EPTEywa here, bringing you another blog (this time hopefully not to cause drama ;d)... Anyhow, this blog is more focused on the ecstasy that BW can provide. You see, generally, when I lose a game against an even to lower rank player, I feel really bad about myself, which I guess is reasonable, I mean... I don't get as mad as some people... So, why would I play BW if it were just for that horrible feeling of losing to someone whom I am pretty confident I could have defeated... Well, I probably wouldn't play. Well, there is a stronger opposite force that also comes from BW. And really, just from competition of any kind.
I'm not good enough to play for money, so I mean... I just play for pride and crap like that and there is no better feeling when you win under that pressure against all odds. This is the satisfaction that I would get from winning the grudgematches which were played against NinaZerg, though that isn't the focus of this blog, the focus of this blog is DRTL.
D ranks team league, organized by Cobalt, was really the first clan league which I had taken part in. I was placed on a team, expecting to be just another player and I wasn't going to assume any responsibility whatsoever. Then, time came when Team 7, lucky #7 needed a team leader and I just couldn't not step up. So, I did just that, I took the leadership position and with the players we had it was clear to me that we were going to make out quite well in the league (aside from some minor hick ups - i.e. failed hydra bust against 1 cannon ;
. Anyhow, I became regular practice partners with my basically most valuable teammate, 
Nikon. At first, I 6-0'd him.. But then I was hard pressed to win another game ;d, he was quick to get back on his feat and then basically went like... 30-5 against me or some ridiculous count. The notion that I liked to do gateway first builds into fe was becoming common knowledge and so I had to switch to forge fe and though I lost all these games to Nikon, I didn't mind because... I knew if I was winning in DRTL official games, Nikon would as well. And so we did, Nikon more so than me, as expected and I didn't always give myself a chance to play being as if it didn't make it past the first 3, odds are I didn't put myself in the draw since I always saved myself for last being one of the top players on the team. I told Nikon early on in the season that if I ever had to make an ace decision, I would put him in unless he wanted me to put myself in. So, as the season went on, our lineup grew thin, our two other protosses were pretty inactive and our Terran player disappeared off the face of the earth after going 3-0 in our first 3 clan wars. We had to ask teams to allow recycle of players and what not because we couldn't field a full lineup.Now, this was happening around when we first played GGNORE who were the other strongest team in the league. And what it ended up creating is somewhat of a rivalry, but the rivalry of course was short lived because it also marks the beginning of the end for GGNORE. What happened in that clan war turned out to be quite a defining moment in DRTL when I asked for recycling of players, they agreed, I took a screen shot, sent it to Cobalt and then... I forget what they wanted, but I declined right away and then the player who was representing them at the time was like... Wait a second, we don't agree to recycle then. Then I responded, you don't have a choice anymore, Cobalt has proof that we agreed on it. This moment was not the ideal manner that I would have liked to give, however, given the competitive spirit I have, I couldn't allow my team to lose this very important clan war. It was just like... Two teams tied for first, we can't lose this and then expect to win the league. Anyhow, all that aside, at this point, Master goes off like a fucking barrel of gasoline lit on fire, he just got so angry and lost all focus... We hadn't even played game 1. At this point, the Clan War was already over essentially because the meta-game was already won. So we had obs in our first game and Nikon... Who hadn't played in a while because of the Christmas break decided to 4 pool... Now, I mean, Conversion (which generally plays PvZ, however being as the rules require a race shout for race pickers, I demanded it - ended up ZvZ)... So, Nikon 4 pooling in like... his tied for best match up and I'm like fuck fuck fuck fuck WHY!? (In my head). So, before Conversion even gets a chance to decide what he's doing, the team rep who had already lost his cool and who was raging in the chat at the start of the game shouts out "FUCK YOU CHEESER". And... Just like that, first game was won by DQ. Now, you may be like... Why the fuck would this make you feel good about yourself? I haven't gotten to the point yet, keep reading. So, following this, Nikon and I each won one of the following 3 matches(Nikon was recycled)... So the clan war ended 3-1. Now, this is a turning point in DRTL because after this day, GGNORE had not put together a single functioning lineup for the remainder of the season. They would show up in fragments and when Conversion and littlelives did show up again, they found themselves out of practice because they had stopped after their clan mate just basically fucked them over.
