Interview: Stefanos Kapetanakis 40K ETC Captain.

Welcome back folks.

I Really didn’t knew what to write as my first words after one month of leave from the Invulnerable, i hope all of you are well and you had fun in your vacations or even better you are still in your vacations enjoying a beach somewhere, for the majority its time to get back to our work, studies and whatever awaits us in the months ahead.

August for me wasn't empty from Wargaming since I managed to play some games, all of them enjoyable since the air-condition machine was quite effective. Apart from that the most important Warhammer 40K event that happened in August was the European Team Championship in Switzerland, even better - for the first time ever players managed to form up a team and participated as the first WH40K Greek Team following the much successful Greek Warhammer Fantasy team, this post is all about that.

While I wanted to be able to give you report from the event itself this wasn't be possible for many reasons, all I could do was promise that the Invulnerable will cover the next ETC tournament and seek the best possible person who could enlighten us about what happened on the event, that was beyond any doubt the Greek ETC team Captain, Stefanos Kapetanakis. 

Stefanos, a young yet experienced player with the help of Leonidas Fragkos went through a lot to organize and lead the first 40k Greek team into the ETC, I contacted Stefanos a day after he set foot back on Greece and he was all too eager to give an interview to the Invulnerable, something that I thank him for.

Right the next day we went at a cafeteria on Pasalimani near the port of Piraeus, Stefanos was full of information and ready to share it with all of us, further than that, I believe he was full of motivation from his and the team’s accomplishment.

Stefanos Kapetanakis also known as Blood Guzzler.

What was the accomplishment? If there is one actually – is yours to decide after reading the interview (if you manage it – it’s quite long). I promise thought to give you my opinion in the end and hopefully, we will agree.

I would also like to thank Vasilis Apostolopoulos for the photographs taken on the event and shared  for the Invulnerable.

IR: Invulnerable Reporter

SK: Stefanos Kapetanakis

IR: You have just returned from the European Team Championship 2011 for Warhammer 40000, was it a tiring experience and a worthwhile effort?

SK: It was tiring, the whole trip was four full days and we were occupied for twelve hours in the two days of the championship, we woke up at 6:30 on the morning and finished at 21:30, each battle lasted for 3 hours plus half an hour for deployment and one hour brake. Either way even with all the weariness I think that it was worth it, we had a very good time and we gained a lot of experience, I don’t think that the weariness stopped us from enjoying the games or lessened our urge to face our opponents.

IR: How often do you play WH40K? For how long and with what armies of how many points?   

SK: I play WH40K for about six years, I have two armies: Tyranids and Blood Angels, I have about 3500 to 4000 points of Tyranids and about 2500 to 3000 points of Blood angels.

How often, it’s not something standard, it depends on my obligations with my studies but lately I play one battle once every week or two weeks, I try to play as often as I can.      

IR: The other players of the team, who were they and what armies did they used?

SK: I will start from Leonidas Fragkos who was the oldest member of the team and he played the Dark Eldar, Vasilis Apostolopoulos “Billap” played the Blood Angels, Odysseus Charalampopoulos “Khorne” who played (obviously) the Chaos Daemons and Takis Mahos who played the Imperial Guard, those were our Greek players. Our three Polish mercenaries were Marcin Narewski with Witch Hunter and Imperial Guard Allies, Roman Lakomiak with his space wolves and Milosz Dziembowski with Orks.    

IR: How was your trip to Switzerland?

SK: Our trip was easy enough; I arrived at the airport at about 13:00 with my car and the rest of the team with the public transport, we did our check in and we asked if we could keep the cases with the miniatures with us on the airplane and not with the rest of the luggage - there was no problem with that. Our flight started at 16:45 and we landed on 18:00 local time, then we took the train to Montreux who also took one hour to get there, it wasn’t tiring at all, everything was quite close to us.

IR: Where did you stayed?

SK: We stayed in the three stars hotel Helvetie who was about 1 km away from the ETC hosting area, the rooms were very comfortable and we even had a small room where we could discuss our plans for the next day at the championship, the breakfast was very good too.

IR: Did the organizers help you to find the Hotel or you found it yourselves?

SK: No, we found it through the internet, the price was very nice for the area and all of our Greek players choose to stay there as a team. 

