[zenabi]

Name: Craig Mackechnie
Age: 19
Location: Brisbane, Queensland

"I'm really excited to be joining Ecko. I look forward to being part of a friendly and strong Starcraft team and improving a lot with the help of new practice partners"

It's with great pleasure that we introduce Azure to our roster! Azure has recently been playing in many of the SEA weekly events and has been placing well. We invited him to train with us and were very impressed with what we saw, and look forward to him showcasing his full potential to the rest of the SEA community.

+ [TtSYF.Sounwave's recent interview with Azure] +

Hey Azure, you're kind of the new kid on the block! There's a lot of people who are wanting to get more information on you so can you tell us a bit about yourself and your history with SC2?

Well, I got into SC2 because of TotalBiscuit. I used to watch his WoW videos but then he stopped making them so I thought I would take a look at this StarCraft thing he had so many videos of and fell in love with it pretty much instantly. About me there's not really much to tell. I'm an engineering student so between that and StarCraft there isn't really much time for anything else.


Terran was an endangered species in SEA for a long time but you seem to be part of the new wave of up-and-coming Terran players. What made you decide to pick Terran as your race?

I used to play Protoss as my main race back in WoL but I really disliked the way the race felt in general. There weren't that many opportunities to be aggressive and I didn't like being pigeon-holed into specific strategies. The real turning point was watching a TvZ played by TaeJa on Cloud Kingdom. The way he was controlling his units and being aggressive at all times really appealed to me so I made the switch.


How long after switching to Terran did it take you to get to your current level of skill?

I switched when I was a Master Protoss player back in mid 2013 and while it only took me a season to get to Master as Terran the difference mechanically between the races was a real shock to me. I think my general mechanics really improved because of the switch, and I found holes in my play I had never even realised existed.

My skill somewhat plateaued with Terran for a while and it has only really been in the past few months that I've found myself really improving again. I'm hoping I can continue this improvement for a while to come.


You recently shocked a lot of people by winning SEAcraft Melee #1. How did you feel going into that tournament and what was your reaction when you won?

I honestly had no real expectations for how I would do. With my lack of knowledge of the SEA scene I even now find myself playing players I have no idea how I will do against. To be honest I think I got somewhat lucky that Protoss players did really well in that tournament. I managed to ride my best match up all the way to the win.

Obviously I was really happy when I won but I won't feel like I've really proved myself until I win another tournament without facing only Protoss players.


So what are your plans for 2015? Do you have any desire to go to an ACL event or something like that?

My main goal is to finish top 16 in OSC points. I would love to attend a LAN event in Brisbane but with uni I probably won't be traveling anywhere else for LANs.


You said you weren't familiar with the SEA scene so in the tournaments you played, is this a good or a bad thing? You have no expectations regarding your opponent, so does that mean you just play your best safe play without knowing if you're outclassed or not? Who impressed you these past couple of weeks?

It's a bit of a good and a bad thing, it means I play my absolute best in every series but it also means I feel somewhat uneasy at first. In the end it doesn't make that much impact though. I was really impressed with Lobo's play in the most recent FFN. So far he is the only SEA Protoss to beat me in a series and he did it with really solid safe macro play.


Any last words or shout-outs you would like to give?

Shout-out to the awesome guys at ETL for really making me feel welcome in the SEA scene. I know I'm not that well known yet but don't worry, by the end of 2015 all of you will remember the name Azure.

- Jordan "Zenabi" Fighera

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Thank you to our sponsors Katana Gaming Systems and Signature Plastics for their continued support, without them none of this would be possible