EPTAlright so we're past Columbus and there's again another month and a half break between events. During the down time between Columbus and Anaheim our team picked up inka, the american protoss who was on LG and before that EG. At this point our roster is now myself, inka, Agh, theognis, Shuffle, Rocker and Zelniq. I'm not 100% sure on whether ReachTheSky and philibird were still with us by the time Anaheim rolled around but it was within that time frame that they were no longer on the team. I think Reach was still on the team but wasn't after Anaheim, and philibird had left before.
Anaheim time was coming up and our team was sending almost our entire roster; inka, Agh, theognis, Rocker, Zelniq and myself. Shuffle is Australian so sending him to events is quite expensive so unfortunately he was never able to attend an MLG this season. Which is a shame for everyone (and I mean everyone) because he's awesomesauce. This would be theognis's first MLG event but he is no stranger to live events as he was a former BroodWar player who was quite known within the foreigner scene in USA. Everyone else has been to an MLG previously so we all had experience going into it.
Since I live in California it was kinda pointless to fly me down to Anaheim. Instead Rocker had decided to drive down from Seattle with his friend and girlfriend and agreed to pick me up on the way down. Their drive was somewhere around the 20hour ball park which is insanely long. Luckily for me the drive would only be somewhere around 6-7 hours from where they picked me up to Anaheim.
Thursday rolled around and I met up with Rocker to begin the drive down to Anaheim which was a fairly dull experience as driving down from NorCal to SoCal is quite boring if you don't take the coastal route. Lots of nothing. Well nothing and grass. After 6-7hours we finally arrived and found our way to the hotel and met up with the rest of the team. Everyone except Zelniq was there as he lived close by so he'd drive up the next day instead of coming early.
We decided to find a LAN cafe and practice a few hours and luckily we found a place not too far away. It was kinda small and not the most impressive place but hey it had computers with Starcraft and enough room to play so we sat down and played. For the most part we just played ladder or with other practice partners on the team. There was also Bryan with us (manager), his friend Trident (some older broodwar people may know him) and Mike, who was philibirds friend that I had met in Dallas. It was a good experience playing right next to teammates and occasionally some of the other people in the place would watch us. Specifically some koreans who would talk in korean while we played so they could have been talking shit and we wouldn't know
It was around 3am when we left the LAN and headed back to the hotel to go to bed. Next day we walked down to the convention center since our hotel was nearby. It was quite crowded outside the venue when we got there with a huge line waiting for spectators. Thankfully as players we don't have to wait in huge lines, just the short ones to checkin and then after that waiting to go into the venue.
Once the doors opened everyone flooded in and it was quite awesome. It seemed much larger than the other two venues plus StarCraft 2 was mainstage for the first time so we were right in the middle. There was a lot of people. A lot. And besides spectators there was a lot of really awesome people that would be playing in the tournament like Boxer and the Slayers guys, White-ra (though he wasn't there on time ><) and MVP.
After the usual opening ceremony everyone rushed over to wait for the brackets to get posted. There's almost always four 'heats' within the first round, so you can either play right away or not until somewhere around 8-9pm, so asking the information person at the desk when you play is a really good thing to do. I don't recall which heat I was in but the person I was playing I think was in platinum or silver and I won pretty fast. Everyone else also won their first match except theognis whom lost to Ddoro. That was quite a bummer because theo is really good and it was hopefully going to be a really good breakout tournament for him. Rocker also lost but he had to play Tyler first round which is lame having to PvP against a good player first round.
Next round I played megumibear, the girl who streams a lot on teamliquid and does some other stuff for sc2. I won but it was a bittersweet victory because I had already found out who I'd be playing in round 3. SlayersGanzi. I actually felt confident that I could at least do well vs him and maybe even take a game. When the match rolled around I had the unfortunate pleasure of discovering the first map was Xelnaga Caverns, which is the worst ZvT map in the pool by a lot. I hated that map, and still do (doesn't everyone??) and it put a big cloud over the match for me.
