KiwiClones at MLG Orlando ...

Thursday
      I flew out of Seattle in the afternoon with GotC . We took a transfer flight in Atlanta and coincidentally were on the same flight as binski and HeavOnEarth who were coming from Texas. We arrived at Orlando and took a taxi to the Gaylord and set out for our first and most important priority which was obviously finding the nearest Denny’s. We ended up walking half a mile down a freeway to a Denny’s just to receive terrible service and a cold waffle. Afterwards we hit up a Walgreens to get some snacks and drinks and rested up early for the weekend.

Friday
      I slept in and had a little time to practice on KawaiiRice’s laptop in our hotel room. I acted fairly lazy until 5 pm when we finally went over to the venue. The brackets kept changing every 2 minutes which was a little stressful because bracket was super easy for me at first, then I had TSL.Polt Round 2, and then finally it changed again to TSL.aLive Round 3. I had a bye in Round 1 because of my huge rank points from Anaheim (4 points). Round 2 was mid masters zerg - relatively easy. Round 3 was TSL.alive and I went for a Void Ray all-in on Shakuras. He opened reactor hellion as if it was a TvZ and slaughtered my mineral line while I was pushing his base. He held with bunkers and won a few minutes later. Game 2 I quickly expo-ed to the gold on Dual Sight and was really far ahead but threw away the lead with bad engage at his natural vs. a MMM army. I watched my team for the rest of the night and hung out with all the awesome people at MLG. Once everyone was knocked out we went back to Denny's, the food of champions. I ordered some chicken meal - much better food and service than Day 1.


Caliber getting ready

Saturday
      Once again, I slept in fairly late. Finally got up around 3pm to check bracket and get ready for the losers bracket. In Round 4, I played flo - who was the toughest opponent I beat at MLG. Both games vs flo I played a macro cheese style with 16 nexus and 20 nexus to the gold. In Round 5, I played a Masters Zerg, dropping 1 game because I tried to cannon cheese. In Round 6, I played wannabuildcannons. Game 1, he opened phoenix while I opened the very safe 3 Gate Robo into twilight 4 gate blink stalkers. This ended up being a build order win. Game 2, he tried to cannon rush me, but I scouted his base on Antiga and saw him build the forge. Held it with ease and then he forge expanded as a follow up while I went 1 base all-in using a warp prism and 4 gate. In Round 7, I played QxGtheognis. Game 1 he all-ined me on Dual Sight. Game 2, I opened Void Rays, which did little to no damage but my DT warp prism follow up won the game. Game 3, he did some really nice drop harass on Shakuras to beat me 2-1. Later that night, I met up with a friend I had known online for years. Afterwards, the KiwiClones and 4Kings ordered Chinese food and chilled in the hotel room.


Caliber playing QxGtheognis


Game 3 vs. QxGtheognis


Line em up!

Sunday
      I woke up relatively early - 11 am and started to slowly clean up the room and pack my bags. I checked out of the hotel and found out that I had the same return flight as KawaiiRice. Shit was cash. I slept a lot on the plane despite having a midterm Monday morning.
Overall MLG was really fun and I had a great time seeing old friends and meeting new people. The event itself was very impressive – MLG Orlando was definitely better than both Anaheim and Raleigh. The staff and refs were always on their A-game.

Thursday
      Arrived at the airport and met vileHawk, after that took a shuttle to the hotel with the rest of the team. Checked into the hotel and dropped our stuff off at the room, then walked down a highway into town. We walked past Tasteless, DJWheat and Sase smoking while leaving the hotel. Found a Denny's and had dinner there at ~1am. Service was somewhat bad. After dinner found a Walgreens and bought water bottles/bread/Pringles/peanut butter and jelly. Walked back to the hotel room, passing Sase who was still smoking outside the door, and messed around with other people's equipment for awhile. Caliber gave us all a good-luck Pokemon, I got an Oddish. Went to sleep with HeavOnEarth, Caliber and binski slept in the other bed.

Friday
      Woke up sometime in the morning, went back to sleep because no one was up. Woke up again later after Caliber had woke up, got out of bed. Hung around the room until KawaiiRice arrived. I picked KawaiiRice up for fun because he was even smaller than me. We left the room and went down to meet Gerbil/Lost to have breakfast. Xeris was checking in at the main desk and laughed at our team jackets. After lunch we went back to the room to wait until the convention centre opened. HeavOnEarth, binski, and I played a practice game on Adrian's laptop to warm up. HeavOnEarth, and binski won their's whereas I lost mine. After that we left to go to the convention centre and bumped into Rain and Xeris (again) in the hallway, so we followed them to the Fnatic room so that KawaiiRice could drop off his bags there. Then we went down to the convention centre and watched July play HuK on the main stage while we waited for our bracket matches. Eventually it was time and we went over to the open bracket area and I played my matches and lost them. Adrian gave me a fruit by the foot after I lost.


GotC preparing for his first set


GotC vs. RGNArtist


      I dropped my stuff off back at the room and then went and ate lunch with my father who had been watching my games. Then I went back and was watching Boxer v TLO on the main stage, and laid down because my back hurt, and then put gloves under my head because the floor was uncomfortable, and then fell asleep. When I woke up I went and found the team and took some photos throughout the rest of the day. Then we walked to Denny's for dinner again. After dinner we said goodbye to Gerbil/Lost who had rejoined us at MLG when they went back to their hotel. We went back to our own hotel room and hung around for awhile before we went to sleep.


GotC sleeping on the Job

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz......


