One theme we see with most of Axslav's team KoD is that they value team chemistry and friendship far more than how the team is actually doing - which could be one of many reasons why Yane and Kowi are no longer with the team.

Not that they didn't get along, but winning at any cost is not what the team is about. There are few other examples of this in competitive E-Sports (though Fnatic is a great example of friends sticking together).

As he shows with me, Axslav doesn't sacrifice for the game - afterall, it is just a game.

About how many hours a week (on average) do you spend playing WC3?

Normally I spend about 2 hours a week playing solo games and probably 4 hours a week playing team games with people. Then depending on what leagues are running, I typically have between 1 and 4 league matches a week.

During season 6 however, I played a ton more, probably averaging 4 hours of solo games a day.

Did you make top 6?

No, I was in the top 6 but the last day of the tournament I was playing really terrible and lost 500 experience dropping me down to 9th (If I didn't play at all that last day I would have ended 7th which might have been enough depending what blizzard does with multi-user accounts and/or people can't show up).

What is your practice regimen like? What do you do to train, who do you train with?

Well, besides season 6, I will generally get motivated when an important team match is coming up and log on to play some ladder.Unfortunately generally after 2-3 games I get bored and stop.Most of my practice is by playing league matches or when teammates or other players I know ask me for cgs I play a few with them.

Is the boredom one reason why you use such unusual strategies?

Not at all. I always play to win, but with the amount I play the game there is no way I can beat top players playing straight up conventional "meet in the middle with cookie armies and micro-fight" style of play.

I think of what my opponent is going to do and what type of army composition and tactics can be employed to make the game into one that plays to my abilities and skills and not the ones my opponent has been practicing.

When did you start playing WC3? What race did you start off as?

I started playing WC3 a month or so after ROC came out after one of my friends showed me the game.

I started playing as random and never switched except for a very short 1-2 week period in which I played human

When did you start playing competitively? What's your clan history?

Well ever since I started playing the game I was a top ladder player (used demolisher/meat wagon/ballista/mortar drops almost every single game crushing those pathetic mass caster/dryad/ghoul/AoW strats).

It wasn't until after a month or two of playing ladder games that I met some really cool people and we formed the Ideal Clan. We had some really fun custom cgs and we all improved greatly.

Shortly after TFT came out, we all started becoming inactive with some people moving to hit it big in poker and others just quitting the game for good. After some time off I noticed Warcraft 3 leagues started appearing and I joined Team rS (with Suboshi and others) to help them compete in leagues.

I only stayed with them for 2-3 weeks as it wasn't as fun with them as it used to be with Ideal (although I did have some pretty fun cgs with Suboshi who's a great guy). I somehow found the ACL (Azeroth Clan League) website and wanted to play in that so I joined the team KoD and after a few weeks of really fun times with them brought back my old fellow Ideal member and friend Strifecro from retirement to help us out.

From there I've stuck with KoD ever since although we've changed names a few times in the course of merging with other teams and picking up/dropping sponsors.

If anybody is interested in a more in depth look at clan KoD's history and has the patience to register at our site (www.kod-gaming.com) you can get at it through this link.