This weeks tournaments ~~~~~~~~~~Announcing SEA Starleague Season 1~~~~~~~~~~~
Huge announcment. We are proud to present our very own SEA version of GSL. Read all about it now HERE!! Because of this massive tournament over the next month, there will be some slight changes to our regular tournaments. Read more to find out.
The community opens will stop for the next month. In its place over the next 2 weeks will be the Code A Tournament at 6pm on Wednesday. Sign up by posting in the Starleague thread.
The iMaster of SEA, 2v2 Opens and KOTH have been put on hold indefinetly so we are not overrun and can fully focus on the StarLeague. This is also because these 3 torunaments cater to the top players of the server, and as such our BSGs and GPDs will still run regularly every Saturday and Sunday. iMaster outstanding prizes have been received and $200 USD has been paid out to Reveant$100, Roz$50 and Jaz$50 for their wins. Once SEASL concludes, the community open will return along with the new KOF tournament.
-The final four players-
rLsEscapisT
nGenJazbas
inF(Replaced by nGenMasteR)
inF
inF vs rLsEscapisT (3:1)
nGenMasteR vs nGenJazbas (3:2)
inF vs nGenMasteR(3:0)
After two gruelling Bo5's, inF, the renowned Protoss player from Hong Kong is crowned iMaster of SEA Week 4 ! Beating rLsEscapist in the semi-finals, he played against nGenMasteR in the finals. nGenMasteR played his offrace (Terran), the first two games and Roz took both games pretty convincingly. In the final game, nGenMasteR decided to play his main race (Zerg), and went for early roach aggression against Roz. Taking down Roz's wall, Roz was forced to retreat and put up cannons to defend himself. He then researched his +1 attack, went for a 5gate all in and performed an epic comeback.
Cure: Congrats on being iMaster of SEA 4!
Roz: Thanks! Didn't really to expect to win it, i haven't had much time to practice lately so it came as a surprise and i guess i finally broke the curse!
Cure: You sure did ! So how did you actually get practice for this tournament ?
Roz: I haven't really been able to practice much but I have been starting to play on the korean server more again so i guess that helped me prepare a little bit.
Cure: How did you feel while playing against EscapisT? Someone that you lost to in the CO, and how did you manage to win?
Roz: PvP is a matchup im generally very confident in. In the CO, rLsEscapisT played really well but at the same time i felt that i played really bad, especially in game 3 with a misplaced forcefield followed by a mistimed forcefield. So i guess it felt very good
to win that series to kinda redeem myself.
Cure: In the second game against EscapisT, you went phoenix immortals against his colossi favored army. Why ? Do you favour Stargate openings over Robo openings?
Roz: In that game, he stole 1 of my gas while taking his 2nd. For me to go robo at that point would not be very good because i would be behind on gas. So instead i went for some phoenix play which im quite comfortable with because i have been doing it a lot on
the korean server as well. It also allowed me to establish my expo faster so it put my econ ahead of his by a lot.
Cure: Words of wisdom from the PvP King! You expressed some discontent when nGenMasteR decided to switch races for the final game. How do you feel about race switching?
Roz: I'm generally fine with race switching between playing different players but i really dont like switching races in the middle of a series. Apparently master asked the organizers to check if i'm okay with it but i was INFORMED rather than asked.
Thats kinda why i wasn't very happy with it.
Cure: You didn't re-veto maps even though you were given the option to, why?
Roz: It's not that i didn't re-veto maps, scrap and delta are just 2 maps i really hate playing on so i just left it as it is.
Cure: Any tips for Protoss players out there ?
Roz: I think 1 of the most important thing for protoss, actually for any race, is just trying to get map control and scouting what your opponent is doing. You really need to know what you're going up against to be able to prepare for it.
Cure: Any Shoutouts ?
Roz: inFi fighting!! I love you all except rev, can't steal MY money this week, LOL. Thanks rLsEscapisT and nGenMasteR for the games, thank you for helping to manage to tournament and for the interview and i love all you Hong Kong players!
