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So another ACL means another blog from me. In this one I guess I'll talk a little bit about how ETL has been going. Maybe not, though. I haven't planned anything, just writing whatever comes to mind.

So, after having a ton of fun at ACL Brisbane (http://www.sc2sea.com/blogs/showentry.php?e=1150) I decided I was going to go to ACL Melbourne no matter what. The online qualifiers went pretty ******* terribly for me, which was pretty disappointing. The rest of us didn't do very well either, except for Azz. Azz did really well in them, securing him a spot in groups for ACL Melbourne. Unfortunately, despite trying to get him to go and even offering to help pay for flights, he decided he didn't want to pay the large amount required to go, which is fair enough but still slightly disappointing for someone who would like everyone on Team ETL to one day be at a LAN together.

I've been trying very hard to get sponsors as well. 'eCKo and Phoenix have sponsors, how hard can it be?' The answer is 'Pretty god damn hard.' We need better marketability, we need better results, and those things don't look like they'll be coming for us for a pretty significant amount of time, unfortunately. Still, I paid a shitton of money out of my own pocket to get jerseys for the LAN team (+ Luckyshyt who was promised one a long time ago for all-killing a team in T4 of the last SEACL) as well as a website up and running (www.eternal-esports.com currently going through a major renovation). At least we'd look like a legit sponsored team (minus a couple sponsors on our sleeves :P) going into ACL Melbourne, rocking the sick ETL jerseys.

It looked like it was going to be me, Crumize and Santi from the Team and TidaL/DeeCN from the clan. Ultimately, it ended up only being me and Crumize. Hugely disappointing, but I'll talk more about that later.

I practiced really hard for ACL Melbourne. Not a pro amount of games played but a lot more than a casual player. I got to Masters on the Korean server (although it took me an asinine amount of time to get promoted even being the highest ranked Diamond on the server with a 66% win ratio) and did pretty meh in mid Masters on the NA ladder. I learned some cool new builds that were helping me get pretty strong. But in the week or so before ACL Melbourne I lost a LOT of games on both ladders, particularly the Korean one (including two humiliating losses to Artosis) that really fucked up my confidence. It wasn't even me playing bad, my mechanics and how quickly I was playing was better than ever, but I just seemed to have a lot of bad luck in my build orders (due to the anti 1 gate FE ZvP style I was trying) and losing to general silly things. I hoped to make up for my shittiness on ladder by outresearching my opponents at ACL Melbourne. I studied the match history of pretty much everyone. I wrote down the builds they did and on what maps, made sure there was a clear consistency, etc. Ultimately I realized that I wouldn't be playing 90% of these people but anyone I did run into would probably get fucked up. This helped me feel a lot more confident. Shout-outs to Malice for being the first person I studied, and thus since I wasn't sure what was important, he got put under a microscope HARD. Shame I didn't get to play anyone I studied except Savior and elimzkE. Savior I'll talk a bit more about later :P

Djvillian being the boss he is, offered a while ago to drive me down for Melbourne, alongside Lara (Lardols) and Pox. I didn't really know where I was going to stay, so I figured I would start asking friends/clan mates in the area. Dale (the sick admin from Melb this weekend) was who I stayed with for Brisbane, but he was unable to accommodate me this time. Second time ended up being the charm, and I was surprised to learn that pX.tRoy had no problems with me staying with him. Everything worked out!

I packed my gear and my ETL shirt and drove down Friday morning. I really wanted to make groups, but unless I got the easiest bracket of all time or managed to upset someone that wasn't going to happen. I resigned myself to inevitable huge disappointment, either disappointment in the brackets or disappointment because I lost to someone I shouldn't have lost to. The trip was super easy and went quickly. I took a picture of sleepy Pox for all of you to enjoy.



One thing I noticed is that people who live outside Canberra are ******* PUSSIES when it comes to weather. Dox complained in a tweet that it was 8 degrees, Troy said it was freezing when standing in the driveway when it wasn't even cold, complaining about cold while we walking to the ACL venue when he was wearing two jumpers and I was just wearing a shirt, not to mention all the players wearing jackets over their team jerseys. Me and Loach (good to see more Canberrans besides our car pool) had a good laugh about all this. C'mon people wtf. Man up!

