SC2SEA.com - Starcraft 2 SEA eSports Community Site

Thanks to Asrathiel for editing!

Replay Pack

Hey guys, after SGL had finished I had a few people ask me for replays, and since it was as easy as looking at my own PC after-the-fact (thankfully, I had "save all replays" turned on), I figured I'd do the good deed and get all the replays up, as well as do a write-up of my feelings of SGL overall.
Download Link: http://drop.sc/packs/531

I hope you enjoy the story!

I don't live too far away; I live with my family, and since my brother was also going (he had planned to play many team tournaments with his friends, including Australian e-sports writer Zorine Harli). We both got dropped off by my mum (thanks mum !) I wanted to get there early, just to set up and have everything sorted out (hell, I wanted to arrive right on 12) but my brother convinced me to get there around 1-1:15. When we got there, parked outside across from the train station, and walked across. Boom, the line’s out the door because they only had something like 3 or 4 people to do registrations, and the way they were assigning seats was woeful.

At the event (beginning around ~1pm): Instead of standing in the line, my brother and I walked in and placed the things we had initially brought from the car- two monitors, a backpack and a keyboard bag- where we were meant to be sitting (he had a row of seats signed up under DYRM and I was listed as TGUN on the seating plan). So, I sit down while he goes and stands in the line to sign up, just sort of chilling on my phone and whatnot. I look up every now and then, and eventually see TARiichard and TADippa basically right across from me. Riichard then informs me that the SC2 players pretty much had their own area (booked as the SC2SEA area, if I remember correctly) and told me I should move my stuff over there. I had to watch my brothers stuff and sign in first, but did move over there as soon as I could (and sat in-between Riichard and SQLtt.HuT for the event).

Fun story: Before I moved my stuff, I had to go sign in. I was paying on the day, as I didn't have money in my paypal to pre-pay, so I walked up and asked to pay. "We're out of seats, sorry", they said, as they tried to turn me away. Nope, I have a reserved seat, I just didn't pre-pay (thanks r0cky, it would've been hell without you getting me a reserved spot!). So I walk over and talk to a guy, pointing out the big TGUN on the floor plan. The following conversation then took place:

Him: "You're clan TGUN?"
Me: "No, I am tgun."
Him: "The whole clan?"
Me: "No.. I am the tgun. I'm playing SC2"
Him: "So you're the whole clan booked there?"
Me: (sigh) "Yes. I only need one seat."
Him: "Ok, sweet, so we can use the other one?"
Me: "Sure, you might even have both, I'm moving to the SC2 area (gesturing towards the area)"
Him: "Cool, thanks man".

How he wasn't able to compute that I was tgun after that conversation is beyond me, but it was definitely funny for my brother who was watching. After all this, I take my tower (full tower, annoying to lug around) and other things and drop it off at the SC2 area, but don't actually proceed to plug everything in, as I could already see that we couldn't connect to bnet. Ended up watching and playing SSF4 as a few people near us (I think Iaguz's friends?) had arcade sticks + SSF4 set up on steam. Man, do I suck at that game! Eventually SC2 came online, I set all of my stuff up (my cable was something like 1km long, yet I sat about 5cm from where our switch was!) and logged into everything (skype, twitter, facebook and SC2; big mistake) and the LAN effect started. Tweets went out, people were contacted over skype and my broadcast was changed. After losing in SSF4 to mOOnGLaDe (is there a game this guy isn't good at?) I sat down, dealt with the aftermath of twitter trolling and got to work laddering…

..or so I thought. I sniped Iaguz as random (spawned as Zerg) and was opening standard, when JoFritzMD (Sharn Kemp) walked by and asked "Can I play?" I shrugged, nodded and quietly moved away as he sat down to play Iaguz. I continued to scream trash talk, as Iaguz had no idea I had gotten up, what race I was, or where I was on the map. It wasn't until Iaguz got three bunkers up (and JoFritz let all his lings die haphazardly) that he turned around to find me standing there looking at him.

Sup?

He laughed and went back to the game. Well, first ladder "loss" of the night, but definitely a fun one. Next, I look over at pokerface and see he's searching - boom, I search and find him on ladder, and have a few people standing between him and me as I laugh, telling him I'm random on Tal’Darim and that he's getting cheesed. Cue Benji casually leaning on my tower- which by the way, has the power button on the top of it- game starts, I get ready to proxy 2rax and the PC powers down, giving pokerface some free points, courtesy of his manager.

After this, I played a few games as Protoss (versus Ninja twice and HuT once), showing people that my Protoss is, indeed, not bad. People didn't believe that my Protoss account was high Masters/low GM MMR on NA (until recently, as I’ve now given it away to a teammate to use), until they saw I was busting out actual build orders and able to micro properly. Then we go off to KFC for a quick food run. KFC was directly across the road, but 6 of us went and Riichard only had room for 5 people (himself included) to drive, so naturally I elected to run there myself. I run there, beating them to the food area (how does this happen?) and walk into KFC. They're not there: OK, maybe they're in the Maccas..? Walk over to Maccas, nope, they're not there. Ok, maybe they're in the KFC now? Nope.