The top 3 players on Blizzard's top 200 list competed for the title of iMaster of SEA!. Thank you iMaster for this amazing sponsorship to encourage ladder play. Including the CO allows a spot for players who dont have the time to ladder up for the shot of $50. Winner of this tournament is required to submit his last 10 ladder games + the BO5 games so if you're in contention to play in this, keep Tuesday night free and remember to save your last 10 ladder replays!
The iMaster of SEA format is like this - Top 3 ranked players + last weeks CO winner make up the top 4 who will play each other in a BO5 Single Elim. In the case that the CO winner is in the Top 3 already, the runner up of the CO will join the top 4.
RedArchon, sponsored by NEO, in the team inFi, wins yet another community open! With zero losses the entire tournament, he took out YoonYJ in the round of 8 (The player that held on to Rank 1 of SEA's ladder with an impressive win ratio), rLsEscapisT in the semifinals (The winner of last weeks CO) and he proceeded to the finals to play MithJump.
In the finals, he shows us why he represented SEA at Blizzcon! Both games of the finals were extremely one sided, with some fun at the end of the last game when he just stood there dancing nonstop while his army was being attacked. Be sure to check out the replays of this domineering player from Thailand.
Cure: Congratulations on being the winner of CO #15!
RedArchon: thx
Cure: The games were splendid, how did you practice for them ?
RedArchon: sea only i dont know how train sry
Cure: Winning the CO without any losses was quite a feat ! What went through your mind during the semis vs EscapisT, the game vs YYJ and during the finals vs Jump ?
RedArchon: i have plan before play what should i do everytime play
Cure: I see that you favour a late reaper in TvP for scouting / harassment purposes, do you think that the late reaper is underused by most terran players ?
RedArchon: reaper good scout and harass
Cure: In the ace match of the finals, you were dancing your bioball while being attacked, were you already that confident of winning ?
RedArchon: yes
Cure: Any tips for terran players out there ?
RedArchon: i dunno you must to play more i learn on youtube channel nevake and learn gsl
Cure: Any shoutouts to your team / friends ?
RedArchon: no
Cure: Okay thanks for your time !
RedArchon: ok ^^
SC2SEA.COM's 2v2 Open #03 Winner:aLtnirvAnA and YoonYJ - $20
aLtnirvAnA and YoonYJ takes SC2SEA.com's 2v2 Open for the second time!
With only 1 loss in the entire tournament, Team aLt defeats last week's winners(inF and aLtAaron) and DsDStarfish and Souj, and moved on to play in the finals vs team "GGSCV"
The finals was an exciting bo3. GGSCV showed us some intense terran+zerg timing attacks and team aLt showed us how to skillfully defend against it!
As i'm unable to contact YoonYJ, i've decided to interview Nirvana alone, be sure to check out the replay pack if you're learning 2v2!
This will probably be the last 2v2 open, and it'll be replaced by the new KOF-style tournament!
Cure: Congratulations on the winning the 2v2 Open #3!
aLtnirvAnA: Thank you!
Cure: How do you feel after winning first place ?
aLtnirvAnA: Really awesome! I'm kinda on a winning streak in sc2sea tournaments, winning the 3 ive joined so far so i'm pretty proud of that haha! Also, its nice to team with Yoon again. The very same yoon who QQed about quitting sc2 a few weeks ago lol!
Cure: Nice! How did you prepare for the tournament ?
aLtnirvAnA: Well we didnt really prepare as i don't have the time to play SC2 much these days. Yoon is also really busy too as he just moved cities, so the last time we played together was the previous sc2sea 2v2 open. but we did discuss strategies based on our opponents build orders in their match history, and came up with good counters for them.
Cure: I see, who were the toughest opponents in this tournament and why ?
aLtnirvAnA: I feared 3 of the teams i played, mainly because they had sick records and were great players as well. Starfish's team was 63-3, Aaron/Rev were the previous winners with a 120-17 record, and StimmedProbe's team had a sick record too. I guess i was most afraid of Starfish's team cause i had no idea how they played, and when its bo1 still and you're up against opponents with insane records, anything could happen.