Anyway, Troy was a super nice guy and WAY younger than I was expecting after talking to him for months online. We got dropped off at La Trobe and had a small adventure of looking at maps n shit trying to figure out where to go. I'm sure many of you also experienced this. Because Troy was an admin, we had to get there early, so I was actually the first player in the building! Chugged some Red Bull and waited.

Eventually they opened the doors to let the players in. First person I encountered was a short blonde haired dude who introduced himself as mGGProbe. I also met a guy named White, FvRphoneheha and reunited with a former Canberran, mGGTitan. Got to chat with people, and everything was nice. But there was one problem. My teammates hadn't arrived yet and Baldie was 10 minutes away from closing registration (which was meant to close at 10:15)

I was panicking and wondering where Santi and Crumize were (TidaL and DeeCN had other commitments). The registration cut off ultimately got delayed which was both a blessing (Crumize made it in the end) and a curse (Bo1 loser's bracket). Crumize eventually turned up but Santi was nowhere to be found. Even now, I haven't heard from him since Wednesday, if he still isn't around on Facebook/Skype anywhere in a few days I'll start to get a bit worried.

UPDATE: As I was writing this blog I heard from Santi. He's okay! Real life strikes again apparently.

Anyway, brackets were posted, I sat down at the computer I used to warm up and checked them. Oh my god. I hit the MOTHAFUCKIN JACKPOT (http://acl_melbourne_2013.challonge.com/PACLMOBD). There was no Poker in my group. No Myuu. No HuT. No JazBas. No mOOnGLaDe. Hell, not even Probe, Satu or Malice! There were a few tough cookies in there, like Savior, ZenAku and stormz among others, but no one that I wasn't confident against. Plus it was double elimination. I had a chance to **** up and still make it through, but with a group like this I shouldn't be ******* up at all. My teammate Crumize had mOOnGLaDe and Malice in his group, but it was still definitely a group he could make it out of.

First round I was against CruxDoc. An okay Protoss player I remember from 2012, but hadn't heard from in months. When Dylan (Djvillian) told me he hadn't played in months in my mind I had already won. Crumize also had a first round match against a decent but nothing special player in iVnNovaX. I chatted about my bracket with people. It felt too good to be true, so I told a few people "My bracket is so good that it seems inevitable that I'll **** it up somehow." My game didn't start for a while, so I watched the games around me. I saw Redemption 2-0 ChadMann, and saw Crumize play a little bit of his first game against NovaX where NovaX shut down his 5 gate pretty hard.



I didn't get to see the end, because I had to go set up. This is my set up, although this is from my warm up and against CruxDoc I was near the door.



We did our vetoes and begun. Game 1 was on Akilon Wastes. Since Doc hadn't played in months, he would have no clue that the current meta is 1 Gate FE, so I assumed he would go FFE every game. I ended up being correct. I did everything well, scouted his 8 gate and got my roach warren at the appropriate time, everything was going swell. Then I droned too hard and got supply blocked, thus having like 3 roaches when his 8 gate pressure (that I had scouted!) hit. I got crushed and GG'ed out, being kinda like "Hmmmm well that sucked." and ALONG CAME THE NERVES.

Faced with the possibility that I might lose in the first round to someone who hadn't practiced in months, I started to sweat and shake. This was not good. This was VERY not good. Second map was Bel'Shir Vestige, so I decided I would go with one of my favourites. Proxy hatchery, as a tribute to the late tgun (R.I.P) who taught it to me.

Well, I had a vague memory of proxy hatching Doc on Cloud Kingdom back in WoL and uh, obviously that memory was true, because before I even put the damn hatchery down he had a probe there. Seeing him scout it so early, I aborted mission and put down my spawning pool. About 10 seconds late due to the attempted proxy hatch. Oh well, 3 hatcheries down. I figured since he hadn't played in months, all-inning is all he would attempt to do. Suddenly, cannons at my third.

****.

**** **** **** **** **** WHAT A DUMB ******* MISTAKE HOW DID I NOT SEE IT LITERALLY ONE ZERGLING **** **** ****

I felt that horrible feeling sweeping over me, when you know you've lost a tournament game that you shouldn't have. The feeling of mild sickness and overwhelming depression. I almost GG'ed right there. I was so far behind, I had lost my third base early and I was slightly behind schedule anyway due to the proxy hatch, how the **** was I going to hold an all-in that I lost to when I had three bases? I decided I would try the most desperate of tactics in this situation. Swarm Host/Nydus. If I could sneak a nydus into his base I would be okay. But he had pylons at the edges of his base and once again, I felt completely and utterly fucked. I did confirm the 8 gate all-in though. I skipped Enduring Locusts to get an extra swarm host out. This may very well have saved me. The 8 gate all-in hit and I had 3 or so swarm hosts. With no observer Doc took a fair bit of damage and pulled back, only getting a queen and a couple of drones. I made more swarm hosts and continued to defend. Holy shit, I survived!

