[x5.Crescendo]

Behind the Username is an interview series where I ask some questions of regular players I meet in and around SC2SEA and our tournaments.

Today I have a chat with Justin 'Elusory' Joel, formerly manager for TtSYF Gaming and the man behind the always-popular Friday Fun Night


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How long have you been playing Starcraft 2, and have you always played Terran?

I've played StarCraft since WoL came out, but not competitively. I was actually busy dealing with ladder fear for about 3 years. I started off as Zerg, because I was watching WCG VODs of Jaedong after all the SC2 releasing hype, then moved on to Protoss after discovering how OP 4 gate was back then. Then I became Random, then Zerg again, then Protoss, and I finally stayed on Terran!


Jaedong is a hero of mine as well. Now that you play Terran, are there any particular progamers whose playstyles and/or build orders you find the most inspiring to play with?

My playstyle is a little bit weird as Terran, I tend to find myself playing Protoss as Terran. By that, I mean being defensive too much and not dropping as much as Terrans should be. Because of that, I tried to look for Terrans who focused on one big engagement rather than dropping here and there. Of course, there are NO Terrans who play like that, they would end up dropping at some point. However, I liked Polt's style in the early HotS time, with his 3 rax opening in TvP and I still use it today. Pressure with bio early and end the game with a bigger bio army, just a war of attrition kind of style. I've been trying to drop more nowadays, but I haven't really been looking at matches or VODs, so I'm just playing the game like a jigsaw puzzle now. The game is my blank canvas, to put my own speed, strategy and determination. And that's a beautiful thing.


With all that being said: describe your playstyle in ten words or less

Lose while ahead. (Not really "with all that being said" LOL)


Hey, that's my playstyle too! Now, it's well known that you've had difficulties in the past with floating Terran buildings to gold. Have you learned the art, or is Schnitzel still traumatised?

( See http://www.sc2sea.com/blogs/showentr...tryuserid=6965 for the story of Schnitzel's lament)

lol Damn it I laughed :P

Yes yes, I successfully lifted my base correctly to the gold in a game during Race Wars, although I eventually lost. I have not taken the island base on Inferno Pools before though, so that should be my last test. No matter how much I learn, Schnitzel senpie will always be traumatised D:


Hopefully, if you can achieve it on Inferno Pools, Schnitzel will forgive and forget On a slightly different note, how did you decide upon your username?

I think I've only used my username for 4 years, about there. I wanted a cool and unique username like every keyboard warrior have always dreamed of having, so for once I gave it a thought and finally settled on something that starts with "E". Then I pulled a word from the back of my head, "elusive". I checked out what was the meaning, and realised it was quite apt for an online moniker. Hence, the state of being elusive, Elusory!


Now nobody can say the meaning of your name eludes them Turning to that notion of keyboard warriors, a lot of us - whether in tournaments or on ladder - have games which stick in our memory as being more fun or entertaining than others. Do you have a war story or favourite match you'd like to brag about?

Since I actually don't ladder that much, I don't really have any memorable games on ladder. Maybe just that one game that got me Masters the first time, TvZ, normal widow mine bullshit . My favourite game would most definitely be a game I played against Alpha in one of the SEAcrafts. Game 2, Alpha 1-0 me, on Vaani. It was the longest and hardest war of attrition I have ever fought in my life. 30 minutes of bio (without ghosts, because I'm so stubborn), against normal Protoss stuff, like Colossus, Zealots, Stalkers, Templars, what not. We were never maxed, and I constantly tried to take his bases here and there. Our supplies were constantly changing and we'd take turns being ahead and stuff. I ended up winning and I was NXZ happy about it, because I've never really taken games off decent (subjective) people, except one time I won DemiN00b in a "practice" match .


Challenger material right there. Show up to the qualifiers once in a while, eh? Speaking of tournaments, Friday Fun Night has been running strong with 44 events completed as of this interview. What inspired you to start the event back in December of 2013?

Friday Fun Night was actually one of the later ideas I had. GPDL was the first tournament I ever made, and that was catered to the GPD (duh) people because I felt there wasn't much attention given to them at that time (mid-late 2013). Then, once I felt like I had a bit of commitment, I started the Below Masters weekly thingy, it went on for about 3 weeks. Then, OSC allowed community-hosted tournaments to award OSC points to Top X finishers. There wasn't many tournaments back then, it was before SEAcraft started, so FFN was the only weekly for a while. I felt it would be good to give people a consistent dose of OSC points, even though it's rather small. People love tournaments no matter how big the prize pool, so I guess making people happy is a good thing too!


Speaking of the GPDL, it was nice to see it make a return this year. From a logistics perspective I know it can be difficult getting players to complete their matches on time. Do you have any advice for people who might want to run similar events in the future?

You have to be resolute, I think that's the most important thing. You have to be very firm with walkovers, and that's something I struggle with a lot. I'll take this chance to say that this will be the last GPDL I'll host, unless I change my mind in the future. It's just very hard for me to deal with walkovers It's not a bad time also, since GPD opens are regularly hosted nowadays! Props to the GPD open admins!


GPD Hype! Running any event will always have its highs and lows, and you've been running the Friday Fun Night for almost a year and a half now. Please share with us some of the highlights and challenges of running the Friday Fun Night.