IR: What do you think of Switzerland as a country?

SK: Switzerland is a very interesting country and very different from Greece, everywhere you can see a wide green grass field without any big urban centers; they have great decentralization and prefer to make small communities and cities where they live comfortably, even on the cities you can find vineyards and lots of gardens.

Montreux, the place we stayed was very beautiful, because of the lake but also because it is a tourist resort, the other cities and communities we saw from our train trip was also very nice and calm; everything seems to run smoothly on Switzerland, plus it is a very clean country.

IR: What do you think of the city you stayed in, Montreux, and the Swiss as people?

SK: Montreux as a city and a tourist resort at the same time is very beautiful and a wonderful destination for anyone who wants to do vacations there, it’s a small city - a village actually but it includes Casinos, restaurants, hotels and it even has a Cabaret. 

 

Everything around the lake is very Green, and there are a lot of statues in the city, Swiss give a lot of attention to art and care to decorate their city with a lot of sculptures and paintings, everything is made so that it provides a beautiful picture to the visitor and the local population. 

I can say that Swiss as people were cold enough, closed inside themselves, I don’t know if we were scary to them as Greeks because of our temperament but they were quite gathered and closed people. They are all dressed very nice with expensive clothes and jewelry and looked like they came from another age.

IR: What age was that?

SK: A more aristocratic age – you could see old ladies in the streets with a lot of jewelry on them and young men with really expensive clothing, it looked like we were among a more – elite society, you couldn’t see poor people in Montreux, it was very strange to me. 

IR: So I guess there wouldn’t be any unemployment too there.

SK: It seems so, look - for example while we were on the train we found a Greek living in Switzerland who said to us that he graduated in Marketing and that in his field the lowest salary one can get is 2800 Euros.

IR: Back to the tournament, how was the organization?  Did you need any help because of your first time on the European Team Championship?

SK: I can say that I was satisfied with the organizers and no we didn’t need any extra help. We Signed up for the tournament at a bench easily found and we also received there a tab and a small book explaining all of the tournament rules, after that the organizers gathered all of the captains to explain them the procedures of the tournament and the rules for the team pairings. 

Something that didn’t satisfy me was that they haven’t solved out some clarifications on the game rules already and we had doubts about many things that were basically solved in the last minute.  In terms of arbitration we are also not satisfied because the referees didn’t have an accurate opinion on many parts of the game.

IR: So you mean that the referees didn’t had a common view in the rules?

SK: Yes, one referee said one thing and another one said something else on the same rule, and many did not know the rules very well, there were cases that a referee didn’t know what the rulebook or the codex said, they made mistakes, and in some cases very serious mistakes.

IR: You were satisfied with the organization? Would they had done something better, and if so what would that be?

SK: Yes, we were satisfied with the organization and I don’t think that anyone had a problem, if I could change something then that would be the referees to be more organized and that the terrain on the battlefields to be more specific, for example what kind of cover each terrain piece provided and the rule clarifications to be more specific.

IR: The referees and the organizers were the same persons?

SK: No, there was a team of 15 to 20 referees who were the same for the two days and the organizers came to the tables and talked to us from time to time but they weren’t involved with the arbitration, they just did the pairings and counted the scores.

IR: the rules of ETC for Warhammer 40000 change the game a lot and what do you think of those rules?

SK: I think that the ETC rules specifically for warhammer 40000 don’t change the game so much. The rules mostly are based on the clarifications that GW gives on their FAQ’s, what the ETC rules change is the way combat squads are deployed in the game, on the normal game squads that start the game on reserves and are separated in combat squads must be declared that they do so at the deployment phase of the game, in the ETC you may separate them in combat squads right after they deploy on the table without declaring that in the deployment.

It must be noted that the ETC rules prohibit the use of special characters but I don’t think that this play a vital role in 40k because the special characters in 40k have mostly a supportive role than their counterparts in warhammer fantasy where a special character can wipe out a whole unit. 

And while I think that special characters in 40k provide a fluff touch in the game and a small change to the balance than an actual effect in some armies - like for example the space marines are affected greatly from their special characters because their codex is written around them. 

I think that no, leaving outside the special characters from the game didn’t affected the way the game is played and actually how we played it.

