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What up what up, another ACL means another blog from me and since I'm such a long winded ************ it's gonna be a long one (as if you'd expect anything less).

First of all, I'd like to talk a bit about ACL Sydney last year, cause I didn't do a blog about that one. Reason being how ******* depressed I was for like a few days after it. So because talking about how shit my previous ACL experience was is kinda important to the story of this one, I'll talk a bit.

Basically, to try and cut it short, I went in saying to myself there was literally no way I didn't make group stage, that was a goal I had set for myself for a long time and I was confident with my play around that time. However, despite looking at my bracket and saying "Yeah, easy." I fucked up and didn't get through. I knew that I could beat these people (my clanmate ChowMuddha, Suzy, Law (who was the only challenging person in the group) and Livibee) so in a weird way since the only thing that could possibly stop me from getting groups was me ******* up somehow, that's exactly what happened. I got super nervous the minute I started a game vs Suzy because I knew that my goal was pretty much 100% within my grasp and that ended up affecting my play big time. I was probably playing like 30% or so of my actual skill, so in other words like absolute garbage. The only other time I have ever been that nervous is when I set myself a goal at City Hunter (winning a series) and had an opponent I knew I could beat and had my goal thus in my grasp. I did end up beating him 2-1 (both Suzy and the guy in City Hunter :P) but the nerves were absolutely insane. I ended up losing 1-2 Livibee (one game from groups) and was insanely angry at myself at first but that gave way to just immense, overwhelming depression. I got back to my hotel at 5pm and slept til 10am next morning. It was odd. Anyway, ACL Sydney last year pretty much sucked for me

So this year, I wanted things to be different. I was going to go to ACL Sydney this year cause it was the only ACL announced, but when ACL Brisbane was announced I had no intentions of going. Flights are expensive yo, and what would be the point, really? I probably wouldn't even make groups

That all changed with online round 1. I beat IronLung (Plat/Diamond Protoss IIRC) 2-0 in the first round, who was a nice easy first round opponent. Then I played Law in the second round. Law had been doing really well lately, but I was super confident with my ZvZ (thanks to Fenner for essentially revitalizing my ZvZ btw. I learned so much from just four practice games with him) as of late. No one would care if I lost but I knew I had a chance for an upset. I won't go into details on the games because this blog isn't about the online rounds, but I ended up winning 2-1. I was extremely happy with that, beating a good player. Law was no PiG, but he was still like a Top 20 player in Australia and that win boded very well for my future! As I'm writing this, I currently have the best results of my SC2 'career' so thanks to Law for being the man to jumpstart that and give me some confidence! Anyway, after feeling completely surreal being in Winner's Bracket Ro8 with big names, I looked and saw I was...I think 5th or so on the points totals after that online round. Holy shit, could I qualify for ACL Groups? That's been my goal, man! It'd be so ******* typical if I qualified for groups for the ACL I'm not going to!

Seeing that pretty much the only way to not make groups was to not show up for the second online round at all, I decided that flying to Brisbane and forking out $400 for flights (plus another $200 or so for entrance fee and hotel) was worth it if it meant achieving my long time goal in SC2. Anyway, I got groups, and it's not like I just scraped in on the end of the groups like Phuzzy (aka Cuddles) or something, I was in the upper half in terms of points! Siiiiiiiick.

So, before booking flights there was the matter of accomodation. Fortunately, a couple days prior to my decision to 100% go to Brisbane, PiG tweeted out saying that he and Dot were looking to share a hotel in Brisbane with someone. I asked them about it and got in, so there's the matter of accomodation taken care of. Flights booked, yeaaaaaah buddy!

I was honestly a bit upset and underwhelmed with my #dedication leading up to the event, I was one of the higher people on the dedication thread (I've since slipped down but I've played like 2 ladder games in nearly a week) but I felt like I was barely playing. I was just sort of unmotivated which made no sense since this was my time to shine, and I was doing better than ever before. I wanted to play 20-30 games a day but instead I was barely hitting 10. I did play a lot of customs though.

