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EDIT: holy **** this is enormous. I'm gonna cut it up into sections.

It seems that writing about ACL melbourne is what all the cool people do so I figure I'd join in but my natural desire is to show off so I have decided to talk about not one, not two, but FOUR tournaments! I don't normally do this but it's been the best few months for me career-wise and that's more interesting then my usual story of "beat a few zergs but not enough, infestors overpowered, bleh".

TL;DR:





IEM SHANGHAI QUALIFIERS

Alright so first up is the IEM SH qualifier. I felt pretty good about it, there's no KingKong, I was practising a good amount and it's about bloody time I got out of Australia to play some Starcraft. I had to play through the stage 1 qualifiers which was pretty difficult. Only top 2 advance and it has players like Light and Petraeus in it and it's also a bloody slog since everyone and their dog signed up. I felt unusually uneasy when I played though. I don't get nervous nowadays as much as I used to, experience mindset and skill help a good deal there, but for some reason I did that night. I ran into Petraeus who I normally play pretty well against but I played scared. I played dumb. I lost. In the lower bracket I played Ray, who I haven't beaten in like a thousand years. Again I played scared, I played dumb and I lost.

It didn't help that Petraeus fell asleep before his lower bracket final match against Rossi and was disqualified. I'd have to play him again the next night and that was not ideal considering how our first games went. I went to asleep tired, deflated and pissed off.

But it was all better the next day! Again I hit pet but this time I felt better. I played confident and won. He tried to 9pool me though every game I go CC on high ground. Whoops. Then I had to Ray. remember how I said earlier how I hadn't beat Ray in like a thousand years? Well it's true. Ray's PvT is basically what I'd like to do, solid macro builds that combine good tech and economy and shit on all aggression, a well timed third and an army that just steamrolls, and when faced with a superior version of what I'd want to do I just get confused and so I've lost to him heaps. But that was gonna change!

First game was on Planet S and I 11/11'd. I almost never do this one but Ray always opened nexus before any units and without scouting. So I proxied 2 raxes, waited til 5 marines, pulled all but 4 scvs and marched right up his ramp. I did this the first series and it failed due to bad micro. But I microed good this time and it worked exactly as planned. Sweet.
Second game was on Newkirk. I did some stupidly overgreedy build, but Ray had figured that I was doing builds that I had done the night before and actually scouted for it. He saw it and reacted well and when I went to hit him I got shat on. Dang.
Third game was on derelict. I had got lucky here. Maps like this and newkirk feature a ton of wide open space for fighting which is really helpful against ray since his forcefield and colossus style is very good against chokes but when the enemy has a massive 180+ degree concave it's not so good. I dropped a bit and picked away some and then all my scvs came off their lines and charged. I got the sweet concave off and Ray crumbled. I honestly cannot recall any other time I had beaten him in a tournament so this was a particularly satisfying win.

The second stage was quite brutal. A 3 day tournament with long days with only rewards for one player. Ouch. First opponent was ninja, who got a seed after doing well at IEM SG last year. But he hadn't practiced very much so I recall straightforward wins. Next was PiG. I only remember one of our games where I wanted to go blue flames but scouted him doing a roach/bane timing so changed it into tank and mines instead and crushed it easily. This would not be possible in Wings of Liberty. Thanks David Kim. You're awesome.

And then came the final boss, Mr Glade himself. Once I'd of been scared at this point but I'd been riding on some good momentum and my record against Glade in HotS had been extremely positive. First game I made a dumb mistake and let a hundred lings through a gap in the wall which killed loads of scvs and scouted my Blue flame timing. But I felt he took way longer then he needed to to actually kill me so I didn't tilt too hard. And he let me play on Neo Planet S the next game which is a dumb move.

Planet S is, I think, easily the strongest Terran map in the current pool. 3 easy bases to secure and it's almost impossible for Zerg to take a 4th without being torn apart by a straightforward push one way and a bit of multitasking the other. I had a solid opener figured out which abused these attributes quite nicely. Both times I played Glade on this map I pretty much just executed well and won handily. All the Zergs in that tournament were letting me play it but nowadays they always veto it.

Belshir was the other map we played, and I'm not sure what I feel about it. The small size means you don't have to push far to get bases but it's also very good for roach timings. Fortunately Glade didn't do any of these (he'd done one in the second Star Station game that was ******* annoying as hell since I was trying to go Blue flames again and that's actually the worst thing that can happen), opting for safe normal play. I opted for the same and edged him out. The second game he fell victim to my thousand hellion 3 cc opener and was far too behind to put up a proper fight, despite some vigorous mutalisk control.

