Rasmus ‘Chessie’ Blomdin; “I can already see myself being on an equal level to a ton of players I admire”

After having recently announced his transition to Dota 2, few seemed to take note of the success Rasmus 'Chessie' Blomdin has enjoyed as a professional Heroes of Newerth player. Winning several LANs without dropping a single map, and being part of two of the game's historically most dominant teams, onGamers took the opportunity to talk to the famed jungle-turned-carry player about HoN, playing with his brother and effectively restarting his career as he transitions to Dota 2.

Ever since the rise of Dota 2 and League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth took a step back in terms of exposure and overall size. Were you ever considering transitioning from HoN to any of the other titles, and why did you decide against it if that was the case?

I didn’t want to switch because I was able to support myself fully by playing HoN after close to a year, and that was a really alluring prospect. If you also add on the fact that it was the most entertaining game I’ve ever played and that I could spend just about an infinite amount of time just playing it as well, switching games never felt necessary for me.

Then, after I became part of the best team at the time and I earned more money than most of the current-day Dota 2 teams playing it, I definitely saw no reason to transition out of it just yet. But eventually the game just got noticeably smaller for every day that passed and when we won our biggest tournament yet at the HoNTour Season 2 grand finals I realized that I had, along with the game, reached my peak and that nothing would ever be as big as that moment in the game. It was simply time to move on.

An interesting anecdote is that you and your younger brother have played with and against each other in several parts of your career. Does it influence you in any way when you have him on each respective side?

By now we’re both so used to playing with and against each other, it’s been happening for several years now and it’s really nothing that comes to mind as soon as the game has actually started. The fact that he’s an incredible player, and undoubtedly one of the best 1v1 players the game ever saw, also made playing with him an incredible joy, and it made the last six months of my career very enjoyable.

Your career moved upwards in a pretty rapid pace, as you joined the compLexity HoN team that featured, amongst others, Peter ‘PPD’ Dager. Whilst in the team, you became extremely renowned for your solid jungle play. Were there any specific players you took after, and did you feel that being on a more individually talented roster gave you more chances to shine in the role than otherwise?

I’ve always thought along the lines of gathering inspiration from players I consider better than myself, just watching them play is the absolutely best way to learn everything in the fastest possible way. When I play today, I always make sure to watch the best players’ streams in order to pick up on all the small details that separate them from the rest. During my HoN days, I gathered a lot of inspiration from watching Akke and his Ophelia (Chen), but with that hero specifically you need to play it a ridiculous amount to become truly good at it. I think it applies to all heroes that utilize micro a lot. The best example in Dota 2 would be Meepo, which I love playing.

Regarding the amount of times I got to shine on my role, I think we were just so on-top of the meta-game and individually skilled that we essentially felt no fear playing against any team in the world. Since all other members on my team produced a ridiculous amount of pressure, and our strategy was so well thought out, I got a ton of space to make plays on my own. The other teams simply tried to play like we did, which we could shut down extremely easily since we were the masters of what they tried to emulate.

Your younger brother’s team, Trademark Esports, seemed to have found this answer to your meta-game as they defeated you by a solid 2-0 victory at Dreamhack Winter 2012. What did they do that just seemed to hard counter you?

We lost our first series in close to four months against Trademark just a week before Dreamhack, and during our bootcamp an entirely new meta was developing around us and we were too slow to adapt to it. Take all that and add two surprisingly weak drafts in each game and it shouldn’t really be a surprise as to why we fell so close to the finish line.

After Dreamhack Winter you left coL for the second best team in North America at the time, Stay Green. After you had joined their ranks however, you helped sG become the most dominant team in the entire history of HoN. Didn’t it feel like a gamble at first to switch teams due to the support coL were able to offer?

I felt that the offer I received from them was too good to pass up. It also arrived at a time when coL had become extremely demotivated due to the recent hardships within the team itself, which affected our general play. Our situation had become so messed up that it was even hard to get everyone to play scrims, so I felt that it was pointless as I was always ready for the times we’d scheduled with our opponents.

I´d even say that me telling them ‘no’ would’ve been an extremely stupid move as I was asked to live with them in their teamhouse in Miami. My months in the US were amazing, and being able to share them with people who were just as dedicated as myself, made playing fun again and we were able to win everything there was to win together on top of it all.

