EPT+ Show Spoiler [TLDR version] +
Woke up
Ate Crunchy Nut
Went into Edinburgh
Won Starcraft 2 Tournament
Ate Crunchy Nut
Went into Edinburgh
Won Starcraft 2 Tournament
So today was my first real attempt at a LAN tournament (GSL doesn't count). It was at the Gamerbase in Edinburgh (the HMV basement). I'm pretty tired (tournaments are insanely exhausting) but I'll go from the beginning.
So I woke up this morning after getting about 5 hours sleep, I'd been playing Dragon Age until about 2-3am because I couldn't sleep. So I got up, shower, eat and take a 20 minute walk to catch my train. While on the train, I went over the builds I'm going to use in my head (cloak banshee TvT, Tasteless build TvP, marauder/hellions FE TvZ).
I go to a nearby Greggs after getting off the train and buy a cup of tea with a sausage roll (bread, not pastry). I headed along the street to HMV and arrive at the tournament looking for people I knew would be coming.
I signed in at the desk, took a seat next to some other people and we chat about SC2/day9 while I play vs an AI to warm up. I also marvelled at how the DNF trailer was already being played on the big screen TVs and kept looking out for more people who were meant to be coming.
There's some delays as some of the people who signed up *cough* CadenZa *cough* didn't show, but since we had 22 people at an originally planned 16 man tournament the show went on. After a small amount of faffing about, the groups were made and they sit everyone across from their opponents.
My first opponent was an Asian fellow called Hitwari (we didn't bother with real names), so I start up the first game, a TvT on Jungle Basin.
Going for my pre-determined build of cloak banshee, I go through the motions of the build. I've been doing this a lot on my US account since it's a safe way to play against weaker opponents with a fast win rate. It also works well in high level TvT, forces your opponent to play to your rhythm and with enough practice produces some great results. The only downside with this build is it's fairly micro heavy and thus more tiring than something like marine/tank/viking.
He scans and sees me going cloak banshee, so throws a bunch of turrets up and I do damage where I can before expanding. I do the defensive style of this build, opting for a bunker instead of a hellion. He pushes my main with from marines but I hold it off and macro out a ton of tanks/marines. Eventually I kill off his expo with my banshees and push through to the first win of the day.
We say our GGs and I look around at other people playing. The guy next to me recognizes me from my Artosis interview and we talk for a bit. Some more time passes and we get shuffled around to our new seats. My next opponent had said to me beforehand that I was in for an easy win. When my cloaked banshee reached his mineral line to see his turret on the other side of his base and no OC, I could see what he meant.
The tournament starts to get into the swing of things as everyone gets used to the system. My next opponent is some Scottish guy who played Protoss. I roll over him with the Tasteless build on close positions Metalopolis and despite being upset about his loss, he GGs and we shake hands.
I nip next door to use the bathroom before the next round and there's a small break for people to get food and drink. Eating the earlier bought sausage roll and drinking some dr pepper. We hang around and more Starcraft banter ensues. Mostly the conversation was about day9 and my time in Korea.
Opponent number 4 is an American who had moved to Scotland. From earlier conversations, he was a Diamond player in beta before stopping SC2 to play HoN. I don't remember much from game 4 except killing everything with banshees.
At this point I'm feeling rather confident and hit my 5th opponent; Adblax. It's a TvZ on Scrap Station, a map which I actually really like playing TvZ on when I don't mess up. I make some big blunders here - getting a tank before a thor, late turrets, not keeping an eye on my rocks, pushing before critical mass ect. It's a painful loss, but he's the only person not to drop a game in groups thus far and I know what I did wrong, so it's not all bad.
The Gamerbase staff announce that due to a shortage of time, everyone is only playing 6 games instead of playing everyone in the group. People are generally OK with this and we go onto our final games. I play a nice talkative guy for my last game; a TvZ on steppes of war.
He goes a late second hatch, so I decide to play a safe marine/tank/medivac build instead of marauder/hellion FE. After I hit 4 tanks, I start slowly inching my way towards his base. It takes a while but I win with the patience of a rock. He asks me what he could have done to beat me and I basically tell him that Steppes is a terrible map for Zerg against Terran and there's not much you can do if the Terran plays right.
Other people finish up there games and we wait while some late arrivals play each other for a Ro8 spot. There's also the resource raffle.
+ Show Spoiler [Economy Lotto System] +
3.1 The Economy score at the end of every game will be noted. Players must make a note of this and pass it onto the admin otherwise it will not be counted.
3.2 At the end of the competition all of your economy scores will be added together and you will be given that many "tickets". The admin will draw a random ticket and that person will win the Economy Lotto Prize.