Cure: You handled the aggression from the team "GGSCV" with ease, what went through your mind while being under that constant pressure ?
aLtnirvAnA: I was like "OMG yoon is gonna let me die again!" Well i was just trying to survive for as long as possible. I actually felt they had a timing window early on where if they pressured harder, they would have won, but they didnt capitalise on it.
Cure: I see, would you say that Protoss and Terran is the best 2v2 combo, if so, why ?
aLtnirvAnA: Hmm yea, I think so because of the power of FFs combined with stimmed MMs, is extremely tough to beat if u execute a timing attack well. and with zerg in a 2v2, its mostly the zerg doing some sort of rush/timing 1 base build which i feel can be easily stopped if prepared. I don't think zerg is strong in team macro games but thats just my opinion.
Cure: What do you think about the 2v2 tournament being scrapped and the new KOF tournament replacing it ?
aLtnirvAnA: We gave the 2v2 format a decent runout, over 3 weeks with 16 teams playing in each week. I expected much more signups, so i felt disappointed but at the same time it was wise to invest the communitny tournament funds in a more popular format which more people will be interested in.
Cure: Lastly, Any tips for anyone out there learning how to 2v2 ?
aLtnirvAnA: Communication is most important, talk about timing attacks together and how to counter certain strats. It also helps to have a very skilled partner, haha!
Cure: LOL! Thanks for your time (:
aLtnirvAnA: Thx ^_^
King of the Hill Australia Current KotH: nGenLight
Tune in two nights each week to see some of the best and up-and-coming Australian players on the SEA server duke it out King of the Hill style in this latest event. Nine players in a season will have the chance to take the $50+ prize at the end of the season if they are the current king. Each match is Bo5 and games will be played on thursday and friday evenings!
Also, if you missed the livestream, the replays can be found below.
inF and OrzRush organized a series of showmatches between SEA and Taiwan! Although it was not heavily publicised, it was an impressive series! The players representing SEA are mostly from clan inFi, and the players representing TW are mostly from clan Rush (Sen's Clan). Be sure to check out the replays of the showmatches here!
Also, the BSG !
SC2SEA.COM's BSG Open #11 Winner: Mosesrocks
Congratulations to Mosesrocks for winning BSG Open #11. He wins an hour coaching by either Pinder or Deth who both are awesome coaches and awesome people for doing this . BSG will return next week, it may be in NA or sticking with SEA. We shall see how it goes. In the meantime, do check out other tournaments in SC2SEA and enjoy the community. Interview and Replay Pack will go up shortly (by shortly, I mean as soon as it is available). Thanks for tuning into BSG Open #11. Also, we are aware about the BSG smurfing issue and we have already dealt with smurfers severely.
Congratulations to aLtAaron for taking being the champion of the Masters Cup! Despite the lack of practice in the past few months, Aaron still proved that clan aLt is a force to be reckoned with. Also, as nGenWild had to leave, the 3rd/4th place matches were not played and TAEdge ended 3rd.
The Masters Cup was an amazing event, seeing some awesome games between the big names in the SEA region! We had over 770 players tune-in to the live-stream to cheer on their favourite players and to see the talent from the SEA region! We at sc2sea.com would like to congratulate the winners, thank everyone for participating and tuning into the stream!
Cure: Congratulations on winning the Masters Cup!
aLtAaron: Thanks ! ~
Cure: I noticed you're not online much nowadays, how did you practice for this event and how confident were you on winning this tournament ?
aLtAaron: I haven't laddered at all for 2-3 months, maybe 10 customs a month at most, and this month i didn't practice a single game in customs either, been pretty inactive. I think i was quite lucky to win, didn't expect to get so far.