I actually held off the "Slayers" build really easily, which at that point hadn't become well known since it was first shown at Raleigh. But despite holding it off easily I still got destroyed on that map. In typical zerg fashion I went for metalopolis game2 and ended up losing in a somewhat disappointing way as I kept losing my third base. It was my first time against a korean at an MLG and I lost really disappointingly 0-2. It was a shitty feeling losing that early, especially considering I made it through the first day at Columbus. It got worse as I found out both Agh and Zelniq lost in the same round, so now we were all out on the first day except inka. Inka made it through the first day after beating Axslav in round 4.
Day 1 was over and it was not a good day for us, except for inka. The only blessing around losing in the 3rd or 4th round at MLG is you don't have to be at the venue until around 3pm, so you at least get to sleep in. Inka, theognis and Rocker didn't get that benefit though, since two of them lost first round and inka was in winners 5 they had to be there early to play. Inka ended up losing to Tyler, but Rocker and theognis made it through the next few rounds.
The rest of us, myself, Zelniq and Agh, went down to play our matches sometime around 3pm. Again this was another bad day for us as a team as Zelniq lost 1-2 vs Ddoro as his first match and Agh lost his first match against a zerg. Our luck was even worse as myself and theognis ran into each other in the bracket. Theo had been doing well and breezed through the first three rounds of losers bracket and then we met and had to play. It's a really lame experience having to play a teammate as you both know the others play style well and you have to wonder... is he going to take advantage of that? As it turns out I psyched myself out a little and misread his build in the last game and he won the series 2-1. There's a shitty feeling of being out of the tournament but being glad it was a teammate you lost too that got to move on.
It's like maybe 5pm and already four of us are out as Rocker had lost the previous round. Inka still didn't have to play until somewhere around 7 or 8 and theo was still trucking through the losers bracket. We decided to go check out the "players" lounge that was set up at the nearby hotel. When we arrived it was mostly empty except the host and a few others, but we were the only players there. It was a large enough place, a big living room, a bar, a pool table and a room in the back. There was also a outside area and since it was really high up it had a cool view. We hung out up there a lot that day, mostly just myself, Zelniq and Agh with Trident (who was always drunk
). Inka eventually left to go play his match and we stayed to hang out as a few more people slowly arrived throughout the evening.Theognis ended up losing in round 6 against I think Russano, which was unfortunate but he had a good run through the losers bracket despite having lost the first round in winners. When you win a lot and lose you have to wait a bunch, but in losers bracket as soon as you have to play you keep going everytime with almost no break between matches so it was a good little test of endurance for him. Inka won his match against Namchir but lost against Attero in the same round I made it to in Columbus. It was kinda unexpected but it was PvP so whatever. Now the entire team is done so we spent a good portion of the night hanging in the player lounge as it got increasingly fuller when more and more players that had lost arrived.
Day 3 was spectator day and I'd say so far Anaheim was the best event all year for spectating. The crowd was HUGE in Anaheim and had a crazy atmosphere about it. The one downside of every MLG final is that the games are usually not that good or there's just too few of them because of the extended series rule. But the quality of the games is always made up for by the fact the crowd is nutty and brings really good energy. MVP won and we all left the venue and made our way to the players lounge again.
The players lounge was an okay experience as it was cool hanging out with a lot of the players and seeing White-ra be awesome and drink with anyone. A lot of players were there but it was kinda crowded and the host kept having to tell people to quiet down, so there was definitely some negatives to being there. A few funny experiences though; Boxer and the Slayers guys came at some point on I think Saturday, but anyway there was a strict rule against pestering the more well known players and especially the koreans. This rule was broken spectacularly by Slurgi who had been drinking some and went full fanboy mode on Boxer. After the fact apparently they had to usher the slayers team out so that didn't happen again. The outside area was where a lot of people were hanging out and at one point someone had closed the screen leading out, I think it was Rain, ran right into it and knocked it off the track. I was looking almost directly at it when it happened so it was quite funny seeing his reaction.
After awhile due to the restrictions of the players lounge people were slowly leaving so a few of us left and made our way back to the hotel. From there we left again and found our way to the Fire & Ice bar which is where JustinTV was having their after party. Oh boy was that place just full of people from the scene. You could move from one section to another section to another and meet different well known players, casters, managers etc. I wasn't drinking again since I rarely do but it was still a cool experience. Unfortunately I had to leave early as Rocker wanted to leave at 2am since they had a 20ish hour drive ahead of them so I missed out on the tail ends of the party and a few of the other little after parties that happened. 2am rolled around and we drove off.