Winning IEM SH qualifiers is exactly what winning a tournament should feel like. I'm tired and dirty and my grin won't dissappear. I'd won a huge prize and beaten many mighty foes. Fantastic! Of my recent success this one was easily the most satisfying.

AVCON

Next was Avcon, a few weeks after. My last trip to Adelaide had been successful, a reasonable second place against Tgun at an Arena lan. This time things would be a little different. The prize pool was 5 times larger and there were tons more zergs to kill. I played only TvZ at this event (though I'd also played TvT and TvP in the qualifers so it wasn't all that!) and I'd got a really comfortable group.

I stayed with Maynarde for this one, and maynarde has basically "Brother from another mother" status. he drove me and PiG around everywhere, kept us fed and we spent all the spare time playing Dark souls. He had offered his pc for warming up but **** that, there's Souls to be had. Top 3 hospitality.

An easy 2-0 against edge and a trickier 2-0 against Myuu and I was through to top 8. My win vs KK was extremely satisfying as I think he has the strongest ZvT in Aus/NZ and it was great to see Petraeus make the finals. Kid is extremely talented and if it weren't for school he'd probably destroy us all.

Rather then talk about the games too much (marines, mines, medivacs, hellion runbys) I'll talk about the event.

AVcon has good playing conditions. The PC's were great, the tables and chairs were fine, the internet connection was most acceptable. A ******* rave started on the other side of the hall and the sound invaded our headsets on saturday evening but hey it's a convention, what can you do? Something always goes wrong at these things.

And this is all well and good for players but for spectators it wasn't good at all. The League was presented well enough it seemed and they pulled roughly 150 spectators up towards the finals and for a live event that's actually pretty damn good but the Starcraft was a huge mess. I won't go into all the details, I think the organisers and casters know all about that so I'll just end by saying that when the starcraft players went up on stage to get their trophies and they announced the awards for Starcraft, the crowd kind of stared at us confused. There was a Starcraft tournament? And that's kind of awkward.

Oh well, made money.

IEM SHANGHAI

Next was IEM Shanghai barely a week afterwards. I found out my group when I got to the hotel and found infeza there and said "So do you know my group? It's not Polt and Hyun or something is it?" Oh, it is? Well that's... difficult.

I hadn't been overseas for two years but I do remember Guangzhou fondly. Sure I lost all my games but I was kinda bad and everyone was great fun and it was an interesting and new experience. This time it wasn't quite as nice. Partially because it was ******* stinking hot and China is more congested then Mafia's mineral lines and I hate having to haggle with people it's primitive and also because I lost all my games again. I also got to experience firsthand what people mean by the huge egos you see in esports. I really don't wanna elaborate that last point since it's messy and awkward, but I got an interesting new perspective.

The brits were fun to drink with though. And I got to meet David Kim and tell him how much I love widow mines! Thanks Dayvie! Now do something useful and nerf protoss or something.

It was also weird seeing some of the Koreans. Not just because they're aloof and keep to themselves a bunch but because I didn't feel like a massive fanboy. Particularly with Jaedong. Back in the broodwar days I was a huge Jaedong fan and never imagined I'd ever meet him in person. I did then and the only thing I said to him was "score?" regarding the Revival vs Polt series. I'm not sure why exactly I don't feel like a giddy fanboy anymore, but I think it's because I want to become as good as them one day. I want to beat them at Starcraft and it's not going to help thinking about them in this way. At least I hope it's that.

Well, ok, I did fanboy a little bit to polt but that was after I was out of the tournament. His english is rather fluent.

ACL MELBOURNE

So we now have ACL melbourne. I kinda wasn't sure I'd win this. My acl results are pretty awful (2 5th places, 2 failures to make it past groups and didn't get the ESWC flight at EB Expo) and due to a PC issue I hadn't practiced very much. I had just lost to KK 0-2 in the Hong Kong qualifier (good luck over there mate, knock 'em over) and had dropped a ladder game or two to Glade over on KR server so I wasn't feeling like 1st place material. Top 4 maybe but not first.