A highlight would definitely being the winningest player of FFN. A $10 tournament isn't big enough to attract the better players of SEA to play, but EnDerr has always been so faithful in joining the small tournaments. It might be a waste of his practice time, but yeah, it's just very professional from his side I guess?

Another highlight would probably be the earlier days of FFN, where we had casters and all. Nowadays I try not to get people to waste their time, because viewership isn't that high :P

About challenges, hmm, I don't think I've really come across a challenge before. Smaller tournaments comes with smaller flak from the community, so I guess the only challenge has been my memory, to post the thread up in time!


Is there a moment in your career which you consider particularly important or formative for who you are as a player and person now?

I think the moment when Phoenix approached me, out of all people, to ask if I wanted to be the manager of SYF Gaming, yeah, that let me know that I was finally trusted by the community, and not just some random on the site. It came to me as a complete shock, because I would never expect a question like that.


You recently stepped down from management of SYF Gaming to focus on other projects. Would you be willing to share with us a bit more regarding that decision, and what you have in the works for the future?

I didn't really say it was for other projects, I'm not sure what did the thread say about me leaving the team haha. I left because at that time, I woke up and realised I had to put in more effort into studying. So, that's already time taken off focusing on SYF. Then, I became a nazi mod and I found myself becoming a bit more busy. Basically, I didn't wanna give something 50%, because nothing deserves a 50%, so I ended up choosing to go with the option of focusing on SC2SEA related stuff. Another reason is also because Insano was a casterino in the team, and I felt he was responsible and just good enough overall to take charge of the team. He has already seen our boss (owner of the team) and have good relations, so I thought it was only natural for Insano to take up the role. It has always been inevitable that an Australian would manage the team one day because of economic reasons, so yeah, Insano is definitely the right choice!


Thank you for satisfying my curiosity! I'd like to throw in some questions about the Oceania Starcraft 2 Championship series. Firstly, taking a look at the current rankings, what are your thoughts on them? Any favourites or early predictions for the grand finale this year?

I'll start off with the ones who are funnier to mention first. I'm actually really keen to see if NaMeK can end up Top 32. I think at this rate he'll be able to, considering that he was borderline Top 32 but now Rank 21, 5 points imba.

I won't spend time talking about Koreans or Americanos, but I think Frustration, DemiLove and Azure are gonna run far. There has been format changes for the Grand Finale, but it's quite funny that I, as an OSC admin, have forgotten how it's gonna be LOL. Regardless of format, pretty sure they'll do well. They're both practising more than before (not just a cliché line, but that's the truth) and I'd expect to see them place Top 8.

For the rest of our local heroes, well, nothing much to say about them. Should be business as usual for them, just another tournament and just another chance to earn some money!

Winner will be a Korean.


Friday Fun Night aside, of the various partnered OCS tournaments, which do you enjoy the most?

I don't really tune in to streams of our tournaments, but I always look at the brackets at the end, so that's my way of "enjoying" the tournament. I think I enjoy Leifeng the most. Most of the times you'll always see SEA players get 0-2ed, but the times where you see 1-2, 2-1 or 2-0 are the times where you celebrate and say, "Wow this guy's got it! Just need to be more consistent and stuff and blahblah!" Most of the times, Demi would always 1v1 me on Skype and tell me how close he was to beating all the Proleague players and all, and that really makes me happy for him.


Looking to the future, with Legacy of the Void on the horizon, what are your thoughts on what you have seen of LoTV thus far?

RIP 2gate, 2rax, 2whatever, and all the early proxies and stuff. I've never done those and always had trouble dealing with those, so I'm glad they're all out! The rest of the new rushes like Ravager rushes and stuff are still too early to talk about, have to wait till the later part of the year before I can actually say something about it. Things will still definitely change. I'm only interested in seeing whether Blizzard takes the Double Harvesting suggestion and implement it. That would eliminate mineral stacking, something that really doesn't need to be in the game.


I have bad news for you. Proxy 3-gate works nicely in LoTV For a bit of fun: if there was anyone in the world you could challenge to a Best of Five match, who would it be, and why?

I'll naturally challenge DemiN00b, because in our Skype conversations I'm always saying how I'm gonna beat him in X and Y tournaments, and how I'm any of the Korean Terrans he face on ladder. Maybe if I give proper ladder practice a shot for maybe 2 months after my exams, I could probably take a game off him in a Bo5 :P


I'd watch that =D Finally, feel free to self-promote and drop some links here if you want folks to follow you on the various social media/streaming sites

Just @elusoryx on Twitter, but most people who'd wanna follow me have me followed already. Basically 90% of the stuff I tweet are random thoughts or life. Same handle for Instagram but I've stopped using it for a long time, so you can go there and find an if you want. @IXL_Crescendo is also a good one to follow, he only has 80 he needs more! So he'll keep you updated with more interviews and stuff.


As if I don't shill my own twitter enough already Elusory, thank you for taking the time to chat with me today! I hope we'll see Friday Fun Nights for a long time to come

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Once again, it was a pleasure having a chat with Elusory, the Noodleman himself.
I'll even forgive him for seeding me with Swarmstika on Friday Fun Night #44
(Seriously, how could Shane 10p my 6p. So BM )

Please continue to support Elusory's Friday Fun Nights so that it remains a staple of SEA's weekly shenanigans.

If you haven't signed up before, try it out sometime! And if your opponent is better than you, cheese them.

GLHF all!