Cure: I see, in the ro8 matches against nGenJuicy, he used some really good timing pushes against you with a really varied unit composition. How did you manage to hold ?
aLtAaron: I actually barely held it off actually, i usually struggle terribly vs 1 base terran pushes. I'm still at the level where i'm pretty much clueless on how to handle 1 base terrans. I made a stargate in the last game because i was afraid of banshees, but he only made 1 or 2, so i made VRs ands Immortals instead. If i didn't push in, i would've been behind, luckily it worked.
Cure: I've heard you say that you weren't that confident in PvP before. How did you manage the PvP finals against MiTHJump ?
aLtAaron: Yes PvP is my worst matchup of all. There is alot of mind games involved in PvP. Since it was a bo5 series, i decided to mix my play up completely to try and confuse my opponent, and gain a lead in the psychological war. For example, the second game i did a 10gate zealot all-inm and the next gate i 10gated again, but it was a fake. I didn't intend to all in, i just made the gateway on 10 like Kiwikaki normally does. But it turned out that he also 10gated, so i played defensive. Normally Kiwikaki would get a Robo tho, but i'm not that good at guessing when the aggression is going to stop, so i panicked and made a 4th gateway. Because my timing for the Robo was a little off, i decided to fake aggression and expo. Luckity it worked. Late game i didn't expect proxy gates, just that i noticed his gate in his main was really late, like 14 or 15 gate and he didn't scout me, so i decided to 2gate rush him since it was close spawns, however i only noticed that he was doing proxy gates when my probe saw no cyber core. I should have checked his gas, but luckity for me the 2 gates were useful for holding off the proxy gates, and after that its really hard to lose with my economic and tech advantage.
Cure: For the sake of the lower league players, could you explain your decision in one of the games in the finals where you went for blink stalkers with archons that were morphed from HTs instead of DTs. Why did you go archons, and why choose HT over DT ?
aLtAaron: I went for archon to use up my excess gas as i was transitioning from blink stalkers to zealot charge. I just had to play defensively against the hard phoenix play. I simply pushed out at a slightly later timing and won.
Cure: Any advice for Protoss levels in the lower leagues ?
aLtAaron: Practice alot and watch HuK's livestreams, he's gosu. You can see how he micros and macros. Also, watch oGsMC, he's definitely the best Protoss to learn from, but he seldom livestream. I myself have learnt alot watching HuK play, although i don't entire copy his playstyle, i like to incorporate his style with mine. From livestreams, you can see others POV, so its really helpful.
Cure: Any shoutouts ?
aLtAaron: Yup ! Huge thanks to my clan aLt for their support, the organizers and casters of this tournament, Roz and Rev for the practice games, and rLsCure is awesome!
Cure: Aww thank you
City Hunter Charity Tournament Winner:aLtPiG
Benji has already done a writeup for this event, so i'll be simply quoting him.
Today was the City Hunter Starcraft 2 Charity event, and as I have time (finally) i've done a short writeup for those who didn't go (and for those who did!)
First note, I have no photos yet as they are being uploaded tomorrow, stay tuned for them. Also I have been asked by City Hunter to cast various series from the tourney so also stay tuned for them (and there are some REALLY good games in there!)
First up, always nice meeting new people, and I got the pleasure of meeting a bunch of new TA players, Sif, Tom and some people from 'LAG'. Great to see new players turning up to the event.
Group stages was 8 groups with 4 players each, only 1 player gets out of these groups and Bo3 games for each set. There were few upsets, and at the end of the group stage the following players emerged from the slain nerds that was their groups:
Final results are
1st: aLtPiG
2nd: TARossi
3rd: TAScarecrow
4th: nGenLight
5th/6th: TAriiChard
5th/6th: TASanchez
7th/8th: nGenBenji
7th/8th: LAGWakinLife
Now before we talk about some focal points, alot of people will be quick to point out that nGen did not take 1st like I managed to point out on various media such as my Podcast and my Stream, and during the trip home I have come up with the following excuses:
- There was Lag
- Light was Sleep Deprived
- I Cast too much and cannot practice
- The sun was in our eyes
As you can see, above points are hard to dispute and thus no flak shall fall on myself or my clan, nGen.
