EPT![[image loading]](http://samods.org/staff/magic/articles/bw_campaign/Brood_War.jpg)
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I’ve been playing Starcraft since middle school I think. Around 2004, 2005? I played like two games of FMP, going pure speedzeal every game, possibly with upgrades. I preferred Protoss… because it looked the coolest. Zerg was too bloody and creature-like. Terran was human, so that’s meh. But Protoss was advanced and sophisticated. So, me being my 13 year old self, I usually played Protoss. And with my many speedzeal build, I won a lot of compstomps :D. I usually played melee until I won 10 or so matches, so that I could get my stars. =D.
![[image loading]](http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a184/MarkThienAn/5stars.jpg)
This was obviously taken just now…but I have 5 stars!
Then, I discovered UMS. Ahhh UMS. Such good times. Still good times. Even today, I don’t melee for fun too often. But UMS kinda sucks now, so I switch between the two. Anyway, I started out playing random stuff like 10-way Marine D, and 12-way Sunken D, or variations of those. Then I started play Helms Deep. Back then I think the most popular version was like “fair 3 final” or something. Anyway, played that a lot, eventually joined a clan called “ESCP” which stood for “Elite StarCraft Players” (kinda lame, but I didn’t really care). Hung out with them for awhile playing Helms Deep and random Diplomacy games sometimes. Started playing some LotRish (old school term xD?) games too. Played Zelda War for Hyrule a lot and got to know the mapmaker pretty well before he retired from SC. Made my own Zelda Ocarina of Time map, which, now that I think about it, was probably really imbalanced because I understood very little about unit/damage types and just knew how to do math. lol. Played some Naruto Battle games too (this is like freshman/sophomore year of high school). My basic point? I played a lot of UMS while I was on/off SC.
![[image loading]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/MoqPUf32AIQ/0.jpg)
This is Helms Deep. It’s a pretty fun game.
Fast forward to my junior year of high school – Spring 2009. Got accepted into Princeton and a few other schools, but missed out on Stanford/MIT/Yale/Harvard. And Princeton was giving me good money, so I was like, alright, I’ll probably go to Princeton. So Prefrosh weekend rolls around (I think it was like, show up Thursday morning, go home Saturday morning – lol I should know this better). I remember being the first one to arrive (like 1-2 hours early because my parents wanted to give us like 6-7 hours for a 4-5 hour drive, lol. I guess my dad is old so breaks were very much factored into the equation). So I get there super early, some people grab my suitcase for me and put it in the main tent while I wandered around. I think it was really cold when I arrived (like 7 or 8am), so I ducked into Clio Hall, which is a building like right next to where I got dropped off. And then I took a nap for an hour or two on their super nice couches. Bahaha.
![[image loading]](http://www.collegiatewaterpolo.org/images/TeamLogos/PrincetonTigerLogo2.jpg)
Go tigers!...?
What did I do after that? My memory’s really bad. I know you meet up with your host in the afternoon… eh. Let’s assume I checked out some student groups until then. I attended/checked out two classes while I was there for Preview – one was an Intro to CS lecture (my major) in which I fell asleep. The other was a Japanese class in which I just watched the students talk to the teacher (it didn’t look bad/it looked fun which is representative of most language classes at Princeton I think). Oh, I think I had lunch of the Frist Campus Center when I could have gotten lunch for free at a residential dining hall, lol. Well lunch was free for me but I met up with my parents and they had to pay. Oh well. I remember having lunch with some kids from that really top Massachusetts school Weylon-Weston or something? Kids I used to row against and get excited if I won. These are the kind of kids that are like, yeah, I think 10 kids got into Princeton, 5 into Stanford, 6 into MIT, that kind of deal. Basically Thomas Jefferson in Massachusetts, plus good sports (idk how TJ is at sports). Anyway, I think that was Friday. But whatever.
I meet my host, who’s a pretty cool engineer – not too much of a partier but not an introvert by any means. But yea, it was a somewhat small triple, and there were two other prefrosh rooming with me. Both of them were all about partying, lol. I remember later that night or one of the two nights I was there, they went to Terrace, one of the eating clubs, and I walked in, stood on the sticky floor watching people dance for a minute, and walked out. I guess that tells you what kind of guy I am ^^.