So I call Benji, but the phone is answered by an unkown Asian voice pretending to be a pizza place operator. Prick. After about 10 minutes of trolling me, Riichard shows up, claiming he had left his keys inside and that he had to go back to get them. Whatever, prick! We walk inside to KFC (let's get some chicken strips, right Rossi?) and are greeted by some of the worst service I've ever had -- and I'm Australian! Rossi and I both order an Ultimate Burger meal box thing: no idea what they're called (I don't usually eat take-out) and both ask for chicken strips with our meal. It took a long time for the meals to come, but they came (as did Riichard’s), and we then sit down to eat.

To Rossi's surprise, he looks down at chicken wings instead of strips and has the look of a kid who just saw his puppy kicked over a soccer field. "It's ok Rossi, do you want mine?" His face lit up, he looked so happy and I tilted my box slightly, ever so slightly, so he could see that I had also gotten wicked wings - he told me that they were wicked wings, and I said that's the joke: we both ordered strips and got messed over, because hey… apparently you don't get what you pay for.

Eventually, everyone gets their food (mOOnGLaDe got his last and then ran over to McDonalds to get food for LiviBee - what a guy), and my brother and one of his friends had shown up, so I walked back to the event with them instead of just running back on my own.

When I get back, everyone was set up and practicing, so I sit down and get set up, practicing on my own- just massing games and getting used to a keyboard that Ravine (DJ Ravine for those whom have heard his music) had brought me- a TTEsports keyboard, which I could use in place of my old PS/2 Keyboard- many thanks, I am still using said keyboard and have since bought it off him, because how could I give it back after winning the tournament with it?

Sign-ups for the tournament start around 7:30 (it was scheduled to actually start at 6) and everyone is buzzing around, signing up. We eventually got to the number of participants necessary to start (I think we had like 16-18, I can't remember) and as we're standing around, Chris asks people for predictions, saying "Who do you guys think will win? mOOnGLaDe, PiG, tgun or Rossi?" and Benji goes "What about the xGKing guys?"

I then step up and say "I don't think anyone in xGKing will take first", and Benji agrees, but saying that’s "only because GLaDe is here". I step up and say they won’t place top 2, and Benji comes back and says, "I bet you Mafia places higher than you".

“Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!” from the crowd.

"Alright, bet." I say straight away; most people know I'm not one to shy away from a bet, and that wasn't going to change any time soon. It's put at the top of the brackets, more important than the maps themselves, $10 bet that Mafia places higher than me. I think cheekyduck or LiviBee also got $10 on me beating Mafia, thank you for the faith! I'm really sorry that I can't remember who it was, but my memory is hazy! ^^;

So, we end up starting and are all greeted by a Swiss bracket, which at first I didn't understand, but someone explained to me how it worked: winners play winners, losers play losers and you play a series of rounds, at the end of which we have a top 8 to start a double-elimination bracket. The games start after me complaining to everyone in earshot that it sucked that there were very few protoss there, as my ZvP was so strong right now - and I drew YoungMinii, one of the two (him and Activision, who is a very nice person).

I played pretty well vs YoungMinii, even though the games were already lagging; seriously, what kind of low-life prick comes to a LAN and starts torrenting so much that they lag the network? People were getting banned left and right for it, but you can't really stop everyone, so it's very frustrating. First game I baneling busted him on Shattered Temple (pylon as part of your walling in a forge fe? No thanks!), and the second game I played my new ling/roach into muta style that I've been working on for a long time.

After those games, I watched a few people play while I waited for the next round, where I was matched up against one of the people whom I haven't played in a tournament in a while: TARossi - easily one of the big names in the scene right now, and in my eyes, an easy top 5 pick right from the start. After seeing how impressively he played vs GLaDe at ACL, I wasn't excited to play vs him, but at the same time, I was happy to not be playing ZvZ. We played two very back-and-forth macro games; in each I slowly gained the advantage and won, although the 2-0 scoreline definately did not do the games justice.

After playing Rossi, I felt great! I was already 2-0 up, which meant unless I lost the next 3 matches, I was qualifying. I just had to dodge a few big names, then I was right. Meanwhile, Iaguz won over GLaDe in an impressive 3-game series, which was a pretty big upset, at least in my eyes. Then I looked at my next round opponent: xGKing's pokerface - dammit, ZvZ. I had been playing very poorly in ZvZ coming up to this tournament, so wasn't very excited, and this series proved it; I played badly and was punished accordingly, going down 0-2. I was not a happy man, and I'm sure the people around me knew that. It was especially bad as I knew that my next round could potentially be against mOOnGLaDe, with how the brackets were running. I had lost so fast to pokerface that I was able to look to my right and catch the end of HuT v GLaDe game 1, which HuT won – then something happened that many people have come to expect from me after a game: HuT excitedly put his fists in the air and shouted "Yes!" – and he had the right to do this after taking a macro game off GlaDe!

