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TL DR **** TRAINS


Do you love esports so much you would go for a 27 hour train ride just to get to an event? Well I made this awful mistake, I made the same mistake as anyone else thinking that a couple of books and my 3DS would keep me entertained..... NOPE about 3 hours in it occurred to me that I had made the worst mistake of my life. I think I will harbor a fear of trains till the day I die, but still the fact that my boy miles came to pick me up from the train station made things slightly better. We met up with Chase and Fender who like a bunch of Netdeckers decided they where too good to stay with all us other plebs and booked a room at another Hotel. Hut was also around to make fun of my poor life decision of catching a train. Miles, Hut and I then began the long adventure back to our Hotel and by long adventure I mean we caught a train and then got picked up by Sue (Who was an absolute legend and drove a lot of the Fray boys around the whole weekend). But anyway the rest of that night was a lot of standard prevent stuff, got to meet up with most of the Fray and SLCN boys along with MightyKiwi. We went out searching for food and settled for Macca's which ended in Me, Rize and Osiris ordering 24 nuggets each. Needless to say after using them to summon David, Rize and Osiris bitched it hard and didnt finish there nuggets but even the nugget lord wouldnt touch the left overs. I felt like my preparation of eating mass amounts of nuggets, smoking and drinking vodka in a bathtub with Rize would prepare me well for the competition.

Day one was pretty interesting, basically skipped breakfast and just went for a coffee instead. The venue was really nice and getting to setup on a computer and warm up a bit got me really hyped to play. I won't go into detail about every game I played because who wants to read that shit but basically it went like this.

vs Chad

Chad had some nice tricks up his sleeve and I felt like we both played a bit sloppy but having better mechanics and a lot more practice leading up the event allowed me to take the quick 2-0

vs Rendorian

Before this I had never beaten Rendorian and I knew I needed to beat him or else I would play Chase in the losers bracket, I went into this match up so focused and felt so confident after winning 2-0 I gotta admit I did get a little loud but hey someone had to give those COD kids a run for there money

vs Azz

I saw Azz destroy Chase and so was a little nervous about this match up, I think it was important that I lost game one because it really woke me up a bit and forced me to get my shit together. What followed after this was what felt like two of the longest tournament games of my life, both games felt like I could lose at any moment and felt insanely back in forth but at the end of the day I managed to just scrap together a win and take the 2-1

vs MightyKiwi

Pretty sure this was the shortest series this entire tournament, all I can say is game one I went for an early pool speed build and got a build order loss and game 2 I fell to the MightKiwi 10p bane which will cause me nightmares for the rest of my life.

vs Fourby

I felt really good in my games verses Fourby overall the games felt a lot cleaner then against Azz and I felt a lot more in control of everything, I also did the most cancer build ever on Teraform and took a solid 2-0. Afterwards though they worked out that Fourby and I where in the same group and wanted us to play each other again, I managed to play a drawn out macro game and hold an all-in game 2 to take another 2-0

We ended up getting back to the Hotel at around 9 and I felt really fucked, we ordered Pizza and hung out with the Fray boys in Jessie and I's room. After finishing off a bottle of Vodka and security telling us to shut the **** up we decided to call it a night and everyone headed back to there own room.

Now at this point I will have to give a shoutout to Ice because the next morning Jessie and I woke up late as **** and if Ice didnt wait for our sorry asses and give us a lift we would have been totally fucked. Although as it turned out it wouldnt make much of a difference, Law and Blysk are vastly better players then me but after how I played day 1 I felt like I had a decent chance of putting up a fight. But instead I sorta fell apart threw away all the builds I had prepared and YOLO'd it which resulted in a 2-0 from Blysk and a 2-1 from Law. Falling short on day two really upset me and I basically sat outside the venue chainsmoking for a solid half an hour just kinda dwelling on everything but afterwards I got over it and decided that I'm just gonna get better. So next year watch out because its gonna be YOE.

I would write about the event after that but lets be honest everyone was either watching at the event or on stream it was hype as ****, afterwards I know some people went for KBBQ but after sitting at the tram stop and having it piss down while David slowly died I was pretty over it and just wanted to get back to the Hotel. It was at this point I found my one problem with Melbourne, I was in love with this city and was basically convinced I would want to move here until on sunday night we discovered, NO ******* BOTTLESHOPS OPEN AT 8PM..... WHY, HOW AM I MEANT TO BE THE GOONLORD WITHOUT GOON, **** YOU BWS, DAN MURPHYS AND THAT RANDOM BEER SHOP WE PASSED YA'LL COWARDS ARE WEAK AND CAUSED ME TO SPEND MY LAST NIGHT IN MELBOURNE DEAD SOBER SO I'M CALLING YOU OUT. So yeah that night was spent quietly indoors with Pizza and discussions of the appropriate amount of Biniki's someone should own (correct answer is 6-7).

Finally day was a bit somber, it was sad to say goodbye to everyone. Me and my boy Miles walked around the CBD and had some girls in school uniforms check us out, I think it was my Fray jersey because lets be real, chicks love esports. After that we spent the rest of the day in the net cafe with half of fray, the brood war match of the century was played out between Pox and David and I shed many tears because of the raw beauty. Returning on the train back I had a lot of time to reflect on everything and even if you skip the rest of this dumb rambling it would mean a lot if you read this part. I am so thankful for esports, getting to travel to a new state and meet all these amazing people is probable one of the greatest experiences of my life and I don't think I will ever feel like I have wasted my time playing this game again. I hope to see everyone again at future ACL's as long as some new faces.

Special Shoutouts go to
Azz - for being an incredibly nice dude and sharing some of that protoss knowledge with me, I honestly feel like he is one of the smartest protoss in the scene and his casting of the final was brilliant

Miles - Miles is just a straight up legend, one of the most positive dudes I know and just a legend to be around, I already miss you bud and hope this is the first of many times we get to hang out.

Jessie AKA Soul AKA Ryze AKA Rize AKA Stunt - This poor bastard had to share a bed with me and I love to spoon.... so yeah sorry friend

Crimson - I just love your accent, cant wait for the Uncle Ben invitational might have to wait till they build an underwater trainline from Aus to NZ

MightKiwi - Without watching you 10p bane nerds on KR I wouldnt have beaten Wally next time I hope we can have a nugget eating challenge

Chadman - Chadman had to look after the gang of misfits, but like that dude from the Mighty Ducks he doesnt do it for the dirty esports money he does it for the passion
(he does still owe me cognac though #brokenpromises)

All the rest of the Fray guys and several others - honestly I could spend another half hour giving people shoutouts but I dont think people would bother reading them so I have to cut myself short but seriously you guys know who you are and made this weekend a memorable one.