EPTMLG Dallas is over, this is how the weekend went for me for anyone who may be interested. I played in the event and was there for the three days (Friday-Sunday) almost all day every day (had to leave early on Sunday to catch a flight back to DC)
PRE DAY 1/DAY 1
First off the entire weekend was made so much better by a couple guys that I met through TL, theBOOCH for picking me up from the airport on Thursday and giving me a place to crash the first night, and team Vile (Spartan) for letting me crash with them on Friday and Saturday nights. I love going to these events but without being on a team (I’m picky and indecisive as fuck when it comes to joining a team) it takes some networking through TL for me to be able to easily attend events like this. Huge thanks to both of those guys for making my weekend possible pretty much.
The event venue itself was really nice. Dallas convention center is pretty massive, the sc2 area was so much bigger and more epic than the previous MLG that I attended last season. Tons of floorspace and seating, during the peak times the seating was totally full and people were spread out ALL around the floor. SC2 by far had the most fans pretty much all the time, and was always the last event to finish each day it seemed. Friday night was especially late as shit, matches were still going on at like 2am.
Anyway moving on to the actual tournament for me, somehow I was seeded in the open bracket (random luck or maybe because I finished last season with like the fewest MLG points you could possibly have 25 or something lulful) so I had a first round bye. The relief of that quickly turned sour when I realized I had to play Naama in open winners round 2. For some reason most of my matches were right next to featured matches so theres freakin Sjow sitting there playing a group match vs somebody and then me playing Naama right beside…I lost to Naama 0-2 but both games were at least fairly competitive. Naama actually knew who I was too, he told me before game 1 he learned how to play terran in bw by watching youtube vods that I put up in 08. That was honestly one of the most really fucking unexpected and awesome things and honestly motivates me to start doing vods for sc2 again since my internet is too shitty to stream.
During game 1 vs Naama he’s attacking into my natural with shittons of bio. We’re playing on a station on the end in the playing area and there’s rows of people watching behind me. Naama target fires my command center with like 20 marines/marauders. The command center probably goes under 50hp at one point while 20+ scvs repair it and it stays alive. I hear this scream of delight behind me when the command center lives and that shit almost tilts me. (I later find out it was Janitor of hypercrew) But I sorta hung onto the game for another 5-10 minutes before losing to shittons of tanks and bio pushing my main. This first game back at MLG reminded me how fucking epic it is playing at mlg’s. SC2 fans are the best fans I swear you don’t even have to be good or be winning games just do epic shit and people will love it. Seriously moments like that make playing at MLG worth it for literally anyone in my opinion. If you live near an MLG event or are considering playing even if you aren’t top level please don’t think twice and participate in the tournament, the experience is fucking amazing.
Dropping to the loser bracket so fast was pretty shitty, I was raging when all these sexy sixjax guys are rolling through all of their winners rounds on day 1 ezmode while I get stuck playing Naama… thus is life of brackets though. Naama actually lost to Moonan right after beating me. The rage when he lost was rather intense. Rightfully so, the guy flew in from finland and had a hard as fuck bracket, had to play me in round 2 (super hard) and then had to play moonan right after that (even more super hard than me) Naama is a really nice dude though I’m def a fan.
Probably the most interesting shit that happened for me personally after losing to Naama on day 1 was Hashe playing Spades in winners round 4. Hashe had some serious mouse issues on day 1. When he would left click and drag boxes for unit or any selections it started bugging the hell out and double clicking or random crap. Gear issues like that are so tilting. His mouse literally started going bad during winners bracket round 2. In winners 4 he’s vs Spades and there’s all these issues, first spades cant hotkey shit or something then hashe has mouse issues. Eventually after like an hour of trying out tons of different ppls mice and restarting pc’s they finally get to a game 3. Hashe goes for a hellion/marine build but scouts a bunker, doesn’t elevator into the base like he was planning because he was scared of something and when he went for the hellion drop it got caught by a Viking. A few minutes later spades pushes with this hardcore marine/Viking/medivac push off 1base and just rolls. Sucked for Hashe so much, one game away from going to sleep on Friday sitting pretty in winners round 5. Instead he drops into a nightmare losers bracket.
DAY 2
I know I’m gonna be playing the losers gauntlet big time. I really didn’t want to lose early or choke hardcore. Would have been so fail to lose in winners round 2 and then early in the losers bracket. I have no pressure to do anything at these events. I really didn’t want to lose early on Saturday though and focused pretty hardcore. To a point where somebody I played against asked me something after I won the match and I was so focused on staying in the zone or thinking about something else/my next match I didn’t even hear him. He thought I was ignoring him cuz he thought I thought he was a scrub. I’m like the most chill/focused non pro user but I guess some people might see that as being bm. Sorry for having jaedong stares I guess?
I cruised through the losers bracket till round 5 where I played vs a terran user named Iron. This guy was like a blueflame bonjwa. Whirlwinds of blueflame hellions shooting across the map and being dropped around and shiz into banshees and other random crazy stuff. I played really solidly though and won the series 2-0. Going mass hellions I knew I could just out tank him and set up contains and just get total map control.