Saturday-
      I woke up before everyone else to play my match in the morning. I left the room to look for a free breakfast service but couldn't find it. So I came back to the hotel and had a shower, then I went down and played my matches, which I lost again. After that I went back to the hotel room and everyone else was awake and asked me about my games. I told them and then we hung around the hotel room for awhile again where we watched some episodes of Sponge Bob, before Caliber/HeavOnEarth left to go play their matches. They left the camera charging and I was supposed to bring it down later when binski went down to play his matches at 5pm. To pass the 3 hours between 2pm and 5pm we changed the channel and found a channel playing horror movies 24/7 throughout the month of October. binski slept and I moved between stages of sleep and consciousness until we got out of bed at 4:30 and got ready to go down. When we got there binski started playing and I took photos with the camera. I got given KawaiiRice's "Team manager" pass and was taking photos from inside the player area. After awhile Xeris asked me if he could borrow it to give it to another member of Fnatic so they could come inside to watch KawaiiRice play, I gave it to him and then got kicked out. I continued to take photos for most of the rest of the day. When KawaiiRice got into the Championship bracket all of us except binski left to sort out dinner, binski kept watching. A female friend of Caliber’s arrived and we tried to find a place to get take-out Chinese from, but the first place we looked at didn't deliver to where we were. So we went back to the hotel room to look on a laptop instead. We eventually found a place and ordered Chinese which got delivered later. binski and KawaiiRice arrived and we all ate the Chinese besides KawaiiRice who had a salad that he bought to the room. Caliber/HeavOnEarth/Lost went and got alcohol from near the hotel that Lost/Gerbil were staying at, Caliber/HeavOnEarth came back with alcohol while Lost went back to his hotel. Some of us had some of the alcohol and then binski and HeavOnEarth played games on Korea while Caliber got on webcam with his girlfriend and I watched binski/ HeavOnEarth. After awhile we went to sleep.



Sunday-
      We slept in for a fairly long time, when I woke up I had a shower, then talked with the other team members and packed up my stuff to leave. We ordered pizza, but it arrived after I left.

      After our uber awesome Denny’s trip, I woke up to the melodious sounds of my teammate, Caliber's voice. What a beautiful way to start a morning, I thought to myself, and then Adrian came through the rainbow that was our hotel room door and he gave us all fruit roll ups, strawberry flavor of course. He brought his Fnatic MSI SteelSeries eizomonitors SixPoolGaming RaidCall jersey with his amazing Fnatic MSI laptop and so we began to practice for a couple minutes before venturing to the venue where we would meet vVv gaming. Now I’m no stranger to vVv gaming, for I have played them in multiple wars/ladder games so yeah. It was a little awkward because they introduced themselves to everyone on the KiwiClones but me. Anyways we went to the venue and kicked massive amounts of ass. The end.


binski warming up


binski still warming up


More of binski warming up


Huge glasses!


KawaiiRice mentoring his clone


binski playing vileHawk


binski vs. GoSuHwangsin

      My StarCraft II experience began when the CSL team for my university took me on a random road trip to MLG Dallas, just for fun to watch. I hadn't played StarCraft at all since I quit BroodWar, so the event was an absolutely surreal breathtaking experience. I couldn't believe how much StarCraft II was actually growing and the event inspired me to pick up a copy of StarCraft II days after. So I came to this recent MLG Orlando not only as a spectator, but as a competitive player on the team KiwiClones. Our team did pretty well, myself included.
      In my last few matches I beat out vileState 2-0, punishing him for going 1 gate 2 gas FE with a 2base roach ling all-in. After a little poking and prodding, burning his FFs with my roaches I sent my lings in at his cannons and 2+3 Warpgates that were morphing in and easily took the game. In the 2nd game, I just played a very standard ling infestor into BL. However, he surprised me by pushing out with 13+ ! sentries on Shakuras after his forge FE. Luckily, I was able to bait out many forcefields using lings and morphed a few banes to hold off his aggression. After setting up my 3rd and 4th, I leaned on him with ling infestor until he gg'd out.


HeavOnEarth playing

      Sadly my next match was vs. KawaiiRice, which I lost 1-2. After taking Game 1 in decisive fashion by faking a speedling expo into 7roaches, Kawaii picked Shakuras and Game 2 started. He slowly picked me apart with reapers and medivacs, killing drones lings in ridiculously cost efficient plays and even managed to snipe my spawning pool, which I had built in a terrible location. He easily pushed out and secured the win. Game 3 was very low econ and close after opening reactor hellion and doing ridiculous amounts of damage, getting up to 6 + hellions. I managed to sneak by a couple dozen lings and took out all his scvs at his natural. Sadly the momentum I gained was lost when my queen couldn’t block my ramp on Metalopolis and 4 hellions ran into my main. Kawaii was in a huge lead after the run by. Wiith a few ling counters and eventual muta harass I clawed my way back into the game. Things were looking up, even though I was still down, when I held off his initial push but his macro and multitask were on another level and he took the game with a counter attack when my mutas were in his main picking apart scvs.


Serious face

Waking up with the Clones at the GayLord hotel staring HeavOnEarth, KawaiiRice and binski.


HeavOnEarth making a Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwich and everyone talking about their upcoming matches.


HeavOnEarth playing SC2 while the rest of the team chills and watches Sponge Bob. binski and GotC then talk about their games vs RGNArtist and RGNInori.


binski talking about his series vs Inori with HeavOnEarth at Denny's. KawaiiRice, 4KLost, GotC and 4kGerbil also in attendance.


Final Interviews and thoughts on MLG. Yes, the camera work spins around... a lot...