After finding out my group, I started prep for Petrify and HuT, two players who are both much better than me. Me and HuT had played two Bo3s in tournaments recently, him winning 2-1 both times. That gave me a bit of confidence versus him, but I did kind of regret showing my hand with some of my cheeky openings/all-ins in a relatively meaningless online tournament as opposed to an ACL, but how could I have known? Am I to hide builds in online tournaments all the time? That's ******* dumb.

Even though I felt like ZvZ was my best match-up, I was super worried about Petrify. I thought I could potentially beat him, but it was unlikely. Same deal as HuT. Phuzzy (Cuddles) was also in my group, but he's Platinum and I wasn't worried in the slightest about him. I talked with Azz on Skype, I've always been pretty impressed by some of the stuff he has to say regarding practice/builds and it was the same here. We watched some replays and he pointed out a couple smart things. He said that since Petrify is the hardest in my group, I should ignore him and just put all my planning into beating HuT. Solid advice, but I ultimately ignored it. Chiddiru said something in Petrify's stream a few days before ACL that made me mad. Something to the effect of "lol this is the easiest group of HuT/Petrify's life" I mean, I know it was true, but I suddenly got a twinge of ambition and wanted to prove him wrong. I didn't plan anything special for HuT really, I experimented with overlord drops in ZvT (like dropping 30 lings in his base when he pushes out or something) but that ended up being a terrible waste of time. I thought about TargA banes on Petrify since I knew he favored a muta into roach style and wasn't overly confident in my standard gasless play vs that. I used my last hour of coaching (I bought 5 hours like more than a year ago) from PiG to discuss some strategy and stuff. PiG thought I should do Life's ling flood scouting deny into roaches versus HuT again even though I've already shown that build to him and taken a game off him with it. PiG suggested altering it and making it a sneaky roach bane, so that was a plan I was going to go with and just try and beat him in a macro game apart from that. PiG agreed with me that Impact's roach/ling pressure is insanely strong on Habitation because of not only the short rush distance but because of the fact that if you can't kill them outright you can contain them a bit and take the gold, recovering from the small economic defecit. He also advised against TargA banes because Petrify makes a baneling nest literally every time, even against gasless. I would just play standard macro on other maps and see what happened.

Anyway, the day before I left, I played one ladder game and one ladder game only. It was against RunaMoK. Now, nobody knows this, but RunaMoK is basically my nemesis in SC2. I just cannot ******* beat the guy and it makes no ******* sense. I ALWAYS play like shit vs him, even when I'm barcoding on Korea and he doesn't know he's playing me :P, I come close to beating him and then just lose anyway, dating back to the first time I played him back in WoL on Cloud Kingdom. I can't beat the guy and it's ******* asinine. This time was different though, it was a standard ZvT macro game and I played...well? I just flat out won. I beat the guy I'm like 0-8 against! You know what that means?

I AM INVINCIBLE.

It sounds really silly, but it was a nice little confidence booster going into ACL. Anyway, I've spent a long time talking about prep and other boring shit that no one cares about, so how about we get to the actual trip to Brisbane? Unlike last time, I didn't have to catch a 6:30am flight so that was nice. It's my 2nd time travelling on my own and went off without a hitch. After landing I waited for like an hour for PiG and Dot to land. I met them at their baggage carousel and also was introduced to their friend Jackson who was also going to be staying in the hotel. Jackson is a cool ******* dude, follow him on Twitter! www.twitter.com/activillain

So we took a maxi cab to our hotel and holy shit, it was beyond what I expected. It was really, really ******* nice. It had pretty much everything you could want, even a god damn router. KingKong also came to our hotel to stay for a couple of nights. I had never really chatted with KingKong before, but omg he's so nice. It was nice to get to know PiG and KingKong less as players and more as human beings. We had a nice time going out to dinner (I didn't eat anything cause not hungry) and chatting just watching GSL on a big TV. KingKong has no time for GSL though, only practice!




So the venue ended up being like 5 minutes walk from our hotel. Pretty cool. I got there, said hello to the elusive Phuzzy (Cuddles) who had masked his true face from the world for too long. I was pretty disappointed at only 11 sign-ups for the open bracket, but the venue was small and as it was I waited 4 hours after the time I was supposed to arrive until I actually got to play my games so it was probably a good thing. First up was Phuzzy wuzzy Cuddles wuddles.

