Machi Esports is a Taiwanese team in Contenders Pacific with a full Korean roster.  They are currently 3-1 in their group.  I was able to speak with both JUDO and their General Manager, Ethan Liu and get their thoughts on Contenders Season 2.  This article focuses on JUDO and his thoughts on past and upcoming games, while the next upcoming article will focus on Ethan's replies on the state of Contenders Pacific and what Blizzard can do to improve it.

How did you come up with your name?

It's a short form of Jeju Island. (Jeju-do). I took the "Je" out, so it's just "Ju-do", since "do" means Island in Korean. Also because Judo is an Olympic fighting sport that I felt was nice to use my name with.

Are you from Jeju Island?

No, I just like the island. (laughs)

Who do you feel are the teams to beat for PAC S2?

We don't care about the Korean teams. CYCLOPS in Group B is the team we're worried about. They've recently changed some players.

Early in the season, AVRL mentioned that both CAG and Blank Esports were the teams to beat. Are you worried about Blank Esports at all?

We're not afraid of Blank Esports because Australia has high ping, so they're not as good as they were before. CYCLOPS is the only team we're worried about.

What kind of ping are the players in Machi Esports seeing?

Schwi and I are in Taiwan and it's 10-20 ping.  For the other four members in Korea, it's around 60-120.

Has ping affected gameplay for your teammates in Korea?

The ping in Korea has affected our gameplay, but it was our decision to play in Contenders so we have to accept it.

Was going from a LAN tournament to Online a good or bad thing?

It's worse because in Season 1, I felt more like a pro player since I'm in an arena with fans and cameras and wearing a team uniform. Now it feels like an online league; like I'm playing a scrim. Even match day feels like a scrim.

In Group A, 5/6 teams have a full Korean roster. How do you feel about that? Can you tell you are playing against another Korean roster based on meta/gameplay?

In the beginning, we were worried about Talon and EXL. Their playstyle is very flank-heavy. However, Talon ended up being kind of easy to beat.

As for MS KR, our team is still young so we were very nervous during the match and we couldn't beat them. as for the rest of the Korean teams, they feel the same.

Against MS KR, how did your team decide to play Bastion for King's Row and Route 66? 

Our Orisa/Bastion strategy wasn't specific for MS KR. It was more a clincher play, preferably for the last match we have to win. But since we were losing, we decided to use Orisa/Bastion immediately. The situation called for it.

How did you feel when they used Bastion against you on Route 66?  Were you prepared for MS KR to counter back with their own Orisa/Bastion?

The Orisa/Bastion strategy was learned from a past scrim with Element Mystic. So we learned not only how to play it, but also how to counter it. We've practiced it in scrims with Chinese teams. But since we were nervous vs. MS KR, we didn't properly execute the defense against it.

PAC S2 is played on Patch 1.24. How do you feel about this patch, does it work well with the roster? Is there more flexibility in the meta?

The patch works well for us since we're already used to playing heroes like Dva, Winston, Reinhardt, and Orisa. If new Symmetra and Wrecking Ball were in, we'd have to practice more strategies. Patch 1.24 works best for us.

Outside of Contenders, do you personally like the new Symmetra and Wrecking Ball?

I don't like it. Wrecking Ball and new Symmetra are super aggressive and confusing. There's a lot of things going on. There's less structure; no consistent flow.

Your team played Doomfist against MEGA.  Do you feel that Doomfist is effective and will your team play him again?

Doomfist is very effective. He's been nerfed in the past, but he's buffed again. We should have played him from the 1st round. But at the same time, practicing specific heroes always requires more prep time, which we don't have a lot of.

Against MEGA, your team almost full held Rialto A with 1 Tank/2 DPS/3 Support.  What made you decide on this composition? 

We were 100% sure we were going to win, so we didn't play what we had originally planned. We also played this composition to confuse the next team who may be watching this match. I've practiced this composition with another team before and it worked well. However, the rest of the team wasn't as familiar with it.

MEGA managed to sneak that win on Rialto in Overtime. How did this happen?

Because we were so certain we we going to win, we started to play more relaxed and we didn't put in full effort. We had a strategy to get back in the game, but one player made an execution error and it affected the rest of the team. It snowballed the other way.