Interview with BoysBoys captain, Rylan!

The pride of Canberra DOTA is making a return once again to the competitive scene.  Having just travelled through USA and been to the Mecca of DOTA2, The Internationals, BoysBoys are now ready to resume their quest for greatness.

We had the chance to ask Rylan from BoysBoys some question and they even had a song ready courtesy of one of the lads from BoysBoys.

Take it away Rylan!

Player profile

Name: Rylan Savage

Age:  21

Current Team: Boysboys

Headset: Plantronics gamecom 780

Keyboard: Logitech G510

Mouse: razor deathadder

Essential tournament food: Cereal. Canberra milk, Weetbix and bananas, need that energy for the big plays.

Hey Rylan, mind introducing yourself to the Canberra DOTA2 scene?          

I'm Rylan or rylan26 on steam, and I've been playing dota 2 for close to 4 years now, and before that dota 1 on wc3 through garena. In gaming I'm also a big fan of cod 4 (played it pretty hardcore through high school) and console games including street fighter, halo and smash. I've lived in Canberra since primary school, and and now studying at ANU which definitely suffers from my dota habits.

Are you able to introduce your team mates as well and their roles in the team?

My team mates are Xavier (X4), Jon (JJH), James (VideoJames) and Elliot (elks). Our roles change around as some people enjoy playing certain heroes and not others within the one role. Generally though its going to be the X4 farming on his carry Earthshaker, supported by JJH and Videojames, with elks offlane and hogging the courier to bottlecrow, leaving me to suffer in mid.

BoysBoys, enjoying the breathtaking view

How long have you played together with your current team?

We've all known each other since year 7 (some longer) and started playing some WC3 dota and halo together, back in the glory days of 2v3 -apnt with no top lane and no reconnects. From there we moved on to garena pubs, and then were lucky enough to get a wave of dota 2 invites early in the beta (credit to X4's musical ability see below). Since then we've been playing as a team casually in AUS events, with variations here and there to our roster with friends we've met through dota. Recently all but one of us went to TI4 to watch, which was good fun.

You guys have been hailed by a lot of people as Canberra’s best DOTA2 team.  Do you believe the hype or do you let actions speak for themselves?

There's only a few Canberra teams that we are familiar with and have played frequently, particularly within the ANU/UC scene, some of whom we've in-housed here and there for some years. We're always met with challenging and fun games, so while we've built up a decent track record in the Canberra scene, I'm excited to play everyone again and am anticipating tough games and strong drafts. 

You’ve also played in tournaments such as the Defence of the Australians, Cybergamer and Southern Cross DOTA, do you feel that this gives you the edge over other teams?

These events were a lot of fun, and gave us a taste for captains mode dota and trying to be innovative with the meta at the time. We haven't participated in tournaments for maybe 8 months now, so might have fallen a little behind in our drafting prowess and team synergy in high pressure games (as opposed to cm pubs). These events were all online also  (unless you made it to Defence of the Aussies LAN finals), so the LAN experience at the Barracks will be fresh for us as it will be for many teams. I think the last LAN we attended was 3-4 years ago at Chinatown CityHunter in Sydney.

We have 3 interstate teams competing in this tournament, with the strongest one of the lot, being AVANT YMC.  Are you familiar with any of them and how do you fancy your chances against them?

We're familiar with these teams and the players on them, having played frequently against Sydney (and other) competitive players in comps and pubs in general over the years. A lot of talented players, and some strong teams. We haven't competed against AVANT in their current line-up, but i expect if we play them the match will be tough, and we'll be counting on strong play from the entire team to be competitive against them and other interstate teams.

What are your thoughts on the Australian DOTA 2 scene?

 I think its tough for Australian players who want to be competitive, especially at an international level. Because of our server isolation, there is only a handful of teams to play each other, without the diversity of challengers in other areas which gives teams dexterity and versatility. Thus i think the Aus scene is comparatively stagnant in its meta and team strengths, despite the amount of strong players. elite players and teams lack the incentives to really commit to dota, as unlike other countries, sponsors and tournaments aren't sufficient to sustain people financially, so dota remains a hobby. With the amount of the new players, teams and tournaments cropping up though maybe this can change, but currently I feel the only way for a team like immunity to perform well internationally would to move to china or somewhere similar, which is obviously a huge investment.

Back to our own local scene in Canberra, is there any teams that you’re familiar with and respect?

We have a lot of respect all the Canberra teams we know. RAD from ANU has given us some of the most intense competitive games we've played, and the C5 pubstar stack from UC have been our friends since college (not competing at the barracks, but hopefully will be there for the event). There's heaps of Canberra teams I'm not familiar with, and look forward to playing and meeting as the local scene grows.

Will we see you in future Canberra DOTA2 tournaments?

Definitely, win or lose we will attend all the local events we can manage.

BoysBoys in LAN action

Rylan, thank you for your time, is there anything further that you’d like to add or any shoutouts?

Shoutouts to all Canberran dota players, competing or not, and others in the community that help the scene, onlylogic from ANU, and the ANU MASCA society for providing ANU with dota tournaments. and to some interstate dota noobs that might not be there, iviv, Jdmaster, and finally to some local superscrubs, homo-erotica  and the BIIIG DAWGG.

Ladies and Gentlemen, prepare yourself for some fine talent time with BoysBoys, Xavier!