IR: But would you like the option of fielding special characters in the ETC?

SK: yes, I would like to see them being allowed in the games, and if not all of them at least some of them so that some armies can be used in full force.

IR: So let’s go now to the games of our team, what was the first team we had to face? What do you have to say about them and how did we fare against them.

SK: Our first opponents were the Americans, Team USA, I met their captain first and the rest of their team, they were very well organized and beyond their eight players they had another team member - a girl that was their coach who at the same time kept their scores and had a computer with all the army lists of the opponents and went to each player while he played and advice him of what score he would try to get or hold on to, what would he have to do for his team to win or if he has to risk in his game or not (for a possible win to risk a draw for example-if they have to play defensively or more aggressive) those players had a kind of synergy between them and none of their players played alone without knowing what he should do.

For example their player who had the grey knights when the coach came to ask him how he was doing he told her that possibly he would lose the game, the coach then said to him that he should try at least to get 8 points so that the team would win. Well he didn’t just take 8 points in the end, he took a lot more.

As a team we didn’t fare well against them and they took from us a lot of points since we lost in all of the games and some of our players were wiped out – no model remaining on the table – for example I lost 13-7 to my opponent but I think that this was totally because of my bad luck – bad reserves roll and a bad difficult terrain roll, generally I think that we could had better results against them.

Another reason to our failure was that we were too much enthusiastic about our participation in the ETC, too much urge to go and play and we were totally surprised by a well organized team who knew what, when and how to do whatever it planned.

IR: The second opponents to our team were?

SK: This was team Wales who as players were much more relaxed than the Americans and much less organized, they were pretty much more like us actually, they played much more for fun and that was obvious, it was actually a big gang of friends getting there to play and they played very well. 

I faced their Space wolves’ player that looked a lot like the space wolves as a character and he won in our game, they had much more consistency than our team and they were much more experienced.

IR: How did we fare against them as a team?

SK: We lost again, we got one or two draws but we also managed to do our first ETC warhammer 40k victory ever since our Blood Angels Vasilis Apostolopoulos made his first victory.

Vasilis Apostolopoulos smiles to the camera.

  IR: Okay so our team hasn’t done well in the first two rounds and we are on the third round, who is our third opponent?

SK: On the third round we faced team Norway who as we dropped in ranking we started facing teams much closer to our own team dynamic. They were also pretty relaxed guys and fun players but again they were much more organized as a team than ours, they were a bit clumsy on the pairings but they managed to take a lot of points against us in the games.

I won against their space marine player with a score of 19-1 and also our blood angel player won 18-2, yet the rest of our team lost or did some draws. We actually lost against them but we managed to bring much more points to the team and that caused us to hearten for the rest of the tournament.

IR: So our team has already done some victories, but only in battles - not as a team. It’s the morning of the second day in the tournament and we face the fourth team, this is?

SK: Fourth team is team Austria, a very well organized team and with very good players, who gave us some very bad match-ups, we actually had bad match ups in every round but against Austria we had incredibly bad match ups, for example I played against heavy mechanized Blood Angels with my Tyranids, something that I wanted to avoid plus I also learned that I played against Austria’s top player who also won in our battle by 18-2. 

I think that we all lost against team Austria, you could see that they were also very much experienced – players who knew how to risk on the final round to get a draw, for example my opponent played aggressively until the fourth round and then he retreated back in a way that startled me!

I think that team Austria was one of the best teams we faced and I think that we learned a lot from them and we were impressed from them, they had tactics and tricks of a very advanced level. 

IR: You mean that you saw moves and gaming that you haven’t seen here, they play a different Warhammer 40k than the one we are used in Greece?

SK: The players of very high level, Germans, Polish and the Austrians play on a very different way and level, they use tactics and systems that we couldn’t not even think about here, for example he could get a walker unit inside woods and count exactly his move so that he could shoot with his weapon without being seen, and if this didn’t worked he wouldn’t worry at all, if his tactics work he would do something later, if they didn’t then he would do something else that was obviously also planned for. 

IR: So we reach the fifth round, who are our opponents in this round?

SK: In the fifth round we faced the team of North Ireland, they were very good players but what made the most impression on me was that they were very polite, the most polite team of all I guess, and very nice in their fair play.

