EPTThere were 19 players total and I didn't give much thought about it at first but kinda screwed me over later on. Buy-in was $15, prize was $100 for first place. Players chooses map and BO1 until Finals then it was BO3. 2 games were played at the same time while everyone takes turns using computers. Participants were allowed to join the games to ob. Skill level was extremely varied, from bronze all the way to 2.2k diamond
I came a hour before tournament starts hoping to get in some practice. I bought my mouse over and used their keyboard. Honestly, it's insanely hard to play without using your own gear. Keyboard was a helluva lot different than what I was used to. I tried out their mouse as well and I couldnt even send my initial 6 probes to mine without making multiple errors. Definitely glad I bought my own mouse or else playing the tournament would've been impossible. Made a newbie mistake though, I didn't memorise my sound/gameplay settings at home so sound was extremely loud while playing and mouse/keyboards were either too slow or too fast. So pretty much it was impossible for me to practice.
Game 1 (RO16), Xel Naga vs a player called Sect. PvP and pretty easy win imo. He went 2 gate robos, I went standard 4 gate. Build Order win pretty much.
Game 2 (RO8), Xel Naga against a Z player, champain. My favorite game in the tournament. I spawned at top, Z bottom. I originally planned to 2 gate CB'ed stalkers to harass then add in blink+2 more games and expo when move out with stalkers once blink finished.
However Z went pool first so I couldn't do my initial 2 2 stalker harass(stalks>lings, speedlings>stalks) and he stole my gas so blink was delayed. So I decided to block my ramp with stalks in anticipation of fast speedlings instead. Once blink finished I started my harass. Seriously not getting used to settings made me do tons of terrible stalker micro. All goods though, it gave me the chance to do what I originally intended: force as much lings as possible. But again, poor stalker micro but GG colossus timing saved me.
He switched to a roach/hydra composition while i go 6 gate 2 robos. Honestly the thing that saved me this game our 3rd. I took a gold as my 3rd while Z took 9 for his 3rd. He tried to kill my gold a couple times but never succeeded. I killed his 3rd and that was pretty much game.
Game 3 (Semifinals - 1st round), Xel Naga against a T called Cat. I went 2 gate robos, 3rd gate while T went fast Thors. Obs saw the armory so I counter with mass immortals. His first rush was 3 thors+scvs+marines, I countered it pretty nicely and by that time I already had my expo up so I was well ahead. Then decided to go kill his expo while I secure my 3rd. So it pretty much meant it was 3 bases to 1 base for Terran.
Well I didn't know this at at the time, but I played 2 semi-final rounds. Quite a few people acknowledged me as the best player in the tourney, and that kinda screwed me over. Like I said earlier on, there was 19 people. (The people that lost in the RO16 played some sort of match, I'm not exactly sure what it was since I took a break to go eat with my friends). Winner of that gets the 20th spot. What this meant was that each round went something like this: 20->10->5. This meant there was 5 people in the semifinals. This meant I had to play 2 semifinal rounds. Playing immediately after the round started didn't exactly make me happier.
Semifinals 2nd round was Xel Naga against a T called expe. Probe saw he was doing tech lab+2nd rax, I thought he was going 2 rax/3 rax rush so added another warp gate really quickly. SCV saw my gates so he prob thought I was going 4 gate so he played defensive and went 2 rax expo. Mistake number 1 was trying to force my way up his ramp and did nothing and lost a few troops.
Later in the game, he attacked me, I thwarted the attack off quite easily. Mistake number 2 I counter-attacked and lost my entire army. This game made me realise how badly my colossus micro was. I went 2 robo colossus and his mass vikings demolished my colossus. I should seriously start thinking about going colossus/phoenix or stick to 1 robo and faster storms especially when he was pumping out vikings from 2 ports.
Overall, I felt like I could've won if I switched to faster temp tech instead of going 2 robos and being overaggressive was the biggest reason I lost the game. He later went on to win the Finals 2-0. I didn't feel like I played to the best of my abilities but I'm sure everyone else had the same problems (although I didn't ask them about it) In my opinon, the best thing about going to tourney is that games matters a lot more and it highlights your weaknesses. This tournament definitely makes me realize that PvZ/PvT, you shouldn't go 2 robos. But money on the line DEFINITELY makes you play more urgently (my average apm was 70 apm higher than what I usually play with)
Rep pack of my games if anyone's interested, don't expect to be impressed though, I'm only 2200 diamond on SEA
http://www.mediafire.com/?45z7j7i1izbsirm
