EPTI play zerg on the EU ladder, ranked 138th on the latest top 200, and I play for team RAGE (I'm RAGECyclone on bnet).
PGL hosted online qualifiers for the romanian sc2 players where I easily qualified (there were 12 groups each with ~15 players).
The 32 players offline tournament was held over this weekend in Bucharest. I made a 7 hours travel by train during the night which didn't got me much sleep, but I had some food/coffee right as I arrived and I was good to go!
I arrived 3 hours earlier and had plenty of time to set everything up and practice some games.
29 players showed up, and it was nice to meet everyone (old friends from W3, or players whom I talk a lot over the internet without knowing them "in real life").
Round 1: Default win for me.
Round 2: I got to play fishlips (z), one of my best online friends since W3, now playing for a local team in Timisoara (which btw has a practice house!). We know each others styles quite well, but I adjust a bit, droning up at times where I'm usually aggressive. He plays defensive, gets behind economy wise and I just roll him with mass roaches. In game two I'm going for a 9pool vs his 14hatch, he's losing too many drones and can't catch up in economy later.
I felt bad for winning vs him, especially for doing a cheesy 9 pool in game two -.-
Round 3: I'm playing Cristy, another good zerg from Timisoara and teammate of fishlips. Game one is similar with the first map vs fishlips, where I get extra drones vs his defensive style, allowing me to do a strong timing push. He messes up in game two trying to sneak speedlings in my main base, while blocking the ramp of Shakuras P. with 3 baneling eggs (bw style?). He doesn't manage to block it well though and I easily overrun him with more speedlings.
Round 4: This is the winners bracket semifinal and I'm playing a more known and experienced zerg player, DeathAngel. I always have a hard time playing him and I blame it on my pre-match mindset: he's known to be quite strong in macro and all I'm thinking is to win it fast or do some cheesy timing push.
I'm going for a 9pool in game one (a build that I only played 3-5 times before) vs his hatch first (which he cancels), he barely defends losing a good amount of drones, and what surprises me is seeing roaches at his ramp when I have my ling speed up. I lose shortly after to his strong roach push.
I heard this happens a lot to players who don't have much lan experience: you get a new idea during an important match and change your style or try a new build for the first time! Obviously there's a small detail you didn't thought of and it ruins the whole plan. That's what happened to me in game 2, which made me rage quit (yes, no gg in a mirror match and vs a player who's game I respect).
The idea I got was good though and I was looking forward to face him again next day in case he got in the loser bracket (he was going to play NightEnd in the winner bracket final and I didn't saw him winning this).
Fishlips is eliminated in the loser bracket by Noise and that is quite embarrassing for him as we don't consider Noise a good player. He's the usual cheesy/ short term oriented terran player, making small pushes at weird times with weird unit combos.
Day one ends shortly after, I go to a friend's place (thanks Painball!) where I watch some TSL matches and get some sleep.
Round 5: I'm glad I have to play Noise, thinking it will be a good warm-up for next round, and that I should just play safe and out-macro him.
We play on Meta and there he is, doing these endless blue hellions/marauder/marine (fast stim) pushes with a delayed expand. I'm sticking to my ling/bane/muta build, but I'm not being cost effective and I'm slowly losing the game.
Game two is on Shakuras and again he's at my ramp with the same unit combo. He gets scared by my two crawler + evo wall and decides to wait in front of my natural. I get 6-8 mutas out, push out with ling/banes crushing his small army and winning the game shortly after due to the lack of marines at his natural.
Game 3 is on Xelnaga, I start by forgetting the 36supply overlord (it's always the 36 one and I hate him!) which doesn't allow me to drone up properly. Again we play the same builds, but I'm controlling my lings poorly and he ends up getting hellions into my drone line which puts me further behind. Same pushes by him, I'm still trying to get my mutas and a 3rd base up but I can't outmacro him because of the horrible start. He's going for the gold base and I almost stop it ... almost (qq).
Losing to Noise was so embarrassing for me and I made a huge effort to type gg at the end (I'm usually honest and tell them how I feel about Terran). I know I should have looked at the replays and try to adjust to his build, but I was too proud for that. I was making plans on how to beat NightEnd (after I got DeathAngel defeated) instead :D
Very disappointing result for me since I was expecting a top 3, but it nice to meet everyone and I'm looking forward to the next LAN!
I won't spoil the results on top 3. I'm gonna update this blog with replays once they are up.
Replays: http://computergames.ro/ro/downloads/popup/id/19176/name/starcraft-ii-pgl-season-1-replays-finala-discovery.html
