SC2SEA.com - Starcraft 2 SEA eSports Community Site

Part 2 -- You can find Part 1 at http://www.sc2sea.com/blogs/showentr...&cutoffdate=30

After losing to Pet I was pretty annoyed at myself -- I didn't play my best and made some very basic mistakes (sitting at 1500 minerals / 0 gas is one of the sadder points). However, I had to move past that, as my next opponent was Nv.Rossi, and he had recently posted some very impressive ZvT results. I didn't want my ZvT winning streak to end here (or anywhere).

The first game was extremely fun: it was on Entombed in vertical spawns and the game started anything but standard -- if memory serves me correct, he opened with hellion marauder pressure and I got a very nice surround with lings + queens. The game drew out into a 4base vs 3base game with me controlling his 4th expansion, however, I had creep all over the map. Eventually, he was, essentially, swarmed to death by mass ling/infestor/ultralisk and forced to GG out.

The second game was just as weird (for a series involving myself) -- he chose Ohana, which I believe is a map that most terrans enjoy going mech on. By most terrans, I mean every terran. To counter this, I went for 10min mutas, popped ~14 mutalisks at 10 minutes and he gg'd out, as he was going for a greedy 3base-mech play and had only two marines (with no ebay or thor in production) to defend my mutas.

After the games, we took a break during which I found Jazbaz. I hate playing against Jazbaz -- his style is extremely hard to predict and he's such a nice person that win or lose, I feel bad. However, winning makes me feel less bad, so I still want to win :P.

I forget how game 1 went -- my memory fails me, but I remember holding off some sort of timing attack behind which Jazbaz gg'd out. Game two, however, went exactly to plan. The roach-queen build worked beautifully. I did almost lose to a nydus counter-attack, but due to my 3-base economy being up for so long, I was able to (very inefficiently) trade roaches enough to force Jazbaz to gg a second time.

That was the end of the first day: myself and petraeus both through to day 2 (both in the lowers, as it happened) and the hope of fray resting on my shoulders. If I won vs. Iaguz, fray would get a player through to ESWC (because we all presumed that myself, Mafia and Moonglade were going to MLG). If I lost, I was told that both fray players weren't too confident versus the Mindfreak powerhouse that is Iaguz.

I think the best part of the night, however, was that when we got picked up by my mum, not only did she know that Pet had knocked me out, but she was happier for him than she was for me.

Damn.

Anyhow, we got back to my house (grabbed KFC on the way, only the healthiest dinner for gamers) and Pet instantly went off to his room for some well-deserved sleep. I, however, continuing my ever-present nerves for tournament days, played a game of LoL before going to sleep. It didn't help calm the nerves.

Day two was nicer for us -- we got dropped off at the event by my mum (hooray for living 15minutes from the venue!) and then set up and got ready. Myself vs Iaguz was slated to be the first game on the stream (however, map 1 between us didn't end up being casted, only streamed, due to technical issues) and we started the tournament off with a standard series between myself and him: back and forth with very close games.

Game one went to him with some very, very strong bio play. He opened with standard hellion pressure, then transitioned into a strong marine/hellion timing on my 3rd which killed it, kept up in upgrades (I believe he was even ahead of my melee upgrades) and kept attacking until I died. It reminded me of practicing with QXC whilst we were in Korea: ruthless agression, all game long, until one of us gave up. Scary.

I was very frustrated, as ZvT is the one matchup that I feel I excel in. The second game went much more to plan for me -- it was on Cloud Kingdom and I played Iaguz's strong mech play. A lot of zergs had been struggling versus terran mech play recently, as LucifroN had demonstrated its strength during WCS EU. However, my roach-drop allin timing (with 5 queens) picked Iaguz apart, having creep under his main and 3rd cc's and his production facilities whilst droning up behind it.

1-1. It all came down to this, and the map was Ohana. Oh joy.. a map where they can attempt to play split-map versus the zerg and be quite comfortable. I looked at the first game between us and anticipated the same sort of style: fast upgrades with a lot of bio, potentially accompanied by tanks. I tweaked my build (in my head, pure theorycraft going into this game) to account for his upgrades and start mine a large bit earlier than what is now standard in ZvT.

It worked. I was halfway through 3/3 when he completed 2/2, which let me get a huge lead with ling/ultra/infestor and snowball into a victory, crushing through multiple marine/marauder/medivac armies. I was happy that I had defended my ZvT crown, fray was happy that they had a player through to a presumed ESWC.. Iaguz was, expectedly, unhappy, but that's SC2. One person is always unhappy. Don't I know that.

The next series was against Petraeus again (a surprise victor over Ninja as even Petraeus himself said before the series that "Ninja beats him in practice all the time"). Again, he took a swift and decisive 2-0 victory and kicked me out of the tournament in a dissapointing 4th place. Gah.

Oh well, it was a fun tournament overall. I got to meet the Immunity management in person for the first time, as well as spectate and meet some of the Immunity LoL players, of whom were all very nice people. The crowd that LoL draws is huge. That game is definitely bigger than SC2, no matter how much we want to downplay it -- even in Australia, the difference is noticable.

Afterwards, we explored the expo very thoroughly (our passes getting us express access) and eventually, myself and Petraeus went to dinner with the Nv boys + Arnor. It was a nice, relaxing dinner at KBBQ where everyone was finally de-stressed, as with any tournament going into it, everyone is on edge. We all joke with each-other before and between games, but it's very noticable that we're all trying our damn best to win.

After dinner, I hassled Dox many times to get a group picture of all of us -- after all, when is the next foreseeable time when Jazbas, Petraeus and the rest of us will be in the same place? A great memory for such a nice weekend (even given all the troubles at the event) closed out the night as we hopped on the train back to Granville, got picked up and got some much-needed sleep.

Overall, it was a great weekend. Huge shout-outs to Linc (Norksman) and JinXxX for running the event so well given all the technical problems. Norksman kept the games running smoothly without being overbearing and JinXxX worked his ass off getting the internet fixed, the power fixed and MCing the whole area (not just SC2). Every time a big game was coming up, he'd do his best to hype it up, although we were very clearly just something tacked onto the EB Expo.

Edit:: Also, livi was drunk.