Before I recap my thoughts on Anaheim there's a little story about the drive home. We were all tired since it was 2am and none of us had really had any sleep, me especially since I hadn't slept at all. So most of the drive was three of us sleeping while someone was driving. Somehow, I'm not sure when or where, we ended up completely off course and were going towards San Francisco at one point, which was at least two hours away from where I was meant to be dropped off. So even though we made good time we managed to go like an hour too far west, then we drove too far north and had to turn around. It doesn't sound funny but it's one of those things you laugh about after the fact.
Anyway, in terms of the actual tournament MLG was really bad for myself and the team. Inka did the best but even then he had a good chance of going even further than he did. I don't beat myself up too bad about it though as I ran into Ganzi who is a superbly skilled terran on Slayers and had the bad luck of running into a teammate which could have gone either way. Anaheim was really good as an event, probably the best out of all of them.
Next we move towards Raleigh which was like right around the corner from Anaheim. I think it was barely a month, or less, between the two events. That isn't a whole lot of time to really prepare for a tournament so before I knew it I was off flying to the east coast again.
Raleigh was the time of that wonderful hurricane While it really didn't affect the event much I did have a wonderful scare on the way there with my flight. Initially my flight was delayed enough that they were going to set me up with another flight a few hours later, but thankfully the plane did arrive and took off in time. The worrying part was my connecting flight and whether I had enough time to make it and through some miracle I was able too. The fun part came when they weren't able to take off and had to sit on the tarmac for around an hour. That wasn't too bad as for whatever reason my flight reservation had been upgraded due to the issues or something like that, I don't really know, but point being is I had no one sitting near me so I could just lay out and wait for the plane to leave. The shitty part came when they said they'd have take the plane back if they didn't get a confirmation soon. Thankfully they did and we were off, almost two hours delayed. I didn't care at that point but it wasn't a fun experience having my first run in with large delays.
Anyway I finally got to Raleigh and was picked up by Ben who had driven again, this time picking up theognis and his friend. The players on our team going to this MLG were myself, theognis, Agh and inka. So we got to the hotel and when everyone got there we decided to go to a LAN center like how we did at Anaheim. We only had one car so we took two trips except me and Ben went to eat before staying at the LAN. We went to the Gypsy Shiny Diner, which is kinda a pointless thing to point out but I liked the name of it >.> Alright so we got to the LAN and it was a really nice place, much bigger and roomier than the one at Anaheim and we stayed there for quite awhile, I think until 2-3am.
Day 1 of Raleigh begins! Our hotel was a bit out of the way though so basically when you got to the venue you had to stay there unless you were able to hitch a ride in the van our team rented. In any case we got there and checked in and headed in to get warmed up. The venue was a lot smaller this time compared to the others, if anything I'd say it was possibly the smallest. There always wasn't that many people as before which was a by product of the wonderful hurricane going on somewhere on the east coast. Opening ceremony and off we go to wait for the brackets! Oh, I'd like to point out that having a smartphone with internet is a good damn wonderful tool to bring to an MLG as you can just look online for the brackets.
I assume due to the hurricane or just being smaller in general there was less people playing in the open bracket so Agh, inka and myself all had byes first round. Theognis didn't but his first round was an easy win anyway. Round 2 I had a ZvZ which at this point was my worst matchup and I really wanted to dodge as many zergs as I could. Thankfully he wasn't very good so I won without much issue but it went downhill from there.
Round 3 of winners I ran into ostojiy the zerg player. Oh great, a ZvZ vs someone good. Fuck. As it were I ended up losing 1-2, once again being out on day 1 by winners round 3. It was shitty because unlike Anaheim where I lost to a korean this time it was against someone I was very capable of beating but had the bad luck of it being a ZvZ. Agh also lost his mirror match against some protoss that I don't really remember. Awesomely both theognis and inka made it through the first four rounds on day 1, inka getting revenge on Attero and taking him out 2-0 and theognis winning 2-1 against Spades.