But! I don’t know where in the time schedule this fits in – I think it was a 8 or 9’o’clock event – there was a SmashCraft Heroes Open House. Those of you who have read hazelynut’s first or so blog will know about that. Basically, it’s a gaming club for Super Smash Bros. Melee, Starcraft, and Guitar Hero. Me being a casual Smasher, a casual SCer, and really bad at Guitar Hero, I was like, I’m totally going to this. I remember it ran into the “This Side of Princeton” performance (which is an amazing collection of most of the performing arts groups at Princeton – I’d watch it every year, but it’s mainly for prefrosh/freshman), so I had to leave early from the SCH thing. The performance was totally worth it, though – Princeton’s got great actors/dancers/all that.
I’m not sure, but I think I came back after the performance. Can’t get too much StarCraft, lol. I mean, I smashed a few times, won some, lost some, but mostly I watched Starcraft, which was on the big screen projector. DaisyP was commentating for much of it, playing other parts, hazelynut might have done some bad commentary/playing (lol bm), and I remember duckett – despite being prefrosh – got a game in with DaisyP, which duckett lost of course, because he’s terribad. I think I got in one or two games with random people that I beat, but aside from that, I didn’t play much (didn’t have a laptop). But the commentary was really good – good in the sense that it was funny, and provided a good atmosphere. Partially because the players could hear every word, which just made it even funnier. “Oh, __ doesn’t see this drop coming in but now he knows about it because I just said it.” Sure, it might mess up the results of the game, but no one was competing. They were all just sharing their love for Starcraft.
![[image loading]](http://www.universitypressclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/monazhang.jpg)
This is the crew before I joined =D
When the event was over, I knew what I would be doing next year. A terrible attitude to combine with my “senioritis,” but it happened. The next day was the Activities Fair – I signed up for the mailing list for like 5 and some clubs (basically I looked for Asians, tennis, and then SCH). Played Smash for most of the Fair, but eventually moved on to different events like dinner. Actually, it was a Friday, and I think I skipped the big prefrosh “mandatory” dinner to just have a chill dinner with my host. Another indication of what kind of person I am, heheh. After dinner, I probably hung around a bit, and then I headed to Starcraft practice. It was in one of the rooms of the campus center – 207 I think? Somewhere along that hall, next to the USG office. But yeah, I walked it and there was hazelynut, doing Physics 104 on the board, with two guys helping her (probably raiame/hazelynuts/Ja.). lol. But yeah, I can guarantee DaisyP was playing Starcraft (when is he not?) and probably azndsh and zchen and agonyx90 and ashih. Anyway, I mostly watched, trying to learn, played a couple games on DaisyP’s comp (lost). It was funny because I think they thought I was a student and they were like, “Why haven’t I seen you before?” Teehee. I was the only prefrosh there and all, but xD. It was all good.
![[image loading]](http://i453.photobucket.com/albums/qq251/hazelynut/IMG_4803.jpg)
lol it’s duckett and hazelynut a year ago
The rest of Preview was whatever – I felt like I had spent half of it with the Starcraft group, lol, especially since I hardly remembered anything else. Regarding my college decision, Princeton Preview was just to confirm that the campus wasn’t ridiculously unappealing and the weather wasn’t terrible (but I’m from Massachusetts, so the limits on that were unbreakable – not to mention Princeton Preview ALWAYS has good weather). For those of you not yet in college… unless you’re rich, I’d say almost always go to the school that is making you pay the least, unless you have a dream school or something. Sure, you can pay it off by 10 years later or whatever, but it’s nice not worry too much about college money.
After that, I started dabbling with Melee. At first, I still played a lot of UMS, but once summer came around, I started getting serious. I was bad and thought I might want to spend summer at home with friends so I didn’t plan anything for that summer – I just ended up playing a lot of Starcraft, lol. But basically, I googled “Princeton Starcraft,” found DaisyP through sketchy means, and facebook’d him. He would be my mentor/coach/gay buddy for the summer and the rest of the year.