As players they were good and had a very nice set of tricks but they were quite on our level of gaming and it was the only draw we were able to take and the only team point we managed to accumulate in the whole tournament. I played against their space marine player and managed to do a massacre of 20-0 and our Blood Angel won by 19-1 plus our two Polish players managed to do a victory and we also had two draws and only two defeats, we actually did very well as a team against them and actually for just one kill point we could have won against North Ireland and got two points instead of one.

IR: So we are at the end: Sixth round, Team Greece has just do a draw that was a very close victory and will face the last opponent, which would be…

SK: Our opponents in the last round was Team Belgium who as opponents I can say that I didn’t liked them at all, they were too much devious and tried to win by using the referees, for example our Blood Angels player: Vasilis had a big problem against his opponent who needed almost ten referees at the same time to solve a situation between them.

They talked French between them and with the referees and our player wasn’t able to understand what they were saying, they had the referees with their side and they took a lot of points because of that alone, I don’t know if they would won the game but it played an important role, I didn’t like them either as players or characters.

My opponent was playing Orks and I think it was the worst match up for the day for me and he won by 19-1 but I think the dice went too much in favor of that player, it actually was so much in favor that I called a judge to test if his dice was fixed, in the end it was obvious that they weren’t. 

IR: So we lost against them also?

SK: Yes we lost. One victory only and two draws.

IR: And they also gave you a really bad impression.

SK: As players and characters too, their way of playing was bad, they weren’t interested to talk to you and to try to make you have a nice time from the game. 

IR: General impressions from the players from the other teams?

SK: Mostly they were very well organized, very decisive in their moves and what did the most impression on me was that they knew when to play aggressively and when to play defensively, they knew when they should stay back and protect their own objectives and when they should go forward and how much to get to close combat with the opponent and how much to move backwards so that they would be out of assault range. 

What made another impression on me was that they didn’t played as we do against for example the Tyranids who mostly their opponents play defensively and stay back but instead they knew how to play a combination of attack and defense that was destructive and I think that most of the players in the tournament had that ability.

I think that here (in Greece), we play more – simple, we have a tactic and we use it, players from other countries have three plans, plan A, B, C if plan A doesn’t work they go to plan B and so on, most importantly they don’t worry, they don’t get stressed, if something doesn’t work they will do something else. 

IR: I guess they don’t give so much attention to the dice rolls.

SK: Yes they don’t, but sometimes the dice itself doesn’t let you ignore them, for example an Irish player I remember who was a very good player but with so bad dice he couldn’t do what he wanted to do. 

IR: How did you fare as a player of team Greece? Could you have fared better?

SK: As a player of our team I think that I did well, I took two victories, two small defeats and two hard defeats, I could have done better and if I didn’t had all this misfortune with the dice I could have won the space wolf player and the Grey knight player of the American team, the two small defeats that I told you.

I managed to collect 55 points who I think is quite good for someone who plays for the first time on the ETC with a very different Tyranid list than the other Tyranid lists that they were playing, my army fared well in this environment and I can continue using such a list in the future too. 

IR: What did we gain as participants in the European Team Championship? We will go again as team Greece?

SK: The only thing that it is sure is that we will go again, even if we don’t manage to find a team to go we will surely go as independent players but I think that we will manage to field a team again.

What we gained is mostly experience, we looked on the depths of the ocean and we found things that we couldn’t have thought of here, details on real tactics and not clumsy moves, plus a lot of knowledge on overall strategy. 

We also got to know other players who told us about a different view about the game we heard for the first time and will surely sculpt our view for the hobby in general. 

IR: Okay so now an important question, why do you think we ranked last?

SK: It’s quite obvious that we finished last because the team was formed practically in the final moment; we didn’t do a lot of training and the community wasn’t interested to support us, I had to search for players to do training and I couldn’t find any, so one thing is that the proper home preparation wasn’t made.

We didn’t saw the army lists of our opponents; we couldn’t weight them and have a plan of how to deal with each of them, we just had some general ideas of what we would like to play against, plus as players we were arrogant and I say this with sorrow but also myself thought that we were better players than what we actually were, some players told us to change things there but we continued to play with our way and we didn’t gave too much attention to some details that we should have given.