It was at this time I nydused outside his base. A delayed SH/nydus all-in. Why not? Not like I had any other options. Doc's inexperience with HotS showed, as he had NO IDEA what the do against my swarm hosts. I slowly killed his third and natural, defending his counter attacks on my own natural and constantly reinforcing. Eventually he GG'ed.

I breathed the single biggest sigh of relief I have ever breathed after a StarCraft game. I could not BELIEVE that I had managed to win a game after I started off so far behind. I turned around and was surprised to see that Crumize had been watching me. He told me he had beaten NovaX 2-1, which made me happy. Dale also came up to me.

"Dude, I was standing behind him when he GG'ed. You wrecked him mentally, bro!" I could understand why.

Game 3 was on Newkirk and I saw him make a really really bad wall with 2 pylons + a zealot gap. I also noticed this during Game 1 and decided to baneling bust him. I was positive it would work. I got speed and my baneling nest, all unscouted. Everything was going just peachy, then I moved my overlord closer to the wall in preparation for the bust and saw that he had a gap about an entire building big in his wall. So, I didn't even need to morph any banelings I just ran in. GG! I had won and not embarrassed myself by going out in the first round! **** yeah!

A Protoss (I'm like 95% sure it was Nomad) who was sitting next to me kinda shook his head in disgust at me. "He deserves it for walling like a retard." I said. Not the classiest of comments, but it was true.

Next round was against Savior, but first I watched some VINTAGE DJVILLIAN



As far as I was aware, Savior hadn't practiced seriously for a good couple of months (turns out that wasn't quite true, he did pretty ******* well at this event), so I had every reason to believe that he would do his most practiced and favourite build: 10 pool. The fact that he had 9 pooled the Zerg he played before me in both games made me think an early pool of some kind was coming.

This actually isn't good, and I would have preferred to play ANYONE ELSE in the bracket except Savior. Why? Because I ******* SUCK at holding off early pools. Seriously, I'm atrocious. 10 pool me in a tournament and you'll see. (Please don't actually do it)

I decided I couldn't possibly lose to a 10 pool if I played retardedly safe, and I could probably beat him in a macro game even with a few disadvantages since he hadn't practiced in a couple of months (T_T if only I knew)

Game 1 I decided to meta and go 10 pool speed. To my huge surprise, he didn't early pool. He went hatch first! It was on Bel'Shir by the way. I made a silly mistake by getting a couple of drones rather than killing his natural hatchery. I continued to mass lings and expanded myself. Ultimately he was coming at me with a large ling/bane force. Well, since I was without banelings I was pretty fucked if I tried to take that one on one. I decided to go around his army and base trade him. It came so, so close to working. All he had left was one baneling nest on half HP, but unfortunately he saw he couldn't win the basetrade so sent a large group of lings home to kill mine

"Unlucky, man." the guy sitting next to me said (can't remember who you were, sorry.)

Game 2 I decided to execute my plan of playing retardedly safe. I decided I would go for 13 pool 13 gas JERRY BUILD. The adaptability of the Jerry build served me well here, as it ended up only hitting 30 seconds or so late. However, Savior had gone hatch first again and somehow (would like to watch replay) got his baneling nest building at 4:40. So, yeah. Woulda smashed the Jerry build even if it hit on time. I was a bit disappointed, but figured Savior would smash the winner's bracket and I would smash the loser's bracket, ultimately coming second in the group. In fact, I felt good and damn confident that this would be the case! Shook hands with Savior (who was a nice enough chap!) and had a chuckle with him about the close first game.

Waited around for my loser's bracket match, which would either be against elimzkE or Lokth, two players I was sure I would completely smash. But then came the announcement that due to time constraints, they were making the loser's bracket Best of 1.

What.

Wait, what?

Seriously, what? This changes ******* EVERYTHING! You're telling me I can be eliminated from the Australian tournament because I lost one ******* game?!

