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Forgive any spelling mistakes I haven't read through it.

Day 1

Ok so I guess I'll just start with walking to the event. I parked somewhere in the vicinity of the venue and on the way in ran into the fray crew. I hadn't met any of them except for fenner so many hands were shaken in short amount of time. Miles led the way as we found our way in and entered the ballroom.

I registered with Norksman (who is an awesome admin/whatever) and then watched the players. Said hi to Nama and schnitzel before meeting petrify, fur and a few others. I said hey to a couple of other people but I don't really remember.

Then I saw a Protoss playing on one of the computers. I hadn't seen them before and they were pretty good (for a Protoss ). Then I realised it was the legendary stallion himself which was pretty awesome. I watched some games for a bit then played miles on stage (we didn't play for ages which sucked), I did on ling bane attacks after droning up and managed to win with them. Miles was a very cool dude though, very supportive and I thank him a lot for the kind words he gave me later

Anyway turns out I have to play deth round 2 so I set up and we play our games. Game 1 was pretty standard, he used drops well, I defended well until eventually let a few do significant damage and the game snowballed out of hand. Oh yeah this was streamed, forgot to mention. Anyway, after I lost I heard tgun say to deth something along the lines of "that wasn't Terran being OP that was just NXZ making mistakes". I think that kinda helped me stay off tilt, I recognised the issues I had in game 1 and refocused for game 2. Game 2 was a really scrappy game where I eventually pulled out a win, denying his drops decently and not letting him secure a 4th. Game 3 was much more straightforward, he opened cc first instead of reaper so it had a lot less harass. Essentially, I eventually won with broodlord infestor ultra after defending drops all game. Deth played very strong and 2-0'd petrify prior to this, so I feel like if I had to play him again he would've been able to win.

Afterwards I am told that I have to play jaz, almost immediately after. My bracket was pretty far behind so we jumped into that where jaz had some annoying lag issues which basically won me game 1. Game 2 I all inned with a 13/12 and he held very well. Game 3 I didn't scout his 10 pool bane so took a little bit too much damage then I should have but I did come out ahead. Unfortunately I left a drone off gas all game which caused me to eventually lose the muta vs muta.

Falling down to the losers I had to play pezz, the winner of which would qualify for groups, the loser? Eliminated. Yeah. It sucked. We played our games, some stuff happened, I managed to win 2-1 and wasn't that happy about it really. Was really a lose-lose for me. From there I killed petrify who was trolling it up pretty hard. Then I played azz who did his shenanigans and beat me game 1, I played MUCH safer for game 2 and 3 and managed to hold his all ins which sparked some interesting discussion after the series between us.

Finally, I played Rossi. Game 1 I don't really remember, I think it was pretty straightforward for him though. Game 2 he 2 raxed me and it killed me. Overall I finished 4th in open bracket. Before the event I had said that if you didn't top 4 open you had no chance of making a splash in groups. Basically, it's group A or C or just don't even bother. Either way, I knew I'd probably get C, with 2 of 1-3 getting A. However, turns out Rossi went to group C, which sucks for me cause I wasn't confident to play against him again, with zvt being my weakest matchup in hots.

I met pig and dot somewhere in between, talked to all my brisbane buddies (who need to add me on Skype damnit, looking at you fvr boys). For the group games I had to play 2 that night. One vs Rossi then the other vs tgun. Rossi cleaned me up again 2-0 with some solid play, with some better strategies I think I could do better but for now that 0-4 record is all I have to my name!

Then came tgun vs me. Ok so tgun didn't seem that keen on playing, I felt bad for him because we had been supposed to play the next day but whatever it happens. We did our vetoes, I vetoed retarded 4p maps, he tried to be a little more intelligent about it. It's all zvz no matter the map for me xD. Game 1 he did a really weird muta style where he played super passive and waited for me to eventually make a mistake (which I did) and used that to win the game. Game 2 went for 51 minutes and was stupid, he tried to all in me with roach nydus, had poor macro and didn't. Meanwhile I also went roaches because I saw his roach warren and am quite comfortable with playing that roach vs roach zvz. Tgun used his killer come from behind play to keep himself in the game for a very long time, despite being down on bases for a very long time. Eventually, I killed him with broodlord infestor. Game 3 I did a speedling pressure into roach bane timing. I stole this build from pig in practice a while ago and it's very strong. But against tgun I did absurd amounts of damage with the early lings where he didn't have much of a chance vs the follow up roaches bane.

Then I left the venue at about 11 after an interview.

Day 2
I arrived on time, everyone else didn't for a while. XD

Talked with maynarde some and then eventually played megafonzie. Unfortunately, our ping wasn't that great and especially in game 2 I felt really bad for the guy. His build needed good force fields to work and it just wouldn't happen. He was fine about it though, I did express sympathy for him, of course I love winning but not so much like that. Up next came nomad who did some cool builds, he caught me off guard with them in game 1 but I pulled it back together for games 2 and 3 and won.

