This weekend, Pandemic Black returns to the tournament scene to challenge for a Major League Gaming title, looking to dethrone Orlando champions Fnatic by relying on their roots. The team featuring last year's stalwarts Joe “NoktyN” Romano, Mason “Nitrana” Groendal, and Greg “Malice” Risselada are hungry to prove the competitive fire that drove them to dominate the tournament scene in 2007 has yet to flare out.

“We haven't burnt out,” emphatically stated team captain Romano, “our team has a lot of desire to win and we've been playing WoW more regularly. The 2008 season so far for WoW has been a wake-up call for our team and we now understand that once you stop practicing for even one day, let alone four months, that you can fall out of touch with the meta-game.”

At this years opening MLG events, the team certainly looked out of place as a conglomeration of players into half-baked lineups failed to impact at WWI in France or MLG San Diego. In Orlando, the team made some strides and improvements, opting to try the current metagame staple of a Druid, but it produced mixed results.

“I don't think our team really underperformed at the Orlando event, I feel we played very well there. For example, our match versus Duelists could have gone either way in my eyes, and we beat ou Time not Skill, who knocked out a few respectable teams in that tournament, in our first match,” NoktyN explained, “The game versus Hoodrych's WLD wasn't played very well, but that was just lack of practice with enhancement comps. We didn't have a solid answer for WLD with our lineup in Orlando, but now we do and I think that's going to give us a win or at least a top three finish in Dallas. It will be nice if it happens... I'm sick and tired of the doubters.”

“Paris was just terrible, the team lineups we sent there hardly practiced together so the results were as such. San Diego was the wake-up call event in my eyes. We learned that countercomping isn't as big as it was in the past, being very good at one composition and just having enough counters to beat the things that can 90-10 or 100-0 your comp is all you need.”

The counter-comping call has been a crutch many competitive teams fell back on in recent times after poor results, and now Romano is resolved to get past the team's previous fascination with it and adopt a new strategy: confidence in their composition. That means Pandemic's classic Rogue, Mage, Priest lineup will be back in full force this weekend at MLG Dallas.

“We've been practicing hard. Our RMP of Malice, Nitrana, and Douja playing hard and having alot of success versus WLD online, which is the comp to beat in LAN tournaments,” said NoktyN, “RMP is still a very good comp. I think a lot of the other teams are starting to experience what our RMP already experienced in late 2007. It seems when you play RMP for a very long time it is easy to say it's not a good composition or it's outdated, but in truth RMP has been and probably always will be one of the strongest 3v3 compositions. You have to have faith in it and never give up on it, and it will have faith back and never give up on you.”

In order to win Dallas, Pandemic will need to show their faith is not misplaced as a tough field awaits them, including top WLD and defending MLG champions Fnatic as well as another strong WLD Gotgame West and the perennial RMP contenders Gravitas. Even so, Pandemic's success online with RMP has been well documented on the ESL ladder where they maintained the highest rating with the composition while also becoming one of four teams to advance through a Cup qualifier.

Whatever happens in Dallas, it's clear the “Golden Rule” - to use a Druid in every comp - the team developed after San Diego needs a little revision.

“Our golden rule is now 'You play RMP, and if you're not playing RMP, the comp you're running better have a druid in it!'” smiled NoktyN.