Nouns Gunnar: “This is the least amount of stress we’ve had in a long time; we’re getting a salary and getting some support.”

After a long series, that went the distance, Nouns Esports has slain the behemoth Evil Geniuses. Coming off of their win in the BTS Pro Series, Nouns was out for blood against the NA giants.

The panel got a chance to talk to Gunnar after the match. Neal "tsunami" Khandheria asked Gunnar about his team's work ethic, commenting on Guilherme Silva "Costabile" Costábile's earlier interview saying the team only gets one day off a week.

Gunnar responded that "we took kind of along break after the last DPC season. It was about two weeks and then we pretty much played six days a week every week." He continued: "It's been really long recently because we've been trying to scrim more EU teams, so we've been getting up earlier... A lot of times they'll get cancelled on us so we'll be up from like 10 a.m. and scrimming till 8 because we have to find a replacement scrim and they won't come till later."

On beating Evil Geniuses, Nouns Gunnar said "good, I mean I was missing games like this, like hype DPC games. I think we were getting a little too excited scrimming too much, like in the first game I was like throwing... I was a little excited in the first game."

The first game was a long slog with EG fighting tooth and claw to get back in the game. But after some clutch teamfights, overwhelming AOE damage from the Nouns side were able to clean up the game.

EG came back with a vengeance for game 2. This time they closed up the game much faster than Nouns did in game two. A fast paced Bloodseeker lineup ran doing the primarily late game draft of the Nouns squad.

The third game looked poised to again be in EG's favor. After a 3-man black hole by David "Moo" Hull's Enigma, the momentum of the game shifted. After a dancing around each other for several minutes, Nouns struck. Led by Nicolas "Gunnar" Lopez on Dragon Knight, the team quick picked off and demolished EG. This has been the of a long road for this team.

Tsunami then asked about how it felt playing Dragon Knight, as his hero pool is usually a bit flashier. Nouns Gunnar noted "I think Dragon Knight is OP right now. I think people haven't experimented with this yet but I think this Manta is really broken." This was in reference to his unconventional manta style build that he bought on the hero in both game 1 and 3.

He continued: "I never got the 20 talent and then one official I was like, 'guys I'm taking the 20 talent, we have a Faceless Void I'm gonna hit in chrono' and then Zach (Zfreek) was like 'is that the first time you've gotten that?' Now I buy Manta cause Moo kept telling me like 'you should buy Manta on DK its so good, buy it before Aghs', so shout out to Moo he told me about the Manta it makes the hero actually OP and fun."

Panelist Robson "TeaGuvnor" Merritt asked Gunnar about when the team picks the "quirkier" heroes in the draft. Gunnar responded "in terms of being quirky it's usually me and Moo. We usually bounce off who gets the quirky hero of the day, like he was doing Faceless Void offlane a couple months ago and I was doing Tusk."

He continued: "It's more so between the two of us we have to make sure our heroes work together and that we're not griefing."

TeaGuvnor then asked who he has to convince to play these heroes on the team. Gunnar told him that "Moo is usually on board, like I'll say 'I just won seven pubs in a row with this hero, this hero is OP' and he'll be like 'ok but why?' He'll basically make me word out my thoughts."

The tea recently got picked up by Nouns and has so far, been producing good results. "It feels so much better, we're in the final steps of maybe getting a getting a bootcamp for a couple weeks," Nouns Gunnar said remembering the pickup. "I think to be honest, since we've been picked up, this is the moth we've improved the most."

He followed up: "I think this is the least amount of stress we've had in a really long time cause we were getting a salary and getting some support."

Ephey then to asked whether this was a burden that the team had been carrying before they got sponsored. Gunnar said "Moo always jokes he's like 'guys if we don't win this BTS tournament, I'm not eating.' It's like mostly a joke, but it's better when you don't have to worry, like they told us 'the only thing you guys gotta worry about is getting better, just winning, nothing else, and like if you have anything just bring it to us.' Like you watch TSM right, and they went from like third place to being second place at the major since they got picked up."

Gunnar went on to thank the fans, his team and his coach. Will Nouns keep up with this upward trajectory? Find out by sticking with us here at esports.gg!