In the tournament itself I think we lost a lot of battles because of the dice, our imperial guard player was particular unlucky but basically all of our players weren’t too lucky on the dice, I don’t know how much you can take this as a factor but I think that it was very important and it played a major part. 

In the strategy part it was almost like players from kindergarten playing at some point against players from a university, there was a big gap of level between us and some of our opponents. Beyond that, we tried to play as good as possible and we had a lot of fun in our battles and enjoyed the whole event. 

The fact that we do indeed ranked last of course is annoying to us but the most important thing is that we actually went for the first time on the tournament and we have just placed the foundations for the next attempts.

IR: So you think that team Greece 2012 will do better?

SK: Sure, I believe that if the warhammer community will support the 40K ETC team and the players who are of a very good level get interested in the event I think that we will be able to do better in the future, but even if this doesn’t happen we will participate every year since now we have formed a group of players who will continue to go in the ETC beyond any difficulties.

IR: From the experience you earned from ETC 2011 what do you think that must be done so that the team will do better in the future?

SK: First of all, we will need to form a team from the start from the players that know the game in depth and the hobby, players with many distinctions in tournaments and events, there are such players here and so the first and foremost is for those players to be found – the community to show interest and not only as players who want to take part in the team but also in our training, the community has to understand that this is our team and we have to support it so that it can get better results.

Apart from that we will have to study the strategies other ETC teams use and incorporate them in our games here and not play as we played so far here.   

IR: I guess that the team must keep the majority of the players who participated in 2011 because of the experience they earned. 

SK: Of course, because we already got a taste of the ETC tournament and we know what’s out there and for sure we will play better next year just because of that.

IR: Champions of the ETC 2011 is the German team, what do you think of them?

SK: Me and Vasilis talked with two of their guys but we had only a small conversation and so we didn’t saw any actual tactics on the table and only for a bit I managed to see some time of a game between a player from Germany and the United States team, it was like seeing a completely different game, they didn’t talked all of the time like we do, they were totally serious and concentrated in their game.

In our conversation with the German players we talked mostly about the WH40K races  and what races they choose mostly to use, what made an impression on me is that they choose not to take races that are weak and suffer easily damage for example the Dark Eldar and Tyranids because while they can do a lot of damage they don’t have resilience to remain on the table, the German players said that races like this can take a victory of 20-0 but can also suffer so badly that can bring the whole team down, so they don’t want that thing and prefer eight players that can make them eight draws than victories and defeats. 

They start with saying that their players will at least do a 10-10 result but not worse than that, if it’s a victory then so much the better for them but it won’t be a defeat.

IR: So what were the races of choice for the Germans, the present European champions?

SK: Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, Eldar, Grey knights, Orks, stuff like who will remain on the table and will not die that easily, the German players were masters of resilience.

IR: I guess that’s why they took the first place.

SK: Because they didn’t risk and because they were slow and destructive (IR: purposeful if I may say!)  

 

IR: Second team is Poland and as I learned they are quite a successful team on many ETC tournaments. 

SK: They are obviously very good players but I think that what led them to lose the championship this year was that they had much more pride than the other teams, for example in their t-shirts at the back wrote “The undefeatable Poland” that proves that as a team they had too much self arrogance, they didn’t paid attention to the other players, acted snobbish to all the others and when you tried to talk to them they said that they knew what they were doing and that we didn’t and that they were playing one hundredth fifty tournaments in their country each year. (IR: The Invulnerable would be quite busy there!)

I think that they got blinded by their greed and while they had the 1^st place for sure they lost it for silly details. 

IR: Being too much optimistic is not a good thing but nonetheless they came up second. 

SK: yes but they were so sure about themselves that they managed to make fools of themselves, for example in the second day they used stickers to hide the “undefeated” word in their t-shirts, impressive - and it made all of us laugh. 

IR: Third team, Bronze Metal – is Team USA. 

SK: I think that they were the best team that got into the ETC, they weren’t going for this place but they exceeded their expectations, and they even played with a jetlag of almost twelve hours which mean that they were playing as if they haven’t slept at all.

They did very good on the tournament and we gave them a very good start in their first game against us where they got an immense amount of points.

 I think that they deserve their good position because of their organization and playing level, against them I felt like we were the primitives against the Spanish conquistadores!