The next two games, however, didn't go in his favour; he ended up going down 1-2 to GlaDe- not a result to be scoffed at. The next round was a very, VERY scary one: I had to take on GLaDe. I was not happy, but I laughed and smiled as GLaDe walked by, and he knew that it was me vs him. I can't remember how the first two games went, but the third one was be a game that will stay with me for a very, very long time, as I still feel bad about it. I should preface this by saying that I have looked up to GLaDe for a long time, he is essentially the reason I got into progaming in the first place. Beating him like this wasn't my plan, but I was sure it'd work: the third game started and I was in the mentality of 10pooling, as I was almost certain he wouldn't expect it. Sure enough, he had 15 hatched, so the march of lings and drones across the map had begun, meanwhile a spine crawler was being constructed in his base.

His overlord scouts my units marching across the map, and he sets up a concave of drones at the top of his ramp. Thankfully, mineral walking is very strong. He cancels his expansion, I mineral walk through and engage with all of my lings and drones, getting the upper hand, whilst I reposition my spine crawler right next to the hatchery to ensure I would win any fight. Eventually, his drones are all dead, I still have a few alive… and he types out ‘gg’. I was surprisingly deflated for having just gotten my first ever tournament victory over GLaDe. I felt super bad, because this was the start of what ended with him being knocked out of the tournament.

However, this game put me at 3-1 with a very good tiebreak score: I was sure to make the brackets, but I wanted to cement that. The last round was forgiving- I had drawn TADippa, which allowed me to relax into my comfort zone of anything that isn't ZvZ, and I took the match with a convincing 2-0. I was 4-1, and through to the next round.

After my games, something alarming happened- people came over to me, and I heard, "You know, if HuT doesn't beat Mafia, there's a very big chance GLaDe is out."

WHAT? I don't think GLaDe has ever dropped out of a tournament so early in SEA history, ever. By this time, people had been saying that the format was very stupid and Chris (who was running it by proxy) had told everyone that he had no input on the format and was only able to update results. HuT took game 1 vs Mafia in a macro game, reminiscent of him vs GLaDe on Daybreak (HuT plays Daybreak very, very well: definately has scary TvZ on that map) but ultimately lost 1-2 vs Mafia, and that put the nail in the coffin: GLaDe was out, based upon tiebreak score. The mood between competitors was somewhat weak: you'd expect everyone to be happy, the favourite had been knocked out, but everyone knew it was a rough deal.

Day 1 and Day 2 ended and started, respectively, sometime around here. It all became a blur, as people passed out on tables, floor, stage area… anywhere, really. I got a total of about 2-3 hours sleep and woke up feeling like I was going to vomit. Not a good start. Now began my consumption of insane amounts of water: over day 2, I had drunk somewhere between 6-8L of water, at the very least. Between every match, I would walk from my desk to the toilets to refill my 600mL bottle (of water!) just to stay hydrated.

At the start of day 2, I would play Mafia first up: an exciting match for a number of reasons. As I looked over the bracket, if I got past Mafia, it was very likely I could play comfortably in ZvT from that point onwards, and this would be a huge decider in the outcome of my bet vs Benji. (It was only $10, but boy was there pride on the line in this one!). The games were very very strange: I knew that Mafia liked to 15hatch 17gas 17pool- a super greedy build. I went into the matches expecting it, having flooded my match history with 15hatch games in practice. I 10pooled the first two games, and both games, he had went 14gas 14pool. Uh-oh. I won the second game through sheer endurance, dragging it out to a macro game . The third game... no, I won't do a write-up of it. You have to look at the replay to believe that I won it: it was insane. After winning, I let out a scream of happiness that I'm sure was heard around the venue, as I was ecstatic: this was what I had viewed as my hardest match in the brackets (unless PiG progressed through the lower half of the winners bracket).

The next match was against the undefeated man from the Swiss brackets, YYJ. Coming into the event, everyone knew YYJ: he has been around the SEA scene forever, and has consistently been somewhat of a dark horse: if he's in form, he's definitely a monster and someone whom you don't want to play. Boy, was he in-form in this tournament! The first game I took somewhat cleanly in a macro ZvT, as he was unfamiliar with my style of ZvT (fast upgrades, infestor ling, ultra ling, large tech switches, macro games...) The second game, he was ready. He opened with a large amount of hellions (somewhere up to 10-12?) and then expanded. Again, and again, and again. We ended up splitting the map on shakuras, and it was a very long, hard game that I managed to win through a death push of broodlords while nydus'ing his outward bases.

