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Hey hey, I got bored one day while I was freezing my hands off (and thus unable to do anything but watch streams) and decided that I'd do a blog of the events I've went to, starting with MLG Columbus. This'll probably help me collect my own thoughts, as well as give you guys an insight into what it was like for me.

So, I guess we start the day before I leave for America. I went in to intime cyber cafe, meeting Dan (FXOUnstable) to play a few practice games during the day at a lan setting, really just getting used to setting up my gear and tweaking it at a lan. So, after doing a proxy hatch versus a toss and god knows what else in my games, off we were to my place to get some sleep before the 32 hours in transit!

Get home, mess around a bit, hang out waiting around for my girlfriend (I'm not going to go to sleep before she comes over, that'd make me an ass), have dinner and sleep. Wake up around 5am, turn on Dan's laptop and see that it's decided that it absolutely hates his guts and windows was corrupted: awesome. His laptop has a horrible battery anyway, so it would've only lasted ~1hr.

Plane ride to LA, 14 hours. Now, I've been on a plane once before, and that was to Queensland: there's a big difference between a 45min plane trip and a 14 hour plane trip. I had a guy in front of me coughing too much, a guy behind me treating my chair like a punching bag and a kid crying as if he'd broken his arm the whole plane trip, but otherwise it was pretty awesome. We each had a Nintendo DS with pokemon games (I got pokemon White ) and played those until the batteries died, as well as a tonne of movies / TV Shows to watch (which were all complimentary), and the captain was awesome. I didn't think they had a sense of humour, but they did. (When talking about food, the remark was something like "If you're right at the back, they'll probably be out of chicken by the time they get to you, but don't worry, when they come with beer and wine, I'll make sure they start from the back).

So, we arrive in LA and have a stopover.

A 5 hour stopover.

There is absolutely nothing to do at an airport, so we found a power supply, charged the DS' and sat down. I dozed off for 20 minutes at a time, waking up constantly because chairs are not beds. They are chairs.

Eventually, we get on the flight to St Louis (I believe, I may be wrong), and thankfully, it was only like 4 hours. We had no movies or TV shows on this one, but the DS' and my iPod lasted the whole trip. Also managed to get some sleep, thanks to scoring the window seat (aww yeah) and having the 3rd guy in our seats talk to Dan the whole way. Thanks for being a scapegoat!

We get to the airport with something like a 3hr stopover, and it felt like it was longer than the last one. We grab subway for ''lunch'' (at this time, I'd been up for something like 28 hours) and let me tell you, coke tastes different over there. It's weird as hell.

'3' hours later, we get on the 1hr flight to Columbus, exhausted as all hell. It's ~10pm when we land, so we get a taxi to the hotel (~20minute drive by normal person, 10min by taxi) and wake up Josh. Up at our rooms, I knocked on my door (I was sharing a room with Shawn, aka Sheth) and no-one answered. The door next to us, however, opened to reveal Karl (Optikzero) looking tired as hell, and I think he said something like "SLoGs snoring really loudly", followed by what could've been my imagination, but a giant anime sweatdrop almost bringing him to the ground.

So, we go into Dans room, talk for a bit until we're greeted by Shawn and QXC, who had left to get food.. at least, I think. We keep talking for a little while longer, everyone being pretty casual and open considering we had known each-other personally for all of 30 minutes. Eventually, we all retire to bed, eager to get up and practice the next day!

Shawn and I were room-mates, I like to call us the manner zerg room, because I'm known for my amazing well-mannered style, and man. The rooms were pretty cool. We each had a double bed, and that was about it; perfect! All I was in my room to do was sleep and get changed, anyway. The beds were comfy as hell, and I had something like four pillows to myself.

The next day, I was woken up at like 8am because breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Everyone else was already up when I got up, because I'm a lazy prick, and we go downstairs. Breakfast was free, and awesome. Everything in America is just... bigger. The breakfast itself was great, except for the bacon; American bacon sucks. We just spent the breakfast talking crap to each-other, especially about how quiet Karl is. For a guy known as the biggest cheeser on ladder (apart from Picnic, Piqliq etc), he is very quiet and nice. Usually cheesers are jackasses.

After breakfast, we decide its time to find a netcafe. Alright, not too hard. We'll just google it.

Fail.

It's okay, qxc will use his twitter army to help us!

Fail.

Whatever, we'll just go out, buy essentials (food etc) until it's time for dinner, and the infamous MLG relay race! This leads us to possibly the most hilarious moment of the whole week, when we're walking around looking for a supermarket, Andy (SLoG) stops a random person and says "Hey, do you know where there's a Supermarket or a Deli, you know, to buy soap?".