IR: They must have made quite the impression to you. 

 SK: Yes, just having a player coming not to play but just to keep scores and keep the team playing as one person/one entity is simply amazing.

IR: Let’s get on another subject. Some people might have thought that it would be a problem to play with someone who doesn’t speak your language (in our case Greek), did you faced any problems with the other players because of the language?

SK: No one of our team faced any problems with the English language; even our players who weren’t too good with English didn’t have any problem understanding what their opponent was saying. I think that in the game we play 9 out of 10 of the words we will use will be in English anyway.

IR: So I guess we all speak Warhammer.

SK: Indeed, we all speak Warhammer.

IR: I would like to ask you about the army lists the other teams used.

SK: Something that is observed almost in every ETC every year is that the army lists are very much the same in all of the teams, especially with armies like the space wolves or the Tyranids, all of the lists follow a basic motif and all of the players play almost in the same way, they all use units that are proved to be good on the table and effective. They actually pick the best units in the books and fill their army lists with them until they run out of points.

A good example are the space wolves where they all play with the 15 long fangs filled with missile launchers, multiple razorbacks with the laser cannon spam, the Tyranids play all with two or three Tervigons and fifty to sixty Genestealers and hive guards. 

I was speaking with the Italian mercenary of the Welsh team and I asked him why he plays the list that he plays with the Tyranids while he could play something else and win, the answer that he gave me…

IR: What list did he use?

SK: The Army list that Filipe used was 2x Tervigons, 9x Hive Guards, 10x Genestealers, 16x Genestealers (with a broodlord) another 16x Genestealers with toxin sacs and 16x Hormagants with adrenal glands. 

So I told him that this was the army list that a Polish player used last year and he took 114 points, and then I asked him why everyone plays that army list. 

He told me that this is the only army list that can stand in the ETC environment, in the ETC what we all do as he said is to copy the lists that the best players use and collect the greater amount of points. You can’t, come in an event like this, especially in the first years and play with a list that you play with your friends, that in a sense is fluffy and with units that you just - like. You have to play with the units that most players use and the units that are proven for their efficiency he concluded.

Most of the players in the ETC just take a codex, weight the units inside and rule out the units who they believe they are the most ineffective, in the end they use only the units that they believe that they are the most effective units in the book.

 IR: So a way for the team to do better next year is to copy the army lists the ETC players use?

SK: Yes, but while I played an army list with Raveners and a hive tyrant with wings that Filipe told me that this was a bad choice the army worked quite well, even if I lost four times I think that with better playing I could had much better results, so it’s not just the army list but it’s also the player, it is also important to see what the other players use but also see how they play. 

All of the players using the same overly effective army lists might made the armies in the ETC look so much the same but it also maximizes the competitiveness that leads in the end in a game that is not decided so much from the army list chosen but mostly from the playing. 

IR: Someone wrote on the ETC forum yesterday: “I came to the ETC with a bag of toy soldiers… I came back home with many new friends” what do you have to say about that?

SK: I agree totally with the person who wrote that and what impressed me mostly from the ETC was that as a community they had a lot of experience on the game, they were very good players but also the best thing in the event was that as persons they are very endearing sweet people who want to be friends with you from the start, they want to talk to you and when they do, they talk like they are friends with you since many years. 

I personally met people from other countries and cultures and they were people who I could join them for a drink to speak about girls and stuff, we played against people who were gentlemen with a capital G, I can’t wait to see them again next year in Poland. 

 I was speaking with a guy named Mat who was from North Ireland and I told him that I will see you in 365 days in Poland.

IR: So the next ETC will take place in Poland?

SK: Yes so far the prevailing opinion is that it will be held on Poland. 

IR: Who decides where the next ETC will be held?

SK: It is decided by sending requests to the ETC from the countries communities; it’s actually an invitation method. 

IR: Participation was difficult, players were not coming to the team, what did you think made the players not participating on the Greek ETC team?

SK: Participation was indeed difficult, there were players at the start who wanted to come but later they opt out from the team and so me and Leonidas at some point found out that we were the only two persons signed up on the team and only with private invitations and hard struggle we managed to fill out the roster with five Greek players and three mercenaries.

