SC2SEA.com - Starcraft 2 SEA eSports Community Site

My EB Expo Experience

This will be extremely long since I’m also combining my “Thoughts and progress” blog into this one, so sorry in advance for the length and walls of text!

Ok so EB Expo was my first interstate LAN that I have attended/qualified for. Previous to this I have played in 2 ARENA lans in Adelaide with okish results. My thoughts going into this event was to not worry about my perfomance and simply to try and compete and have a good time. I definitely achieved this goal!

Day 1 (Thursday)
I arrived in Sydney airport at around 6pm and met up with Frustration (Who from this point I will be referring to as Ash so I can actually use the word frustrated) at my gate, we then had around a 2 hour wait for Fries to get in. Eventually Fries did get in but I still have no idea how he did. Basically he told us he was flying the day before and then when he called he said he got the bus to the airport. Needless to say I was already suspect of his motives. He then told us to look for the guy in the fluro green jumper. At this point I had a little chuckle because lets face it, no one wears fluro green jumpers. We then spent the next 30+ minutes looking for some idiot in said jumper. After 30 minutes of Ash failing at navigation some seedy looking old man came up to us asking for money. This was Fries. He was not wearing a fluro green jumper. 3 hours into my Sydney trip and I had already been trolled. Wonderful. We then caught a taxi to where we were supposed to be staying, the Formule 1 in Olympic park. Our taxi driver was very inventive at breaking numerous road laws, something that Sydney drivers are very good at. Eventually we reached the hotel only to discover it was the wrong one. It was now 10 and I was tired. We then discovered we were staying at Enfield and took another cab there. After arriving at the new (and correct hotel) we caught up with TASpider (Jak) and Neko (Nick) at the local pub which was actually an amazing place had a few drinks and played pool. They all sucked, I won. The end. Thankfully the pub closed at 12 or otherwise we would have been there much longer. Now the fun part began. Bedtime!

Day 2 (Friday)
This day literally starts at 12am (Midnight) since I got 0 sleep mainly due to Fries and Ash chatting away until around 3am which was slightly painful. Once they stopped however sleep did not come. After deciding that I couldn’t be bothered lying in bed anymore I went off to Maccas at 5am to eat breakfast. Ash decided to join me as we nailed down some mcmuffins. My stomach hated me. I’m actually not sure what I did until EB expo started as I was in a sleep deprived haze. We left the hotel at around 9 in order to get some practice in early. However this was not to be the case as when we arrived there was no internet! So I basically did a meet and greet and chatted for a bit. I didn’t actually talk to everyone, since its hard to know if they are playing/concentrating and you don’t really want to be a dick and interrupt them. Eventually the internet came up and we started playing some practice games. I managed to snipe tgun on ladder in a RvR and got terran while he got Protoss on entombed. I then proceeded to proxy 2 rax and win. There was an issue though as everyone was extremely laggy and basically unplayable. Fortunately marines are a good unit.


We then had another wait while the internet was up to speed and eventually we began playing I had Ninja first round, something I was a little pissed off about as I’m literally 0-9 vs him. First game I went immortal sentry on Antiga (I somehow missed this in my vetoes) The reason for this is that I actually cannot play macro on this map. I struggled greatly with zerg multiprong and just got mad and vetoed the map as a result. So here I was my first map, one I haven’t played on for probably 6+ months. Needless to say I got crushed. This was my own fault though as I didn’t plant proxy pylons down and was a little timid with my push. Resulting in getting stuck in the middle of the map. We then went into game 2 on Ohana and I decided to try something a little different and gateway expand at the natural ramp. Unfortunately the entire net dropped out again so I was left thinking about what I was doing. This wasn’t good for me as I started to second guess myself. After the net was fixed the rest of the first round matches were played, my original build (eco 4gate into mass blink stalker) turned into a 1gate fe expand into fake pressure. This was so fail as I accidentally pushed too far and lost all of my sentries in the middle of the map due to the speed lings that I had wanted to force by faking the pressure. NICE WORK BARD. That was basically the end of game 2. Ninja had demolished me, but oh well I still had lower bracket! Which was either Rossi or Iaguz… Great my worst matchup first round of the lower bracket -.-. The power then cut out which delayed our games even further, I would love to go into what I did during these downtimes but the lack of sleep had really hit me and I don’t honestly remember. The only thing I do remember was Cory. This guy literally came out of nowhere and bought everyone at the SC2 section food. Absolute legend. Also a big shoutout to his Dad who funded this endeavor!


