Hippomaniacs. Sehny: Winter Madness Holiday interview

We’ve taken an interview from Jan “sehny” Sehnal, the captain of Hippomaniacs, ahead of the Winter Madness group stage. This is a part of our special interview column dedicated to the Winter Holidays.

In the conversation leading up to the interview, Sehny mentioned that he was planning to dedicate the winter holidays to playing Dota 2 with his team.

WePlay!: So, playing Dota 2 is leisure time for you. It’s not something you feel you are getting tired of, right?

Sehny: Yeah, for me it’s like a hobby. I’m employed so when I get free time, I just play Dota 2, it’s leisure time for me.

WePlay!: Anything else you like to do during Christmas or New Year besides playing Dota 2? Any family traditions?

Sehny: Not that much actually, we just gather with the family on December 31st and do some stuff together with a group of friends. And that’s basically it.

WePlay!: Is there a special childhood memory that you would be willing to share.

Sehny: Oh man [laughs]. I actually remember back when I was an eight-year-old kid we were still living in a flat. We weren’t that rich and my father bought a new boombox, a big one and pretty expensive. He unpacked it on the Christmas eve.

There were candies on the Christmas tree but after like two days they were all eaten on the front and I had to get behind that tree to find some. But as I was crawling there I accidentally pushed the tree directly on the boombox and broke the volume control.

WePlay!: So you broke the new boombox.

Sehny: Yeah, exactly. My father wasn’t happy about that one.

WePlay!: I guess there is a lesson to be learned, if you put candies on a tree, at least make it accessible.

Sehny: Yes, that’s one way to look at it [laughs].

WePlay!: Did you get punished

Sehny: My dad was pretty mad but in the end, he realized I didn’t mean to do that.

WePlay!: Do you plan to do something special with your team during the winter holidays.

Sehny: We have been playing for 6 months together so we don’t have a special tradition yet. We have a lot of tournaments to play including Winter Madness, so we want to just play and get in a good shape.

WePlay!: Did you think about Winter Madness in terms of possibly winning group A (taking the first place)? Is there a celebration you want to have in case if that happens?

Sehny: I think that winning the group is pretty unlikely, but what we are aiming to play good and get a nice seed in the playoffs.

WePlay!: Is there a team you would like to play against in the playoffs? I would imagine you want to play vs. OG as they are the winners of TI.

Sehny: Well, actually we had a chance to play OG in some qualifiers and we learned a lot by losing pretty hard. If we didn’t have to play that team it would be pretty nice for us.

WePlay!: Anything you want to share with your current and the possible future fans you will get after winning Winter Madness?

Sehny: First of all, I would like to do a shout out for our manager. Her name is Skeli (Hana Dichtlova), she organizes everything for us and is doing a really good job. And another shout out to our team owner Eduard Winkler, he is trying really hard as well. And the third and last shout out would be to the Czech Dota 2 community, it’s relatively small but the people support us a lot and it’s pretty motivating.

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Thank you very much for your time Jan. WePlay! wishes you the best of luck next year.

Sehny streams on Twitch frequently, so feel free to give him a follow and join the chat!