So, that being the most important part of the season, now we get closer to the playoffs and little by little the pieces fall back into place for Team 7,
Sabas would become more active with Brood War towards the end of the season as did roflcopta. We had also acquired two new players who wanted to be on the same team together Prophecy_ and Gao Xi. Once I played with Prophecy and Gao, I was fairly confident that team 7 had the championship in the bag... and then the most peculiar thing happens, I come back from class after our last clan war of the season (I had arranged that if any games were leftover, the last set would be pp'd so that I could play after class). My team tells me "Hey Eywa-, Score 2-2, you have to play"... I'm just like losing my mind now, I haven't played in weeks and this team who took us to ace wasn't even going to be making the playoffs. Now I'm just like wtf wtf wtf. So angry with myself for not practicing, disappointed in my team for making me play and then it hit me, I was a huge part of the team when we first started as being a potential ace player for it and now I'm like.. Fuck I don't want to play, guaranteed loss. Then the pieces started to fall together and I realized, if I were going to bring team 7 to victory, I was going to have to play and I would have to deliver as a great deciding factor as I had on a couple occasions in the past. So, I didn't feel good about taking the game, but I took it. PvP... Fuck my life. So, here he is, sitting outside my base with dragoons, I'm like.. I gotta break the ramp, set my reaver down on the ramp, lose the reaver, lose the shuttle, lose all my shit. I'm like god fucking damn it... WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU TRY TO MICRO A REAVER WHEN YOU COULD HARDLY DO IT WHILE FULLY PRACTICED!? So, I left the game, I was so angry with myself I couldn't believe I had just lost and then my opponent pm'd me on TL and he said:From: Jealous [ 242 posts | Profile | Buddy | Report ]
Subject: GG
Date: 1/29/12 05:33
Don't be too hard on yourself, you just need to work on your reaver positioning when breaking a contain. You put it visible on ramp, needs to be higher up on ramp to prevent me from attacking it ^^; GG
The I'm like, you know, he's right... I shouldn't be too hard on myself, I should just practice more. And that's what I did. And then came the next weekend, first round of the playoffs... Semi-Final match vs Team All Kill Kings. I have to go to school at 9 in the am. So I'm in calculus class, 11am, Clan War begins... I have no idea what my team is doing but I just pray to god they don't fall apart. I skip the second half of my 5 hour class being as it was just going to be review and I'm like.. Calc, ezpz, no need for review. I get home at about 11:30... Team 7 is down 0-2. My jaw dropped to the fucking floor. We had 3 players left, those were Gao, Nikon and I... I had to win a fucking game in order for us to win the clan war or we'd be eliminated how frightening is that... 1 loss from being eliminated, 3 wins from moving on. I gave my team the dirty look for the abysmal choice of line up they had put together I'm like how did you pick that? "Oh, he wanted to play"... I wasn't pleased, but to drag that on would have made it worse, we needed to focus on our comeback. I wasn't feeling good about it. I sent out our top gun first,
Gao Xi was out on the field and I am getting updates from Shimy who was obsing the game between the top player of Team All Kill Kings 
sGs.Fantasy and the top player of our team Gao Xi. At one point, we get to "Fantasy way ahead, I think it's over now"... My head just sunk down into my keyboard, didn't know what to think at that point in time, I wasn't there to lead my team to victory and they didn't have any organization ready being as I took care of all of it all season long. Then, about 5 minutes later, Shimy tells me about marines running into lurkers... Game has evened up and I'm like FUCK YEAH! SHURUKEN U DA MAN! 3-1. So now, the game's still going but I know the outcome and so I get Nikon and I tell him he's up next... Match Point... We agreed that it was too bad we didn't have a Terran to send out on there because we both hate the map and I just hate it more. So, I didn't get any updates at all during this game, Nikon vs Dewski... I was so confident in Nikon's ability that I never even suspected a loss, I had been counting on him all season and he wasn't going to let me down now. And so, after the game, he comes to channel, announces the win and I now need to play the final deciding match of a 2-2 Clan War. Now, before I get too much into that particular set, I wanted to say something about Nikon because, he had been the most dedicated player to our team all season long. Always showed, just about always won. And... After my game, he got me to watch his replay, I couldn't believe the dedication, it was just... absolutely ridiculous.