To say I was happy was an understatement: I saw that Rossi had progressed through the lower side of the brackets and coming off a victory vs him in the Swiss, I was confident: not arrogant, definately didn't underestimate the Italian Stallion, but confident. I walked over to my brother’s team, who were between matches, and told them the news, getting a round of congratulations (and a fist bump, aww chyeah!) before watching Ninja vs Mafia. Ninja unfortunately went down 1-2 in a close series, and I reassured him that he played well, and only lost because of a few slight mistakes (and a hell of a lot of lag).

Myself vs Rossi round 2 started, and it started very well for me: we started on Daybreak, which I was very happy about. Prior to this event, I did lots of practice on this map with teammate GoSuKyhol, whose macro TvZ is very good. I was well versed in how this map worked and what I needed to do to succeed on it, and took it very convincingly with infestor/ling play once again. I told myself constantly that I wouldn't deviate from my standard, as it was working; why change it if it's working, I said to myself. The next map was Shattered Temple, which isn't a map I'm very fond of. Rossi opened up with a marauder hellion push (which I scouted) and almost won the game right there; if not for a hero spinecrawler, I think this game would've been much shorter. I parried the push, forced a macro game and got my creep all over the map before taking the series 2-0. Seeing that YYJ had progressed through the losers bracket over Mafia, I was happier than before: two people that I had 2-0'd previously were now fighting it out to play me in the grand finals.

Rossi ended up taking it out 2-1 over YYJ in a surprisingly interesting TvT series, after losing the first game. This was the best case scenario for me: playing a gand final against someone whose style I was familiar with, in a very confident mindset. We waited around for 45minutes for the SGL staff to set up a projector before we started, after the comment of "It's too much effort" from them. Are you kidding me? The grand finals of one of your tournaments, and it's "too much effort" to put up a screen for spectators? Wow.

The games were laggy. Very, very laggy. Game one was on Shakuras Plateau, and Rossi opened up with a very well executed hellion contain: my creep was held in my base, I wasn't able to take my 3rd as fast as I would've liked, and I was denied almost all scouting information. I managed to sneak an overlord into his base and see that he was going to follow it up with a big marine/tank/hellion timing on my 3rd, which was very, very barely defended by myself. He attempted to expand behind this, but was stopped by my infestor ling force. I very slowly ground the game out, expanding and pressuring him into GGing.

Championship point: the final match, and boy was I pumped. We were on Metalopolis, a map which he had vetoed every series before this. However, he caught me off-guard; very off-guard with strong mech play, opening with a huge amount of hellions (rough guess of about 15?) containing me on two bases for a while, as I pushed it back with queens, spines, lings and banelings, before moving out with a huge SCV pull thor/hellion all-in as I tried to take four bases. I had scouted that this was coming and had built up my infestor/roach ball, but this push had gained a lot of force and the lag was making it hard to focus fire.

My fourth died. Uh-oh.

He pushed up the ramp to my third, and I tried to engage. Neural parasites went off, fungal growths went off. Almost all the SCVs had died, plus a few thors, but I was losing the battle so I pulled back.

My third died. Even more uh-oh. The drones died.

At this point, I'm swearing under my breath and the people around me are chuckling- they think that I've lost. I re-gather my forces and pick off three thors, almost for free. I cut off his reinforcements and get ready to engage. My final neural goes off, and I'm one-shotting his remaining Thors. They all go down, I have a very strong roach ball remaining, and he is pushed back. I double expand and get ready to rally across the map to kill his third and natural, before he types in the magic letters that made me feel on top of the world.

GG.

I had won my second big tournament in Australia, and boy was I happy. This tournament was stacked as far as SEA talent goes, and I had been the victor: I was positively beaming, although I was on wobbly legs: exhausted, I walked over to my brother’s team (who were again, waiting for matches- the organisation of SGL was poor, to say the least- they had to forfeit some matches because the schedule wasn't followed at all, and ended up forfeiting all of the matches because of network issues..) and told them the good news. I got congratulations from everyone, walked over to fill up my bottle of water again, and gave the admins my contact details for the prizes.



Bonus Story:

After winning, I had told a few people before-hand that if I won the tournament, I would buy ice cream. We walk over and all get double-scoops (I get a double-scoop of rainbow and choc mint, oh yeah!) I turn around and start walking away, before taking one lick and the ice cream cone snaps in half.

All of my happiness now turned into sadness; I now know why this is such a sad scene in comics, TV shows, movies… and well… life. It's the worst feeling ever. However Arnor (aka Chris, the person who helped run the tournaments and runs all the CityHunter tournaments) had my back, and got me another two-scoop icecream for free from the kind lady serving everyone, as she saw what happened!