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Over the weekend of the 10th-11th of August 2013 I attended my first ever ACL event, ACL Melbourne 2013. It was my first big LAN that I had attended as well as my first outing while under the Exile5 banner. I was quite nervous going into it for both of those reasons. What made the nerves worse was the pressure of facing the open bracket.

My practice leading up to ACL was as good as I could make it while doing year 12. I remember some advice Satu gave me at AVCON which was along the lines of “if you think to yourself about how much practice you have done and you think you couldn’t have possibly done more than you did, then regardless of the result you should take pride in knowing you did everything you could to try get the result that you wanted”. That advice was really useful and it definitely helped in my ACL preperation. For my preperation I mostly laddered but I also had a couple of practice games with a few of my practice partners to try out new builds that I could maybe throw into a series.

As the open bracket came out I discovered my first opponent was going to be Zenaku. A strong Protoss player who I’d only versed a few times before. As I saw that I knew it would be tough but I believed if I played my best and scouted well I may be able to beat him.

Going into the first game on Akilon wastes I was pretty nervous as I knew it would be a tough one. The game started off rather standard with a FFE from him and a 3 hatch build from me. The rest of the opening 7-8 minutes were standard with no shenanigans by him or me. It wasn’t until the 9:30 mark that the game started to get interesting. Zenaku came in with a warp prism full of pesky zealots that were determined to kill some drones and a couple of queens. Luckily I saw it coming with my floating map hacks and was able to minimise the damage to only 1 drone and 1 queen. I was pretty happy with how I defended that harass but I knew after scouting no third base that he was going to follow up with a strong 2 base all in. And follow up with a strong 2 base all in he did. Eventually around 11-12 minutes I believe, he pushed out with a strong 5 immortal, 5ish sentry +2 blink stalker army that was bred for one reason! To destroy the world of men… well in this case Zerg… The world of Zerg… I was unable to stop this strong 2 base all in and Zenaku proceeded to take the first game and then eventually the second with the exact same style. I was rather disappointed with my opening games and I was just hoping that I wouldn’t go out without winning a game. I have to say that to have the Exile5 guys standing behind me, cheering me on and giving me advice after the games was extremely helpful and I felt privileged to have them there. Having PiG and Bard there to help talk strategies with and ways to beat the build was one of the most useful things that a player could possibly have. Not only did the team help with strategies and ways to counter but they provided a level of mental support that I had never witnessed for myself before in starcraft.


After losing the first series 2-0 I looked to the brackets to see who my next opponent was. My next opponent would be Champi, another Protoss player… Yay me… What made the next game more nerve racking then the first 2 was the fact that it was a bo1 rather than a bo3. So I knew that one mistake one missed tech structure and I could have lost the game so I knew I had to be on point. And on point I was. The game was once again on Akilon Wastes and it started standard apart from the fact that Champi tried to sneakily cannon my third but once again my floating map hacks came to the rescue and I was able to get my lings there in time to force a cancel on the cannon. After forcing the cancel on the cannon I felt I was in a good position since he had wasted 100+ minerals to try get that cannon up. I scouted with my lings shortly afterwards and managed to see a second cannon being put up as well as the cannons targeting the rocks for the third. At this points I decided to take a gamble and greedily expand and drone up for the next few minutes. I was able to get away with mass droning and expanding whilst only having 8 lings on the field as my army for the first 11 minutes and 30 seconds. It wasn’t until I was at 108 drones, 4 base saturation and my 5th gases saturated that I started to build units. What units you might ask? Mutas. Mutas, mutas anddddd mutas, oh there was also a sprinkle of corruptors here and there. Once I had amassed a rather sizeable muta corruptor force I waltzed my way over to Champi’s third and proceeded to end the game with my sky army and +1 zergling follow up.


After winning that game I had a massive confidence boost as I knew that I would not be going home without winning a game. I can remember Bard being absolutely baffled about how I got away with being that greedy after the game had ended. My answer to that is… Zerg op. As I was going to report the scores to the admin I had a chance to talk to Champi and discovered that he was also baffled about how I got away with being as greedy as I was. I’m sure he won’t let a zerg sit back as long as he let me ever again. He was a really nice guy about it all though and I was disappointed not to be able to talk with him later on.

So looking at the brackets after my game against Champi I saw I had to vs a Terran. Now my ZvT leading to the event had been very up and down so I was hoping I could have one of my better games here. My opponent was Phoneheha and the map that we would vs on was Whirlwind. A map that I was rather confident on but a tad weary of drops.

