special1

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Duke is a UFO2000 player that has the most number of points on 7kPlay site scoreboard on 21st of January. He participated in almost every tournament and scored 1347 points for his excellent skill.

I've managed to ask him some questions, the interview is below.

How long did you play UFO2000?
- I first played UFO2000 little over a year ago, in October 2008, when Matahl wrote an article about the game on a Czech IT portal. The article sparked fond memories of the old UFO games and I just had to try UFO2000.

Back in that time the game wasn't new, but there wasn't any real community for a long time and basically no development. I pessimistically thought it doesn't have a future, but now that the 7k community started and new versions came out, I am hopeful it will get more attention.

kept secret from others and since it doesn't mess up the balance I think it's fair to use.

But when it comes to general tips, I believe that adaptability is very important. There is no ultimate strategy and no perfect team setup that you can prepare in advance, the best team and strategy always depend on your opponent and on the map. In the middle of a battle you simply have to make best use of what you have left and be creative about it, modify plans on the fly but don't be afraid to stick with those that span several turns if they are going well.

What type of match rules you've enjoyed the most?
- I quite enjoy classic 7k deathmatch games. 7k is a good limit for 5x5 size maps so that there is enough room for strategy and the games don't take too long. But I enjoy all games that have a nice flow and the players don't take it
too seriously.

I wish there was a mechanism in the game or in the 7k rules that would speed up the endgame a little bit -- for example, if there's only one or two units on each side and they're looking for each other, it can take very long as both players want to be very careful to win the game, yet don't want to spend three hours hiding carefully....

Did you become THAT skilfull from the very beginning?
- No, I remember much humiliation in the beginnings.
Back in the day I played a lot of 15k games with old-time UFO2000 players like Tasoth, Adder and Matahl (they sadly don't play nowadays) and I was getting quite frustrated, as I was rarely able to kill more than one or two of his guys (out of 12 or so) before my squad was annihilated... But things got better with practice, especially playing so much with Claw later on. I'd still never have thought I'd have such success in tournaments.

I hope the players I met in the beginnings will once again join us as the community grows. They often used nice strategies that are not seen around anymore, like relying heavily on reactions. I think it would be interesting to see how the "oldschool" strategies measure up to what we came up with, and what can we learn from them.

Can you share some secret technique on how to win a match in the game?
- I have no special secret techniques and I'm against secrecy, I prefer to share the knowledge :-). I believe it would be unethical to use some trick or a strategy that can't lose, as existence of such would be a flaw in the game, and using it would be exploiting it. There are things that can be considered flaws too, like putting units on roofs at the start of the game, but as long as this trick is not