We sat down with new Team Dignitas Assassin player Vilhelm 'POILK' Flennmark, to talk about his first few weeks with Team Dignitas and his experience at the Gold Club World Championship in China.

Did you know he has a cat? Or how the POILK name came to be? Sit back and let's get to know a little more about the newest addition to the Team Dignitas Heroes of the Storm roster.

A lot of Heroes of the Storm fans know the name POILK, but who is Vilhelm? Tell us a bit about yourself.

POILK: I’m a 20 year old guy from Sweden. I live 10 minutes away from Malmö in the South of Sweden, pretty close to Denmark. When I’m not playing Heroes of the Storm I like to watch handball and F1 or spend time with my cat, Elvira. I usually also have Heroes streams up on my second monitor.


Even before you competed in HGC EU, the name POILK was well known by the pro-players on the ladder. Where did your Heroes of the Storm journey start? And what were you playing before?

POILK: I started playing Heroes of the Storm roughly 2 years ago. I started playing it as a sort of chill game and after 3-4 months I started getting high ranks on the ladder and people started recognizing me. Before Heroes of the Storm I played League of Legends for a long time as ADC. I was mostly Master, but made Challenger from time to time.


Some players have funny stories about how their screen names came to be. Where did the name POILK come from?

POILK: It actually has no meaning, but on the backside of my QWERTY-keyboard it said “POI” and then “LK” on the line underneath. So, that was just 12 year old me having a struggle coming up with a name, and I just wanted to get into a game of League quickly, so QWERTY sounded pretty cool, and everyone knows about QWERTY, so I just looked on the other side and found POI LK and I took it. This is by the way also why the name is in all caps.


Players and experts alike call you the biggest talent to come out of EU lately, how did you go from Hero League Legend to be part of one of EU’s top teams?

POILK: Shortly after I started playing, I got in contact with a Swedish player called Suris and a guy called Muppet, who were friends with some of the pro players, and that’s pretty much how I started hanging out with everyone, because I knew Muppet and he brought me on to the Teamspeak with: Zarmony, Athero, Bakery, and Snitch. When I was playing Hero League we would all try to snipe each other, so that’s pretty much how I got to know people.


Team Dignitas is an old well-established organization, not only in Heroes of the Storm, but in esports in general. What does it mean to you to represent Team Dignitas?

POILK: It’s really cool to finally have a “real” organization that stands behind you and really support you. People start to recognize me in games and ask me questions, because of the “DIG” in front of my name. It has been really great so far.


The players on Team Dignitas have all praised the work of their coach Nabby, are you looking forward to working with a dedicated coach?

POILK: I haven’t had a lot of time to work with him, we only had two or three scrim blocks before we left for China, but I’m looking forward to working with Nabby, I have heard good things from the others, so I definitely look forward to working with a dedicated coach. I think it always helps to have a third party involved.

If I had to list something that I want to work on with him, then it would be to get rid of a lot of the bad habits I have inherited from Hero League, which are punished heavily in competitive. I have tried to work on it, and the team has been helping me a lot with it while we were in China. These guys have a lot of knowledge, and I still have a lot to learn from them.


After seeing the other teams in HGC EU announce their final rosters, how do you think the chances are for this new Team Dignitas lineup in HGC EU 2018?

POILK: After our performance at GCWC (Gold Club World Championship), I think our future looks really bright. Anything but Top 2 would be a disappointment to me. Fnatic had a pretty rough ending to GCWC, but when they get their things together and solve their issues, I think they will be really strong. Other than Fnatic, I think the former Team expert could be a threat as well.


You recently got home after 2 weeks in China where Team Dignitas played in the Gold Club World Championship. How did you like being in China?

POILK: We didn’t get to see a lot of China and Beijing as we spent a lot of it in our hotel practicing and playing our matches, but I really liked the people that were around us, especially the interpreters. Overall I had a really good time in China, it was an awesome experience. Some of the food was a bit weird for us coming from the West, not super weird, but I usually don’t eat noodles this much at home. There was also some shrimp stuff, but I didn’t touch that since I’m a bit wary of seafood when I’m traveling. Overall I liked the food, it was really good.