On a serious note, PiG played really amazing and was most deserving of the win, also like everyone else present at the event was a really nice guy.
A bunch of us have been hard at work over the last week and now we can finally make an official announcement introducing a series of new features on the site - to explain a little bit more and how to get the best out of them. Also feel free to give feedback, e.g new achievements u like to see, new avatars or more suggestions for improvements on the site.
Would also like to use this opportunity to thank the people who have helped in making these features possible.
We have done away with the User Title system replaced it with a spanking new Avatar system. The more posts you have, the cooler your avatar becomes!
You start out as a larvae then morph into a zergling >..etc.> reaper >..> void ray >... > and finally into a mothership.
Special thanks to jaczie who painstakingly went through all the avatars, cropping/resizing them and making them transparent and finally rejecting the ones which didnt look good on the site after testing them out one by one!
In a bid to encourage more participation on our forums and in SEA tournaments, i thought it would be cool to come up with some Achievement badges you could have displayed in your profile everytime you post. These badges range from Winning BSGs to the "Seasoned tournament player" for having played in more than 10 tournaments to achievements recognising valuable members of the community be it through streaming, organising, or making quality posts.
Check out all the badges we have here - who the awards have been given to and how to win such awards! http://www.sc2sea.com/awards.php
Also feel free to suggest any cool achievements you can think of.
100% functional already and still undergoing refinement, this is pretty much our very own version of TLs streaming status notifier. Basically everytime your stream is on, the site will highlight it and display your stream link on the right, alerting visitors of our site to your stream. Submit your stream in our thread here and our admins will have you listed in less than a day.
A huge thanks to Erasmus (who had previously wrote up code but my server language was too outdated ) and Veteris who has thus wrote up the new code all by himself for the stream widget.
A brand new idea, where instead of scrolling through our "Find a partner" thread to find AT or 1v1 practise partners, you will be able search with extreme ease in the box on the right hand side of the site. Find players by game type, race, league level or country and submit your details so other players can search for you!
And of course a huge thanks to Veteris who was behind all the coding for it.
Pretty self-explanatory, i had to come up with a system to help with the growing popularity and activity on the forums. i wrote up a whole article explaining it, so admins could better deal with the growing trolls, ensuring the sc2sea community stays as a friendly and positive home for us. Basically you are giving points for doing something wrong and if u reach a certain level of points you get temp banned/perm banned. Read it here and beware the ban hammer!!
Basically there needed to be more distinctions between normal forum users and those who have contributed alot to the site. As a little something for their contributions, these groups of users have their own special colors so people will take more notice when they post/chat and they are also the only ones who can upload their own special customised avatars and hence don't follow the avatar system as above.
These positions can be earned only by those dedicated enough(organisers), put effort into quality posting (mvps) and in addition to these two qualities, have also proven themselves to be absolutely trustworthy and responsible (moderators). So if you want to one day be a moderator, it definitely is possible but it is a gradual path meaning before being a moderator you have to be a mvp or organiser and it will take time to prove yourself.
MVPs - A user who has contributed on sc2sea through a history of well written posts or articles. Most recent inductions are Benji and Pinder and so have a look at their recent articles about "small money tournaments" and the "new ladder map pool" respectively to get a feel of the quality needed, in two very different writing styles.
Other MVPs are Unstable, HuT, Apth, and DFM and MvP/Partial mods kelly and hdphoenix.
Organisers - A dedicated and responsible user who has contributed to the community through regular tournament hosting. Organisers are Mukade, Santi, Kaz, dogsi, Baka, Zergtastic, frequency, eddie, Sixth.
