Yesterday yet another LAN took place in the DC/BALTIMORE area. It's really great we've now had 4 events in the DC area in the past few months. (3 LANS and a proleague finals viewing) This event was by far the most competitive event in the DC area in some time, (soon to be topped next month though kekekeke O_o) those who attended yesterday (to the best of my recollection):
Torenhire
Louder
Xeris
LastShadow
Nyoken
Tossim
Slog
LuckyFool
Valtyr
Zeppelin
Purpos3
Krackling
Boardin
LordWeird
StorrZerg
HatchetWound
Sadistx
CPeter123
PedoCows
Haemonculus
AuHsoj
Sentient66
Orb
CaucasianAsian
Duckett + princeton gosus
d3_crescentia
All in all we had a 24 man tournament and around 28 or so total people. (counting the princeton gosus and a couple others that I might have missed)
Really awesome that some great gamers were able to make it yesterday, slog, Nyoken, Louder, some really well known names were there which was good fun and made for some really great games.
The tournament was good fun, big thanks to Xeris for saving the day bracket wise. In typical Xeris fashion we ninja'd a pretty sweet bracket together after some problems and started games, a tad later than intended but nevertheless things got underway. Personally I feel I played pretty shitty but I haven't been practicing hard against good opponents (tons of D games on iccup doesn't count as legit practice) and it costs me. I won my first match 2-1 against zepplin (who I had to play in the first LAN back in July) and then lost to Tossim 0-2 in 2 pretty decent games. The first game on Tau Cross I went for a push but kinda just got content when I took control of the two middle bridges. This proved to not be wise as he was able to flank around and eventually break it, also got a nice recall off in my main. In game 2 I lost on colo2, my 200/200 push worked more or less but like usual my lategame macro sucked and I have no clue wtf to attack on colo2 when protoss is making like 3 different mains around the map. I always like start splitting up my army and just get raped. I then won a match against orb in the losers finals, he went carriers but I pushed pretty fast and he only had 2 when he had to use them to try and stop the push. I then faced slog in the losers bracket and should have had the game, my push succeeded but since my macro is so shitty I couldn't follow it up really and had to gg I think the difference maker was when I lost 3 tanks to a mine, boy was I raging over that ohman. Overall I didn't play horrible yesterday but I can play better fo sure. I played only TvP yesterday in all 4 rounds that I played in.
What I learned yesterday is to fucking stop getting supply blocked at 52 in TvP (happened probably 5 times in at least 7 games.) and that it's time to start incorporating a more harass style TvP. Vs shitty people you can just macro and rape with the first push, doesn't work vs somebody who knows what their doing.
lastshadow played pretty well, for some reason I have no replays of any games he won, just the ones he lost, (hmm what an interesting coincidence) I wonder if he saved ALL his replays on the pc he was on in the cafe...
Last time I was pissed I forgot to upload some of my games vs Superior and later at the next LAN I checked the same PC and got them all over a month after we had played them. (EZ!) Maybe I'll ninja lastshadow's replays too if I'm ever back there at some point in the future.
I got most of Louders replays, for some reason I missed the first bo3 of the grand finals, where lastshadow 2-0'd louder. Probably the best game of the tournament (that I saw) was Louder vs LS on destination where Louder had a 30 kill reaver. That shit was pretty intense at differnet points in the game it looks totally over for the other player and they both manage to fight back until Louder takes out like 10 scvs with a scarab that glitches THROUGH minerals. High level shit like that is awesome and it's great when we have players of that caliber in LAN situations. Shit like this needs to happen more often yo.
The other most epic game I heard about (didn't see it) was CaucasianAsian vs Hatchetwound on Destination in losers bracket, some 40 minute PvZ with like everything mined out and coming down to 200/200 armies with maelstorms and shit and eventually 6 ults ending it. That game will be forever a memory though because both players forgot to save the replay... FAIL!
Dinner was pretty sweet (even though they screwed up some shit and thought they were missing a bill when it was really them just fucking up) Korean buffet was good but in my opinion slightly overpriced for the value. I would go back there again sometime though (not every night though or I'd be totally broke after 2 trips)
Overall I'm pretty pleased with how things turned out yesterday and I hope everyone had a great time. I hope to continue keeping Starcraft alive in the DC area as there's a pretty kickass group of guys now that have gone to all 4 events (or even 2 or 3 of the 4) and knowing who people are is a blast. Around a 30 person turnout was amazing. CaucasianAsian finished the night with epic PvZ's against StorrZerg. I dunno why but I was so into those games... Those guys are a pretty good match but CaucasianAsian ultimately raped like 3-1 only losing in a ZvZ at the very end.
YepYep good times, LAN's are so much fun.
By on the lookout for quite an exciting event on November 7th in the DC area, Xeris will be hosting and coordinating and I would expect to hear more news on it shortly.
until next time,
-LF
edit: sadly this LAN was seriously void of cameras, I think maybe 1 person brought a camera and took like 3 pictures. That was fail.