When speaking to Zai in a previous interview of mine, he said that the dominance you experienced together with Stay Green was built of an almost perfect usage of a single strategy. Would you agree with this, or were you all top individual players on your specific roles?

It was a combination of strategy, will and individual prowess. We lived together, constantly talked tactics and studied our replays together by using a big projector in the house. After a while we were just so far ahead in terms of tactics, and had such a good grasp of the meta that our individual plays in the early-game stage started mattering less and less. We became familiar with every situation that we could possibly experience later on in the game. When we played we always had a strategy with a clear goal in mind, and I completely agree that the tactic he’s referring to was so incredibly strong that it simply put our opponents on the backfoot when we got to play it. Nobody could play it as well as us either, as we had mapped it out so much more thoroughly due to the time we were able to actually just spend on playing the game together.

So to sum it up for you, our strategy was the strongest one around, but along with the amount of hours we put in to perfecting it, and also fielding some of the best players in the game at the time made it all the more hard to beat. Though, to be honest, tDM were able to beat us a number of times, so it’s not like we were completely unbeatable.

Only one team’s stardom has really carried over from HoN in to Dota 2 and that is Fnatic, who dominated the game throughout 2010-2012 and won four Dreamhacks in a row. In comparison to sG, would you say that your overall results were more impressive than Fnatic’s?

There’s a lot of split opinions regarding this, but the way I see it the level of gameplay is extremely more polished nowadays in comparison to two years ago. You only have to look at a couple of replays from back then to see mistakes no solid team would be getting away with today. With that said I’m pretty convinced that if they had kept on playing HoN instead of Dota 2 they would’ve developed just as fast, if not faster, than the rest of the competitive teams and could definitely still have been the best team around due to their dominant past. But sG vs. Fnatic would’ve been incredibly exciting games, that I’m convinced of.

Wasn’t there a considerable drop-off in terms of consistency and skill when the more established teams and players started leaving the scene and you continued to dominate since you mentioned the level of play in Fnatic’s days were much lower?

I’d still say that the highest level towards the end of the game was still way higher than earlier, the issue was that few teams could keep up in terms of consistency. There were never more than four top teams around at once, and sometimes there were only as few as two. The quality of the top games were incredible, but you only needed to take one step further down on the ladder and you caught eye of a pretty ugly sight. So in all honesty, the difference was that during the end we simply had more talents leave the scene overall and there were fewer teams around, but having been a competitor in both eras of the game, I can easily say that in terms of raw gameplay we were far ahead of the teams in 2011-2012.

sG has now effectively come to pass and you have transitioned fully over to Dota 2. I’ve gathered that many HoN pros played Dota 2 on the side as early as 2012. Were you one of these people or have you just thrown yourself head-first into something completely new?

I played a tiny amount around the intitial The International, men I never really grasped the game fully back then. I didn’t like that there were any kind of tournaments around, or even a bonafide rating system. It wasn’t until the game received the matchmaking-rating patch that I decided to transition fully and stop playing pubs in HoN.

Even though the games are relatively similar, I can imagine that there are a lot of things the players that transition dislike, or just feel weird about. Is this something you’re experiencing?

HoN will always hold a special place in my heart. It’s an incredibly fun game but all good things must come to an end eventually.

I can’t even play more than a single pubgame at a time in the game today without feeling the urge to just quit playing, but in Dota 2 there’s no limit to how many games I can rack up in a single day without getting bored, and I see that as a vital ingredient if you want to be really good at a game. So I guess you could call it a very delibirate transition in my career, but it’s also a new and exciting challenge that I’m enjoying every minute of.

What role are you currently playing in Dota 2?

During the last six months of my career I played carry, and that is what I will continue to play in Dota 2.

Will your brother be joining you in your Dota-endeavour? Also, are you planning on starting a team with your former sG teammate Johan ‘mynuts’ Andersson?

Limmp is still currently playing HoN and has no plans on transitioning over to Dota. Me and Mynuts will however start playing amateur tournaments in order to gain competitive experience, but if we’re going to be playing in the same team is something only time can tell really. But I don’t see it as an impossibility since he’s such a talented player.

Does it feel weird being back at square one like this after having been at the absolute top of another game for such a long period of time?

Actually, I feel really good about it. I haven’t been playing for long but I can already see myself being on an equal level to a ton of players I admire, so I believe that with a couple more thousand games that I’ll make it back to the top.

Photo Credit: HoNTour, GosuGamers, EsportSM