I covered my mouth, turned away and giggled like a schoolgirl, as the stranger looked at him bewildered and explained there was a CVS about two blocks away. There is pretty much nothing else in Columbus, it's barren as hell.

So, we all get essentials (toothpaste, deodorant, QXC stocks up on 'snack food' aka cereal w/o milk) and walk back to the hotel, having fruitlessly attempted to find something. Dan takes this time to reinstall windows on his laptop so we can set up our own lan center in the hotel room. A few hours later, Moonan is arriving at the airport and everyone but me and QXC (we stayed back playing magecraft, essential practice for MLG) went to greet him at the airport. When he got back, he set up his laptop and we now had three laptops to play with, giving us more space to practice. After just chatting, practicing and generally wasting time, we head off for dinner.

For dinner, we went to a restaurant which was nearby, although I can't remember the name. It was pretty awesome, the food was great (did I mention it was also huge?) and then headed off to the convention center for the relay race.

At the convention center, we met up with team EG, torch, seltzer, most of sixjax, artosis, teamliquid and more. I came into this expecting it to be a giant joke and more of a meet-and-greet than anything else.

MLG had other plans: they pretty much had a collegiate relay team on their side, and teamliquid also took it pretty seriously (equipped with sweat bands, etc). We took it pretty casually, besides QXC, who ran like a parkour boss, and ended up not coming last (because EG was in the relay race, keke) and had some fun. Man, I wish we just played soccer or something instead.

Ah well, it was a fun night; we return to the hotel and I go to bed pretty quickly, just tired and not having much else to do. MLG tomorrow! Yeaaaaaaaaah! Anthony gets in early next morning (~8AM or something?) and wakes up someone, I barely wake up in time for breakfast and now, with the whole team, we have our first team meal. Everyone was happy, we chatted about everything (I zoned out and switched my brain off, really, who gets up this early?) and had a pretty good start to the day. After which, we went back upstairs, Anthony set up his laptop and we now had four computers upon which we could practice on! Hurrah!

Anthonys laptop sucks. Alot. I played Karl and him on his laptop before I gave up, as during battles it became a slideshow, and outside of battles if I got 10fps I was amazed. But, you get what you're given, at it was still good practice. Other than that, we messed around until ~midday which is when we set off for the convention center: time to get our passes and play, right?

Wrong.

The line to buy our passes was really short, and we got our media and played passes in like 10 minutes, allowing us to go off with Raelcun and grab lunch before entering the actual room and playing. Raelcun is a great bloke and chatted with us about everything; he also has a sick scar on his arm. Ask him about it!

So, we walk back to the event, and the line is all the way to the escalator. I'm telling you, this line makes the xbox look like a nintendo DS. It was a joke. We, being smart, said **** that and walked off to the side. Shawn and Mingyun, who had top16 passes, were able to walk in without waiting in the line. Lucky bastards.

ESFI comes up and does interviews with everyone, which for a lot of us, was very strange. We weren't used to attention, Andy just rambled a lot, Karl was very quiet, Anthony also rambled and I have no idea how I was; I haven't seen the interview, but I'm going to guess I was probably as uncomfortable as the rest. Then Josh (FXOBoSs) had his interview and made us all look horrible; the guy is very well-spoken and knew how to get his point across. He also ended the interview with "Haters gonna hate".

After the interviews, I met up with some friends (RNA, Bluetea, Buffy and Cheekz) whom I met on Destinys stream, exchanged pleasantries, showed them my awesome Koala (as seen here: http://sea-play.com/pics/dox/FXO_MLG/FXO_MLG_005.jpg) and then went inside, keen to experience my first big lan event.

For those that attended NRG, you would know that the atmosphere at a LAN is unreal; this was way bigger than NRG. This was huge. The problem, however, was there was pretty much no PCs to practice on: every PC was taken, and SC2 had been blacklisted from the blizzard servers (yay for LAN support! Oh, wait..) so you couldn't even log in. Whatever, walked around, met more people (MikeD, Herpderp, csOBroto and goswser) before stealing Kevin (QXC)'s computer to play a practice game. This is when I realise that Destiny and ROOTFayth are both behind me, and I spam them both with messages because they were on the feature PCs, thus broadcasting the messages onto the big screens above them. Kekekeke.

So, I get halfway through a practice game before they tell us to piss off, get up and introduce myself to Destiny, and end up sitting down while they sort out the brackets. Turns out I'm in 'heat 3' of the brackets, So I'm still not playing for another hour or so. Awesome! As the brackets fell, I can't remember who played in what heat, but the downtime was filled with either us sitting down on the floor, because chairs are expensive and talking with each-other (everyone in FXO usually hung around each-other), cheering on teammates or attempting to find out who we played next.

