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Sequential Gaming: Player Spotlight
Andrew "SenSei" Carmichael

One of the less heralded teams floating around the ever growing SEA scene at the moment is Australia's Sequential Gaming. While they are not commonly included among the bigger names like Xeria, aLt or the recently disbanded Archaic they have been quietly achieving with some home grown talent. They don't throw money at the biggest names, but instead go for a small, close-knit squad of underrated or up-and-coming players and after the ACL results it's beginning to pay off. This had encouraged me to start an article series on SQL to get to know their players, plans and performances up close.

Andrew "SenSei" Carmichael recently published a blog, "Going All In" about his intentions to take StarCraft II more seriously and play almost full-time. As one of the less appreciated players with talent to burn on the SEA server SenSei has mostly gone under the radar until recently. Despite some reasonable performances in beta and some appearances for Team Australia it has been his recent successes in online and LAN events that have him considered as one of the stronger Protoss players on the server. You can see from his recent achievements below that he is punching well above his weight for someone who doesn't put in many practice hours, which is what makes it so exciting that he will be applying himself soon.

Recent Achievements:

• Semi-Finalist APL Season 1
• Third Place ACL Brisbane

With goals including making a living financially off of StarCraft winnings, streaming himself, and playing in international tournaments SenSei is a player worth keeping an eye on as he tries his luck at the highest levels of play. With 8 years of SC:BW experience including Team Australia representation under his belt we have no doubt that he will achieve what he sets out to and we wish him the best of luck. I'm sure he will keep us updated on his progress but I reasoned an interview would give us a baseline to compare his goals and ambitions as he climbs the ladder.

Andrew "SQLTt.SenSei" Carmichael

Age: 23
Location: Brisbane, AUS
Race: Protoss
Team: Sequential Gaming
Clan: Terror Australis

1) In your blog, "Going All In" you said travel plans fell through so you skipped straight to playing full time. Did your position on SQL encourage this move or was it always something you planned?
Full time gaming has always been something I have wanted to do ever since I first started playing Broodwar competitvely, but before now there has never been an opportunity for me to do it. SQL didn't really make a huge impact on my decision to go "full time" it was more the fact that now I have finished my studies and have worked a full year full time within my industry and saved up enough to last me awhile.

2) You mentioned in our last interview that your contacts from your days at the top level of SC:BW would make ideal practice partners for you. Do you still practice with these NA based players regularly, or will you? or is it enough to practice on SEA and with teammates?
I can't say that I keep in regular contact with them anymore, having a fulltime job and not much time to play limited me to concentrating my time on one server (SEA). However I do still talk to all the check-six guys on vent, but it's nothing like when I first made the move from Broodwar to sc2. In terms of practice I think that SEA ladder is not very helpful, having teammates is great for if you want to practice specific builds but I don't think that should be the main source of practise, this is why I plan on grinding up my korean account to (hopefully) high masters and get most of my practice on there.

3) People will also notice back then you played as Terran, citing that you liked the aggressive, non-turtle and micro-intensive play style. Is this still the case, and what made you switch to Protoss?
The main reason I made the switch from terran was because of TvT, I hate tank lines.. I would find myself in a demanding lead in games and then throw it away running into a line of tanks because I am very impatient, something I need to work on. I still definitely prefer playing a more aggressive micro-intensive play style over . However I still struggle with my PvZ as I find if zerg , being such a reactive based race, get the correct scouting information they can counter you very easily.

You Tube

You Tube

SQLTtSenSei vs NEOindy in Eddie's Masters Cup

4) What will be the first steps you take to improve your play? As a player already near the top of the GM ladder it's not as simple as paying for coaching, so do you have anything special in mind?
Like I said earlier my main focus will be to mass play on my korean account which I haven't had time to play on previously. I will definitely be analysing the korean pro's and downloading a bunch of their replays/fpvods. Apart from that I will start to analyse my own play a lot more instead of just taking a loss and moving on without thinking too heavily about it.

5) How will your SC:BW experience help you achieve these goals, if at all? Do you feel you are at a similar level or higher in SC2 than you were in SC1?
I think the mindset in training sc2 compared to Broodwar is the same, so it will definitely help me. I'm not at the same level I was in Broodwar in sc2 currently, I was a lot more competitive, especially on an international level.

6) You were mostly competing at a high level in online tournaments in SC1, without much of a chance to go to international offline events. What do you wish you achieved during your time as a BW player, how far do you think you could have gone, and will you be trying to achieve this in SC2?
By the time I started getting really competitive and good at Broodwar it was nearly 5-6 years after release and the scene in Australia was pretty much dead except for online. Overseas still had a huge following for it but here there was not much left, this is why the majority of my achievements were online, the only offline LAN event that was big was WCG which I placed 2nd behind Legionnaire in 2005. I'm happy with what I achieved as my time as a Broodwar player, I had my fame and made a lot of money at the time for a young kid playing games. I feel like if there were more opportunities within Australia at the time I was playing I could have competed in overseas tournaments with all of the big names as I did online, but even being in overseas sponsored teams at the time they did not want to pay for flights or anything out of Australia. It's alot different now with online qualifiers and many tournaments paying for your way overseas and sponsors being a lot more lenient with paying for you to compete so I feel like I can achieve this.

SenSei finds enjoyment in teammate Rossi's suffering at the hands of his friend LoSt.

7) What's the next big event you will be focussing on, either individually or as part of a team/clan? How do you plan to achieve your goals?
I am going to be focusing on improving my own game rather than concentrating on taking out tournaments, if it happens it happens. I wish to represent SQL as well as I can and enter all the big tournaments that are around, I will also be flying around Australia to partake in them. Apart from Australian tournaments I will be joining in as many international qualification tournaments as I can. A goal of mine for this year is to win a national ACL event.

8) We've seen with a lot of the older (22+) Australian SC1 players decide to take the plunge and go full time for SC2 only to end up playing more casually as real life or disinterest gets in the way. Examples include Legionnaire, Starhunter, XaraCoS and SeMu - how will your case be different to these players?
The only thing that will stop me from following in their paths is keeping a strong mindset of what I want to achieve, setting short-term and long-term goals for myself along the way. Once I set my mind to something I don't quit easily.

Shoutout to SQL, Tt eSports, USA Foods, everyone in TA and to everyone on sc2sea.com!

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This is part 1 of a three-part series covering the SQL players.

Part 1: SenSei - Part 2: yang, inFeZa - Part 3: HuT, Ninja
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External links

Sequential Gaming - Twitter @SenSeiSC2 - Stream

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