![[image loading]](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_g4sHj4pUFFM/SsWCjxkU7MI/AAAAAAAAAO8/uCGRqaCF1gw/s320/ive_been_stalking_you_on_facebook_tshirt-p235707160008788108q6vb_400.jpg)
FB Stalking <3
If you remember my introduction, I was a complete noob at melee. A build? What’s a build? Expanding? Huh? Scouting for something besides their position? lol. I probably did a lot of zealot rushes back then. And I was petrified of ICCup. I did a lot of solo practice / practicing with DaisyP before I tried ICCup. I saved every replay (me and _ 1, me and _ 2, me and _ 3) etc. before I realized there was an autoreplay tool. I’d study the replays and check the timings, and try to do it on my own. I never got good a probe harass/micro because I spent my time figuring out builds and stuff. I never learned reaver micro because that required having reavers, and I figured what I knew from UMS was good enough to pass at first. Eventually, I was meeting up with the team online/on SC2GG ventrilo regularly, and playing with hazelynut/agony pretty regularly (the rest of team was in China LOL). I always liked playing hazelynut because I could actually beat her (she recently switched to P at that point), whereas agony usually beat me and DaisyP always beat me. Not to mention PvP was the only matchup I had any idea of how to play. I think the first game I won against him was on NeoMedusa and I proxy gated him. Somehow he mismicro’d and I ended up winning. I was like “O_O_O_O_O_O_O_O_O_O_OO_O” and the replay was probably named “I WONNNNNN.” Actually, I think any game I won (ICCup) I made a special note for, ie. “vP 5 WON.” Like I said, I was a noob. I think the first time I got to D+, I proxy gated for like 5 wins. Haha. I was so happy. I also became known on the team for being really cheesy (read: going DT every game). Bahahaha.
![[image loading]](http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a184/MarkThienAn/dts-1.png)
I should update this article
Toward the end of the summer was when I started working with hazelynut to do CSL stuff. The very first thing I did involving CSL was a ~8 person skype conference call which included people like Peanut, Cholera, Sebastian (from PolygonRevue), Sunyveil, d3_crescentia, maybe a couple others that I don’t remember. These were all people who, at the time, were working to do stuff for the CSL (before CSL+ haha). I pretty much said nothing the whole time ^_^. I’m a pretty quiet guy when in a conversation with 6 people I don’t know. But thus, was my initiation into CSL.
![[image loading]](http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/kotaku/2009/04/starleague_01.jpg)
Starto!
I mostly did organizational stuff. I’m an okay writer so I might have done one or two newsposts early on. I remember spending one afternoon stalking the All Stars from Season 1 and making cool photoshops of them. I question the quality of these but:
+ Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a184/MarkThienAn/Starcraft2/Nesh.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a184/MarkThienAn/Starcraft2/StRyKeR.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a184/MarkThienAn/Starcraft2/ToTyosh.jpg)
(Yosh’s was a LOT creepier and funnier originally, lol)![[image loading]](http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a184/MarkThienAn/Starcraft2/gtroo.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a184/MarkThienAn/Starcraft2/j2joLin.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a184/MarkThienAn/Starcraft2/tifa.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a184/MarkThienAn/Starcraft2/Freaky.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a184/MarkThienAn/Starcraft2/clazziquai.jpg)
I know hazelynut did the last two, not sure other than that which ones she did.
At some point, hazelynut ditched CSL to form CSL+ and naturally, I followed her. Can’t have CSL without hazelynut, lol. But yeah. I started coordinating events and stuff for CSL. At some point during all this, I went to school. lol. I think the CSL/CSL+ split was before I got to Princeton, I’m not sure though. Doesn’t matter. Everyone knew where the legit CSL was at xD.
![[image loading]](http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a184/MarkThienAn/SC/CSLplus-1.png)
Lol, Xeris’s School of Design strikes again
Heading into Season 2, I think we were a little understaffed, and I ended up doing double duty as a division admin, in addition to doing general stuff as staff. Oh yeah, I remember at the Princeton vs Rutgers live match (I think it was Week 1), just before everything got started, one of the division admins resigned because he didn’t want to do that much work (facepalm). We ended not finding a replacement, so I covered two divisions, East 4 and West 1. I think East 4 was like Yale, Harvard, McGill, Hampshire (who never showed up, so bm), Tufts, Cornell maybe, and a couple others? West 1 was like UVic, UCB, CalPoly, maybe CalTech, UCLA, Victoria Island University, etc. I had a really good time getting to know the teams, especially coordinators. Easily 90% of the league was pretty well mannered (Rutgers and UVic make up most of the other 10%), and problems were pretty rare. To some extent, division admins weren’t needed. But it really helped to have seven people sorting through emails/replays rather than just me or something. The updated site in Season 3 made this a lot easier. I remember raging about Hazrd from UVic being such a hassle because he complained so much (still love you bro) or something. Other than that and my grades, there was really no downside. I started streaming at some point, started off just streaming the games and eventually started D+ commentary. Sometimes it was good, sometimes it was bad. Like I said, D+ commentary. I hated when I got T/Z matchups because I knew nothing about them xD. Eventually I learned some basics, so it was all good.