The power came back up and my lower bracket opponent was Rossi. The last time I played Rossi he 0-2d me quite easily. However my PvT had improved a lot since then so I decided to play macro again and see what happens. The first map was entombed and I scouted him on cross positions going a 2rax. I thought to myself “there is no way in hell hes actually going to push with that”. He did push with that. I was supply blocked on 34/34. Game over. I was actually really tired at this point and I was starting to get pissed off for a few reasons. There was some multicoloured lighting that kept sweeping over my computer and basically blinding me, while this never happened at key moments in the game I would have lost my shit if it did. Also the people behind me watching the LoL were incredibly rude. I literally had them bumping into and pushing past me every minute or so. This was probably the only downside of my trip, the arseholes who thought that because they bought a ticket they were entitled to watch whatever they want and to hell with making sure the players can actually play. Also LoL Players are very loud and the guy behind me was actually a massive dick who would scream abuse at the other team, literally half a meter away from me. Anyway moving on to my second game vs Rossi I just wanted to get it over and done with. I was way too tired. I did my usual thing of scouting and when I got to his base I saw something a little off the standard. A 1rax reactor FE. I was originally going to expand but I thought bugger this and dropped 3 gates. 4GATEEEEEEEEEEEE. This proved very affective as Rossi only had 1 bunker at the front and I was able to micro my way to a win. GOAL ACHIEVED! I actually felt a little scummy after this since I’ve always “prided” myself on being able to win with macro. However this showed me that playing macro every game isn’t actually the best idea, knowing what your opponent can and cant get away with is very important. Being very happy with myself we went into game 3 on Shakuras. After thinking for a bit I decided to all in again, however I chose the worse possible one. I decided to blink obs. This wasn’t hindsight either. I figured out how bad this was as soon as I put down the twilight. While yes the map is good for it, unfortunately my opponent is also very good against it. It never occurred to me before the game that Rossi probably plays this build A LOT on ladder, against Korean Protoss that are far better at this game than I. Needless to say I lost this game and Rossi advanced. But I was happy, I had achieved my goal! The rest of my day was just sleep-deprived gibberish. The only thing I remember is playing a game against Livibee, which I almost lost! Livi so gosu!


This brings on my main lesson learnt from EB expo. Making goals that are easily achievable is definitely not a good idea. While my goalset was realistic and made me feel good at the time it actually gave me a negative mindset going into the event. The correct mindset would have been to play to win, no matter what opponent I got first round. I felt like I gave up as soon as I saw the bracket, I should have thought to myself “bugger it I’m going to win”. The difference between giving it your all and losing and giving up and losing is huge. Losing is a part of this game, its how much you can improve after each loss that really matters. Going into a game with a defeatist attitude reduces your ability to learn and come back in tough situations. While if you give it your best shot you are already looking for areas to improve and sometimes you can even win those “lost” games. So in future I’m going to go into every game wanting and expecting to win, while this will make me more emotionally invested in the game it will allow me to improve more from each loss. This is something a lot of people don’t understand about Ash, when he headset slams or gets “mad” he’s not actually mad at you, he’s mad at himself for losing as he can clearly see the areas he could have won the game.

Another interesting thing I took away from it is how you can create an opinion about someone online that is just blatantly wrong. For example all my previous interactions with Azz on SC2Sea and ingame have all been pretty negative. However meeting him face to face I have to say that he is actually a really nice guy! He was more than happy to discuss strategy/chat in general and listening to his thought process going into a game was extremely interesting and I definitely took a few notes! That being said everyone I met was just really nice and easy to get along with. This is probably one of the greatest things about the sc2 community, the majority of the players are just down to earth, friendly guys and it really makes playing/competing with them an enjoyable experience. It was actually a real treat to meet people that I've watched/fanboyed/played against online and just talk normally with them. Although I am a little remiss I didn't take advantage of Glades free coaching at the GAMECOM stand!

Day 3/4 (Saturday+Sunday)

I’ve combined these days together since I basically did the same thing each day, explored EB expo! This will be a collage of fun moments I had ^^. It was actually a really cool setup with multiple stands/games to play and an arcade section! My first experience was in the arcade section with Jak and Cory. I decided to play a game of table hockey. This was exciting. My opponent was none other than the great and masterful “Random 6 year old”, needless to say this was a long, close contest where I eventually came out on top 10-0. Probably my greatest feat of the tournament! We played quite a bit of PS3 Super Smash Brothers (cant remember the actual name) which was actually pretty good fun! I excel at button mashing. However the most amazing, best thing in the world was Just Dance 4. Myself and GTR played this game and pretty much rocked it, “In da Club” was our track and I immediately relived my childhood memories of being a ghetto superstar. It was awesome! Needless to say I am far better at dancing like a gangster than GTR so I came out on top here. Jak and Cory then went next and failed miserably compared to us. I am quite confident that myself and GTR could go pro at Just Dance 4.The money, power and women could all be ours! Unfortunately I don’t own a xbox so that plan had to be scrapped.

Sunday Afternoon/Night was A LOT of fun. We met up with the SEA CM Storm Rep David at EB expo along with the MiS LoL team, Jak and Nick at the local pub from day 1. What then proceeded was an extremely amusing night with betting on pool, lots of BM and a Chinese place around the corner that was absolutely amazing. Although I had made my mind up that I didn’t like LoL players 2 days before, these guys completely turned that around as they were a funny, down to earth bunch. Also I profited greatly due to the bets being placed on the pool table, which I managed to mostly win! Unfortunately the place shut at 12 again and we ended up back in the hotel where people slowly headed off due to early morning flights etc.

Frustration, Myself, Livibee and JinxXx (Zee) on the last day.

Overall I had an amazing time at the EB expo, while the technical issues were unfortunate they did not damper my experience at all. I would like to give a shoutout to Team Exile 5 and our sponsors Western Digital, Nvidia, Coolermaster, Coolermaster Storm and iiNet for sending me to the event, I really appreciate it! I would also like to give a massive shoutout to JinxXx (Zee) who MC’d and organized the event. I don’t think many people know how much he actually did behind the scenes to get things back on track and not let it get cancelled. Also that Korean BBQ was amazing! Thanks! Also to DOC from Exile5 who gave us a lift Saturday morning and saved us a cab fee! Cabs in Sydney cost way too much.

Full photos from the event were taken by Exile 5 manager Fries and can be found on the Exile 5 Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/teamexile5/ Like us!