MY Daily #100

Hi everyone, my name is Justin, and this is my first blog post. I am hoping it is kind of inspirational to some people. It was inspired from 2 things: 1: The day9 daily #100, where Sean basically talks about the same thing I am, and 2: From me wanting to share my silly stories, which never get attention from a regular post.

I know that I'm technically a nobody on TeamLiquid, especially considering I have like, only 100 posts, but I'm hoping my story will interest and maybe even inspire some of you. This is a very LONG post. I'd suggest not reading it unless you have a lot of time. I will hope to make it interesting by adding pictures and captions.

So I guess I would have to start my history at StarCraft 1, and Brood War. I was very young then. The highlights of my week would be going to the Bennigan's(RIP) near my school, which doesn't exist anymore, and going home and watching the Cartoon Network Friday Nights special, which also doesn't exist anymore. My hobbies were collecting/constructing Bionicle sets and anything that has to do with dinosaurs.(All 3 of which I still enjoy to this day)

I recall my brother bought the StarCraft Battle Chest one day, in a store near Publix. I was immediately hooked to the game as soon as it was introduced to me. From there, I chose the zerg race. Again, for two specific reasons. 1: I was very young, very into dinosaurs, (as I mentioned above) and the zerg kind of resembled dinosaurs to me, at least way more so than the Protoss or Terran. 2nd of all, I was at that age when all the kids can't share anything, not even a race in a video game. My older brother (the one who had purchased Battle Chest) chose Terran. The second oldest brother in my family chose Protoss. I was stuck with zerg, a decision that I don't regret at all. But later on, I found a completely new reason to love, almost literally, the zerg.

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She will always be the Queen Bitch of my whole universe.

Yes, I admit it. I wasn't even ten yet, and I found Sarah Kerrigan to be the most beautiful woman alive. (Or dead, if you see it that way) It almost grew to a very unhealthy obsession, luckily through my Legos I was able to express these feelings, or else I might've ended up a very, very, twisted and sick man. (on a little editorial, I hate how much they totally destroyed Kerrigan's character in StarCraft 2, although she is still very, very sexy)

Also, I know what you are thinking when I say I expressed myself through "toys". Not like that, you sickos. I basically recreated the whole StarCraft universe with my little 1x1 bricks, characters would be made out of little 1by1s stacked on top of each other. I created all these little situations where Jim Raynor, the Dominion, or the Protoss would try to kill Kerrigan and just by a hand-wave, she would destroy the entire fleet. Tassadar was never involved though because, of course much lower on the romantic scale, Tassadar was also one of my heroes.

I was also a very heavy campaign player. I would never play any customs. Just campaign. I would always use cheats too. Right as the game started, I would stare down at the keyboard (this was when I wasn't such a great typist) and as quickly as possible, I would type: "power overwhelming", (Invincibility, except for friendly fire and spawn broodling) "show me the money", (10000 minerals and gas) "operation cwal", (quick build time) "black sheep wall", (no fog of war) and later, "the gathering" (infinite energy) would be added to the list. It was for this reason that I never could play the level "Kel-Morian Combine", because as soon as I typed in "operation cwal", my objectives of reaching 10000 of each resource would be fulfilled and the level would be over.

So many years later, I was a bit older and I started playing Fastest Possible Maps. This was a lot of fun with the rest of my family, and we even got my cousin involved. This would be the peak of my "actual play" in the game. I never really got into ladder or 1v1s. As I was graduating from the 5th grade, I saw some gameplay footage for StarCraft 2. This was actually several years before its actual release. I remember being so excited for SC 2, but I was also a naysayer. As Destiny calls a "nostalgia fag" I never wanted the change to happen. I feared the unknown future. (I mean, now I know it's great but back then it was pretty sketchy)

And we've gone this far without any talk about eSports! For all these years I had been playing StarCraft, not knowing that this whole phenomena of eSports existed. And as I found out later, in America, eSports really didn't exist that much.

So my first venture in to the world of eSports is when I went to Korea. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I'm Vietnamese. And at this point in time, I am still, very, very young. So when my Church(which was basically fully Vietnamese except for people who were married to other races, or friends, etc) was having a missionary trip to Korea, my parents insisted that I had to tag along. Why South Korea? Well because (I'm still not so sure) with Vietnam being a communist country and whatnot, there were some issues with getting in and witnessing. So a Vietnamese community within South Korea was the second best thing. On the plane ride there, I watched "Little Miss Sunshine" several times, and it's one of the few films that I can say is better than Jurassic Park. (Also on the list is Inception and Monty Python and the Holy Grail).

So in Korea, I was flicking through channels, and first stumbled on Warcraft being broadcasted. I didn't really play Warcraft so I just changed the channel, but figured if they had Warcraft they probably had StarCraft too! (That is, not two, but also) And yes, they did have StarCraft. Hooray! It was about the only thing I watched (aside from Astro Boy) because even though I couldn't understand it, I knew I could understand it. So that was the extent of my eSports entry for a long time.

