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Hey everyone, I just sat down with Snowblindfrog and Dr. Salvador and talked about their team and the TWL Div2 playoffs. The Magnolia Thunderkitties are scheduled to fight Carnal Gaming for the Division 2 title on Wednesday August 4th at 10pm EST.

Hey guys, thanks for sitting down with me, why don't you take a minute to tell us about yourself and your team?

=^..^= Snowblindfrog: Howdy. I go by Snowblindfrog and I am co-founder, co-captain and pocket soldier for Magnolia Thunderkitty. I've been in the competitive gaming scene since 1996 in QWTF, spent several years in TFC clans, and have been clanning in TF2 since late 2007. I've been running Magnolia Thunderkitty since Aug 2008.

=^..^= Dr. Salvador: I'm Dr. Salvador, been playing TF2 since beta. I started online gaming with CS 1.6 and TFC. About a year and a half ago I decided to try out competitive play and have been with M7K ever since. I play demo and I'm a team captain along with Snow. Outside of gaming, I just graduated college with a degree in computer engineering.

Almost 2 years is a long time for a TF2 team to survive together, have there been any problems with the team or drastic roster changes in that time?

=^..^= Snowblindfrog: [laughs] We've had our fair share of challenges, that's for sure. Most have been personality conflicts, so finding that perfect balance between trying to win and having people you enjoy playing with has been rough. We've had a few roster shakeups but usually no more than 2 people at a time.

=^..^= Dr. Salvador: I can't say it's been trouble-free, but we've always been able to discuss our differences and come to an understanding. We haven't broken up because we all love the game and we all have the same idea of what our team should be like. We desire the same balance of fun and competition; we never work too hard but we are always working to improve.

Switching topics to the playoffs, just last week you guys beat out charles, a clear favorite for making it to the finals. What do you think gave your team the advantage in that game?

=^..^= Dr. Salvador: In short: we cleaned ourselves up. In the past few weeks we had started to loosen up for various reasons related to both team synergy and real life occurrences. However, a shortly before the match we knuckled down and worked on what was crippling us. We went in with every push planned instead of the lackluster "follow the uber" pushes we had been doing. One player specifically, Jigz, really stepped up his game. He went from literally the bottom of the scoreboard in scrims to top-fragging in the match.

=^..^= Snowblindfrog: Agreed. We also had a 'Come to Jesus' meeting the night before to hash out some things. Sometimes people are leery of giving feedback directly for fear of causing hard feelings. So we had a good bitch session to clear the air and I think that went a long way to making everyone feel like they were on the same wavelength again.

Carnal Gaming beat out GGG, making both matches this week an upset. How do you think you will do against them?

=^..^= Snowblindfrog: Well I know the way I want it to go, but in reality I'd say it's really anyone's game at this point. We've not always had the best scrims against Carnal, but I also feel like we've come a long way since the beginning of the season. I do think it's going to be our toughest match for sure.

=^..^= Dr. Salvador: It's hard to say. We did have a rough match (read: loss) against them in XPL, but I think the improvements we made for the match against charles will really help us out when we play Carnal next week. I am glad we've playing them as I think it will give us a chance to make up for any mistakes we made last time, and that's quite a motivator.

Do you guys have any new practice strategies that will help give you the edge or are you just going to try and work as hard as you can on your usual strategies to gain that win?

=^..^= Dr. Salvador: One thing we definitely learned in the match with charles was the potential of unconventional strategies. We don't have anything specific lined up right now, but I'm pretty sure we will try scrimming with something new before match time.

=^..^= Snowblindfrog: Well I do have this one new strategy that involves a dragon, but I've only worked it up on Yukon thus far. Seriously though, this has been a topic of much debate within the clan in the past couple of months. Historically we've stuck with the usual strats and haven't done much in the way of experimentation. At the same time I think it's caused us to be inflexible when faced with alternative strats from the opposing teams. So it's definitely something we're open doing.

With all these new leagues starting up, where are you guys planning on playing next season?

=^..^= Dr. Salvador: We've signed up and paid for CEVO Main and will probably be playing in TWL next season.

=^..^= Snowblindfrog: Though I will add, I've heard there’s a sexy new admin over at UGC...so who knows!

Well, thank you guys for the interview. Any shoutouts to your fans in the crowd?

=^..^= Snowblindfrog: I'll just give a brief shoutout to the rest of the team. Thanks for all the effort you put forth and doing what you do to help keep this clan going. And I suppose, more importantly, I'd like to shoutout to Mrs. Snowblindfrog for not wanting to leave me despite spending many hours a week in matches and scrims! :) <3

=^..^= Dr. Salvador: Shoutout to Laving and Mancakes for being sexy awesome. Also, thanks to everyone who rang for us when we really needed to get a scrim in.

Good luck to Magnolia Thunderkitty and Carnal Gaming next week as they face off for the Div2 title. Predictions, news and more coming later this evening.