Hap: "Slashug to Luminosity is going to be one to look out for"
Following his appearance as a caster at last weekend’s OGA Pit R6 Minor and ahead of today’s Benelux Season 4 Finals, we spoke with Hap to ask about what we saw there and what’s next for R6 esports.
After a short career playing in Benelux R6 events near the end of 2017, Stijn "Hap" Hapers quickly moved to casting the region’s leagues, where he has stayed since. In the year and a half since then, he has lent his voice to four Benelux Seasons and numerous smaller Dutch LAN events, such as the DreamHack Rotterdam tournament within the Benelux region and has provided English-language casts of other national events such as ESL Italia Winter 2018 and 6 French League 2019 tournaments.
Hap playing for Windigo eSports in 2017
Outside of national events, Hap has also been involved in the Europe-wide CCS Women’s League and Seasons 9 and 10 of the Challenger League, as well as the European and North American qualifiers to the Allied Minor event last May. This December, however, saw two of the biggest events in his R6 casting career as he attended the OGA Pit Minor last weekend and is due to cast the Season 4 Finals of the Benelux League later today.
We caught up with Hap during day two of the OGA Minor to ask about the tournament, the upcoming Benelux Finals and what’s in store for R6 in 2020:
Firstly, can you introduce yourself to us?
Hello, my name is Hap, I’m one of the Benelux casters here at OGA.
Sternab, Hap, and Demo on the analyst couch at the OGA Pit Minor
This is your first international event, how are you finding it?
I have done the Allied qualifiers in Hamburg but yeah, this is the first actual LAN event I’m doing internationally, so I’m very excited. We’ve seen some very good matches so far.
How does it compare casting players of this calibre to the Benelux or Challenger League?
The main difference between the Minor and Challenger League is, of course, we’re on a LAN environment and play styles are very different. We see a lot more aggressive plays coming out, especially since we have LATAM teams here. I’m only used to Europe and the playstyle of Europe is more passive.
We also see more higher-level plays and counter-strategising coming in, something you don’t always see at Benelux, for example. It’s starting to come up more and more but there’s definitely still a lack of that in the region. But overall, just higher gameplay which makes it a lot easier to get hyped for the matches as they swing to stuff you don’t ever expect to happen.
Other than Paluh, is there any other player that surprised you at the event?
Pengu did really well on his first map, it’s just unlucky that he got knocked out early on against MIBR. MIBR and Liquid are really showing up right now, it’s so crazy to see how they just came in here basically not expected to win against BDS or G2, but based on individual performances on the day they’ve just launched through the competition.
I don’t know if I want to put down any player but if I’m putting it on the teams, Liquid and MIBR are here to contest for the title. And then there’s Paluh, yeah, he’s going to be the MVP already, purely based on those 27 kills in that wild game.
Paluh and his teammates' final statistics
Out of all the transfers we’ve seen over the last few months, which do you think will improve the team the most?
Slashug to Luminosity is going to be one to look out for; you saw it yesterday (Friday) as well, he’s such an experienced player that him bringing in all the experience to Luminosity will definitely see them going up. Canadian as well, the actual IGL coming into Spacestation definitely shows a change in play style versus MIBR -- it’ll still take them a little bit to get comfortable with it, but as soon as they are, they’re definitely going to be a top-two contender for the next season of the Pro League.
We just saw all three EU teams go out on day one; was this more due to bad performance from the EU teams or the other teams showing up?
We’re used to getting like four EU teams in the semi-finals of the Major, so it’s kind of a thing where we have the feeling that EU is above all the other regions -- and in some ways it is -- but as soon as they get too confident or too easy on themselves as they’re going into the match as favourites... (I’m pretty sure G2 had that, BDS not so much, but Secret was the favourite on Strafe as well.) So it might be a bit of overconfidence that got to them as well as stellar performances by the teams that they played against, the LATAM teams especially.
The results for this event as of day two, via @rainbow6br
Trust are the clear favourites for next week’s Benelux LAN. Which teams do you think has the best chance to take them down?
Honestly, either FACT or Epsilon (ex-Aura) are going to have a good chance. I’m not sure how things are gonna happen at LAN, I don’t want to be the one bringing bad news here, but Trust has dropped out of the Challenger League so there’s a big motivational thing going on. We saw the same thing with PENTA, when they dropped out of the Pro League they lost their French League match against Izidream as we saw the mentality being broken right there.