If we look at the games, can you talk through some of the results for Team Dignitas throughout the tournament?

POILK: Throughout the whole first series I was really nervous, so the only time the “Nervous POILK” meme was accurate was during the first series. I was really nervous, and I ended up pressuring myself and ended up choking. I missed all my Tracer bombs in the first game, and I misclicked my ult on Chromie in the second game, but we ended up with a tie so it was fine.

In our group stage series vs. Fnatic (1-1) I felt like we played much worse than in scrims, maybe it was because of the Bo2 format that we were a bit afraid of doing certain play, especially in the second game against Garrosh we were afraid to make moves. I think we had the game under control, but we ended up throwing it on an easy-camp. After the series I felt like we were in control in both games, and if it had been a Bo5 I’m sure we would have come out on top.

The first series against Ballistix in the Group Stage (2-0) I was really surprised that we were able to dominate them like we did. We had a fantastic game on Tomb where we ended up with a 4 level lead, but I was more surprised that we did so well on Dragon Shire where they have been good in the past. We played the map really well and got the draft we wanted, we were doing really well on Tomb in the tournament in general and took a lot of teams by surprise.

In the Winner Bracket series against Ballistix (2-3) I think the games were really fun until we lost the last map on BoE. I got really disappointed in myself, I felt that I messed up in the teamfight on core, I missed my Tracer bomb on the Greymane so he didn’t die. I kinda took the whole blame of the series on myself even if I shouldn’t, but I’m glad that my team supported me afterward, saying that even though I messed up on the core it was not my bad for the whole series. Already the day after, I was not really that sad that we lost. Ballistix played a really good series, and we ended up learning a lot from those games.

In the Loser Bracket series against Ballistix (3-2) We started out on Shrines where I think we should have won the game, we played well the whole game and messed up on the core, and we could have played better in the following core defense. They pretty much got a free game there.

After that we had a pretty bad time on Dragon Shire, we felt like it would be a 50/50 on who would take that, but we ended up losing it and be down 0-2. Now we had our 2 good maps still left (Sky Temple and Tomb of the Spider Queen). We were really comfortable on both those maps, and I felt like we could easily get up to 2-2. After those games we felt like it would be a 50/50 chance on Cursed Hollow, as both teams seemed pretty evenly matched. It all came down to this boss fight where we get a pick on Tyrael and chase the rest of them down with Arthas. So, when we got the Tyrael kill I felt like we had won the game, because we could chase them down with Lucio and Arthas, or we could take the boss and go core. When we got the last pick on Genji we started cheering on voice comms.

In the Grand Final against KSV BLACK (0-3) we were a bit tired, but it would not have changed the result, they were clearly the better team. Maybe we could have won the second game on Sky Temple, we made some mistakes that we normally wouldn’t, so I think we could have won that for sure. In general KSV is just a really good team, it’s really hard to draft against them, because it feels like they can draft anything and be fine with it.


It was the first time you played at a LAN event and it was maybe the most stacked tournament of the year. How did it feel to play on stage?

POILK: As I said, the first game was really nerve wracking, but after that I felt really comfortable and had a good time. It was fun to play on stage, and I really enjoyed playing in front of the audience. I feel like I can feed on the hype from the crowd, and it just makes the whole situation feel right, it’s just amazing.


If you look back on the tournament as a whole, how do you think you and the team performed overall?

POILK: I think we did better than expected, we just went in there and did our best and wanted to make top 4. Our main goal was just to get as much scrim practice as possible and treat it like a bootcamp, but we did better than expected, already in scrims. After we beat Ballistix 2-0 on stage and we did really well in our scrims, everyone started to get really hyped and wanted to go as far as possible.


We are happy to have you on the team and we look forward to following you and the guys on your path to the top of the world! Do you have any shoutouts to your new teammates and your fans?

POILK: Shoutout to all our fans, I really appreciate all the support. Shoutout to Team Dignitas for giving me this opportunity. A huge thanks to my teammates who are helping me so much. Of course shoutout to Twitch chat, and happy Holidays and happy new year to everyone.

Follow POILK on his social media:

Twitter: @POILKpls
Twitch: twitch.tv/poilk2