We interview Arctic Storm manager Ashley “Slip” Haynes after the organisation brought on board some of the former XENEX League of Legends players, entered the UK Masters qualifiers – and made some bold claims.
Introducing @arcticstormgg UK Masters roster! Featuring @Artorias_lol @Prosfair @sancuslol @ARC_VoN @hejsansvenne see you all at #UKMasters pic.twitter.com/N0kfOop1wD
— ACS Slip (@ArcticSlip) May 11, 2017
Please tell us a bit about yourself.
My full name is Ashley Haynes, and I literally am a no name random myself with no background.
This is my first experience in this scene and i have set out to make it a memorable one.
In the past I’d constantly been trialling the Willis twins (Prosfair and Artorias) and they are both very talented young players. Also they’re in the UK which kind of amplifies their value in this scene, so coming into this org it was a no brainer to go for them.
Prosfair also brought along his partner from XeneX (Sancus) who in my opinion is currently the best jungler in the UK. And again is from the UK which in turn also amplifies his value.
We have three top tier UK players which lays the foundation to also approach a lot of good roles in the mid and ADC role respectively. So we spoke to an ADC I’ve known for a little while called Hejsan Svenne, a lot of the time in scrims a few of my friends have players have said and I quote “is f*cking smurfing”. And he definitely earns the praise he gets in my opinion.
He was a very good pickup for us as I don’t really see any other ADC matching against him, except maybe Toaster.
Moving on to the mid lane we picked up von, who we saw a lot in solo queue and heard a lot of feedback from other players saying he’s a really talented mid laner. And i think his flair and new blood is pretty needed in the pro scene to mix things up. He has definitely performed well in scrims and previously, it’s just a case of transitioning him into the right player for the team from a solo queue player.
“We are going to hard stomp this prelim and we are gonna convincingly win UK Masters this split. We also want to win the ESL UK Prem afterwards for the CSQ spot.”
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He has almost two decades of experience in journalism, and left Esports News UK in June 2025.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He also previously worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation.