GameReplays is proud to bring you an interview with the esteemed Aniketos. We took some time out of his busy schedule to ask him a few questions.
GR: Before we start with the interview could you tell us a bit about yourself, age, gaming career, history and achievements?
Aniketos: Well I'm 22 years old my hobbies are playing video games obviously, martial arts systema, boxing, mma etc and playing soccer not watching. My first online Real Time Strategy was
Red Alert 2 where I was top 100 but could not really advance higher because I was one of the few who didn't use a map hack. After that I started playing
Warcraft 3 and was top 100 on the Northrend server and I'm proud to say I actually managed to win from Grubby 1 time in his "newb" days. From
Warcraft 3 I went to play some
Command and Conquer Generals but stopped playing it three weeks later because China was so brokenly overpowered and it got boring after getting a score of 185 wins and 3 losses. The game didn't feel competitive enough and happily
The Frozen Throne expansion finally came out so I went back to good old
Warcraft 3 . At a certain time I actually stopped playing RTS games and started playing some shooters like
Counter-strike . But my shooter days were over when
Company Of Heroes was finally released and I had a competitive game to play again. In
Company Of Heroes I managed to win few tournaments and even got a 88 win streak with Wehrmacht which stood there for like 2 years until just recently when they released the new 2.4 patch.
And finally I got to DoW2 after playing the Beta. The concept of hero just like in
Warcraft 3 combined with
Company Of Heroes style mechanics just really appealed to me.
GR: What made Space Marines your race of choice to play as?
Aniketos: I love unit preservation and having tough durable units. The concept of few marines against whole hordes of Orks or Tyranids is just exactly what I wanted to see. I'm constantly trying to get the most units killed while losing nothing. My current achievement is 149 kills to no losses against real opponents.
GR: How much time do you spend playing matches a day and how do you find the time? At the latest stats you've played an astounding 402 ranked games.
Aniketos: Actually its 500+ right now you probably didn't count the team games. The thing is
Dawn of War 2 games don't last all to long. While in
Company of Heroes an ownage game would last 15-20 minutes in
Dawn of war 2 an ownage game lasts 5-7 minutes. Seeing as the current auto-match is broken and I almost always get matched against low TS players most games are over in like 5 minutes. I sometimes manage to play 10-15 games and hour easily. Just after the release of
Dawn of war 2 Steam used to show that I played about 30 hours a week. Right now it's more around 10 hours a week.
And my secret of actually being able to play so many hours and do all my other stuff school, work, sports etc is basically the fact that I only sleep 5 hours a day. I also don't really waste time watching television plus I seem to be able to learn all lesson material during the classes, so I almost never have to learn at home.
GR: Any thoughts on the next patch and current metagame? And what do you think this will mean for all our bubble boys out there?
Aniketos: The current metagame is quite unbalanced to be honest. Your best choices if you want to play competitively is to either play Eldar or Tyranids. Eldar only if you have high enough micromanagement skill. All other races will just get crushed by the Tyranids.
I just hope that in the upcoming patch they also secretly nerfed more from Tyranids side. Because right now almost every unit they have is overpowered in some way.
And I'm glad they are nerfing the bubble boys because this will mean that Eldar would not be able to survive with 3 guardians the whole game because of the endless mana Warlock. And this also might stimulate those Hammer Force Commanders' Bubble boys to actually try other gear.
GR: If you could nerf and/or buff any unit in the game what would it be and why?
Aniketos: Nerf the Zoanthrope, really Orks can't do anything against it. It one shots almost every squad, it does 1000 + damage to Nobs and it needs no setup time. It doesn't hit own units. It can snipe vehicle disable in the fog of war. And it has a bubble...
Make it more like the ranged setup weapons like the D-Canon or Heavy devastator plasma. Make it hit your own units, have a setup time, shorter vehicle disable range and lower damage versus infantry.
GR: We know it's hard being one of the two people to play first in the Battle for Supremacy and even harder to go out first. If you could've changed anything in your strategy in those games what would it now knowing the result?
Aniketos: Well there is not much to change really it's all about getting those falcons down in time and harassing the gens. But I could have used a totally different strategy I have with the apothecary, which consist of getting one assault squad, two tactical squads with bazooka's and two snipers. Which works very well versus the falcon and the Eldar bubble boy. But the problem with this strategy is that it makes it harder to harass enemy gens and we all know what happens if Eldar can tech up.
GR: Who has been your hardest opponent to date?
Aniketos: In
Dawn of War 2 it's most likely Stellviax or Sky Tear from ESL.
GR: Any tips for the budding gamer who wants to get high in the ranks? Not disclosing any training strategies of course.
Aniketos: It's very important to actually know every faction. One wise man once said: "Know yourself and your enemy and you will not lose in 100 battles". If you know what the enemy can build at what time in the game and what it actually cost him to lose unit A or unit B you can always be sure of what to expect from your enemy.
GR: Any final words that you want to say to the GameReplays community?
Aniketos: Yeah, wub my replay (joking)!
GR: Thanks for the interview!
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