Dewski goes for 2 port wraith, Nikon is ill prepared... His drone line gets massacred, overlords, etc. Nikon is down by 30+ supply. And that's when I realized, Nikon's dedication was the main reason we had gotten that far in the league. He fought his way back from being down 30 supply in a 40 minute long game on Match Point. While most players would have lost their morale and been forced to gg after such a devastating blow from the wraiths, he grabbed himself a pack of mutalisk and just went over to the Terran base, ravaged the mineral line of the natural and all the marines that were trying to defend it, once the harass was done, they were back to even on supply, however, the Terran tech was significantly ahead and Dewski managed to build a massive vessel cloud, but Nikon never gave up, ended up scourging every last vessel and Dewski was eventually forced into a no win scenario as he decided to go for cattlebruisers in the late game... And I think that's really what defined both of these players, not the skill difference, but pure will to win and the need to force it upon themselves. It is something that I could not have done and I'm quite glad to have had this player on my squad.And now that I've praised Nikon enough, I shall move onto my own set. It was a PvZ, I was quite nervous... I was VERY nervous. I spawn bottom right on Circuit Breaker,
L3gendary spawns top right. Right off the bat, I just told myself, you know how to play this, just throw down the forge, and set the cannons down. You're better than this fool, you don't need to cut corners. And so, I throw the forge down and I scout the 9 O'Clock position (not a spawn position but an overlord path because on Circuit Breaker, scouting is always vertical for overlords - Ofc, L3gendary scouted in the wrong direction, but that's not the point I'm making). Dewski now calls out in all chat "Why the fuck is Eywa- scouting the 9 O'Clock". Surely enough, L3gendary knew, he turned his overlord around and sent a drone straight down to my base. I was pretty upset, I'm not going to lie, but I wasn't going to argue anything because I knew if I got into an argument, I wouldn't have the focus to play. So, I scout his main as well, and fuck, his pool finishes, lings spawning, no fucking cannons at my front... I throw down my cannons and pull probes off the line once the lings hatch and I was just praying that I wouldn't lose in a stupid fashion like this, he had the drone there thanks to genius observer and he knew my cannons weren't up, so not a shot in hell he'd have the lings chase the scout probe. I forget if it was 1 or 2 probes the price that was paid to fend off the lings while the cannons warped in, but it was worth it because it gave me a real sharp sense of the gravity of the situation and I just tried to do everything as perfectly as possible. Now, my macro wasn't 100%, but it floated a lot less than it did in many other games I had played, I didn't forget storm and I didn't forget obs. I was basically all set for the win. I sniped his macro hatch at his third base location with ranged dragoons out of sunken range, there is nothing he can do about it. Then in an act of pure stupidity I move into the third with my army and I get C.R.U.S.H.E.D from all sides. I'm like holy fuck, he went all units, no econ.... So I'm just spamming my gateways, I know that queuing the gateways wont help me at this point but I need the reassurance that I'm actually macroing (which I'm not). And I'm just like fuck fuck fuck, he comes in with a very nice force of hydra, breaks through just about everything, but an absolutely stellar probe drill comes out and saves the day for me and my team. From here on out, it was pretty much all smooth sailing, he had just lost a huge portion of his army on an attempted bust that failed and his army was basically his only investment, there was none in econ, yes he took a fourth, but I was mining more off 2 base. I pumped up my army, he had a contain at the bridges going with lurkers so I broke to the south west and took the high ground. At this point, the game is over, I have the high ground against a contain of lurkers with a good heavy force... I mashed down the ramp and headed straight out to his third with my just about maxed army and punched through the third, to the fourth(main behind the third) and then back into the third (once my backup came from behind since he kind of tried to set up a mini-contain for my army). During all this, I dropped a DT in his natural that cleared out every single drone. With 3 drones on minerals, he has no use for the recently constructed hive and is forced to GG.Now, in this very moment I was so exhilarated and just uncontrollably happy, it was a great feeling to pull through and qualify my team for their spot in the finals. I was just so happy with myself and then, as I said above I watched Nikon's replay and while I was still fucking ridiculously happy. I noticed that his game was much harder fought than mine was. Which kind of was like a "Oh yeah, not all me, team also did great." Though, that generally never slips my head, when I just win an ace match in a tied clan war of a semi-final, I'm overwhelmed by joy and I kind of lose track of the rest of the clan war entirely. That's kind of the extent of focus I had during that game. Just such a rush came afterwards.