3.3 The more tickets you have the more chance you have of winning but the prize could go to anyone.
3.2 At the end of the competition all of your economy scores will be added together and you will be given that many "tickets". The admin will draw a random ticket and that person will win the Economy Lotto Prize.
3.3 The more tickets you have the more chance you have of winning but the prize could go to anyone.
In a rather pleasant result, my second opponent (who was the only 0-6 player) wins the £20 gift voucher and we go back to waiting while my 6th opponent asks Adblax to look over his replay.
Eventually we get the round of 8, if you want to watch the replays, I've uploaded mine here.
Because of time constraints, the first round is a best of one and we take a vote on the map to play this round. A show of hands favours Xel'Naga Caverns and I play a "gold" Protoss. This was probably one of the scariest games in the whole tournament. His early push could have done a lot of damage if he'd gone through with it and I push out too early. I win through superior macro alone and barely hold his aggression.
I pull through and go into the semi finals, but meet something I always dislike playing against; a random player (he's also the only person who cheesed in the whole tournament). The admin announces the first game is scrap station and we start playing.
I check my entire base for any kind of cheese before scouting. He's playing a standard Protoss build so I immediately start the marine/tank/raven setup and start knocking down the rocks. He catches me off guard and I someone hold it off. I manage to use a banshee to even out the worker count and force him to defend. After taking an expo and macroing, I push through the rocks and get a good siege position. With a good position, I stim and go to another close victory.
The second game I go into a standard 12rax/13refin. I see he's playing Terran and micro him to death with banshees. He gets a decent counter attack, but I kill it off with a couple of banshees before I start hitting my macro stride and taking the semis 2-0.
I'm now in the finals, facing off against Adblax (I knew he'd make the finals). I feel confident and know that if I play without making my earlier mistakes I can win.
The first map is Xel'Naga again and I execute my build decently, but not perfectly. I fend off his counter attacks while doing decent damage with my pushes. I eventually build up a big enough force to end the game.
Game two was on Metalopolis which was fine with me as hellions are pretty good on it. There's a lot more even trades this game and he does a decent job harassing my expo. There was a point when I'd thought I'd lost, but my thor managed to crush his lings, allowing me to start massing again. I get enough marines and thors and with a final push just as my infantry get +2, I win the game.
At this point there's a group of people around me patting me on the back with each win and I'm feeling good. I also thought I'd won with that game so was surprised when "shakuras" popped up in the chat window. The admin points out that the finals are a best of 5 and I shrug and load the next map.
Unlike the previous TvZ games, I'd promised to show the guy who wanted us to play shakuras instead of xel'naga earlier why the map was such a coin flip for TvZ. My scouting SCV spots his scouting drone and I immediately go into the close position tank/marine drop. He also forgot about/missed my scouting SCV hiding in his base, so I threw a bunker down because I could.
It works out pretty well considering I've never had the chance to do it in close positions before and I'm pretty much going off what I saw happen to Ret at the code A quals back in December. I kill his Lair and most of his main while expanding, before losing my dropped units when I took my eyes off them.
I start building a bigger marine/tank force with upgrades and after a couple of pushes, overwhelm his hydra/roach to take first place. At this point I was exhausted from playing; TvZ is a really tiring match-up to play and Adblax is a pretty solid Zerg. After saving the replays from the eight player bracket, the prize giving and getting some photos taken, we all head home after roughly 6 hours of tournament.
It still hasn't quite kicked in that I've actually won the tournament yet. But I'm feeling pretty good about today. I met a lot of cool people with similar interests, I played a lot of Starcraft and only dropped one game, I won some cool stuff and now feel confident going forward into future tournaments.
I'd like to take the time to thank some people as well -
My family for supporting me in my crazy dream of one day going pro at Starcraft.
Carn and Torch for taking the time to help me with my TvT when it was my weakest match up.
Tasteless for explaining the Tasteless build to me.
All the other foreigners who gave me advice while in Korea.
Day9 and David Sirlin for inspiring me to play games competitively.
Mairnai for cheesing me until I could fend it off properly.
Gamerbase for running a really good tournament.
All the cool people I met today, hope we meet again.
Drool, Majes, the ukstarcraft(.net) community, the rest of my friends in #ocd, the Korean Starcraft 2 community, Carefoot, my irl friends, the Sirlin.net community.
And lastly the team liquid community for being so awesome.
+ Show Spoiler [ps.] +
Since CadenZa didn't show up, I'm totally the best Scottish player until some kind of bo7 show match happens.
+ Show Spoiler [pps.] +
I'm taking questions about my trip to Korea and other Starcraft related stuff for ukstarcraft, so feel free to submit them and I'll try to answer.