Thanks for fray for flying us all down and getting us a nice close to the venue hotel, and thanks to Sue for driving us around a bunch. Also oranges. She got us oranges! Us fray boys are nothing without them. Fenner, I approve. Also, those couches in the lying down area? Mandatory! Should always have a nap place at events. So useful. It was hard to resist the urge to steal PiG's glasses too.

My group was alright. PiG, Pezz and Stoicwilly. 3 people I'm yet to lose series against in hots. First up was pig and he was doing all sorts of weird shit. Overlord speed into ling speed into 2.5 base roach bane timing. The first game I was trying to go blue flames and when his ovies saw it I swore. Seriously who the **** goes ovie speed anyway? I saw a few roaches move out but thought it was just to get my 3rd to lift up as I was planted it fast, trying to play greedier to compensate for my shit build. Instead it was a bust and I only had 3 marines and a tank to stop it. Not nearly enough. First game of the tournament was a loss.

Which sucks, but hey if he's allinning this early then that can only mean someone is more afraid of me then I should be of them. Second game I opted for a safer build, polts reaper expand into viking and mine drop. And I'm glad I chose this one since it's a ton safer and pig did the same build again, except this time I had loads of bunkers and mines and had also killed tons of drones in his main with a reaper/hellion runby. I played it out rather scrappily I thought but one of us had a real economy and good upgrades so that's nice.

Game 3 was wild. I opened safe and he opened with what I thought was going to be another overlord speed into roach bane (I scouted roaches and speed overlords) but he held off once he saw my wall of mines and bunkers. I'm unsure if he wanted to do it and just scouted first or if he was just mindgaming but I killed a few drones so whatever. I moved into a normal bio mine midgame and prepared for standard ling bane muta except I then saw hydralisks. What? So I lifted my reactor factory for 2 fac tanks expecting roach hydra but it was just ling bane roach hydra.

Huh?

Fortunately a few banshees and drops kept him pressured and I was able to get into the swing of things with my pushes. But my execution was floundering a bit and pig was being weird with his movements so instead of crushing him with strong pushes I dithered a bunch and he got 5 bases and ultras. And then a few broodlords showed up. I was able to block his broodlord push with a faked counter into a large surround and it just barely worked, and I'd been able to strike at his economy with a few drops but things were getting scrappy, I was running out of minerals to mine.

I'd lost tons of depots (was stuck on x/106 for ages and resolutely refused to make more depots for ages for some retarded reason) and he ran some ultras around to keep denying bases. Eventually I had to use a few widow mines to keep him from planting new hatcheries and to kill the drones distance mining. Pig didn't have money for overseers so he had to get a few zerglings and attack them with his last remain ultralisk so the cleave would kill it. Insanity.

I then remembered that in low eco situations banshees are your best friend so I threw down some starports and made some. And a few ravens to see his last few burrowed infestors and sat on my final Command centre with enough scvs. I'd picked off too many of his drones and a few infestors and my position was unassailable. PiG tapped out of a crazy 54 min game I just wished was on stream.

Next was Pezz. I don't rate my TvP too highly but Ray is gone so I'm much less afraid of Protoss nowadays. Pezz played quite well, he got himself into a pretty reasonable spot in the first game and read my opener quite well in the second. He definitely had strong chances to beat me, but his lack of experience and nerves buggered it up for him. A pity. With more time and mentality he might just fit into Ray's massive shoes.

Next was StoicWilly. I knew nothing about him (I asked deth what he looked like and he stared at me for a few moments before pointing at the chap two seats away from me. AWKWARD) other then he has the best username in all Starcraft. And he's terran. I opened with a safer 15 gas opener game 1 and scouted early which was a good thing since he was going 11/11 and it helps to know that in advance. I had a bunker up in time so he couldn't get much done but we traded a few scv's. The correct response here I think is cloaked banshee expand and with them I was able to keep his fast 3 cc into mech play under a ton of pressure. A push or two later and it was over. Neat.

Game two was my worst of the tournament. I read him going gas first cloak banshee and even though this build is super popular right now I had decided to counter it by having 2 marines out when it hit. That's ******* next level TvT right there. Eventually he contained me hard and I couldn't see a way of breaking it so I did a shitty breakout and lost horribly. I was kind of angry with myself but it's ok. I figured I could win game 3 if I didn't play stupid.