They’ve also been trialling a new player I heard, so they’ve not been playing with the full-five that they played with for the last Challenger League and Benelux seasons. So, it definitely depends on how they will step up, because I think that definitely Epsilon and FACT will have an opportunity to beat them if Trust doesn’t bring their A-game and if they’re not fully focussed on the game.
Note: Trust Gaming will be playing the Benelux Finals with their analyst, Easy, substituted into the lineup
The EU Six Invitational is coming up where we’ll see G2, Secret, forZe, BDS, Vitality, Chaos and a load of up and coming teams. Who would you favour to take this?
You can’t say that! EU is the wild-west right now, it could literally be anyone. Whoever has a good day could be winning it, there’s no favourite as there’s so many PL and CL teams -- EU is so close. We just saw G2, the favourites here get knocked down in the first day so that’s not going to be looking good for them for the EU Qualifiers, but it might have just been a bad day for them or something else, so I don’t know.
Is there any current tier-three team we should be looking out for Season 11 of the Challenger League?
There’s a lot of teams actually, just watch the Spanish Nationals, it’s stacked. Mkers from Italy, they’re definitely going to have a good shot at it. MnM from ESL Prem is such a good team as well, they definitely have a good opportunity to make it into the Challenger League, but maybe not all the way. I don’t think a team is going to be going all the way to win CL and PL again this season or the next season, but we’re definitely going to be looking at another really really stacked Challenger League coming up.
Next weekend is also the US Nationals, while we haven’t seen the new rosters in action yet, which do you favour?
Reminder: This was answered last weekend before the USN kicked-off during day two of the Minor.
I think SSG. They’ve got the experience here and they can scrim intercontinentally here. They can prepare the best considering if they get knocked out next against LG as they still have two days to bootcamp with G2, Secret, NORA-Rengo -- whoever. They’re definitely in a good spot right now, just before the USN so as soon as they fly back, they’re going to be ready considering the experience they just got here, so SSG is going to be strong there.
The USN schedule, via @R6esports
This event has had quite a few new additions we haven’t seen at previous Minors such as double-elimination, the best-of-five final, and it being a closed event. What do you think its impact is like and which would you like to see at future Minors?
Let’s go through them one-by-one. First, we’ve got the double-elimination which I think is a very good change because, for example in the quarter-finals, teams have to go all-in or they’re going out, while when we go over to the semis you’re going to get an extra life so you can do some risky things and see some other play styles come out as well just to test things out and try to catch teams off guard because they know they have that “1up”, they can go down to that lower bracket. It’s a welcome change that I would want to see in more Minors.
With the Bo5 Final, we’ve seen it before at the Six Invitational. With the double-elimination, the winner’s bracket team getting an extra map is going to make sure it doesn’t go on for too long. It is a Minor, of course, and teams will often be playing on the same day. I think it’s interesting, we’ll have to see how it’s going to play out and what the players think of it after it happens.
Closed event; that’s a controversial one, because for the players this is actually good because we’re at the same hotel as they were playing so they don’t have travel stress and stuff like that. So, for the players this will be optimising their performance as they don’t have to travel 40 minutes to the venue, so there’s 40 minutes a day they actually save for preparation. The prep rooms are actually on the same floor or just one up from the actual game, so for the players closed events are especially good for them. For the viewers, not so much. They want to be here, right? So that’s the question, do you want a lot of spectators to make the spectators happy or do you want to make the players happy to get the best possible games that you could get, so that’s what they need to decide.
Croatia and Split, have you had time to look around the town and how have you found it?
We’ve had some time to walk around but nothing too much considering the 17 hour day we had yesterday. Maybe tomorrow, tomorrow’s going to be a shorter day so we can go out and look around the town. I know Fluke has been here a lot so he may be able to show us some nice spots, I definitely hope so.
Finally, 2020 R6. What are you looking forward to the most?
Six Invitational 2020 announcements.
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To find out more about the events click here for out OGA coverage, here for the USN coverage and here for the Benelux preview. Also to find out more about Hap, check out our previous interview with him here and be sure to keep an eye out here at SiegeGG for further interviews and coverage.
