i55 Preparations

With only a month and a half to go, i55 is looming clear on the horizon like a spontaneous KnOxXx un-retirement. With so much diversity among the attending teams it is easy to wonder how some of these players, experienced though they may be, are handling the pressure and getting ready for the challenges that await them. As such, I have managed to bring together some exclusive insight into how teams are feeling, how they're performing and how they're preparing for LAN.

Froyotech

Last year's defending champions and miners of the world's finest European salt, Froyotech are confident going in despite their frequent roster changes. While their recent decision to add the $1300 perk to their fundraiser of playing Pocket for them at i55 was controversial, Shitwizard has been a great pickup for them and is considered by most of the community to be an easy upgrade to ash. However, though he is confident as ever, Bant "gr4nny" Vincent has some reservations about their new team-mate and their chances in England.

"While Shitwizard's average of 29 airshots and 30k damage per game has certainly been impressive, we still aren't sure if even our newest roster can match up to the sheer force of Euro gimmicks. A little known fact about Wizard is that he really does have magical powers, so we asked him to conjure up some of these gimmicks for us to use at LAN, but unfortunately he actually is a shit wizard so instead of the Epsilon backcaps we were hoping for he only managed to give us a full-team 'bind s explode' strat and something about AYOGURL. Despite this setback I fully expect to take home another LAN trophy, which is great because I was running out of paperweights."

Not all is looking good for 4G however, as crucially they will no longer be here with lansky at the event; as such, they are expected to lose the YouTube hits war to Sideshow's GoPro and even with a victory in the tournament they can no longer win in our hearts.

Ascent

North America's second competing team, Ascent, are also brimming with confidence after updating to their long-awaited Beta version, having finally moved out of their Alfa release. Having recently made the landmark achievements of beating a weakened Froyotech in the ESEA main season and narrowly avoiding losing on an American server to a 140-ping Russian and two Black Boxes, Big Fans of Ninjanick's Surfs are filled with energy and more than ready to ride rando's eyebrows to victory. Team leader Nick "TheFragile" Leon had the following to say, carefully translated from a series of meowing and sexual innuendos.

"Preparation? Dude, this game is easy, what do we need to prepare for?"

When pressed for further comment and after several minutes of replying only with various references to "twinks", he elaborated as follows:

"Yeah we beat 4G in the main season and of course beat Tyler Morgan in the easiest showmatch of my life so we've basically won those matches already, so hopefully the Insomnia staff will see some sense and just give us the wins by default on those. We did lose to those guys with the cereal or whatever I guess but we've just shrugged that one off and it was a really easy loss anyway."

Nick then called this the "easiest interview of my life". When asked how much Pyro he plans to play at the event, Ma3la claimed that he will play "all of it", which European Twitch chat has since responded to with "lol hl".

Classic Mixup

Former world champions and perhaps America's greatest hope of winning the event, Mixup are a team loved by countless fans across the globe and studded with star players. This team needs no introduction, so let me cut straight to my exclusive interview with team leader and true legend of the game Michael "Platinum" Miles.

"What the hell? Mixup disbanded like two seasons ago man, what's this interview about? How did you even get in my house?"

With this shocking revelation, all hope for America at i55 is officially dead. When asked for his thoughts on the Mixup disband and how he feels it will impact the event, Seagull flew away with my fish and chips. He later elaborated on this, adding "caw". This fantastic Roamer play is expected to appear in the fragumentary, set to be released sometime around the heat death of the universe.

Reason Gaming

One of the strongest challengers to America's world championship, Reason Gaming have successfully cut their way to the top and Kaidus is set to finally become a world champion without having to join Epsilon to do it, having the genius leadership necessary to instead just get Epsilon to join him. Kaidus has been criticised for this mercenary attitude towards team-building, but has denied all allegations. Replacing skeej, wltrs and zoob with Mike, KnOxXx and now schocky has allowed Reason to take Season 21's ETF2L championship and tap in to the old Epsilon magic; unfortunately for Kaidus, this magic was depleted when Mike and KnOxXx threw i52.

Reason's preparation has perhaps been some of the most interesting, since as well as their standard practice of duct-taping Kaidus' wrist back together before and after every match they have also been engaging in some unconventional rituals to up their chances. I spoke to Mike about what they've been doing; tune in to TFTV Radio Cymru for the untranslated version.

