Joshua “Dweg” Nathan has finally made it out of EPIC.LAN groups at the seventh attempt. Even if Binmen International fell in the first round of play-offs, the caster and personality is confident they can make a strong run through the Inters bracket. Tom “tomtom94” Coles sat down with him at the halfway point of Saturday.
You finally made it out of groups, how does it feel?
Yeah, it’s a good feeling, we worked really hard this LAN. A lot of people might sit there and say “it’s a summer LAN, you don’t have as many good teams” which is true, but from our perspective you’ve got to beat who’s in front of you. In the lead-up to LAN we made a few changes from the last roster to this one, we had very little practice time and pretty much just pugged. We turned up on the day and I think everyone played really well, everyone held their weight.
Without a doubt it was the best performance, not just from me but from one of my teams out of any EPIC I’ve been to. I mean to take Royals to double digits and be 11-7 up against them – our mentality going into that game was just “try and keep it competitive”, help out the round difference, but when we were 11-7 up I genuinely thought that game was winnable and it’s a shame we couldn’t get that over the line.
I’ve heard you were the star player for Binmen International, is that true? Do you think there’s another person who’s been doing the carrying?
I don’t think there’s been a star player this event, everyone’s been holding their weight really well. Whskyyyy, I’ve played with him, I think this is my fourth LAN with him and he’s a really solid anchor player; Indx has been helping me out with calling quite a bit and kind of letting me focus on my thing, trying to be me mid-rounding and him calling more from the start which has been really helpful, that’s something I haven’t had on previous teams. Pej, I think he stepped up massively from last event to this event, and then Nazzery, he’s a young up-and-comer, first time he’s been at LAN, he’s playing in [UKIC] Ruby League. I’m sure he’s going to be looking for a home come the new ESEA and LAN season – he’s fun to be around and he’s obviously a very good player.
How’s it been watching Binmen grow into what it’s become?
I think it’s been great, to be honest. From my POV, I’m more involved with the charity and LAN side of things with Binmen, and I think the idea that we can represent two, three, maybe four teams for the next event and try and raise money for charity is fantastic.
I was involved with getting a lot of the prizes from the orgs for this LAN itself – if you check out the BINMENcsgo Twitter you’ll see that on our donation link, any donation gets you into a chance of winning jerseys, signed t-shirts, demo reviews, DemoDive subscriptions, so many great things that everyone’s given us. A massive thank you not only to everyone that’s donated, but to everyone in the community that’s given us prizes to give away.
How is casting with TheEternalJay going?
I’ve known Jay for a very long time – funnily enough, the first time we actually casted together was EPIC26 when I’d just moved to the UK. I think I moved to the UK in October or November of 2018 and we were casting up on the balcony of EPIC26 in the February of 2019, and then obviously we’ve been partnering together I believe since the beginning of 2020 so pretty much coming up to four years now.
I think he’s a guy who’s very relatable, very hard-working, we just work together on everything. I think we’ve had a bit of a taste through this year and last year for more studio events, we’d love to get more in front of a crowd. I think when we did Elisa Masters Espoo last year I think you could really tell the difference of the energy that can be produced with a live audience, so that’s what we’re going to be striving for for the rest of the year, to try and get those opportunities.
What match-ups are you looking forward to in the rest of EPIC?
Hmm, I probably would have said in our group, Neighbours vs Royals, which ended up being 15-15, that was quite an anticipated game. I’d like to see how far Kica’s team [Team 7PM] go, I think actually they’re playing right now against Ghil. We played against them last night and they’re obviously very solid. Verdant, they’re in the lower bracket so they could have a difficult time to make it deep.
Ideal matchup? Maybe something like 7AM vs Verdant, or Verdant vs the Neighbours – I especially want to see how far smooya’s mix [Neighbours] can go.
And the ultimate question, now that we know EPIC40 is coming back to Kettering, can you get out of groups again?
I’d love to try to! I won’t give a promise to say it’s going to happen. A lot of my players are unfortunately being poached, so it’s going to be a rebuild, like it is. If you’re a player out there that’s kind of looking to get under the Binmen banner and try and maybe get me out of groups again, give me an @ on Twitter (@DwegCSGO), we’ll have a look at the process of players that we can try and get. If we get a decent mix of players like we did this time I think we’ll have a decent crack, maybe make a play-off run.
You can donate to the Binmen’s fundraiser for Young Minds here.
