After a rather disappointing performance in WGTCL, the predominately Swedish powerhouse NaW/QPad has chosen to expand their ranks from outside the borders of Sweden. To get some more insight about the teams recent changes, I spoke with the leader of the team Emerald.

Would you mind briefly introducing yourself and what your role is in NaW/QPad?

I am Tony, more known in the community as Emerald. I am 24 years old, live in Sweden and I am also the owner of Team NaW/Qpad, where I mainly handle PR and sponsoring Issues, but also some regular clanleader tasks. You can call me "the spider in the web" If you like.

Recently, you have decided to remove several gamers from your team including Emil “Mireille” Niklasson who is one of the most accomplished gamers in Sweden. What is the main reasoning behind the decision to remove these gamers from the team?

Inactivity, MireIlle decided to drop his E-sports career – At least until the release of Starcraft 2. NaW- does not have any place for inactive members who do not contribute with anything for the team regardless of their "fame" or recognition in the community. The activity Issue got a lot more important after this summer, where we have been fighting with a lot of problems due to Inactive members during this summer.

To keep the team active you have chosen to look outside of Sweden for players. Your first addition to the team is the well-known American zerg player Jacob “LzGaMeR” Winstead. How did you become Interested in this player?

I have kept my eyes open for new recruits for the past 2 months or so. First, we tried to find some Swedish candidates, but it didn’t really lead anywhere because the players who would pass our requirements already were in teams we didn’t want to steal them from. The rest were simply not fulfilling our high standards. Therefore we started to look outside of Sweden, but only in time zones that would be similar to our own. LzGaMeR lives In the US, but he has promised he will be able to play during "our times" and after some tryout matches and additional discussions we decided to make him a part of our team.

In less than two weeks he will be representing NaW offline at the WCG USA finals. This event is unique because seven out of the ten competitors are terran users. Do you think that the large amount of terran users will either help or hurt LzGaMeR as he attempts to advance to Seattle?

I know that LzGaMeR Is practicing hard for WCG, and that he prefers to train games versus Terrans. In NaW we lack some terrans at the moment since MireIlle just had to leave us and Troy Is In the army (Therefore we are currently looking for a T user for the team). But I am sure LzGaMeR will get all the practice he needs to be well prepared for the American WCG finals.

Is there any chance that we could see this American travel to one of the DreamHack events In the near future?

A flight ticket from USA to Sweden Is rather expensive and we also got a lot of good gamers In Sweden. But if we get increased sponsor support In the future I think it can be a possible scenario then.

Your second recruit is not a well-known player, but an admin. What administrative role will Bman play in the time? Will he be given the role of trying to recruit more players into the team?

He will not be handling recruiting since I always have my own personal touch in each recruit for the team. Maybe If he someday takes over as clan leader. Bman´s tasks will mainly be to keep our members entertained with events such as showmatches, KOTH and also to schedule clanwars and administrate those as well. In time it is likely that he will get extended privileges as well as responsibility.