And I didn't. I opened 15 gas expand and saw him also opening safe. I harassed him a good deal with 6 hellions and an 8 marine drop and kept him under good pressure whilst retaining the units which is important. Normally I play like an idiot and get them all killed (see vs Pezz g2) but this time I was disciplined. I took a strong eco lead into the midgame with a fast 3rd and kept it all niceand secure. When he moved out with a push I decided his army was too small to worry about and countered with a ton of marines that tore up his 3rd and medivac boosted my way out to avoid losing it all (thanks again dayvie, these things are ridiculous). I had forgot +1 though and was at 0/1 to 2/1 at one point which is pretty ******* bad but it was ok I have money.

And then I bm'd him pretty hard with mules and a ring of sensor towers around his base. I like to bm terrans sometime when they stall out a game by sitting on like 2 base tanks with very little income and it's very hard to attack since Terran, but really in a situation like this it was wrong (it's ok to do it vs Glade though that guy spent like 2 years crushing my dreams, **** that guy). I was upset at myself for playing so stupid g2 and decided to let it out on him which is really wrong. I apologised afterwards but still felt really guilty when I saw his expression post game. I realised those were probably the games that knocked him out of the tournament, and I really should not of done that.

Bad iaguz. At least he was on SCLN and it's fun to bm them but really, come on man. Bad iaguz. Sorry stoic. Still best name AU.

ANYWAY, the next day gave me Malice and Poker to play. Malice was like Pezz but not as good. A bit of multitask the first game and a bit of him fumbling his defence in the second game and that was over. Poker was a bit similar, just did my normal TvZ thing. Make some units, pick away at some drones, pretend to respect possible Zerg aggression and then get the macro engine rolling. Terran is fun.

Then came group stage Sunday afternoon. I had a seed into top 8 which was nice. I had to play winner of Pulse and Jaz which I expected to be jaz and was not wrong. Jaz seemed like he had no confidence to beat me in macro games but to his gentlemanly credit he tried anyway. But I feel he shouldn't try to be such a gentleman next time; it didn't work. Made units, Spread mines, Killed zerg.

An interesting thing happened game 2 where I had 'delayed' shields when my first push came out so instead of just attacking I parked it at his new 4th base and just left it there. Hopefully he wasn't going to try and engage a well positioned (but shieldless, shields are important without them it means if you stim a baneling 1 shots a marine, not 2) terran off creep and neither wanted to backstab with an army so close to somewhere important. The gamble paid off and when reinforcements came in shields finished and it was zerg murder time.

I then had to play PiG or KK next. Hmm. On one hand KK is probably the stronger player I though, on the other I'd already shown my hand recently to pig and he probably had more up his sleeve. I decided KK was probably not who I'd want to play and was happy to see him try and 9pool pig two times too many.

I sat down on stage to play pig and I was feeling pretty good. You should always feel good when you're playing Starcraft, it makes your play much stronger and the whole experience more fun. I'm a bit of a show off by nature so I like the stage! I still get a bit of the shakey hands on stage from time, and I did in game 1 when I donated 4 hellions, map control and basically the whole game to pig for free. I also trapped a bunch of marines with a shit sim city. I scanned and predicted he was gonna try and 3 base aggro me with something, (speed roach speed bane it turned out) so I made a few extra bunkers but pig just smashed through all them no problem. Sod. Down a game again to annoying all ins.

Game 2 I opened reaper and got off some fine drone harass. Akilon is a very good reaper map there's plenty of space to hop the reapers around and pick off drones, and I was able to send out the second one as well as I had noted before pig wasn't trying to delay my natural with sneaky bastard lings. Feeling foolhardy I hellion ranby and killed a good few drones securing a good eco lead. I macroed and pushed and with some medivac dickery I took a comfortable win.

Game 3 on Star station was another hand shakery moment. The reapers did sort of ok but when I went to run by pig adapted and decided he wasn't to be having any of that and crushed it easily. Hmm, too keen methinks. But a few extra hellions and a sneaky mine drop managed to kill 17 drones anyway so I was able to midgame comfortably. At this point I realised pig wasn't making any mutas ever (hut told me his games vs Pro7ect at ASUS were like that too, no mutas anywhere) so I knew what I wanted to do. Marauders!

Marauders are your best weapon against all zerg ground units, they poop on roaches, they laugh at banelings, they don't get completely annihilated by infestors like they used to and they're your best weapon vs ultralisks plus they have loads of health so the medivacs healing is more relevant. They're not fantastic at killing lings so you still want marines for that at least but otherwise Marauders man. I made a bunch and attacked. I also made sure to do some drops too since star station is good for that and playing as if mutalisks do not exist means terran can be really abusive.