"Well, since me, KnOxXx and schocky have already won a world championship before, we thought that trying to recreate what we did at i49 seemed to make sense. We could maybe have done that with demo reviews, scrims and all that but instead we've gone for the much more sensible approach of holding a séance to communicate with the ghost of Epsilon's success. We tried a few different ways to summon it, like the standard method of sacrificing Highlander players to Hildreth, but we had the most success by saying 'Mitsy' three times in a mirror. Once it showed up we couldn't really understand what it was saying so we spent a few hours trying to translate but eventually we gave up when we realised it was just talking about League of Legends. Even though it didn't work I still think our chances are good and I look forward to getting carried by Hafficool at i55."

It is worth noting that despite their chances of winning the event being very good Reason are still underdogs, in the sense that they finished under Dogs in their main season fixture.

The Last Resort

HYS' rag-tag band of oldies and newbies that looks like it was made by taking the leftovers of the post-season shuffle and picking names out of a hat, TLR have shocked the ETF2L community by doing the impossible: taking first place in the main season without a single ex-Epsilon player on their roster. Shocked, that is, until everyone remembered that HYS played two games with Epsilon in Season 18, showing conclusively that there truly is no escape. With two fairly new faces to Prem, this being Serotone's first season and the third for NiCO Mum's Hand, TLR's surprisingly dominant season and second-place finish in the playoffs have already established them as the best eclectic mix of nationalities since Eurovision and arguably with better singing.

After some initial difficulties (do you have any idea how hard it is getting a translator who speaks Parseltongue?) I managed to talk to HYS about how they've been getting ready for the event, which has revealed surprising levels of commitment.

"I think we might honestly be the most prepared out of all teams attending. We haven't announced this before now but we are actually the first team to have been boot-camping; we've used the fundraiser money well and we're all currently playing from a cottage in Coventry. Everyone's coping well for the most part, but I guess there have been a few hiccups. ShaDowBurn read the new patch notes the other day and he's been curled up in a ball in the corner since he saw the Black Box changes, we're trying to tell him how good the new Liberty Launcher is to cheer him up but he just keeps chanting "why" to himself in Russian so we'll have to get back to you on that one. Herr_P has inexplicably missed a few scrims too, he keeps disappearing and saying something about 'training'. Other than that the only real problem is eating, honestly; we do have NiCO making us fine French cuisine but we have to eat it off of our mousepads, since Serotone keeps dropping all the plates."

While the leadership of HYS seems to be paying off for TLR, with so many players who have no LAN experience under his wing it is vitally important that he becomes well-versed with the Heimlich manoeuvre before the event.

nerdRage

Formerly Europe's most delicious team, nerdRage have gotten over their mildly embarrassing cereal killer phase and picked up a sponsor for i55, leaving them no longer directly named after star Scout tonythetiger but rather after his CS:GO sessions with Sideshow. nR began the season in suitably rigged fashion, not having to face TLR or Reason until the last two weeks. We can only assume this has resulted from Permzilla deciding that if he can't kill TF2 he at least wants to kill Prem. Come the end of the season, however, nR were unable to take more than one map out of their games against TLR and Reason, getting absolutely smashed by the latter thanks to the equally smashed monitor of Toxic Tony. This end to the season, having come third in the Premiership playoffs to boot, has left things looking uncertain for nerdRage despite their promising showmatch victory over shrugger + 5 but tonythetiger is still bursting with confidence and crunchy breakfast goodness.

"Coming into playoffs as third seed and finishing in third too was a bit of a let-down but it hasn't changed too much. nerdRage have been a great sponsor, they were our immediate second choice after Kellogg's turned us down, which was disappointing because I promised to stream while wearing a tiger costume and everything but I guess they don't know good marketing when they see it. We're doing grrrrrrrreat as a team, though a few of us individually are having problems. Now that he's played every other class in Prem, Zebbo's decided he wants to play Demo to complete his collection and he's had a few arguments over that with ryb but we all know he'll change his mind by next week anyway. Flippy's also having a few difficulties as he's spent the last few weeks trying to find the scope on his Scattergun. Those problems aside though, I still think that one Brit, three Frenchies and two Swedes is a winning combination as it gives us just the right balance of memes, aim assistance and actually being good at the game."

When asked how he would spend his i55 winnings, Tony said that he would live up to his name and use the money to launch his own cereal brand. I have been asked to inform the readers of this article that AY-Os are "gurlicious" and "a great way to start the day".

Fundraisers

With the event so close, remember to donate to i55.tf/#production to bring eSports' most essential man and his camera to England, i55.tf/#froyotech to send Shade's cat to LAN and i55.tf/#potato to send a team of highly-trained agents to kidnap Admirable and force him to cast the grand finals.