Moderators - The highest level on the site, moderators have proven themselves to be highly responsible and trustworthy in addition to the qualties listed above. Moderators have the ability to edit anyones post, move/open/close threads, give out infractions and of course wave their ban hammer! Moderators are Mezza, skybreaker, torniquet and jaczie
#7 New tournament format for our regular tournaments next week
Finally with Benji's "small money tournaments" article which i mostly agree with, it made me realise a new system would be needed to basically get the streams listed on TL so there would be more exposure for the SEA community and to this site. So he suggested intead of running a series of $10-$25 tournaments weekly we should just run it once at the end of the month so there is a $100 minimum prize. I dont however, agree with stopping the smaller tournaments entirely cause i beleive pple would like something to play with for the fun of it even when there wasnt any prize money so what i came up with was a hybrid of this.
Using the Community Opens as an example:
-Tournaments are continued to be held every week at the same timeslot on Wednesday.
-The prize pool is $0 but instead the top 2 players qualify for a $100 tournament at the end of the month.
The 2 finalists fight it out for glory with the winner receiving an achievement badge on their profile, a short interview and a higher seed in the final tournament.
The $100 tournament will be held at the end of the month on a weekend and will either be
1) An invite only based on the top 2 every week, 2x4weeks = 8 players OR
2) A 128 man tournament where the top 8 winners are directly seeded into the ro16. I will need feedback on which would be better.
We were actually spending $100/month spread over 4 weeks at $25/week so this change in format actually helps us get listed but keeps the exact same budget!
The BSG will run as usual as it has always been a no cash prize tournament meant for fun.
The prize however has been improved and the winner will receive 1 hour free coaching with Pinder / deth.
The GPD might be slightly changed as well to a more hybrid type model.
Will have to talk to eddie first about this
iMaster of SEA will be changed slightly, ill have to think about a new format as well while its being put on hold.
So with recent donations it is actually possible to run this new tournament format for at least the next 2 months.
Thank you for reading and may you continue to enjoy being part of sc2sea!
------------------------------Other scene happenings------------------------------
-SC2SEA KOF #1! $100-
Due to the declining popularity of the 2v2 open, Nirvana has announced the new KOF-style tournament in replacement of the 2v2 open! Click on the link above to learn more about the format and to sign up for the KOF tournament!
-The SC2SEA Ban system-
Also, Nirvana has introduced a new ban system this week! Be sure to check out what you can/cannot do on SC2SEA.
If you haven't already seen this, it's better to familiarise yourself with the rules and regulations of SC2SEA.
-SEA Starleague-
Currently, the SC2SEA team has been working on our very own version of the GSL! The total prize pool will be $750, but not everything has been finalised yet. We will post it up as soon as its finalised, so remember to check back to SC2SEA often!
Also, congratulations to all the Zanooku-haters out there! He's been banned for 7 days for trolling / starting hate threads around the forum.
Best Replay Competition - Share your best replays and stand a chance to win prizes! Team ICHOR SEA Open #1 - Team iCHOR announcing their open tournament for the SEA Community! It'll be on the 20th of March, so sign up fast! How to host tournaments - Ever wondered how to host tournaments ? Click here to find out !
Geek from clan NewGeneration(nGen) has transferred to Team Relentless(rLs). iceiceice SEA's representative in Blizzcon 2010, has joined Team Relentless(rLs) HuT a free agent for a long time as well as new faces Yoda and Azazel have joined up with NewGeneration(nGen)
Last edited by cure; Sun, 24th-Apr-2011 at 6:35 PM.
Spoiler tags are broken atm, which is why some parts of the weekly aren't showing, and imo, masters cup for the biggest event this week.
EDIT: The city hunter tourny is up for viewing now although the spoiler tags still aren't fixed yet. It'll be fixed when Nirv adds in next week's tournys, and stuff.
Last edited by cure; Mon, 14th-Mar-2011 at 1:52 PM.
I'm not bashing the lan tourney, especially since it was for charity, credit to those who ran it and attended. I just dont think small lan > online tourney is bigger in terms of prizes/players/audience in this example.
Even the smallest donations help keep sc2sea running! All donations go towards helping our site run including our monthly server hosting fees and sc2sea sponsored community tournaments we host. Find out more here.