CIS: China's Underdogs

In actuality, the team has only played five matches but CIS proved themselves to be top contenders in the scene when managing to take down China's newest Allstar team, NewBee 2-1 in the recent Sina Cup 3 Qualifiers, knocking them out of the tournament. Although they lost to DK in the first round of the double-elimination bracket, they sure did not back down without a fight- managing to take a game off of the "Dota Kings" 2-1.

China's newest addition, CIS have shown that they are a creative -slightly crazy- team with picks that you would never see in the average Dota 2 professional match. Some of their picks include Sniper, Wraith King, Ursa, Tusk and even Pudge! The latter two were used in a level 1 Roshan strategy that demolished DK managing to take the win in 23 minutes.

The following is an interview conducted by RN Dota 2 with CIS manager lyfljw adapted from the English version on 2p.com. Portions of the interview have been edited for grammatical purposes. 

Hi, first of all, say hello to everyone.

Hi, guys. I am CIS-Gaming's manager lyfljw, I am happy to take this interview.

Could you tell us the current situation of CIS-Game?

Our team base is located at Kunshan Economic Development Zone which is very close to Shanghai. The traffic is convenient, and we can travel to Shanghai by metro. The last player arrived here at 6pm February 25th. Now all players live in the team base together.

Could you tell us what are the opportunity and the reason of forming a team?

I saw the news of SPG (Speed Gaming) set to form an academy team. I thought: I love Dota 2 very much, and why not form a club by myself? Then I found Mini幂, whose ID is CIS.June now. We've talked for a couple of days and we both felt well, therefore we decided to form a new team.

Has it been a month since the formation of the team?

Yes, I contacted June at the end of January. Maybe because of my young age, several players' parents expressed concern and so they didn't want their children to come. Therefore, we needed to change some players, and finally we got together on February 25th. Players come from all over China.

Talk about the game against Newbee. Did you feel nervous since your opponents are famous players?

Yes, especially Ruoli. He is very young, and his hands were sweating and trembling during the game. As you saw in the first game, we were under pressure and lost the passion to win. 

It is very hard for a new team in China, and the only successful case is VG, but they still have experienced many roster changes. Do you fell CIS will meet this situation?

We watch the replays to find the problems when we don't perform well. I feel we will have ups and downs, but we can go through it. We are young and have room for improvement.

It is easy for a new team which can amaze the world with a single brilliant feat in League of Legends, but it is hard for a new team to become a top tier team in Dota 2. What do you think are the reasons? Are you worried about this? 

If everyone has this kind of thought, Chinese Dota 2 will not have any future. The former team XFY is a good example. The main reason is many people are afraid to do it. Top tier teams play traditional strategies better than the new ones, but if new teams try some new line-ups, they still have opportunities to win, and also increase the excitement of the games.

Read the full interview in Mandarin here on RN Dota 2.

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