Funnily enough, this was similar to ACL Sydney. Facing an opponent I knew I was easily capable of beating caused me to get super nervous and made me play badly. Things turned out okay though.

Game 1 was on King Sejong Station. It was a fairly standard roach vs roach game, and even though Phuzzy impressed me with an attack on my back rocks and keeping up with my macro for like 10 minutes, eventually I just had more roaches and he died.

Now, in Skype a few days prior, Phuzzy was talking about how he 14/14ed most of his ZvZs and had a sick winrate with it (even though 14/14 is generally shitty, remember he's in Platinum). I remembered this. So, he didn't 14/14 in game 1, this means 14/14 is coming game 2 on Overgrowth, right?

I'LL 9 POOL HIM WHAT COULD GO WRONG ******* BRILLIANT IDEA

So yeah, I almost lost and was a nervous wreck pretty much, but it was a fun game, with me building walls of spines and evo chambers in order to not die. Once his pressure was over, I won easily. Phew. 2-0. In a way, that was the real challenge, cause like...if I lost a game to Phuzzy I'd never hear the end of it. I do think he has a lot of potential though and I try to give him all the help I can in ETL Skype Chat.

Petrify was next, and thankfully playing an opponent I was expected to lose to made the nerves go away. If I lose, no one will give it a second thought. If I win, people will be like "whaaaat that's crazy". Game 1 was King Sejong and I played completely standard gasless. I did a bit of damage with my intial 1-1 roach timing and was in a decent position honestly. I took a bit of a gamble and got burrow and tunnelling claws fairly early, thinking that it would catch him way off guard. He came at me with roaches while I sent about 5 burrowed roaches to his base. No problem, I have a lot of money and a lot of larva, I'll hold this attack and-

I'm supply blocked.

God damn it.

So yeah, I could do pretty much nothing except watch his army push across the map. My burrowed roaches killed quite a few drones in his main and natural before getting cleaned up, but that's irrelevant because with like 20 less roaches than I should have had, my army got absolutely ******* god stomped and I lost. Well, that certainly sucked. Map 2 was Habitation. Aw yiss. Time to put the Roach/Ling plan into action. I recall messing it up somehow, but I can't quite recall. I think I missed a roach or two. I got to Petrify's base and he had a ton of spines building but it was too late, I did some pretty sick damage, although I wasn't able to end the game. I took the gold 3rd like I planned. Petrify went mutas into roaches but couldn't get anything done with his mutas and combining that with the fact that I never let him get a 3rd up, my roach/hydra rekt his army and I won the game. Hey, I took a game off Petrify, that's awesome, right? Little did I know that Petrify would make it his mission to drop a game to everyone else in the group. Jerk :P

Game 3 was on Overgrowth. I literally have no idea why, but I decided to go TargA banes even though PiG told me it was a bad idea. It went okay, honestly. My banelings didn't do anything except trade with his banelings, but I forced a few spines and was in a decent and fairly even position. It ended up going to muta vs muta. This was pretty scary now, I was playing Petrify's game now.

We had like a 20-25 minute ZvZ of intense (fairly standard) muta vs muta ZvZ action, and I'm happy with how I played it. It was very close. I lost 3-4 mutas to a spore early on when I wasn't paying attention and that might have lost me the game. I was also forced to take a muta fight when I wasn't watching for a second and his mutas jumped on top of mine. We were even on upgrades and it looked like I had more, am I actually going to win this game? But alas, the fight was right next to his base and the reinforcing mutas rallying in for him was too much and he won the muta fight, and shortly after the game. Still, I was pleased with my performance. I was surprised he had never actually seen the roach/ling pressure build I used to kill him in G2. It's fairly common these days.

Anyway, next was HuT, and this series was actually played on stream, casted by Dox and Kez. And they have playercams yaaaaaaay!

http://www.twitch.tv/aclprosc2/b/533895120 1:22:17

There was a problem with my planned strategy, I saw Petrify do the exact cheeky roach/bane I was going to do to HuT and fail at it. DAMN YOUUUUU! So, that was out of the picture. In other news, no nerves, woo! But despite not feeling nervous, I played like complete garbage in Game 1 on King Sejong. Seriously, look at the supply blocks, the queen losses, the minerals floating, the reaction time to drops. Disgusting. It was a standard ZvT basically, just with shit play from me. I realized after the game how easily I lost and knew something was amiss. It's odd playing like garbage but not realizing it until the game is over.

