We caught up with Royce 'Bubbadub' Newcomb after Cloud 9's crazy game against CLG to hear what he though about the team's decisions, roster and more!

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How are you?

Bubbadub: I’m doing good, we should’ve gone 2-0 this weekend if the guys didn’t throw, honestly the guys are super upset at themselves with what happened, but that’s life.

Talking about the beginning of the game, were there any specific picks you guys were looking for, maybe Nidalee, what things were you going for specifically?

Bubbadub: There wasn’t a specific champion; it was like we want to run 2 or 3 compositions depending on what they ban. Their bans were actually pretty good but I actually think their first rotation they kind of let us build a comp that we were comfortable playing when they could’ve actually taken something away. It would’ve been a lot harder to draft around but I think the players are really comfortable with the draft overall.

Do you think they were picking and banning to fit the Kennen pick and do you think Kennen impacted how they played their strategy?

Bubbadub: I mean we kind of knew Zion would be on a split push pressure type champion. We banned Fizz and they banned Rumble and it’s kind of hard to have a lot of split push pressure against someone like Maokai and Kennen was a pretty good pick, but I don’t feel like it fit with their comp too well. He’s a hard engage and you’re building a 4-1 around AP Split push and his split push pressure is a lot lower than Riven or Gnar. Might be going off topic but I think the Kennen pick was actually pretty good overall, it did a lot of work and it plays to ZionSpartan’s strengths as a player. I think it worked for them because of their players.

Going over to yourself and your interactions with the team, how has being a coach been as opposed to a player, what’s that been like?

Bubbadub: It’s much different, not being on stage you don’t have to calm yourself down before the game. My job is to create quick decisions at Pick/Ban and help facilitate what kind of comp we are aiming towards. Normally you have 2 or 3 that are discussed and you have to choose one on the spot, you have to be saying okay this looks great because of this, this and this. Then if the players disagree you have to be really quick working out what you actually want to run. I think this weekend the players did a really good job on that, I won’t take most of the credit because I would say Lemon leads the Pick/Ban. I think that’s one of the reasons Charlie isn’t here today, I’m not stepping in to fill Charlie’s Pick/Ban shoes and make this team better. Normally I’m the coach behind this team but I just got brought down because Charlie wanted to spend more time with C9T because they’re bootcamping and they’re having a bit of a rough time, but that’s a different story.

Working with the players and how tricky the roster has become do you work with them directly with scrims and pick/ban before the LCS?

Bubbadub: So I do help them with the pick/ban and Charlie helps them with pick/ban and an analyst that helps them with the pick ban so basically it’s just a think tank for pick/ban of what we think are options and also, wait what was the half of the question?

It’s sort of a tricky roster right now because you lost the shot calling of Hai but then kind of got it back, so how is working with the players and the morale?

Bubbadub: Hai is a super energetic outgoing guy, and he keeps the morale really high by himself, I tend to help with that on C9T more because I was head coach with that. I would say the Cloud 9 players are pretty independent as a group right now. I’m there for scrims and to help them review plays that go wrong, stuff like that. For the most part I would say Hai keeps the morale high when they lose.

So independent as in they know what to analyse, what to look for and how to analyse themselves is that what you mean?

Bubbadub: Well a lot of the time players won’t think, it kind of depends on how a scrim goes. They won’t think about all the bad things that happen when they win a scrim so we just bring it back and say “Okay this is what you improve on." If they lose it’s the first thing on their mind but if they win they’ll be like “Oh my god that game was messy but we did it.” They won’t tend to look back at the mistakes as much, I’m there to put down the big points of the game, what got them ahead what got them behind and stuff like that.

So Cloud 9 do that a little more than someone else might?

Bubbadub: This team in particular, Cloud 9 does pretty well looking where they messed up and what they need to do to fix it. Other teams I’ve worked with haven’t been like that.

What is your next goal in the LCS, maybe swap spots and avoid relegation?

Bubbadub: I think the obvious answer is yes we want to avoid the relegation and they also have the points from the first split so if they do avoid the relegation they can actually make a run for it if they improve just a little bit more. That CLG game just showed; they got really ahead early, they had really good map movements and then one slip up. If they didn’t have that slip up they could’ve forced the good fight, taken baron and then snowballed the game, they were like 6k ahead when they slipped up.

I heard that if you guys can get back into contention for world, because of your points you’d have to fight some weird gauntlet for it, do you know how that might work?

Bubbadub: Honestly the goal is to get 7th place and then worry about it. Getting 7th at this point would be good for us, Team 8 has to lose for us to get 7th place so it’s not even in our hands. If we won today and Team 8 lost then we would be even and then we would just have to beat Team 8 so long as we go even in the last week right now we actually have to win more than them, with only one week left that’s a bit concerning.

Wrapping up the interview, do you think you will continue on with Cloud 9 Tempest say they get in the LCS?

Bubbadub: That’s a tricky question. I don’t think I will be on the Cloud 9 main team as head coach past next weekend, I think Charlie will be coming back and I will be back in the shadows so to speak. Then if Cloud 9 Tempest makes it at that point I would have to make a decision. One thing I did want to say is that Jack has been really good to me I definitely think working with the Cloud 9 organisation is good, so we’ll see.

Any shoutouts you’d like to give?

Bubbadub: I’d like to thank my wife for giving me this opportunity to coach and continue pursuing a career in eSports. Any fans out there and all the Cloud 9 Sponsors.

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