So the game started and I went for a standard 15 hatch 16 pool but after seeing he 14cc’d I threw down my third base as quick as I could. I had my lings at his possible 3rd base locations and was starting to get worried when I saw he hadn’t taken them. I still decided to take my 4th at the standard time but chose not to drone it up until I saw his third. I saw that he had a few marines out on the map and saw that he was looking to push. He then tried to do a double drop in my main but once again my floating map hacks saved me and I was able to thwart his drop attempt quite comfortably. After that drop attempt failed he postured his marines and mines the centre of the map on the watch tower while taking his third. This is where I slightly droned up my 4th and started to make mutas and had a strong 2/2 ling bane army. After sending a few units in and seeing his army I decided I could take it and engaged off creep and due to a lucky lag spike I was able to get some really good bane hits (the only lucky lag spike I had all tournament). After cleaning that up I countered and killed most of his scvs at his third, after which I was feeling really confident. That is when he started to drop everywhere and things got tricky. I eventually managed to stabilise and build up a strong ling bane ultra infestor army and just decided enough was enough and attacked him in between his third and fourth base. I saw that he had a heap of mines set up so I burrowed my infestors and threw down some infester terrans to detonate as many of the mines as I could. It worked perfectly and I was able to detonate most if not all of his mines. I then proceed to clean up his army, waltz into his main and take down his production. I sent my reinforcements to clean up the drops he had sent out and after a few more minutes of him being trapped on one base he gg’d. It was a crazy game with many ups and downs and I was super glad to win it. I think this was the my best game of ACL and it was one I was mostly proud of.


Bard giving me some last minute advice

So 4th game over going into the fifth I was feeling more and more confident, up until I saw my next match would be ZvZ. ZvZ has been my worst match up for quite a while and I would be worried about playing one even if it were against a far worse opponent just because of how crazy and silly they can be at times. So after seeing it was a ZvZ I was pretty worried and immediately called Mr PiG over to talk too. My opponent was Soundwave a decent zerg player from ETL. This talk was what was able to calm me down before the game and get me into a good mental position before going into the game. Just having someone like PiG to talk to helps so so much. PiG and I talked about Soundwaves match history and all the all ins he had been doing during ACL against zergs. We then spoke about how I wanted to counter them. In the end we came to a decision that doing the 2 queen Jerry build would be the best option considering how nervous I was about going up against zerg all ins. So I went into the game with a clear head and feeling more confident than I had 5-10 minutes before hand. So going into the game on whirlwind I was still nervous but also rather confident that I could take the game if things went my way. Once I saw Soundwave move out with 2 scouting lings after I had pulled off gas and was amassing lings I started to get worried and immediately sent out my lings to try scare him away as well as pull some drones to the nat just in case. I was trying to make it look as standard as possible. Luckily my 2 lings scared his away and I was able to go unscouted. Once my speed finished I ran over to his base, running under 2 overlords on the way. Once I got to his base I was happy to see that all he had blocking his ramp was 4 lings. I then surrounded his queens killed the lings and eventually ended the game. I was extremely excited to win this game and move on because I was so nervous about playing a ZvZ. That was until I saw my opponent in the next round would once again be Zenaku. (I’d like to make an announcement right here to everyone and say that I very very very rarely 10 pool in ZvZ and I am super confused about why people say I am known to 10 pool. If someone would care to explain why people think that I would greatly appreciate it)

So to have Zenaku be my opponent for the next game I was both excited about the fact that I may be able to get revenge but also worried that he may just beat me again with his strong builds. So the last game was to be played on whirlwind and I was hoping it would be a map he would do a more macro style on. After talking with PiG for some length about how to counter his previous all in I was confident that if he did it again I would be able to beat it provided I didn’t make any major mistakes.

The game started off exactly the same as the previous 2 between us and he did the exact same build except this game I was prepared and went hydra ling. It wasn’t until I had scouted and seen he still hadn’t moved out at the 11-12 minute mark that I realised that he might be going colo to counter my ling hydra. So I threw down 20 odd spines and built a spire to prepare to go mutas. I also built a 4th base as the spines were finishing up. Zenaku then moved across the map with 3 colo, immortals +2, blink stalkers and a couple of sentries. I was hoping that if I could get an overwhelming number of mutas out I could just kill his stalkers and then the rest of his army. But as he came to engage I had a bad spread and concave and got half my hydras trapped by forcefields and lost most of my army. My mutas then spawned but there wasn’t enough to kill all of his stalkers so I decided to spine up my third and go for a base trade. I sniped his natural and then realising how in risk I was of losing my third I ran back with my army to try to defend. But with his 3 colossus still alive I was unable to kill his army and he managed to take the game.


I was quite disappointed about losing to him 3 times that day, but he definitely deserved to win and unfortunately he missed out on getting groups by only 1-2 wins.

Overall ACL Melbourne was a great experience and I have memories from there that will last a life time. It was also a great chance for me to meet more people and get to know the Exile5 guys more. I am slightly disappointed in my performance but I believe I did quite well for my first big event and I am looking forward to competing against everyone again at the next ACL I am able to attend!

Last but not least I’d like to say a MASSIVE thank you to my good friend, the fearless leader of TCP, Mr David Kong aka Lemminks. For without you my trip to ACL would not have been made possible! So for those who don't know once Lemminks heard about me wanting to go to ACL, but couldn’t due to the cost of flights, he straight up offered to pay for my flights without a second thought. Now for me this is the first time someone outside of my family has ever offered to do something of this magnitude for me. So I’d just like to say thank you David I really, really appreciate it! I could not hope to have a better friend and TCP really is lucky to have you as a leader. I cannot wait to meet you in person at ACL Brisbane next year! Team David Kong Fighting!