Last season they could decide the final of the Playoffs for themselves by overcoming the top favorite of Division 1 Chaos in Complete Control. Now they are back on top of the highest skill Division of Heroes Lounge by showing a strong performance in their first game watched by an audience of several hundreds of people. We wanted to know who these people are forming the team called No Trick Ponies and asked them some questions.
First of all, I would like to congratulate you to your match against the Frozen Vikings. It was very entertaining! As I think that many of the players and followers of Heroes Lounge would like to know more about the teams and the players could you please introduce the No Trick Ponies to the readers? Since when are you playing together? How old are you in average?
Thanks! No Trick Ponies is an all-Finnish team dating back to February 2016. There have been a few roster changes along the way (we mainly consume tank players like a Diablo main does souls), but the core of the team has remained more or less intact for more than six months and we have hundreds of games played together. The average age of our team is 26,4. No Trick Ponies is a team that functions largely on memergy (meme-energy) and a good team atmosphere. Since we've been playing together for a long time now, we know each other's quirks outside of the game as well as inside of it. This often results in team comms being mostly rambling that would be incoherent to the uninitiated, general fooling around and repeated twitch memes. We can get pretty serious when playing competitive games, but we try to keep it sufficiently light so it never becomes too stressful.
Who is currently on the team playing which role? What are you doing besides playing Heroes of the Storm in Heroes Lounge?
Mili - Team captain, ranged dps/flex: I enjoy swimming, travelling and reading fantasy books on my non-HotS time. I also often travel to big European summer music festivals like Tomorrowland, Sensation, etc. While at home I like to tend to my precious reef aquarium, which is inhabited by possibly the worst behaving pair of clownfish (the Nemos) in all of Finland. I originally started gaming in vanilla WoW and I still occasionally heal a battleground or two on my priest. Another thing that gets me moving outdoors is Pokemon Go, because who wouldn't enjoy chasing Pikachu at 11 at night in rain and sleet (the typical Finnish weather). I work at school as a special needs assistant. 
SilverFox - breadcaster and voice of the team, ranged dps/flex: It is I, the almighty SilverFox we all know. Some may know me for my awesome Sgt. Hammer plays but recently I’ve been playing pretty much only Tychus since there is this rumor that Tychus is the best hero in the game. Sigh. I am the team’s ranged/flex player and my hero pool is probably almost as large as Patsku’s. When not playing HotS I am casting community tournaments at our Finnish channel HotSFinland. Right now HotS is my primary game I play but sometimes I play other games with my friends like Magic: the Gathering, Rocket League, and CS:GO. My other hobbies (IRL) include playing several different instruments like guitar, keyboard and drums. My favorite genre is power metal. I work at an insurance company and also study business economics in a university of applied sciences. I also draw a little sometimes, mostly doodling fan-art of something I like. I fell in love with Heroes of the Storm immediately when I first tried the beta. I hate other MOBAs because they feel more like work whereas HotS has way more stuff going on with short games. And also, Blizzard is the best.
Fatal - team poet and philosopher, support: Heya, I am the strange one. I love my teammates so much that I have taken the role of healer with only a little pressure from my peers. Outside the gaming world, where I consider myself ancient, I am a 34-year old guy who lives in Helsinki and studies agricultural economics in the department of economics in university of Helsinki. I am passionate about knowledge, food and nature. My other hobbies include hiking, frisbeegolf, raves, beer, drunken singing next to a fire and tabletop role-playing games which I have been playing since I was seven and still love these days (Archipelago is my favourite atm). On a typical weekend, you will find me either playing or exploring the night of Helsinki full of sin and partying hard. 
Jyke - tank/melee flex, manager of Finland's biggest salt mine: I am a 21-year old mechanical engineering student at Oulu university. I am casual gamer and play all kind of games. At the moment, I mostly play Heroes of the Storm then a little less other games for example Overwatch and Total War Warhammer. In HotS I can play pretty much any role well except support but since the team needs a tank so I tank. Many in the HotS Finland community know me for my Illidan play and have heard me say "Now I go in and kill everyone". Outside of gaming I like to watch different movies and series I also like to cook different kind of foods then rest of my free time is usually studying if I have spare time after playing games and that other stuff. So, I don't have hobbies at the moment but thinking about taking up skydiving or fencing.
Patsku - melee/flex, main drafter and shotcaller: In addition to playing Heroes of the Storm and dealing with HL monkeys I deal with a different type of primate as an English teacher trainee. I also play the bass in a hardcore/metal band called Soul Gutter and do club gigs around Finland. I also play other games such as Overwatch, Pokemon Sun, Total War: WARHAMMER and World of Warcraft, but those take less and less of my time since Heroes of the Storm takes up most of my gaming time.
How did you happen to play in Heroes Lounge? Are you satisfied with Heroes Lounge or are there any wishes how the league should evolve further?
We saw the Heroes Lounge announcement on Reddit and that's where the idea came from. There were some issues with arranging matches in Season 1 that gave us some headaches but thus far it seems Season 2 is far stricter about the rules and administrated EVEN better. Over all we are very happy with how Heroes Lounge works and consider ourselves lucky to have such a great platform and community to play with.
How are you in general preparing for a match-up in Heroes Lounge? Are you analyzing your opponents and their last games/drafts or are you just jumping into it?
We like to focus on our own game play for the most part instead of overthinking how our opponents are going to play. A couple of times though, we have been facing teams we know well beforehand, in which case we do like a bit of respect banning and counter picking action. In general, we practice together three to four times a week as well as personal practice. Mili has been getting us more and more good quality scrims with Heroes Lounge connections via Discord, so that's a great boon to have moving forward in Season 2!
In your last game against The Frozen Vikings you played a Muradin, Tassasdar, Valla, Thrall, Malfurion comp against a Alarak, Reghar, Tychus, Johanna, Gul'Dan comp. You were then winning the game in a really convincing way. However, as Khaldor was casting the game he said he would like to see the exact same game with a Zarya instead of Alarak. Do you think that would have been a bit more of a problem for you?
Patsku: I feel like their comp needed to move into us on the shrines where most of the fighting happened. Our comp specialized in a sustained fight in a medium-sized area where there are minions to heal from with Leeching Plasma. With Zarya I feel their front line advance into the shrine would have been worse (they only had Johanna as melee), although they could have stayed for a longer time and controlled the area better if they got there before us. Zarya might have been a better pick overall, but not a game changer IMO.
Are you heading again for being number 1 after Season 2? How do you think about the other teams in Division 1?
We are aiming for that top spot for sure! There are some really good teams in the league, but we feel like we play our best in high pressure situations and adapt well on the fly to new play styles, so we'll be fine.
Any shoutouts or advertisement you wanna give?
A huge shout out to all the casters and Heroes Lounge admins, especially our top fan Epixors <3. Also a massive thanks to Juuso Häkkinen, the creator of the best emote in all of the Internet, :ponychamp:! Also, a shout out to the HotS Finland community and Pumax the archfeeder! If you consider yourself a fan of extreme metal music, go check out Patsku's band Soul Gutter. 
Thanks to Mili, Patsku, SilverFox, Jyke, and Fatal for the time. Any feedback or suggestions for what's next on Inside Lounge? Contact us within the Heroes Lounge Discord or via Twitter or Facebook. If you got time and watch some Heroes games of the HotSFinland community, tune in on: Live-Video von HotSFinland auf www.twitch.tv anzeigen.
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