With only six teams left standing, things are getting heated in the Campus Legends Mobile Legends division. Joining us today is Ben “Bento” Toh, team captain for the ITE CC representatives, Turtle Bois.
Ben, congratulations on the team’s great performance in both the Group Stage and Playoffs. As team leader, you have the responsibility of managing your players, whether it is mentoring newer members, working on strategies or shotcalling. What has this experience been like for you?
I played in Campus Legends last year, so I do have some experience. We did have to find a couple of new members this year because some of our players graduated and left. But I have not had many issues working with the new guys. When I’m trying to gather the team for ranked training, they get on real quick. Of course, we do have a couple of minor disagreements, but everything has been going pretty good so far.
You have quite a few MPL veterans on your roster. What has it been like working with them?
In-game, wonderstruck and Vanix are very involved with team comms. wonderstruck is the tank, so he is constantly looking at the map, telling us when he wants to gank or engage. Vanix is mainly responsible for objective comms and as the EXP laner, I am also involved in directing teamfights around objectives.
It has been pretty smooth sailing actually. With their experience, they know the flow of the game, what to do, what the game is like, so it is easy working with them. We just hop on the game and play. There is no real need for training. We just get on with the matches.
With this many voices involved in the team’s shotcalling, has there been any conflicts and miscommunication?
I am pretty sure this happened in one of the series we played earlier. We were having miscomms and the game was quite rabak. Generally, when we have these kinds of problems, we try to resolve it within the game. We might talk about it after as stuff that we can troubleshoot for our future matches, but we try not to take it out of the game. At most, we might mention it for banter. No hard feelings or grudges.
What were the team’s expectations given your veteran line-up?
I am quite chill, so when we first joined Campus Legends, I told my team to just have fun playing. I do not really want to put any pressure on my players, because deep down I know that every one of them wants to become champions. All of us are aiming to become back-to-back champions.
Who would you say has been the best performing player on your team so far?
To me, no one has really outshined the rest. Everyone has been performing well. We all have a good grasp of the game and when things get tough, everyone will be able to step up.
Of the six teams left standing, who do you think is the strongest competitor?
Based on the games we played and the ones that were streamed on Twitch, I would say NP is the strongest. They have really good team synergy, have been training a lot and they did beat us in our group, so they are definitely a team to look out for.
Since they were in the other group, I have not had a chance to play against RP and TP yet. At first, I thought TP would come out as first seed in Group A, but RP proved me wrong. It shows they have the team chemistry and individual skill, so I would like to play against RP since I think they will be a good fight.
How has the tournament meta shifted given the matches so far and the introduction of the latest patch?
The newest patch definitely shifted everyone’s playstyles. Jungle in particular was heavily affected. Previously, you would play a Tank, but now it is back to Assassins, Marksmen and Fighters.
For us, we do not have a specific playstyle. It depends very heavily on our draft. If we have an early game hyper, we focus more on early objectives while our gold lane is given more space to 1v1. But if it is a game where our Marksman needs to be the primary late-game carry, our Tank will focus on babysitting him and letting him scale up.
Since our Core has a wide hero pool, it did not really change the way we approach the game very much. We just go with the flow.
To end off, given your loss to NP in the Group B finals, what is the team’s outlook towards your coming rematch against them?
They are a solid team. Of all their players, I think Qd is the one to watch out for. I have played with and against him for quite some time and he has really solid mechanics. On their team, I think he is the one that holds everybody together.
Since we are pretty far into playoffs, we will be playing more seriously. Whether it is showing more respect to our opponents or not letting them run over us so easily. If they are putting on a good show, we will give them a fight.
Tune in every weekend at 1 pm to our Twitch channel to catch the action live! Follow us on Instagram to get the latest updates.
Special thanks to Mate Mate for their phenomenal support! Check out their website matemate.com and use code: ‘CAMPUSLEGENDS’ for 30% off for all purchases, from 1st June to 20th August only.
