I read Dragon Ball for the first time and got WAY into it. Like, WAAAAY into it. I came across an absolutely terrible "How To Draw Manga" book that I picked up and that was pretty much it.

It was absolutely shit in terms of... pretty much everything from anatomy to expression to character-design, but it was enough to get me started. The rest was practise and imitation of new things.

DrPuppet: I can only confirm that, I did the same myself but never got really good at it but you mention you read Dragon Ball did you read a lot of Mangas at that time?

TBSkyen: There wasn't a lot of manga to read in Denmark at the time, it was a pretty recent import. Europe has a HUGE comics-market already, mostly Belgian, French and Italian comics, so for a tiny country like Denmark publishers took a long time translating things for the Danish market. Just not enough demand.

I did pick up pretty much whatever manga was available though - albeit after Dragon Ball, the next thing that came out was a shojo manga called DNAngel that I couldn't really get into 'cause it had no explosions or screaming people powering up. Some more manga followed once Dragon Ball got popular, and I picked those up until I was about 16 or so and found out that EVERY MANGA IN THE WORLD was available for free on the Internet.

Matt Demers Interview - Reality of eSports Journalism