William “dobbo” Dobson joined mix team The Neighbours for EPIC39, along with his former Into the Breach team-mates Adam “Adam9130” Ahmad and Owen “smooya” Butterfield. Despite losing to 7AM in the upper bracket final, they took revenge where it counted, stomping their opponents 16-5 on the decider map of the grand final to take home the title. Tom “tomtom94” Coles caught up with dobbo right after their win to talk about EPIC, teaming with Adam9130, and what the future holds for the currently orgless rifler.
Your third EPIC, you’ve won, how does it feel?
Feels great! Never won an EPIC.LAN before, I’ve been to one before on LAN, and then played one online, didn’t win either, so feels good.
What did you learn from the first time you played 7AM in the upper bracket final?
Not much, we just kind of sucked, to be honest.
I appreciate the honesty. How did you feel after Nuke?
Nuke, if I’m honest, I just felt super fried, I was making an unlimited amount of mistakes and everyone else in the team was as well. We knew what they were doing a lot of the time and just couldn’t get the kills, even though we had the read. It was just one of those games, you know?
We definitely felt okay coming into Vertigo, because we had a good showing last time [against Next in Line].
What do you think of 7AM as opponents?
7AM are definitely a decent team. They’ve stuck together a long time, that’s why they’re decent, that’s why they’ve come second here, but obviously it comes down to who shows up on the day and I think our individuals were just way, way better than theirs.
Were you happy with that Vertigo win?
[laughs] I was literally the AWPer for that map somehow, I’m out-AWPing smooya, I think I’ll take that.Speaking of smooya, obviously he’s going to pull a lot of the attention around this team. Was it fun to play with him again?
It’s always fun because there’s so many sides of him that you see. I think it was fun overall, some ups and downs obviously playing with him, but yeah it was perfectly fine.
Who else on the team do you think deserves a bit more recognition?
Hmm. [pause] I think Extinct, I think that guy was hitting some nice shots, very crisp. bevve – he’s an onliner, that’s what I found out from this LAN. Owen – he needs to stop changing res, and Adam, he’s always insane smarts, he’s a very good player.
You’ve teamed with Adam for the last three years, what makes you such a good duo?
Well, there’s better duos out there [laughs] I think I learned… not everything, but a lot from him, and a lot from ashhh. Obviously knowing how each other thinks, it’s really good for a team, I instantly know what he wants from me, where he wants me to go, so that’s obviously just super useful playing with him.
He said to us that 2023 has been an “awful year”, do you agree with him?
Oh of course, yeah. We’ve been orgless, like, the whole year, basically, the whole of 2023. We’ve tried to make projects work, and each time it’s been pretty unsuccessful. We’ve had some wins, some success, but it’s against teams that aren’t very good so it doesn’t really count, you know? And obviously we’ve had no success getting an org, we’ve had just up-and-down results, definitely a lacklustre year for me and Adam.
What’s next for you as a player?
For me I’m going to be focussing on streaming, grinding FPL-C now that the season’s started again. I’ll be playing Ruby League, obviously, because that’s big in the UK right now, and then just trying to see what offers are out there, 100%.
And will you defend your title in October?
[laughs] No idea. Let’s just wait and see.Lovely stuff. Any closing remarks?
ghil… is tiny. [laughs]
