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This blog will cover my experience with today's LAN at the Arena in Rundle St, Adelaide organised by Ecko Esports.

You know you are dedicated and hyped for your first LAN (in any game I might add I have never been to a LAN of any kind before!) when you show up and despite walking past that little door sandwiched between actual cafes two or three times you are there at least half an hour before the guys actually running the event



I mean seriously... have a look. Can you find the place? :P Lordy lordy I missed that entrance...

Up the stairs I go and I enter the room, first thing I did was to check out the equipment. The PCs were great but I wasn't too impressed with the keyboards and mice though ehehe.

But I gave the equipment a chance and jumped on SC2 and played my placement matches against the AI.

I kept pushing the wrong buttons on the keyboard. The mouse wasnt.... acting like I was expecting it too. At the end of 3 torturous games the game delightfully announce that it had matched me against....... Very Easy AI.

I just got insulted >.<

OMG PEOPLE!

Then the first people arrived The Ecko boys running the show and HvG's own Ice. For the next... half hour to an hour I had a nice chat with Ice discussing strategies, sc2sea dramas and so on. I found him to be quite a fun character to chat with.

So after the chat with Ice I pulled out my own gear and ahhhhhhh much better. After a couple AI games I went on to the ladder and went on a bit of a win streak. A lot of my games were V terran and I practiced my blink all in and a 3 gate blink pressure that I saw from Heartz in my Bass Fish Open last night. Everything went brilliantly.

Then the brackets were announced.

My first opponent?

Ice.

I just talked strategies with him for half an hour and he watched me play against those terrans :P In short I was rekt by Ice in fairly prompt order. Althought looking through the replays afterwards I saw I had quite a few chances to pull it back. I guess I was not used to playing against Ice's aggressive style. A lot of the terrans I play against on ladder are quite passive. Ice was a dangerous novelty.

So after that defeat I fell down into the loser's bracket where I met Spook (not before one of the attendees showed me someone's facebook rant against Protoss - that someone was a competitor at the LAN but I won't name him for the sake of limiting drama).

So.... my game with Spook... it was interesting and again a game where its a case of coulda, woulda, shoulda. I made a couple silly mistakes with worker micro in a in-base battle and spent too much time controlling my attack in Spook's base without keeping an eye on what was going on in my own base. In short I did hold Spooks attack and the army in the main was still doing a little damage although that army was nearly gone.

So I felt pretty decent at this point, warped in a couple zealots and then went to warp in a sentry and then well I'll just leave this vid here... its almost exactly what happened lol



The worst part? I had 2 workers left. and they were both mining gas. Then Spook came along with what remained of the army that had defeated my attack and I had little left. I did what I could but saw it was hopeless and GGd.

I sat back and initially I was disappointed. I wanted to win at least one game at this LAN even if it was the only one I won in the whole thing. But there I was. Eliminated.

After the game Spook was kind enough to come over and we had a nice chat. Spook good guy

Reflection

After I looked through my replays however, I was encouraged. I didnt really perform half as badly as I thought. Few mistakes (but verrry costly hahah!) and for the most part it was a fairly even contest. I could have won against Ice and progressed to the next round and I feel that if I hadnt made such a hash of holding Spooks attack I probably had a decent chance of defeating him too.

If anything this LAN has motivated me to become better and focus on doing so.

One step in this program will be exposing myself to more tournament environments as a player...

Because after all... its not that easy to concentrate on your game when your heart is trying to jump out of your chest

Thank you Ecko Esports!

So finally I would like to thank Ecko Esports for organising this LAN. I really hope there are more LANs in Adelaide. We had quite a few people come and it was quite an experience meeting everyone and putting faces to names.

I had a blast and definitely will come again to a future LAN.

Hopefully next time I do better

ETL Balimaar The Bass Fish

I am also now under orders from my leader that I am not allowed to wash the hand that Spook shook.