I understand where they're coming from, having helped organize some Canberra LANs. I know why they had to do it and acknowledge that there was no other way. It just sucks that the players had to suffer for it. Some of us suffered (me, PLoTTeL and others) while some flourished (Djvillian) because of it. Either way, it was clear. The best players might not be coming out of the groups. Every single subtle move in every game mattered. Crunch time.

My next opponent was elimzkE, someone I'm like 0-3 against. He Jerried me every single time, and checking his match history it seems like the Jerry build is all he does ZvZ. I thought about how best to counter it and decided gasless opening and just blindly making 3 spine crawlers. I scouted to confirm anyway though, and saw that indeed, he was going to do the Jerry build. I ended up taking WAY more damage than should have been possible, losing two queens. However, the Jerry was repelled and I was ahead.

However, while teching up to 1-1 roaches, he went for mutalisks and I got MASSIVELY behind by reacting super poorly. He got queens, overlords, a few drones and most importantly, he had a 3rd mining for like 5 minutes longer than I did. I vainly made hydras and was eventually able to get enough out and coupled with roach/spores was safe from attack and turtled on 3 base until I had 200/200 2-2 roach/hydra. elimzkE lost a lot of mutalisks during this time due to some really careless micro. We had a couple of ling/bane/muta vs roach/hydra engagements and traded rather evenly. I killed his 4th and pulled back, eventually pushing again soon. He fucked up majorly with his baneling control, right clicking on hydras protected by roaches, most of his banelings rolling ineffectively against my roaches. Eventually they detonated and killed most of my roaches, but the hydralisks remained, slaughtering his mutas and pushing into the natural.

"**** i'm awful" elimzkE said in chat.

"DAMN RIGHT YOU ARE!" I shouted out in real life. I heard a couple of people chuckle behind me, I think Dylan (again, Djvillian :P) was one of them. I want to say even though it's not an issue and I'm the one bringing it up, that I genuinely meant no offence to elimzkE. It was the heat of the moment, and his mistakes coupled with my stubborn refusal to die and keeping a clear head enabled me to come back from a massive deficit. I was SUPER pumped to come back from a game like that. My next opponent was x5.Stormz, who even though I had never played him before, probably rivaled Pox as second only to Savior as the person I didn't want to play. Why? MOTHERFUCKING 10 POOLS MAN. I figured though, that Stormz wouldn't POSSIBLY want to risk his tournament life on a 10 pool. The Bo1 format was helping me! Or so it appeared. Loach came up to me and told me that he overheard stormz saying he was thinking about 10 pooling. This made me panic and in hindsight I really, really wish Loach hadn't said anything. We vetoed maps and came up with Whirlwind. I was still in panic mode and wasn't thinking clearly. How the **** is he gonna 10 pool me on Whirlwind? 10 pool banes? As long as I don't hatch first (and I never do) I'm fine. But I didn't think of any of this and was fearing the 10 pool. Stormz had a HUGE mental game advantage over me, just like Savior. I saw PiG talking to Stormz, giving him advice, and I got jealous

Anyway, I really, genuinely considered going for the Jerry build and almost did. But I decided that in this Bo1, I could take Stormz in a macro game, on this macro map. I opened gasless and safe. I didn't scout because I saw lots of posturing around with his lings and after denying his scouting, thought he might have been going for the Jerry build. It was about 5:30 and there were no signs of the Jerry build. Guess he isn't doing it. I moved my queens out of the wall to go spread creep and things and what do you know, it was about a minute late but it's the MOTHERFUCKING JERRY BUILD. SPEEDLINGS IN MY BASE.

If I had done anything differently, if I had scouted better, hadn't been so negligent and careless in my defence, had gone for the Jerry build like my heart told me (I am the ******* master of Jerry vs Jerry and his version was a shitty minute late version), all of this would have got me the win. But I fucked up. And so I was out.

Oddly enough, I wasn't depressed. I sighed a bit but I wasn't faced with the overwhelming sick to your stomach feeling of depression I faced after I got knocked out of CanCraft 2 and my 3rd got cannoned in Game 2 vs Doc. I simply said something like this.

"Hah, minute late Jerry build threw me off."
"gg wp"
"gl"

I left and heard the x5 people cheering behind Stormz. How simple it would have been to turn their applause and smiles into disappointment and frowns. Wait, I'm sounding kinda creepy. Moving on.