If you want proof of how bad I played, compare Game 1 to Game 2. In Game 2 I did a really dumb opening I had beaten HuT with before on the same map and had literally no reason to do it again, but I was pretty ******* desperate and thought I would play badly in a macro game again. I played what I feel was my actual skill level though and put up a good fight but ultimately doing no damage from my ling pressure put me too far behind and I lost. Still, that was a much more impressive game, although still not what I wanted. I wanted to at least take a game off HuT again

Oh well. But that was my games done for the day apparently, I'd play Peppy and ChadMann tomorrow. I was confident I could beat both of them, but then Peppy had to go and suddenly beat HuT and Petrify somehow, in addition to beating Chobosniper in the open bracket. What the actual **** is going on here? Well, I guess he's going to be pretty challenging then. I might even lose to him, dayum gurl.

I asked to cast, and was given the opportunity to do so. Yay! I casted PiG vs Val with fray'Alpha and you can watch it here: http://www.twitch.tv/aclprosc2/b/533954225 29:38

I thought the cast went pretty well, I think I say "uh" and "um" too much among other things, but we're overly critical towards ourselves, I guess. Maynarde said it was good and Maynarde is a ******* boss so I'll take his word for it.

Anyway, after leaving the venue, PiG, KingKong, Jackson, Dot and I went out to dinner again. Discussed games, etc. I realized that I probably wasn't going to advance from my group, and I was okay with that. In fact I pretty much accepted that I wouldn't. This helped me play well the next day.

Speaking of which, I jumped right into my games on Day 2. I played ChadMann first. The situation was that if I beat both Peppy and ChadMann, beating one of them 2-0, I would have a 7-5 map score to Petrify's 7-6 and advance. I thought it was definitely possible. Watching ChadMann play yesterday helped me not to underestimate him, he played like a ******* baller all weekend. I knew I could take him, but it wasn't going to be easy by any means.

Game 1 was on Overgrowth and I decided to open with a 9 pool. Poor ChadMann probably ******* hates 9 pools after this ACL. Petrify 9 pooled him, I 9 pooled him and Peppy 9 pooled him twice. Anyway, despite him opening pool first, I was able to get a cancel on his hatch, **** yeah! I then thought that since I was in the lead, a nice roach/ling timing would finish him off.

I was wrong.

ChadMann held it EASILY (by far the hardest I've ever seen that timing crushed) and I was like "Have I just thrown my lead? :/" and started getting a small touch of nerves again. But after like 20 minutes of roach hydra vs roach hydra, I came out on top, in what was a much closer game than I expected. Very wonky game, but ******* intense and very fun. Probably the most fun game of the whole tourny.

Game 2 was on King Sejong. I opened standard gasless. I sometimes do this thing where I make 4 lings and send them to scout instead of the standard 2. In addition to confusing people, sometimes I can get a drone or two while scouting. I scouted a 2nd gas going down and like 10-12 lings already out on the field. So...TargA banes? No wait, maybe all those lings are just an overreaction to my 4 lings. NOPE. ******* JERRY. JERRY IS BACK 2014. It did a shit ton of damage, killing my natural. I stayed in the game for like 15 more minutes but got rolled in the first real engagement

After dropping that game to ChadMann, I didn't think there was any way I could 2-0 Peppy so I pretty much accepted the fact that I was out of the tournament. Ah, well. Go out with a bang at least, ey?

Game 3 was on Waystation. If it was long spawns I was going to just jerry myself. Like...what the **** are you meant to do on long spawns? You can't scout ******* anything. Dumb map. It ended up being short spawns and for some reason ChadMann was convinced I would open 9 pool again, so he went 14/14. Well Chadm8, I didn't 9 pool. His 14/14 all-in got rekt hard and he gg'ed out.

