10 Questions With JerryDamage: Volkai

Today, Jerry interviews the captain of the Faithless Lumi, Volkai.

Welcome to 10 Questions with Jerry Damage. This is a weekly player interview to get to know some of the players and personalities around the league better than just someone who’s name we’ve seen on the website. For this week’s interview, we sit down with captain of the Faithless Lumi, Volkai.

1. Standard opening question: Where are you from originally? And where are you at now?
   
   Volkai: I’m originally from Windurst, and now I reside in Ul’Dah. Okay really I was born in Bloomington, Indiana, and I’ve lived in Detroit since 2009, with stays in Manhattan and Ann Arbor in between.
   
   
   
2. Other than Hearthstone, what do you usually do to have some fun or relax?
   
   Volkai: Mostly I consume sci-fi and fantasy stories in a wide array of mediums. The biggest one these days is Final Fantasy XIV Online.
   
   
   
3. What’s your history with CCGs? Is HS your first?
   
   Volkai: My first CCG/TCG was Magic the Gathering. I started playing it in 1998 with Portal, their first ‘for new players’ set. I also tried Pokémon’s first edition, back when Wizards made it, and tried a handful of others including C-23, Xena, Jyhad, Battle Cattle, and Havic: the Bothering. I wanted to try Battletech, but never actually acquired any cards for it. Hearthstone is my first digital-only card game, though.
   
   
   
4. How long have you been playing Hearthstone?
   
   Volkai: I first picked up Hearthstone around Old Gods, just before Wild was announced, but I was too invested in Magic to get used to the differences in the games and fell off after a few months. I picked Hearthstone up again as KFT came out, and missed preordering it by a day.
   
   
   
5. This is your second season in Sylvanas. What made you want to captain your own team this season?
   
   Volkai: This may come as a surprise, but I didn’t want to captain my own team this season! My original plan was to help coach the Mucklings to victory from the sidelines. However, the league needed one more captain, one more team, to expand from 16 to 20, and so I answered the call — and I don’t do something like that without going all-in and giving it my best
   
   
   
6. The Faithless Lumi have been a team that looks like they have what it takes to make a deep run in the playoffs. As you were making the team, what were some of the criteria you used when you signed all the players to your roster?
   
   Volkai: Caseyclarke was the first potential team member to sign up, and his passion for the team led to his bringing knockout recruit after recruit to me, even to the point where he withdrew from our lineup to allow for a strictly-speaking-PR-score better lineup. My criteria was pretty simple: be willing to commit to making your matches, and accept help in preparation from your team and captain: we’re a team, not a handful of players.
   
   
   
7. You’ve spent most of your time in the THL with Sylvanas and playing Last Hero Standing. Do you prefer LHS over Conquest as a format and if so why?
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   Volkai: My first experience with Conquest has been Tavern Hero Qualifiers, and it’s a fine format but not particularly exciting to me - it gives you a format to play games, but the excitement’s focus is the game, not the match. Last Hero Standing is, to me, much more interesting as a Match format, especially with the closed decks (but open classes) of THL. While playing the game well still matters, you can make up for less skill at the game by accurately predicting and countering your opponent’s lineup with limited information. Losing a game can directly lead to winning the next game - or even the entire match - through superior preparation.
   
   
   
8. If you could take one card from Wild and put it back into Standard, what would you pick and why?
   
   Volkai: That’s a tough call, but the one card I would move from Wild back to Standard is probably Fandral Staghelm. I love the way he betrays the ‘flexibility over potency’ theme of Druid with ruthless efficiency
   
   
   
9. Our usernames are something that usually have some special meaning to us. Where did the name Volkai come from and how did you pick it as your username?
   
   Volkai: The day Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition came out, back in 2000, I was at the table making my first character for it, and I wanted to give it a name that was new, original. After a few minutes I plucked ‘Volkai’ out of my brain fully formed, and I’ve used it ever since.
   
   
   
10. If you could pick one card to represent you as a player, what would you pick and why?
    
    ​Volkai: I’m instead going to tell you the card that represents me as a captain: Nourish. I try to help my team members in the ways they need, and the fact of the matter is a player like Seohyun has different needs than a player like KillerVeebs.

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That’s it for this week. Thank you Volkai for letting me interview you and look forward to another player interview next week.