One thing that made it hard for the players to participate was the economic part that was playing a vital role since we all know what the condition in our country with the depression is.

This Boat shares our opinion about the economy.

Apart from that those that had the means to come and didn’t were either afraid of playing on the ETC and of the first time failure, yet while all want to be winners that cannot happen because we must first learn and educate ourselves from the failure and then by the experience accumulated emerge victorious. 

Another reason was that some people don’t want to play without independent characters; some people think that without them the game loses some of its character but I believe that without them you see a part of warhammer who you couldn’t see with them. 

Something else is that the community of WH40K is based on factions or groups, for example a group of players that is on a certain place play among themselves and only among themselves, some tournaments do happen and they gather people from around but they don’t cooperate. It’s a closed community - closed in its own self without talking outside of it and can’t make something really organized.  

As long as we keep doing that we won’t do anything good in the ETC, we will play our game with our friends as local gaming groups, this is sad because there are minds in this country who can shine in the ETC and can lead us to conquer good positions as the Warhammer Fantasy Greek team do already.

IR: The Warhammer Fantasy Greek team conquered the 16^th place and as all say it could have done a lot better as it has done in previous ETC tournaments.  Why the Warhammer Fantasy Team do so much better? Is it only the experience they have accumulated produced from participation of many years in the WF ETC? 

SK: Personally I believe that their experience as players is of great importance, they are players who know what the ETC is and what are its traits and oddities, they know how to play and how to organize as a community, they are quite a close community too but they have managed to build a team that is good and manages to bring results. They were lucky because one small team or faction as we said earlier managed to do well and I think that they can do even better. 

I don’t want our community to be that close, I want all of the players to have a chance to participate in the ETC team and to manage to reach the positions that the Fantasy team get and the same part of glory that they get each year.

IR: You believe that the next invitation to Team Greece 2012 will be more successful? More players will come?

SK: I don’t know what to believe, I hope that there are people who will give more attention and interest in the ETC mostly because we did the first step and now we know how the ETC is, we doesn’t start from zero now, we start from some level and I hope that this will thrill some people and ultimately join the team.  

We need the interest of the community - of the players and I don’t know if I believe it but I hope that there are more players out there that will respond to the next captain’s call.

 

IR: Will you be on team Greece 2012?

SK: that’s the only sure thing, I am determined to participate in the ETC team every year and the only thing that would pull me back would be if at some point there would be eight other players who would be better than I am, in that case I would respect the team’s need and not participate, in other case I will be there every year and do whatever I can to give to our country as many victories as possible.

IR: Would you like to be captain too on that team?

SK: To be sincere, yes I would like, it wouldn’t have to be mandatory but if the team would like it too I would like to be the captain for the team because I also believe that I did my job quite well on the pairings and on other team matters. 

IR: So to close our interview, is there something you would like to say about the whole experience?

SK: I would like to say that it was a pleasure for me to participate in the European Team Championship, it was a privilege to play among players as Leonidas, Vasilis, Odysseus, Takis and our Polish team members:  Marcin, Roman and Milosz and it was an honor being captain of this team.

Personally I don’t care at all about the result because I went into a really large event and I had a really great time, an experience that I will have for the rest of my life as I think the rest of the players.

Maybe the result doesn’t satisfy everyone but this comes second as the most important thing is that we had a great time and while I don’t know how the community will perceive our attempt I would like to tell to those who believe that they could do better than us that the only way to learn if they could do better is to participate in the team with their presence and not be hostile behind a keyboard or a Mask. 

It is important to support your team whatever the results it brings. 

IR: Okay, thank you very much Stefanos and good luck with the team. 

SK: Thank you too. 

So what was the accomplishment? Obviously it wasn’t the ranking, Team Greece finished last with only 1 point, many defeats and actually quite a poor performance, so what was it?

At some point I was thinking some months ago that there would not be any ETC team once again, and a small but good community of warhammer 40k players will not be represented again, or at least send some of its players on the ETC.

But there are good players here, and many, able to do a lot of good work on the Championship – Stefanos mentioned that and I agree, if all of us take this team seriously we have some real chances to do very good on the championship, and that will be on the path this team started, and every start is an accomplishment.

Well done guys.

 

For the Invulnerable.

Panayiotis.