We countinue to introduce our EHL stars!

Please welcome - star defender from THE INCREDIBLE WILDCATS - Andreas aka BigLick aka eSportsManiac!

- Please first tell us about yourself, your family, your country. How goes your ordinary day.

My name is Andreas aka BigLick aka eSportsManiac. I’m 30 years old and I life in the beautiful city of Ingolstadt in the heart of Bavaria in Germany. I use to work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week at the Agency of Urban Planing in my hometown. If I explain my employment to others I always say it’s like playing Sim City. I’m single and I like rainbows and beach walks.

- How much time you spend playing virtual hockey? What other games you like.

Some years I’ve played an average of 3-5 hours a day. But I’ve reduced it to maybe 5-10 hours a week. At the moment I’m also playing Modern Warfare 3 and F1 2011.

- This year you play in a new team. Tell us about your team and guys who play there.

It’s the first EHL tournament for THE INCREDIBLE WILDCATS and my first year there. They’ve also played EASHL the years before but their players always joined other clubs for EHL. Most of them I know from clubs like THE UNITED STARS/KNIGHTS and THE FANTASTICS and in my opinion it’s the most promising German speaking EHL team since NHL 09.

- What do you think about EHL? What you like and dislike in our project?

The most I like about EHL is the 6on6 challenge. In EASHL it’s quite hard to get 6on6 games going and it’s mostly frustrating to be reliant to CPU players. If there is at least anything that annoys me in EHL, it’s the fact that every year you got almost 50% new teams being created 1 week before EHL starts. I know it’s sometimes hard for a team to stay together for a long period because people getting mad with each other or circumstances in real life are changing but once in a while I’d wish there would be more tradition.

- You got a EHL best defender trophy in 2010 tournament. What this award means for you?

Well, similar to all other player awards you owe the biggest piece of it to your team. You can’t achieve much as a single individual in virtual hockey. But it would have been more pleasant for me to win the EHL playoffs in 2010 and not being swept in finals for the second time.

- What is your side in battle PS3 vs Xbox as a platform and as NHL game level.

Well, PS3 or Xbox360 has never been a question to me. I’ve grown up with PS1 and because PS3 being better in terms of technology my decision was clear. Since all EA games (and others too) are developed on Xbox you do not see any difference between both platforms but this is maybe one of Sony’s biggest problem that those games are not using the full potential of PS3 hardware.

- What king of sports you play in real life? Any awards? Please tell us about it.

I used to play a lot of sports such as basketball and street hockey. I’ve played goalie in a football club until the age of 27 but was force to end my career because of a knee injury. We have won some championships and tournaments but nothing worth mentioning. Right now I’m preparing my nephew and niece for a big football career ;)

- What is your favourite NHL team? If you will have a chance to step on real NHL ice in real NHL game, what partners will you choose to play with (i mean whole line up)

My favourite NHL team are the Detroit Red Wings. But I must confess that I do not follow the NHL like I follow German and European football. My line I’d like to play with would be: Shanahan (LW), Yzerman (C), Fedorov (RW), Lidström (LD), me (RD), Hasek (G);

- Last year you presented a video where you collected gold 99 Ultimate team with all start from NHL team. Tell us you secret how to biult a good team in HUT and earn a lot of pucks there?

The trick to earn a lot of EA pucks is buying and selling. I must confess I’ve invested some real money at the beginning of HUT in NHL 11 but the biggest piece I’ve earned was by buying promotion packs and sell them at the right time. I’ve earned most of my pucks during the Christmas period, where I’ve saved some expensive training cards because there were no promotion packs during this time. I’ve also earned a lot after the PSN hack where you wasn’t able to buy any packs when Playstation Store was still down and +25, +30 and +35 contract cards were very expensive (like 3000 pucks). I also used 5 PSN accounts for it to put five times more cards in my collection and on the trading pile. And in NHL 11 there was a glitch to put 50 cards on the trading pile instead of 30. All in all I’ve earned round about 6 million EA pucks and I used this pucks to buy my roster right at the time were cheap promotion packs were out there and all cards were like 50% cheaper. I don’t know, if all of these tips are still working in NHL 12, because I haven’t played HUT this year so far. But the basic procedure should be the same – buy promotion packs and sell them at the right time.

- What do you wish to our project and all other EHL players?

I’d like to wish Consolehockey Network to expand and continue the great work of forming the biggest virtual hockey community in Europe. And I appeal to all EHL players to respect each other and not to take this game too serious.