Come the first game, I figure out I'm playing a guy called xiNizzy, a ~1400 Masters terran. "Ez win! Ez game!" I'm thinking to myself, as I set up. After all, I'm a grand master, I should easily take this game! Aww yeah! One of the tournament officials came over and asked me for a veto, but before he could finish his sentence I said Typhon Peaks, as the map is a giant joke. I can't remember what he vetoed, but I didn't care either way.

Game one on XNC, and away we go. 14hatch 14pool, he opens with a stanard walloff + techlab rax. I drone up a bit and poke his ramp, and see a cc building. Cool. I sacrifice my overlord, and scout something that's strange: He hasn't moved down to expand, and he has units.

A lot of units.

Alright, he's all-inning me, sure. Easy to defend. He comes down the map with 6 hellions, a bunch of marauders, marines and a handful of scvs. I bring all of my units (leaving one zergling below his expo, incase he tries to send out his cc while he attacks) back and barely hold off the attack, and comically, his natural CC is left hovering over my zergling, as they didn't want to get blood on the paintjob. GG, game 1 goes to me, and I'm ecstatic at this stage; I didn't choke! I won the first game! YEAHHHHHH! I was a nervous wreck, but outwardly, I was trying to hide it.

Game 2, he picks Shattered Temple. Damn, that sucks. We spawn cross spawns, and the openings are the same; this time, however, he gets a reaper out early and does 0 damage. Thank you to Filthy (Phil) and Kevin for the practice, as your reapers are infinitely more dangerous than this guys were. I poke the ramp and see the same thing as game 1; walloff, techlab rax and an orbital. Awesome, macro game time!

Except not really. I sacrifice my overlord from the top of his base (the cliffs above his mineral lines are imbalanced) and scout 3 extra techlab rax and a factory w/ techlab. Awesome! At this stage, I have two spinecrawlers and about 8 roaches, while I have no idea what he has. Again, I move everything back, leaving one ling behind his expo to see if he's just playing a really weird (see: stupid) macro build, and prepare. He wasn't playing macro.

He sieges up and starts crawling towards my base, carefully staying behind the creep. Luckily, my creepspread was good, and he took his time getting to my base, allowing me to amass 4 queens and a bunch (20~) of roaches, against his mix of tanks, reapers and marauders. No worries! I'll get lings!

I don't have ling speed. T_T

It's okay, I got this. His timing was late, allowing me to make use of my natural. I send a queen forward, transfuse it like a boss (I hit ~5 transfuses before this queen dies, soaking all the tank shots) and break everything but one tank and a bunker, while he still doesn't have his expansion down. Ok, stay calm and keep playing. I make more lings, break down my back expo and take a 3rd. Wait... he still doesnt have his natural. What.

Alright.. I try to break him again, and get everything but the bunker this time. However, I run 6 roaches past his bunker and intercept all his reinforcements. Soon after, he types out GG and I'm extremely happy; he might've been a relatively easy opponent in retrospect, but the feeling of winning was awesome. A fistpump and a handshake later, I pack up all my stuff and turn around to walk off.

I left SC2 open, with my account up. Derp. I plug my keyboard in and ALT-F4 starcraft, hoping no-one had seen what I just did.

After the game, I walk back to my teammates (most of which had watched me play and laughed at how emotional I was whilst I played) and sat down for another hour or so, talking with them, random friends, fans whilst wondering who my next opponent would be.

"Hey tgun, the brackets are online, you should just get on and check them out dood"

Well, alright. I find out that my next opponent is none other than sixjaxMihai, another terran player. A very good terran player, at that. If I lose here, no-one will be pissed at me, but I don't want to lose. I hate losing. I'd be dissapointed in myself if I lost, as I worked so hard to get out here, practiced my ass off and wasn't about to lose second round.

Going into the games, I only wanted two things: to not play on typhon peaks, and to play macro games. The tournament official comes over, and again before he says anything, I just say "I veto typhon peaks regardless of what mihai vetos, it's a shit map"

"Sorry tgun, Typhon is the starting map"

Fffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

Two vetoes later (I veto'ed Shattered, as he said he didn't like Taldarim (I don't like it either, but that means he'll veto it, which he did), we begin on Typhon peaks. God, this'll be hell.

Alright, 14hatch 14pool, he doesn't get special treatment, and I see that we're horizontal spawns. These spawns are possibly the worst spawns for ZvT on this map: vertical spawns are bad, but every attack will pretty much always go through the backrocks, horizontal they have a lot of attack paths, all of which go through small corridors, and pretty much get a free 3rd base.

Well, the start goes standard. I scout that he's opening reapers, and he does 0 damage. I mean, absolutely 0 damage. I think he hit a queen once. Whatever. I made nothing but drones to ~30 supply and had both my queens up at this stage. I had ~150 gas, and it hit me. Ling baneling allin would crush him at this stage, there's no way he can go 1rax reaper and stop ling baneling allin, unless he instantly goes tanks off 1base behind it, and if he does that, I'm on even footing going into midgame.