But things were still dramatic. PiG murdered a lot of my scvs with his counters and when his first fungals showed up I had a bunch of red health units nice and ready for him. Fortunately I was able to get into some good fights and the marauders did their grim work. PiG knows how to kick violently when you've got him in a corner so I took it methodically, my brain yelling at my shakey hands to not ******* overextend, not now.

Which meant I had to play Petraeus in the finals! Again! Oh man this is awkward. First game was surprising, Pet was being really aggro with his lings vs my initial hellions. I decided to just play it cool and noticed him gassing his 3rd so he was going mutas. I moved out with my first push to try and just clear creep but as I went to extricate pet descended and tore everything up good. This was a running theme, I'd barely make it to the middle of the map, think I was doing ok and then pet would unleash the swarm. I was barely able to stay alive with reinforcements when he tried to follow up his advantages (thanks Widow mines! Thanks Dayvie!) and when I thought I was in a stable position he had ultras. And 3/3 slightly faster then me. That should never happen!

So I sent out a few drops and took my 4th and hoped I would kill enough drones to maybe get some momentum back. And thankfully that was enough, a few fights later and he had broodlords but very little in support. I had 5 bases, a still vigorous economy and a good viking count. My last push cleaned him up. Still, I was very surprised, Pet was playing quite fierce it seemed.

G2 was my other frustrating loss of the tournament. I opened reaper and pet jerry'd me successfully. This really shouldn't work. I should make 2 hellions, kite back to my mineral line and get the scvs in the fight whilst the hellions sit behind them and burn zerglings. Instead I botched it and had the hellions in front of the scvs so I just lost a bunch of scvs instead. after all the lings were dead I tried some counter harass but pet deflected that quite ably and cleaned me up nicely with some speed roach speed bane. Grumble.

G3 I decided to pull out a pocket strategy I'd prepared a few days earlier and hadn't used yet. Reaper expand into 2 base blue flames. It's cheesy, but I figured he'd just went roach aggression last game and probably wasn't going to do it again this game, and that it would be unlikely he'd scout my tech lab factory position and that he'd just assume it was the reaper into starport play I'd been doing all weekend. All these things went in my favour and my blue flames burned many zergs. It's a fairly risky strategy, fairly dirty but it's fun to mix these things in a bit sometimes. Keep them zergs scared. Scared zergs are much easier to beat then confident ones.

G4 I decided to pile on aggression again. Pet's on the back foot and if it's anything like avcon his nerves are probably getting to him. So I did the mass hellion 3 cc strat I like, it involves making a shitload of hellions and just pressuring and running them by like a ************. It has shit upgrades and medivac timing but a terran is on fast 3 base vs a Zerg whose struggling economy is struggling it is very favourable. Not only did I kill enough drones to ensure that but I also scouted his half finished spire and knew his upgrades weren't going to be great either, and that I was going to need some turrets.

I deflected his mutas well enough and got my 3rd up and just macro macro macro into win. I mixed in a few more drops then I normally like but pet was being active enough with his mutalisks that I felt confident where they'd be. I don't like dropping if I feel it's just muta food or if zerg is vulnerable enough not to require it but it can very strong when the mutalisks aren't there to stop them. Eventually my attacks were too much and Pet tapped out.

And that was that! Another tournament win, another pile of dead zergs, another feasted orange. Good times. Thanks to ACL and their usual competence in organising and running tournaments and also for being very quick to pay out players. Thanks to everyone who has tuned in and supported me with their kind words, and also for anyone who has actually made it all the way through this. This turned out to be a bit longer then I expected.

So what's next? IEM NY Qualifiers in a month or two, as well as IEM SG (even if I dont' qualify I'd very much like to attend), and ACL Sydney and who knows what else springs up. But honestly? I don't want to go overseas to play tournaments as much as I'd like to go overseas for practice. I want to be a better player then I am now and I feel like in Australia it is very hard to do this.

But I don't actually know how to organise that properly. Normally the way you get attention from teams what have money and teamhouses and stuff is to go overseas and beat up some koreans and that's kinda hard. So I dunno, maybe I'm still in Australia for a bit longer. We'll see.

Thanks for reading.