So now, I leave this game behind and face the one week preparation for the big game. The final clan war. I had thought about it a lot because I just wanted to win so badly. Once I had the opponent's line up figured out, I adjusted mine accordingly. I knew we would win, yet... I was very anxious. Us winning didn't take into account the possibility of our players performing below their normal level. The line up I had planned out was going to be
Skeggaba <<Circuit Breaker>> Prophecy_razryv <<Jade>> SabasR-Dizzle <<Ground Zero>> NikonPanix <<Fighting Spirit>> Gao XiEssbee <<Matchpoint>> Eywa-This lineup seemed very good for me and I knew that would be the order in which they would come out in. I didn't think that I could beat Essbee, but I knew it would be 4-0 in the first 4 sets. All of my players playing in their absolute best match ups... It was a guarantee basically. Then, when we got to the clan war site, everything changed. First, R-Dizzle announces he has to go soon in the public chat (admittedly not the best move by him, if anything him not saying anything would have made me doubt my lu). So, it got rearranged.
R-Dizzle <<Circuit Breaker>> Prophecy_razryv <<Jade>> SabasSkeggaba <<Ground Zero>> Gao XiPanix <<Fighting Spirit>> NikonEssbee <<Matchpoint>> Eywa-Once I had that figured out, I was still very confident in my lineup, I asked prophecy if he was ready to go with his best match up (PM ofc) and he was pretty excited that I got him a PvZ... But then the unthinkable happened... R-Dizzle race picked to Protoss and it ended up being PvP. So... I was like herp derp, his PvP can't be too good because he plays ZvP generally. Though Prophecy's PvP had just lost in the Semi-Final so who knows... Anyhow, stream is up, I'm watching as R-Dizzle goes for a DT rush, Prophecy goes for an expansion first and sets down a cannon at the front of his natural and everyone from team 7 was basically like FUCK YEAH in the stream chat... and then... PROPHECY WTF!? He cancels the cannon at his natural. My heart stops (not really), but I had written that off as the end for prophecy. Prophecy repositioned the cannon at his front, but it wouldn't be in time, HOWEVER, he also put a cannon in his main at range of the ramp. The army of R-Dizzle reaches the ramp, cannon just barely finishes as Prophecy tries to delay. Cannon survives. DT out for Prophecy, he walks it over. No detection. Nexus of R-Dizzle goes down... Basically at this point, we all knew... Team 7 was going up 1-0. And so we did as soon as prophecy was confident enough to deal the game ending blow.