So, I start ling speed, I put my baneling nest behind my mineral line at my natural (if a terran is going to scan, he'll scan my main for tech structures) and I rally my lings to the middle point between my base and his base, behind the tall grass, just so he can't accurately predict my unit numbers. Eventually, my ling speed finishes, I morph a tonne of banelings (something like 16) and here we go, f*** it, we'll do it live. He has a bunker with 3 reapers in it, and let me tell you; when things go right, you feel amazing. The bunker explodes, and the reapers instantly die to banelings as it goes down. I catch his scv's as they try and get back into the main with two banelings, and he gg's as my lings stream in.

I just won a ZvT, vs a good terran player, on my worst map. How the heck could he beat me now?

He picks XNC; alright. I've played on this alot, I should be fine.

We play a relatively long macro game, and I forget a crucial part of my strategy in the style that I was playing. I need a macro hatch when playing ling infestor, and I usually forego it to put up an extra base quickly.

Mihai was on top of me the whole game. He dropped every base, denied my gold, denied my 3rd and eventually forced a 'gg' from me, even though I had contained him to 2base all game.

I was furious. I had just typed 'gg' in, whilst floating 2k/1k against a guy that I could've easily beaten. I wanted to break my monitor, his monitor, his face and the desk all in one swift motion, but I restrained for dropping my head to the desk for a moment, recollecting my thoughts and telling him to create on metalopolis.

"Don't worry, you only lost because you forgot a macro hatch; you can beat this guy" Dan told me reassuringly, "Just don't tilt like a jackass". So, I calmed myself down as we went into the third and final game. I was shaking, it felt like everyone was watching my game, when in reality, It would've been the FXO guys, and probably ~8 friends that I knew there, everyone else would've been watching the main screen or one of the featured pool play games.

I force a macro game on cross spawn metalopolis. How can I lose, when I'm in my nature? I take a fast 3rd, crush all of his harass and get my mutas out, going back to basics; muta, ling, baneling. No need for fancy play, no need for cute tactics. Just play solid.

We get into the midgame with myself on 3 bases, him on 2 and my creepspread starting to envelop the map. However, he doesn't actually push out much. Actually... he doesn't push out at all. My muta harass had kept him contained. I felt like Julyzerg for a moment, applying so much pressure he couldn't even leave his own base. Into his third base (which he hadn't taken), behind his base, along the outskirts. He had spread his marines everywhere and had spotter supply depots / turrets everywhere to detect me.

That's fine, I'm on 3, you're on 2. I win! Right?

So, eventually, I get sight of him starting to siege crawl out towards the gold. What. My muta ball, at this stage, is around ~32 +1 mutalisks, which were primarily grouped as he hadn't shown any Thors. I was confident. At around ~180 supply, he starts moving further and further to the gold, and to my dismay, I see a CC going towards the gold. I put down my 4th hatch at the bottom left (because the gold is suicide, damnit) and prepare to hit him. My mutas are harassing his cc, and he stims a group of marines to shoo me away. The cc is at about 40% health, and there's only like 18 marines there. I poke back in, hit the cc, and he stims more marines up.

Whatever, bro.

I run my mutas around the cc, hitting and moving, taking huge losses, watching the bar tick down slowly. The scv's were in transit, mules were dropping down, I have to kill this CC here or I've just lost a tonne of mutas for no reason. My mutas were exploding, but there's only one red bar left!

Suddenly, explosions. The cc dies at the gold, and I'm ecstatic; to me, I had won the game here. I fistpumped, mid matchup, and screamed a little at how happy I was. I had something like 4 mutas left of my initial ball, moved back and readied myself to slowly break him. I was already back at 200/200, my 4th was running, it didn't matter than most of that was in zerglings and he had tanks; I was 2/2, his mech was 0/0 and his bio was 1/1. I attacked his forces and killed almost everything, my muta count rising again. Slowly pushing his forces further and further back until he was stuck in his natural again.

Oh shit, a thor. Byebye to about half my mutas again, I was clumped up. Doesn't matter: I'm on 4bases and I've scouted everything; he only has two. I'm rallying into his gold and attacking in waves, and shortly after, he GG's.

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I had just beaten the #1 open bracket seed; a guy who had worked his ass off at Dallas, gotten through the open bracket and into pool play, and let me tell you, I felt ontop of the world. Shook the blokes hand, closed SC2 and walked out to my teammates who were sitting down. "So how does it feel to win, tgun?" (Mockingly) "Yes!!!"

Smartasses, just because I get excited and show it.

So, whoevers next couldn't possibly be as good as Mihai, right?