NAME: Team EnVyUs
WEBSITE: teamenvyus.com
TWITTER: @TeamEnVyUs
FACEBOOK: TeamEnVyUs
ROSTER:

• FranCHiS Real Name: Jose Leonardo Mavo
• Soto Real Name: Kevin Soto
• Praized Real Name: Arodys Dipre
• Toy Soldier Real Name: Jamie Rivera
• Team Manager: Ryan Summers

Team EnVyUs has had its core members since the later days of Gears of War 3 and are known to be the most well-oiled, prepared, and textbook competitive Gears of War team. FranCHiS, Soto, and Praized have been playing together for over a year, with Toy Soldier joining them just before the beginning of Season 2.

“Toy Soldier, the new addition to EnVyUs, brings raw skill and slaying power, but perhaps more importantly is a perfect fourth piece to this puzzle in terms of chemistry and personality,” said commentator Jon “Falloutt” Kefaloukos. “Toy Soldier defines the underdog story. Having been found by former pro-player Vishouz in a ranked game with the gamertag ‘Glass Gnasher,’ Toy Soldier worked his way from truly the bottom to become one of the most exciting-to-watch and high-skilled players in the game after his breakout event with Notorious.”

FranCHiS has been playing competitively since the original Gears of War, but had been known for his “2nd place curse,” until winning Hypefestation 4 in October 2015. Combined with the raw slaying power of Toy Soldier and Praized, as well as the high-skill consistency of Soto, FraNChiS may have finally found the right combination of players to hopefully bring home his first major championship.

ESL: How is your team preparing for the Season 2 Finals at PAX East?
EnVyUs: Our team recently held a bootcamp at the EnVyUs house for almost a month. This was a great opportunity for us to build chemistry with ToySoldier and get a lot of grinding in throughout the second half of the season. We’ve been practicing a lot. We all watch film together and talk over our strategies as much as possible. We take the time to break maps down and talk about different situations we see and how we can better address them the next time they arise.

ESL: What part of your game does your team have to improve on most in order to win?
EnVyUs: Our team, believe it or not, needs to improve some aspects of our communication. We have four members who communicate a lot, along with a coach’s fifth voice, but one thing we want to improve on is the ability to help guide our teammates in our communication. We are working on not just calling out what we see, but calling it out in a way that can help guide our teammate to make the correct move that is necessary to take the round. We are getting better at this every day and we will be 100% ready come tournament time.

ESL: What is your team most confident about coming into the Finals?
EnVyUs: We are confident in the fact that we have the best teamwork of any team in the game. Even though we have only played with Toy Soldier for a short amount of time, we believe our teamwork is on a higher level than the rest of our competition. That is why we have been able to finish the season with an 11-game win-streak and the #1 seed coming into the Season 2 Finals. Toy has done a great job adapting to how our team plays and we feel that as a unit we work together better than any other team currently playing.

ESL: Which team are you most excited to play? Least excited?
EnVyUs: The obvious answer here has to be Denial. We are also excited to play Notorious because of our history with Kenny, but we are most excited to play Denial again and get our revenge on a series we believe we handed away to them at the Season 1 Finals. We feel that come tournament time they are the biggest competition as the reigning champs, but we are very excited to hopefully rematch them again in the championship match. There aren’t really any teams we are least excited to play to be honest. We feel confident against any team that is put in front of us and we know that as long as we play our game, nobody can touch us.

The Gears of War Pro League Season 2 Finals will happen live at PAX East in Boston on Saturday, April 23. The top four teams will compete for the championship title and a share of the US$60,000 prize pool. Be sure to follow the ESL Gears of War Pro League on Facebook and Twitter for all the updates!