![[image loading]](http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l213/USXWiNNinG54/CSLHQtl.png)
I think Season 2 was the season we didn’t have news staff and I had write stuff T_T
What did I do as a CSL Division Admin? Not much, hehe. Basically, I’d send an email to all the coordinators each week reminding them “email each other, get a time set, these are your opponents for this week, this is the map pool,” and any misc. announcements. Things they could technically do/look up on their own, but it’s nice to have someone do it for you right? Like an operator for a phone, or something. lol. When Season 3 came around and the replays sorted themselves out, there really wasn’t much to do as a division admin, except show up for matches and answer questions/obs/settle arguments. Other than that (as an admin), I mostly managed emails and the results of matches. Substitutions and Ace matches usually – it’s unfortunate that matches could only be updated from the database directly. It ended up being me and yenta doing most of this, and hazelynut toward the end. A lot of manual labor, in a sense, but it could only be done by people with access. T_T note to change that in the future.
Aside from working for the CSL, there was playing for the Princeton team. Making it to the round of 4 in Season 2 was good enough for all of us. With Magneus (love that kid) jumping aboard for the regular season as well as none other than Gretorp coaching us once a week, Season 2 was our season. Zchen stepped it up during the playoffs, the rest of us mostly choked, but it was alright. Getting past Duke and Toronto was amazing in itself, even if Duke came back for revenge the following season. But to emphasize how crazy we were during that season, let me describe our practice schedule. Thursday – practice with Gretorp coaching into mass gaming (8pm-2am). Friday – mass game (8pm-FOREVER PM aka 3am). Saturday – matches, and after the match, mass game (whenever until whenever). I spent many nights going home with DaisyP/Zchen or to my other home (hazelynuts’s room).
How can you say no this handsome nerd?
In some 8 months or so, I went from an only-UMS player to a somewhat consistent D+/C- player. I went from like 100apm to 180-200apm. I beat LuckyFool once on US East at like 3am (I’m not sure we played any other games after that, maybe one or two). At the first DC LAN I went to in October/November, I played in the tournament knowing I would lose, but beat Haemonculus 2-1 going (mass) DT rush both games that I won, took a game off Semih with PvP DTs, took a game off CaucasianAsian with DTs (though I think he offraced P), and almost took a game off Gretorp twice with gas steal->DTs (but he’s too good so I got destroyed by +1 mnm). I felt amazing after that day. Not to mention the whole trip down to the LAN had been spontaneous and full of lulz. The team spent the night at hazelynut’s house that night for/after a win against JHU (me crashing on the couch before we started watching the replays). That weekend was one of the craziest ones I had that year. And I think it’s safe to say, during the Fall, I went to Magneus’s house at least once a month, for absolutely no other reason than because I loved spending time with the team so much. DaisyP and I spent a couple days (after the Power Outage Finals event at Princeton) at Gretorp’s house playing 1v1v1s and Power Grid. I slept for like half of it because I had stayed up some 40 hours before that (for school and then MSL), but it was still awesome.
All in all, participating in/working for CSL has been an amazing experience. The TL community, of course, is like none other. I’ve been spamming on the mafia forum all summer, hence my quick ascension to 2k posts (well, it’s responsible for like 75%). TL’s a great place to waste your time, because people understand Starcraft, and the culture that surrounds Starcraft. K-Pop, for example. What kind of non-Korean likes K-Pop without some Starcraft in their system? But now, we make the journey to SC2. I’ve yet to play because part of me wishes BroodWar was still being played for CSL. But SC2 is the future, so that is where we shall go. Hopefully, I’ll get good enough to provide commentary for the league. But, until then – glhf, and JOIN THE CSL!
http://www.cstarleague.com/
School's Thread
Thanks for reading,
DarthThienAn
you should come to more DC LANs with the Princeton crew!
grats on 2k. you have far surpassed my post count you mafia whore. i'm kind of surprised you left out season 3 and the downfall of our team's morale, but i think i'm glad you did...T_T