Yeah, it sucked that I was out. Especially then. After Stormz I would have played ZenAku and for me a Bo1 against Protoss is actually kinda good. Had a build planned and everything, 90% sure I would have beaten him. Then it was fur. He goes mech every game, and it's easy to counter it like Savior ended up doing. 99% sure I would have beaten him. Then I would have played Savior again (He lost to Xormentor. I saw a bit of this series. Here's a funny conversation with Pox.

"Baneling/Hydra. As you do."
"He's playing Savior."
"Oh. Well that makes more sense.")

And yeah, I probably would have lost to Savior again, but damn it, at least it would have been a good respectable run, with wins, albeit Bo1 over some solid players. But nope, instead I barely finished in the upper half of the bracket. I wouldn't even call my run mediocre, I'd call it outright bad.

But I was updating my Facebook between series, and the overwhelming influx of support I got from my family and friends was so, so beneficial for me. It really helped me not feel sad about losing. Thinking on that game against Stormz now, I do get frustrated, but back then I wasn't sad and I owe my friends thanks for it.

I ended up watching Djvillian's SICK run through the tournament. PLoTTeL was very sad after he lost to roach/nydus. I saw his face man, that's the type of depression I was expecting. Then he beat Nomad with proxy hatch and beat Montycarlo with Soulkey's 1/1 roach timing. He was in the ******* LB finals. He outperformed all the Canberra boys! Who would have thought it? He ended up losing to Poker, but it was a damn commendable run, and it made me happy to see him so ******* happy about it. I'm not sure if it would have been possible without the Best of 1 format, but I'd like to think he would have done it anyway.

Crumize also made an awesome run, ultimately coming one game away from groups, falling 1-2 to Malice in a really close and intense PvP series.

Most memorable spectator moment apart from that is probably Kez screaming "**** YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH HHHHHH" after tying up his series with Fenner 1-1. He put the COD people (who were ******* disgusting sportsmen the entire event by the way. Cancerous behavior.) to shame in terms of volume.

I rocked up on Day 2 and instantly felt regret. Look at all those gosus playing their group matches. It looked like a clique. A clique of SEA's best in SC2, and I was angry that I wasn't as good as them. I was angry I wasn't in there playing those ******* group stage matches. And thus came the inspiration to continue playing. And I won't stop. I won't stop until I hit the top of the South East Asian mountain. I don't know when. 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016. SOME POINT I'm gonna be standing next to Petraeus, PiG, iaguz, mOOnGLaDe as an equal.

However, Maynarde was looking for someone to cast the first match of the day. No one was available, what was he going to do. He kind of pointed at me, maybe intrigued by the sexy professional looking shirt I was wearing. I told him that I had casted many clan wars in the past, and the stream viewers seemed to enjoy my casting back then. He told me it didn't matter even if this was my first cast. I was the only option.



Casting, especially with a boss like Maynarde was a lot of fun and a true honor. You can find the VOD here: http://www.twitch.tv/aclprosc2/b/443863908 at 5:09

Me on camera was kind of awkward, having never been in a situation like that before. Smiling at nothing looks silly and I won't do it again. I got more comfortable the more time I spent though, and my first moments on camera are a lot different than the closing moments. It was fun but unfortunately I'm probably not gonna get to do it again because I'll be too busy destroying people at future ACLs, leaving no time for me to cast :P

Anyway, iaguz won like I predicted back at Troy's house before the event started. He pretty much crushed everyone. iaguz vZ is pretty good.

Anyway, the trip back was without Pox and also without incident. Not really much more to say, but I really hope ACL Sydney has an open bracket, because with no more City Hunter tournaments, it will be a LONG wait until my next LAN without it. Plus ACL is ******* awesome, and I'd like to give a shout-out to the various cool people I chatted to over the weekend.

Dylan, Troy, Loach, Loach's brother, Lara, Kez, ChadMann, MegaFonzie (best ID SEA) Dale, Probe, Philosopher, mOOnGLaDe, PiG, PLoTTeL, Lokth, Maynarde, NimbLe, Crumize and anyone else I'm forgetting. As I said in my Brisbane blog, I'll say it again, I love this community.

But during the pack down on Day 2, I took the opportunity to stand on that StarCraft 2 stage. I felt something deep inside. I said out loud, talking only to myself (though the ACL production guy ended up hearing me). "I'm gonna be standing up here one day."

"One day."