Losers round 6 was vs VTFuture who I beat 2-1. I lost the first game in 7 minutes to 5 stalkers and a zealot. I had no idea what he was going and when I do any tech builds TvP I almost always make a bunker in case shiz like that happens. I sent a scouting scv like 30 seconds before his attack and I only saw a zealot and a stalker which was really standard. Little did I know there were like 4 more stalkers right behind that. Losing the first game of a bo3 in 7 minutes could be really tilting. I was surpringsly calm. I actually kinda lol’d when the ref next to me turned and saw the first game was over and I could tell he was like “wtf over that fast?” look on his face. That comedy moment actually helped relax me. I guess in losers round 6 there were few enough games that refs started sitting and watching all the games instead of having to float between like 4-5 matchups. Game 2 I went in with a solid but pretty risky gameplan, 3rax pressure into expo. He caught wind of my high marauder count with a scouting probe and played super defensive so I just took my expo. I kept up a hugeass bio ball and teched to medivacs while future went for mass gatway units. I managed to pressure his 3rd and got a decent position in the first major fight. Surprisingly I felt really good going against pure gateway units with bio in this game. Maybe because I opened 3rax and literally always had a massive bioball. Game 3 I go for the 2port banshee allin but this time I don’t make the same mistake as game 1 and actually make a bunker. Future pushes and loses bunches of units. I pull like 10-12 scvs and head out with raven/banshees/hellions/marines against what I assume was a 2 or 3gate expo (haven’t seen the replay) it wins the game outright after some micro and an imba point defense drone.
Up next in losers round 7 is sixjax cocoa. The winner would play grubby for a spot in the championship bracket. Cocoa is really good TvT (His best matchup) but I’ve taken games off him in practice online before so I wasn’t feeling helpess. He pretty much outplayed me in game 1 I actually played pretty terribly missing depots and things and having idle scvs at 3rd and letting drops just rape shit. Game 2 I won really fast with a tank/medivac push, I think the longer build time on bunkers makes my build stronger again which could be interesting. Game 3 my game crashes like 20 minutes in because of some hardware glitch or something. My gear is pretty outdated shit and I think there was some random conflict with the alienware pc’s mobo or some missing driver or something. I was 2 bases down and way behind in supply so I just conceded the game, he had cleaned up my main army right before that and I didn’t even have a 3rd making. There were lag issues during most of the day on Saturday too which was pretty weird in general. So my MLG ended in losers round 7, cocoa went on to beating grubby 2-0 and making it into the championship bracket. I knew the winner of me or cocoa would beat grubby. Grubby had huge lag issues in his series vs cocoa too though which sucked.
I should mention here that when we were walking into losers round 6 I told Sterling (my partner in crime basically, terran user from broodwar who is also teamless and not a complete waste of life user in terms of skill) that I’d beat future if he’d beat xiLost. Sadly Sterling bombed out vs Lost. Sterling since you read all of my blogs I’m gonna say how could you not hold up your end of the bargin man, I felt so lonely in losers round 7, I was probably like the only teamless scrub still in it at that point.
Anyway after I lost I was pretty dazed it was kinda weird to go out conceding like that but I honestly felt it was the right decision. I didn’t see TLO vs Idra but apparently Idra kinda did the same thing when it was lagging or something. And Select also conceded something at some point (missed that too) honestly lan would fix so many problems of this disconnecting and lag drama omfg.
DAY 3
Day 3 started crazy, we stayed up till like 5am on Saturday celebrating Hawks championship bracket appearance and we wake up to a phone call saying “Yo hawk has a seeding match right now get over here now” Hawk and I literally get out of bed and run like 4 blocks from the hotel to the convention center only to find kawaiirice isn’t even there so hawk gets a w.o. Kawaiirice later showed up for some consolation matches but offraced or some shit and got raped lulz.
Day 3 unlike Day 2 didn’t have super stream fails. Only a couple lag issues in some games (WHERE THE FUCK IS LAN BLIZZARD) but other than that it was a great broadcast I felt. I got to see the grand finals from my laptop at the airport which was pretty awesome. Kiwi almost made a comeback but couldn’t.
All in all I loved the weekend, MLG events are so epic, I will definitely go to a couple other MLG events this season, probably not all of them but 2-3 more would be a definite possibility. Playing in MLG events is so fun, just seeing everyone and watching sc2 played on main stage with hugeass screen and sc2 sounds filling the whole place is epic. I remember when I was playing in one of my losers round matches we paused while dde and grubby finished their match on stage and hellion shots were SO freakin loud it was crazy.
Good times, MLG is super awesome can’t wait till my next one which will hopefully be Columbus if not definitely Anaheim.
Shit, I said about all I wanted to say and the flight still has 45 minutes, guess I’ll finish with saving the two videos I took the entire weekend, one of funky circular keyboard user and another of dde vs thisisjimmy basetrade consolation game and Mihai getting ready to play allaboutyou. I should have taken more vids but I fail when it comes to takin vids, it’s pretty stupid too cuz I have a nice flipcam but I take like 2 vids and then put it away and go talk to Mihai for like 3 hours and forget about it. I’ll upload the vids soon they’re still on my camera.
Some shoutouts: everyone who participated in the tournament regardless of skill. Selling out player passes helps mlg, helps keep these events huge and growing which helps esports in north America. Ubertoss for being a badass repping team AOV shirt, Hawk for being so pro and making championship bracket after playing like a million zvp’s. theBROOCH for housing me on Thursday night. Spartan for offering a hotel to stay. Slog for asking if he could have some of my fries last night and then offering Ret my entire dinner. Kurt and Team Sixjax for allowing me to be their toilet boy and all the dc guys who followed me in the brackets… <3
-LF
the two vids I took ALL WEEKEND, fail rofl:
