Welcome to “Meet your WCS Challengers” an interview series where we give you the chance to get to know new and returning WCS Challenger player that battled through the brutal qualifies to test their mettle in Challenger and earn a chance to make it into Premier League. Today’s challenger is a young Protoss player hailing from Kazakhstan, and currently residing in North America. Meet Pavel “PiLiPiLi” Pilipenko!

PiLiPiLi on FearDragon's "Breaking Out" Show

Thanks so much for taking the time to do this interview? For our readers that don't know who you are can you tell us a little about yourself?  

I am an 18 year old Protoss player. I was born in Kazakhstan and moved to the U.S. 18 months ago and I started playing StarCraft II two and a half years ago. I first hit Grandmaster at 17 years old.

How have your parents reacted your bid at progaming. Are they supportive do they understand what you're doing and that you might get to travel the globe to play video games in front of an audience?

My parents are happy as long as I do well at school and can pay for everything I need on my own using those dirty dirty eSports dollars.

You're from a country that we don't often see represented in professional StarCraft. Is there any Kazakh scene you know of, or are you the only real professional player form the region, and what sever did you play on? What was the latency like?

The only notable player from Kazakhstan was Masterok but he doesn't play anymore. So I'm currently the best Kazakhstani person playing StarCraft right now. I wasn't playing StarCraft that much in Kazakhstan, but when I did was playing on EU server, but I mostly played team games. I was only diamond or platinum in Kazakhstan. When I moved to America I started playing a lot and hit Grandmaster.

During your WCS qualifier you took out Bails, and you recently killed HuK in a show match hosted by Rotterdam. How do you feel the strength of your PvP is right now?

I think PvP is not my best matchup but it is the matchup in which i am not scared of anybody because I know I can coinflip people to death, but i don’t think I will play PvP in challenger.

Could you tell us how you feel about your other match ups right now as well?

My PvT is god awful, but thankfully there is no Terran that can pick my for challenger, so I don’t care about pvt much at the moment. I do need to work on my PvT though. My PvZ is my best matchup I think. I have a really good style for PvZ because I can play macro,and all in, and cheese. So its hard for Zerg players to predict me.

Looking specifically at your play what do you think your greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses are?

I tend to panic a lot if i get harassed, and I am not very good about adopting to weird builds. My biggest strength is probably that I know my builds well and have good micro and timings.

Scarlett would be the other big name that you took out in the qualifier. What was taking down such a well known player in such a high profile match like for you emotionally speaking?

I was nervous as hell during our games, but i managed to watch her replays vs other people before our match so i managed to metagame her a bit. I was extremely happy after beating her/making to challenger. I was literally screaming for like five minutes. I am a super emotional player!

Leading up to the WCS qualifiers what was your practice like? Do you primarily ladder for practice or do you play customs with other pros?

I was only laddering three days before qualifiers i stopped streaming and started laddering 8 hours a day. Fortunately that paid off. Also playing in a lot of online cups got me experience in an online cup environment which helped a lot.

I know rank isn't everything, but approximately what rank do you occupy on the various ladders? Can you tell us how this affected your confidence going into the qualifiers?

The account I use to practice in is in the top 10 of GM constantly. The ones I stream on are barely top 25. On EU I am in the top 80, and I got GM on Korea last season but I haven't been playing there much due to latency. In terms of confidence ladder rank means nothing to me. A lot of people that are way higher on the ladder than me didn't pass round two of the qualifiers.

For our readers that haven't seen a lot of your play can you describe how like to play with a sentence or two for each match up?

Well as I said for PvZ I can cheese, macro, and all in. For PvT I prefer straight up Blink opening into 2 base colossus into double forge, and then a third with late storm. For PvP I like to play reactionary, mostly blink or stargate and then just react to whatever the opponent does.

The Challenger draws are happening tomorrow night. Is there anyone in particular you're hoping picks you, and if so why?

I want PvP or Suppy. Astrea or HuK is the dream, because Astrea doesn't practice much and HuK is beatable. Suppy doesn't play much either, and I don't think I have to explain why I don't want to play against Hydra, Kane, and viOlet.

Aside from winning your Challenger matches and attempting to make it into Premier whats next for where, do you have any specific plans StarCraft or otherwise for the new future.

My dream for now is to make it into Premier League. Then to win the Breaking Out NA tournament, and then to focus on streaming and trying to make it into Challenger next season if I fall out.

Do you have any final words for our readers?

Thanks for reading and I hope to prove myself as a good player in the near future!

Finally can where can we find you on social media and do you have any shout outs for us?

You can find me on Twitch where my channel is PiLiPiLi96 or on Twitter @PiLiPiLi96.

Sadly PiLiPiLi's qualifiyng matches against Scarlett had to be played off stream, but he was kind enough to provide us with the replays and we will be creating casted VoDs from them! Be sure to check back for them!

For more breaking news and great eSports content be sure to follow Joe on Twitter @ploguidic3