My last opponent was Peppy, who I wanted to beat not only cause you know it's a tournament and shit, but 'cause he's been a pretty major douchebag to me online before. I thought me beating him was unlikely though, I mean this ************ somehow got real good real fast and beat Petrify, HuT, Law (later in the tournament) and Chobosniper.

Game 1 was King Sejong Station. I scouted that his natural was down late. So...14/14? Nope, it was a 9 pool? Who the **** 9 pools on King Sejong when there's so many other sick 9 pool maps around? THIS GUY APPARENTLY. So, I reacted pretty much incorrectly and got slam dunked for it. Then my gasless 1-1 roach timing did literally jack ******* shit and I gg'ed out cause mutasssss.

Game 2, Overgrowth. I decided that since he did a muta opening every game I would do an all-in that is super effective versus muta openings, roach/bane. Unfortunately, I hadn't done this build in like 6 months and fucked it up a little bit. See, to hold roach/bane you either need roaches of your own or a bunch of spines. Peppy had both. I was pretty sure I just flat out lost the game right there but I did kill a few drones and forced those spines so kept on keeping on. Peppy mixes in hydras pretty early so I went for a roach/bane mid-late game composition, eventually adding in hydras when his attack came later than anticipated. I ended up getting maxed and going to the towers. I saw his roach/hydra/infestor push out of his base. Infestors oh noooooooooo. Fortunately for me, he literally didn't fungal my banelings at all and they killed half his roaches and all his hydras, then I pushed into his base and he died. Well. That was certainly a thing that happened.

Game 3, Waystation UGH. Short spawns though I was going to TargA banes cause I didn't want to have practiced that build for nothing. But in an odd twist, he did a ling/bane attack to me first. I'm not good at holding ling/bane all-ins with gasless so I might have lost if I opened gasless, but instead I opened ling/bane and held his attack with ease. I was like "Well I made all these lings, let's go counter attack." and Peppy had droned hard behind his aggression and had basically no units so I just killed him right there. Wow, I beat the guy who beat the guy who eventually came second! Good shit. Peppy had a good firm handshake, the best of anyone at the event, very respectable. Peppy, if you're reading this, I hope we can put our past issues behind us and move on. There's no need for hate baby, only loveeeeeeeeee.

So I was 3-2 (7-6) and that was the same as Petrify. Since he beat me (barely ) he won the tiebreaker and advanced to play Kez in the Ro12. I wasn't sad at all, I had no goals or expectations coming into this ACL and it paid off huge for me, as apart from my series against Cuddles (aka where I had expectations) I didn't really have nerves affect me at all. I was really happy with my performance, I took games from some good players and am the first person in the history of 3 person advancement from groups (this is only the 3rd ACL they've been present at to be fair) to go 3-2 and then not advance. Pretty cool. Anyway, I got to cast Peppy vs Pezz with WoLF later on and you can check that out here: http://www.twitch.tv/aclprosc2/b/534180849 4:13:12 Was a lot of fun, WoLF is a cool guy.

Speaking of cool guys, the social experience at this ACL was sick, was nice to chat to so many sick ******* blokes, including DoMo, who is super ******* funny. Feels like I'm making some legit friends so that's always an excellent thing. Anyway, I didn't go out to dinner with everyone else that night (wow so anti social) instead opting to shower, watch the cast of my games and go to bed early.

Woke up, said my goodbyes and got a lift to the airport from Slayar who is a ******* sick bloke and a true bro. My flight home was delayed like 20 minutes but otherwise without incident. Lucky it was only delayed 20 minutes unlike some other poor individuals. Anyway, going into a well written conclusion has always been my worst aspect of essays and other such writings so I suppose I'll just go into shout-outs or something.

Shout-outs to Eternal E-Sports, fuckin homegrown yeeeeee. Shout-outs to PiG, Jackson, Dot, Sam, Alpha, Slayar, Petrify, Kez, ChadMann, HuT, DoMo, Phuzzy, WoLF, Baldie and other ACL Staff, uhhhhhhhh **** it, shout-outs to everyone who was there. Y'all are awesome.

If you actually read all of this, thank you. If you didn't read all of this then I don't care 'cause I still love you. See you all at Sydney!