Next up, we had Sabas vs razryv, our P sniper would indeed see some PvP. I was really confident that Sabas would win this one because his PvP is good among players of his level, partly because he uses abusive builds that abuse the fact that D ranks can't micro reavers and what not up to a decent level, however, that doesn't change the point that his PvP is good for the league. The set has lag, Sabas refuses to play, thus, Sabas and razryv get on Game Ranger to play and it still lags, meanwhile in channel, Cobalt and Skeggaba are getting ready for set 3. Skeggaba is obviously their player and his opponent, Gao Xi is afk... roflcopta is afk... Sabas is trying to get a laggy game going... Nikon is here, but I don't want to use him just yet. So, I naturally try to buy time, I'm like yeh one sec bro, lemme talk to my players -> go on skype -> WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU GUYS!?! OMG was so stressful. I needed to execute my lineup in the right order or the whole balance would be set off. Then, Sabas, the savior of team 7 returns to the channel and says, "Still lag". I'm like YES! an outlet. So Cobalt basically tells me I need to give him my draw and I asked him, why would we start set 3 before set 2 is even in game? Can we get a decision on that? So I publicly suggest that I be good manner and replace my player (being as I had 6 players to deal with for a Bo5, wasn't a problem - I wouldn't have done it if I wasn't 100% sure it'd be 3-0 if this went through). So, both Cobalt and Skeggaba agreed and my lineup now looked like so:
R-Dizzle <<Circuit Breaker>> Prophecy_razryv <<Jade>> NikonSkeggaba <<Ground Zero>> Gao XiPanix <<Fighting Spirit>> Eywa-Essbee <<Matchpoint>> roflcoptaSo, Nikon and razryv go into game and its lag again. Cobalt insists that the game be played through the lag, it wasn't bad between razryv and Sabas, etc. So I'm like okay, lets start sets 2 and 3 then to catch up time (ofc I can seem nice that my player has returned from the world of afk). So now its once again back to:
R-Dizzle <<Circuit Breaker>> Prophecy_razryv <<Jade>> SabasSkeggaba <<Ground Zero>> Gao XiPanix <<Fighting Spirit>> NikonEssbee <<Matchpoint>> Eywa-Set 3 announced, Skeggaba was their player.. Who knew? Anyhow, I've just gone from insanely stressed out because all my players I may want to use have been afk for the past fucking 30 minutes into well now I'm comfortable knowing I have nikon left in the bag, he'll easily destroy Panix even if Sabas loses because of lag. Now, Sabas' game finishes and the channel basically goes into full out chaos mode... Sabas was raging so hard at cobalt and was telling me to side with him, then razryv starts talking shit to Sabas, Sabas starts talking shit to razryv, I start telling Sabas to calm the fuck down, Skeggaba gets out of game and tells me to stfu, I'm just like WTF!? I'm trying to calm the situation, he's like oh.. sorry bruh. And Sabas just wouldn't be calmed down eventually razryv left the channel but Sabas was still angry after Nikon beat Panix for a 4-1 victory. I know my players, and I understand fully what happened in that game and I would have gotten into it with Cobalt probably had Nikon not been so reliable as far as winning because, the decision itself was not bad, but having the same knowledge I had, I think he'd have agreed it would have been best to offer me a sub out for sabas because, the lag didn't even kill him. What happened was that he felt forced to play in the lag because he absolutely wanted to play and he knew this was his only chance to play in the CW and Cobalt had told him to just play it out. So at this point, he's completely emotionally compromised and he played terribly for his standards and on top of that, his opponent went 2 gate vs his 12ish nex (There was like a canceled gateway or smth, didn't watch the rep). So, basically he just completely lost his composure and his opponent used a pretty good lag build, assemble the two and you have a recipe for disaster.
Anyhow, all that said and done, the CW was over with a score of 3-1, I offered an exhibition match between essbee and roflcopta just for the sake of playing the remaining set out and the rest is history. Really, the feeling of being the champions of DRTL, though it may seem like a "noob league" to some, I don't care if it's a noob league, it's my level of league and I managed to conquer my level of starcraft as both a manager and a player and it just was so fulfilling to do so. I'm just really quite grateful to Cobalt for organizing the league and my team for giving me an opportunity to experience this along side all of you.
Nikon 7-1 Really not much to say, just simply the best teammate I could have asked for.
Eywa- 5-3This is me... I suck at BW.
Sabas 5-4You really did quite well, clearly the most distinguished player making interesting discussion and sometime talking when one ought not to!
Don_Julio 3-0You left us
... Come back plz! We have another season ahead of us!Gao Xi 2-0Not a long run, but a good run. I look forward to seeing you again next season!
Prophecy 2-1Huge contribution to my near-heart attack in the semi-final, but you came through when it mattered!
roflcopta 2-3Future ProSC coach hwaiting!
I'm just playing around, great to have you on board, glad you showed for the playoffs!Cellder 1-1DW, next time I'll teach you to hydra bust before telling you to pull it off in a game!
zezzerex 1-1You were a ghost, your name has no logical pronunciation... A ghost you must be then.
