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.
Haha sounds awesome! A lot of the big names in SEA right there as well. Once I get my skill up to diamond/masters, I'll definitely make the interstate trip to NSW to hit up a few of these lans!
Edit: Part of me flying up to NSW involves Benji taking me for a cruise down King's Cross to look at the attractions
I had a great time there yesterday! I felt the atmosphere was even better than last time as we had more people attending/hanging around, and playing for a noble charity event can certainly put a smile on everyone's faces. It was certainly great to see some old friendly faces and definitely some new faces such as Avanar, SiF, Pig, Sixth, Tom and the Lag boys (Sorry to anyone I forgot to mention).
It was personally unfortunate that I wasn't able to repeat as champion for the sake of nGen and Benji (personal motivation was pretty low). Not to make excuses but a few excuses/issues/entertaining moments of the day I really wanted to mention:
Personal excuses:
- I came to the tournament having been awake since 2am Saturday morning (30+ hours awake), and still relatively drunk from a night of drinking, it was an effort just keeping my eyes open!
- Thus I made a lot "brain fart" moves, didn't think about the matches with experience/strategically as I would have, and made a lot of "*** it 1a moments".
- The tournament was somewhat laggy, with spikes every 3-4 seconds, I think it is because of the recent earthquake in Japan (my heart out to them) causing issues for Asian ISP (City Hunter), it was not easy at all placing FFs and keeping that lone, crucial collosus alive!
- Have been pretty lax about my skill level recently, having lost the motivation to get better or ladder frequently as I used to, Pig's highly effective Hydra drop in the second game was something I've seen recently but never bothered to practice/think about.
My observations:
- TARossi and TAScarecrow has improved leaps and bounds since the last City Hunter Tournament, I feel really happy about their progress!
- aLtPig totally deserve the win as he was the most confident player ther,and through his solid game-play and unique play-style (something I absolutely forgot about) caught many players off-guard, congratulations on the win!
- nGenBenji's win against 12th ranked Master player Imposta was very impressive and he once again managed to make the tournament a great atmosphere just with his presence! Also note worth mentioning is that the Razer Blackwidow mechanical keyboard Benji brought is a freaking machine amongst other plastic typing toys.
Entertaining moments:
- In one of the group stages, a player Tsui(friend of mine) who plays random, got Protoss twice in his match against a zerg opponent, he went 4warpgate rush twice and won. His opponent slammed the table in frustration, muttering something about 4gate, and you see Tsui jump off his computer in celebration yelling "my CHEESING IS SO GOOD!!!!!" in Chinese. I have never seen anyone so proud and excited through winning with 4gating whilst their opponent had a face of grief right next to them, LOL.
- Winners brackets finals game 1 between Scarecrow and Pig, after Pig fended off scarecrow's first mini-death-ball push, Pig counter pushed just to find Scarecrow already established his third at the Gold of Xelnaga tower right after I said "If Protoss has a third he is in trouble". The reaction on Pig was priceless as he yelled out an expletive and had a bogging head motion that made everybody LOL. Pig went on to subsequently win that game to a round of applause!
-TARossi's battle through the losers brackets produced the most entertaining replays, featuring TARichard and myself, I'm sure Benji will release them soon. Hilarious moments such as TARichard dropping the wrong base in game 3 and me and Rossi's extreme 1basing of me in game 2 as well as the hilarious situation in game 3 (which was something I forced knowing I've already lost) were extremely entertaining!
It was a really good day and I was delighted to have been there to hangout with everyone and for the atmosphere, regardless of how much I wanted to just sleep (I got home and slept til now, a good 14 hours xD)
Congratulations to Pig for winning and congratulations to Rossi for turning around a grim first round loss to come second! If My motivation for 1v1 returns to me (which I hope not - too time consuming), I will look forward to playing/challenging you guys again in the future.
Lastly, I give my heart out to all the suffering from QLD, NZ and Japan recently and hope that things will get better for everyone in the near future. I hope that our contribution yesterday, however small, will make a difference in some way.
Last edited by nGenLight; Mon, 14th-Mar-2011 at 4:36 AM.
Yea it was definately a great day, i really enjoyed meeting everyone there and even though it was my first lan i was happy with how i played and hopefully cityhunter can organise another well run tournament
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.