By Nikita “Armavel44” Stavitsky from RuGwentTournaments team (Twitter page: https://twitter.com/Ru_Gwent)

Congratulations on winning the tournament! Firstly, I would like to know — what do you feel right now?

Thanks! I feel great, and my strategy worked out almost exactly as we have envisioned before the event. The hard work has finally paid off.

You had solid victories over Fanderman and Huanshi, and only versus TailBot did everything come down to the fifth game. Was the tournament as easy as it looked from the side?

To be honest, the game versus Fanderman was the closest one from my perspective. I had a blue coin and if he would have played the Consume-Henselt matchup a bit better and been able to win, my Henselt would have had a very hard time against his Greatswords on a red coin. TailBot won as many games against me as was possible, but I was quite sure that his Eithne was not going to get there. In my opinion, it is actually a favourable matchup for my Greatswords.

So yeah, overall it went really smoothly. I wouldn’t call it easy, but I definitely had the upper hand in all of the games. In addition, I was actually surprised how calm I was. I was even able to stay in moments where I had bad luck or when the RNG was against me like the situation where my Aguara buffed Yaevinn.

Now that you've mentioned it, I want to know more about your lineup you've brought to the tournament. Handbuff Scoia’tael with Aguara definitely surprised everyone. How did you come up with the idea?

So we made 2 predictions: Brouver will be less popular because of the Challenger, and people will also predict that Brouver will be less popular, so Bran boats will be less popular. Based on this, I wanted to design a lineup to give Henselt on red and Greatswords on blue a hard time. Finding a Scoia’taeldeck which is able to snipe Henselt on a blue coin would be amazing, and was our goal. I’ve also used some techs in Henselt like Geralt: Igni to have more of a chance against a blue coin Greatswords. I tried multiple Scoia’tael decks that may be able to beat Skellige and Henselt: Eithne kept disappointing me, so Handbuff was the best option there.

In the end, it all came down to testing. We probably tried the list for around 20 games, and Aguara was there mostly to beat Harald Houndsnout and to substitute for Muzzle if the Dragoon gets charmed since I could also pull it with Royal Decree. The ability to counter Harald is very important, as I consider him to be one of the reasons you can lose versus Skellige even if you counter the Greatswords.

You had some incredible plays which everyone has noted. Like placing all your units around Geralt:Igni when you had no information if Huanshi has it in his deck. Did you play around everything?

I definitely played a lot around Geralt: Igni and Coral. That’s also the reason I decided to take Abaya over Ghoul from my Black Blood. I wrote down a lot during my matches. For example, I made notes about the cards I was looking to play around.

You have also beaten TailGod. Can we call you Kratos now?

It was fun. We are good friends in real life and of course I have a lot of respect towards him as a player. So yeah, it is quite an accomplishment for me. Calling me Kratos is actually pretty hilarious

So we can expect you to beat more gods in the future. Now back to more serious topics. What are your plans right now? Do you aim for winning GWENT Open #6 or you would like to focus on preparations for Challenger?

Realistically, I won't be able to compete for the top 6 spot this season. I have the Red Dragon championship in the Czech Republic and GWENT Challenger ahead. Also, some real-life stuff reminds itself. So, for now, I will go all in on preparing for Challenger. I may want to get to top 20 on this season’s Pro Ladder for World Masters Crown Points, but I am still not sure.

Now you can compare playing at two different tournaments. Both GWENTSlam and GWENT Open were played without spectators, only the live stream was available. Can you compare environments between the CD PROJEKT RED office in Warsaw and Lifecoach’s mansion?

Lifecoach’s mansion felt a lot like a GWENT mansion. It wasn’t so much about going outside to Vienna, just staying at a nice house with GWENT personalities, talking and playing. GWENT Open is more official. You go out together, see the city, stay at a nice hotel. It’s just really very professional and the guys from CD PROJEKT RED took care of just about everything you might need.

What did you like more personally?

I preferred the GWENT Open atmosphere. It was just a nice event where you could really use the time to explore the city, and play games with other participants and CD PROJEKT RED employees on PS4. I liked the way you could put your free time to good use for non-game activities and really focus on the games during the weekend.

Any chances we can see your streams soon?

I am not planning to stream right now. I can ask on Twitter to see if there is interest, and maybe try it out this season since I am not really competing. So yeah, I would say there is some chance you can see me live in the future.