So eventually StarCraft 2 came out, and I didn't really give it much thought. My cousin got the game, and he liked to talk about it, but mostly with my brother (the second youngest one). I never really cared much for StarCraft 2 until my cousin showed me a video during thanksgiving. This is going to sound like the stupidest thing ever, but the thing that got me into StarCraft 2 was a video by HuskyStarCraft....

Contrary to what you probably think, I actually prefer to say "YOU CAN'T LEAVE!!!!" when I get good baneling hits

So yeah, Husky's silly Justin Beiber parody is what convinced me to give StarCraft 2 a shot. It's for this reason that, although many people despise Husky and find him horribly annoying, I will always respect him for all the work he's done and the positive influence he has had on promoting eSports. Same with Thegunrun. (Maybe shoulda had a new paragraph for that one?)

When I first started StarCraft 2 I only played campaign, like most casuals. My only 1v1 experience came with "Versus AI". I tried a build I found on Husky's channel, called "Basic Roach Opener" and it worked for some games but not all. Noob me, I thought it was economical, but I really went all-in every single game.

So one day I was bored of single player StarCraft 2 and decided to go into the practice league. So this was my real 1 on 1 competitive ladder kind of situation, so of course going into it I was shaking like crazy. And believe me when I say this, the practice league was HORRIBLE! And completely Zerg unfavored. I truly believe it did me more harm than help in the practice league. The destructible debris on the ramp made it so that you couldn't fast expand, which is very detrimental for zerg.

I always remembered my first match. It was against a guy named rlharper (yes, I even remember his name) who I can now proudly say is still around bronze-silver while I have moved on to bigger and better things.

I was going my standard "Husky Roach Build" and by the time I hit his base, he had about 2-3 banshees out. The banshees went to town on my roaches, but I kept reinforcing and he was down to 2 buildings. Of course, being the evil imba terran that he is, he just lifts off and my roaches can do nothing. He also realizes that he doesn't even have to kill my roaches, and he flies his banshees into my base and kills my one queen and everything else.

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It's true, Evil really is sexy...

So the rest of practice league was mostly uneventful and I finally got around to doing placement. My very first placement match I beat a bronze guy and he quit the game without a gg. I was so proud of myself, getting a guy to ragequit like that. Unfortunately, my happiness was not to last. I lost every other placement match except one where my opponent disconnected. Going 2-3 in Placement, I was placed into bronze league.

There wasn't much to say when i was in bronze. I rarely played 1v1s, opting instead for the horrible 3v3s and 4v4s. And while my ZvP was exceptional, I had literally not won any ZvTs. My problem was that I kept trying to play ZvP and ZvT the same way, which really does not work.

You say all terrans ezpz? Well you try going Roach/Hydra in ZvT!

The sad part is that DongRaeGu actually defeated TLO in a TvZ using Hydralisks. And speaking of which, TLO switched to zerg and also beat a terran using hydralisks. Maybe I just suck =(

So, like I said, I was bronze. And as such, I would always get offended at the bronze stereotypes. "Oh, bronze players don't know how to get off of one base!" "Oh, bronze players don't know how to perform a build order!!!"

I understood the skill level of bronze was a very vast one. And while I am by no means saying that ANY bronze player is good, there are several "tiers" of bad. Bronze ranged from "Literally doesn't know how to play the game" (the tier that most of bronze belongs to stereotypically) to "Really bad". (Which is where I was)

I would always be offended when people said bronze was so bad, as I was bronze, and I never thought I was that bad. At least, I knew how to expand to 2 bases and how to read a build order and how to set a rally point. How could these guys say these things? It's not true!

Well, that summer I had adamantly insisted that I would become Silver by the end of the summer, or die trying. (Luckily I made it :D) I had received a lesson from Rekatan during the middle of the summer, and although I often credit the lesson for getting me from bronze to silver, I had realized that it was just in me the whole time to make it to silver. I just had to play! After only about 30 wins, I was promptly promoted in season 3. (it was, however, due to Rekatan's lessons that I made it from Silver to Gold. More on that later)

During this time, I went through the metamorphosis that most everybody goes through: I stopped playing random teams. I just stopped and started becoming a serious 1v1 player. My 4v4 random ranking sat at bronze until the end of the season, where it didn't go anywhere after that. Same with my 3v3 rankings. I had continued to play team games with my friends, but the fanaticism that I had with team games disappeared, instead transferred to 1v1s.

My lesson with Rekatan was a huge turning point in my StarCraft 2 skills. His teaching skill was incredible. I really didn't know what to ask him when I won his free coaching monday, so I just said "zvz". Instead, we spent an hour with him teaching me how to macro and drone efficiently. It was incredible. He knew what I wanted to learn BEFORE I even wanted to learn it. So that brings me to an answer in the huge debate of "lessons or no lessons for bronzies". When it comes to getting better, nothing beats good practice. However, I recommend you get ONE lesson, just to put you on the right path.

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"If you can drone correctly, you can dodge a ball."

And so that brings me to the end of my story so far. I know it's not as good as Day9's but we can't all be special...

Some may have noticed a decline in quality as the story went along. Well the thing is I wanted to do this in one go and it's getting pretty late. Anyway, I've NEVER really been good at endings, so I'm not even going to try now. Goodbye everybody.

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When I'm grandmaster...

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