Overall it wasn't a terrible day, losing sucks but having two of our four players make it through was cool. Next day me and Agh didn't have to go in until later so theognis and inka went to play their round 5 matches. Theo had shitty luck and had to play Noblesse while Inka had to play Tyler again which he lost 1-2 (again). Me and agh made our way to the venue and started our matches in round 4 losers around 3pm.
My first match was against... a zerg! Of course. But thankfully he wasn't that good and I won it without much issue. Then finally in losers 5 I had a non mirror match (by now I'd only played ZvZ) against CheckSixVer. I was slightly worried as I knew he was a good terran with some slightly unorthodox play but I played really well and took the series 2-0. Losers 6 was against Attero and same as Ver I was slightly worried as I knew him too be fairly good. I won the series 2-0 which was actually a lot easier than I had anticipated. I was feeling really good at that point because I showed myself if I had played non ZvZ match ups I'd have done really well in the tournament. Naturally to balance that out I had to play a ZvZ next round against iSjEcho.
This is one of those series that sticks with you months after, not so much the series but one game in particular. It's on Shattered Temple and I get a huge lead by sneaking two lings and making banelings in his main and killing a lot of drones. At this point my brainwent "you won!" and shut down... when I needed to be thinking "okay you're ahead do this this and this". I lost. He did an all-in because he was too behind economically, and I knew it was coming. I knew it but my brain died on me, and I lost. Felt so shitty. Soooooo shitty.
Slightly funnier to note that had I won then the next round, losers 8, would have been an extended series zvz vs ostojiy. Jeez someone REALLY wanted me to play ZvZ this tournament. On a brighter note the others were doing well up until losers round 8. Agh and theognis both lost close series, Agh vs painuser and theo vs rsvp. Inka had a fairly poor series against the zerg player Lost. So what was going to be a really awesome tournament went sour in that one round. All in all as a team we didn't do terribly but by now we expected ourselves to do better and go further. I felt really shitty because had my luck with matchups been a little better and I didn't get ZvZ every fricking round I felt like I could have done really well, but alas it is what it is.
After that we went to the bar attached to the hotel, had some drinks (I drank a little at Raleigh) and then our group went out in search of a place to eat. After walking around awhile they found some restaurant/bar place to eat. They carded you but I'm 22 so w/e ezpz right? Wrong! The guy said there's some law in North Carolina about out of state ID's not being valid, only out of state licenses. Since I don't have a driver's licenses and only my state ID that meant they I can't go in. By that point everyone else had gone in so I called Ben (who was in there) to let him know what happened. And being a truly awesome person he came out and when he was unable to persuade the bouncerpeoplethingies he stayed with me and we went back towards the convention center to eat at the little shops they had. After that we chilled and waited for the group to come back. I think after that we went back to the hotel.
On Sunday we mostly stayed around the hotel awhile before we went to the venue where me, theognis and his friend watched the games. We mostly only caught the last few series and the finals. Despite the crowds being smaller there was still a lot of energy so the experience was still cool to be part of. After that I think we ended up going out to dinner as the owner of Quantic Gaming wanted to take the StarCraft team to dinner. So we did that, than I'm pretty sure we made our way back to the hotel bar next to the convention center and from there it was mostly people hanging out and drinking. It was a cool night, at one point a few of us went outside and sat down at some of the tables and none other than Tasteless himself came and sat with us. Mostly because of theognis as theo was known in the usa scene back when he played broodwar so he was old buddies with Tasteless, Artosis and a bunch of others. Still, it was cool meeting Tasteless in that setting as well as some other people and players.
Sadly my flight was really early, I think maybe 6am, so I had to leave early and got taken to the airport with some of the other Quantic players from other games. Thankfully my flight left without any problems this time and made it back safe and sound to California without any issues.
Overall not a bad event, but could have been better and as I said we expected to do better as a team. But it was still fun and the after portion of MLGs are always a blast even though I often have to leave early ><
Originally I didn't plan for this too be longer than two parts but alas I write way too much in an effort to rattle my brain for all the details so this ended up really long. I'll have to finish the rest tomorrow for part 3 which will cover Orlando/Providence. Again any questions go ahead and ask them and I'll answer.