At this point I was 3-1 in groups, tgun was 2-2 and Rossi was also 3-1 (both losing to pig). They were playing each other and tgun managed to win 2-0 in some funky games which kept my chances of advancing alive. Has rossi have won his map score would have been leaps and bounds better than mine regardless of my result against pig. At this point I'm sitting at 6-4 in maps, tgun at 7-4 and Rossi with a worse map score than tgun and no chance of advancing. Initially I thought I only needed to win a map, then because of head to head I would advance however I didn't realise that would kill my maps lost and mean he would advance.

Anyway I went into the games vs pig. Game 1 I 10 pool baned, I had practiced with pig before the event and I felt like I had a mindgame advantage going in and felt pretty confident that it could work. Especially considering I still thought I only had to win a map! So, he went hatch first and I killed all but 4 drones then eventually killed him with follow up roaches. It took longer than I would've liked, but 3 spines are good units. After I realised that I actually had to BEAT pig to make it through, nerves back on after thinking I was through after taking game 1. We had some computer issues and some stuff happened which sucked but we eventually did play the game and pig made a huge mistake of leaving 5 drones off gas after ling harass. This gave me a huge lead for muta vs muta which allowed me to win the game and the series 2-0. I felt pretty lucky after, beating pig was the win that almost shouldn't have happened.

OUT OF GROUP STAGE YEEEEEAAAAH.
I advanced from in 2nd behind pig, and was the 5th seed going into the double elim bracket. This means I played kingkong first round. Going into this tournament, I expected at least groups, wanted to do well in groups and would be ecstatic with top 8. So my mindset had switched from, I HAVE TO WIN THIS to I DON'T CARE ANYMORE TOP 8 YEH. I think this mindset may have helped me because I had pretty much no anxiety over losing for the rest of the tournament. Anyways back to kingkong, he 10 pool baned me game 1 and again I didn't see it coming till late and held it inefficiently with my 15 pool. He then went on to kill me with some fantastic ling bane micro and his early lead. Game 2, I went to 10 pool bane and he went hatch first. However using an innovative evo wall I could do no damage to his drone line and had to settle with merely killing his spawning pool. Into the macro game I think I was ahead but he did too much damage with 1-1 lings right before my mutas popped due to under defence on my part. Down to losers :S

Andy and I were sitting next to each other for our games, him taking on pet whilst I fought kingkong. Beforehand we had joked about winning, "cya in the winners semis", "Brisbane pride" and so on. However he did lose to pet 1-2 which sucked because we had to play in losers. I moved over to the other side of the table and we started our series. Game 1 I used the speedling into roach bane build, (the same one I used to beat petrify and tgun earlier) and it beat him. I did the whole fist pump thing and then we went to game 2. I took a very fast third at 6:30ish and pumped lings off only mineral saturated drone count. He saw my third go down and made lings to punish but due to his tech and extra gases behind it I simply had more lings and didn't allow him to morph banes. He managed to cancel my third but lost quite a lot of lings in the process. So as I followed him back to his base and saw him morph the lings into banes right as I arrived I knew I was in a strong position. I ran half the lings into his main as I fought at his natural and forced the gg.

Meanwhile the tor guys are going crazy behind me which was amusing. I talked to fur after and he mentioned something like that if I won I'd be top 4. I told him not to tell me things like that haha. Then we watched the rest of pig/jaz. I wanted to play jaz more than pig, despite losing to him and beating pig. I felt that jaz was beatable but with pig I just got lucky. Turns out pig manages to win 2-1 so jazbas fell down to play me.

Game 1 I recognised that glade had been laddering since our series and hadn't talked with jaz so I went for the speedling into roach bane AGAIN. Jaz came VERY close to holding it, but I managed to do enough damage to take the game a few minutes later. For game 2, I thought he would do a 10 pool of some kind or maybe a hatch first. I decided that I would 10 pool speed, given that it is the best 10 pool against other 10 pools. Long story short, jaz went for 9 pool eco and I pumped a bunch of lings and did some decent damage to his economy before securing my expo quicker and getting enough roach ling to kill him and win the game. Many high fives were shared after I shook jaz's hand and then went to report my score.

Then somehow I was top 4... :O. I talked some strategy with pezz, with ninja and I think petrify as well. Then I went and played the games. Game 1 I got impatient and took a bad fight to lose the game. Game 2 was pretty straightforward. Game 3 I made spur of the moment mutas and then immediately after realised how stupid of a decision that was. Light played some very strong starcraft though and I was just glad I could take a game. I think to an extent I got lucky because I think I'm generally better against 2 bases then later game plays. I think I may have had the crowd cheering for me which was pretty awesome. Oh and yeah that gif happened after game 2 LOL.

I talked with pig after and shared some advice. He felt pretty confident, I think he'd seen enough of lights pvz to play well against it. I won't really talk about the games from here, they were streamed but for results sake, pig won 2-0 vs light then lost 0-2 to kingkong. I talked with dot/stally/pezz/lemminks/petrify for most of the finals and it was a lot of fun. Still feel bad about killing pezz though .

The event then finished and I bailed cause I had to go sleep asap. Took some photos with fray and kingkong and overall I was pretty happy about the result.

Maybe I'll see you all at acl Melbourne, if the date is good I'm probably gonna be there!

Also big love to avant who got me the teamshirt and headset for the event. They also flew pezz up from Melbourne which was so awesome! Thank you sponsors