EPTWednesday: Back in Rancho, home of the NASL studio and also our house, a few of the lads went out to dinner to have a meal before ToD departed the house to return to France. On the way home, Ken, of eSports Canada but also one of the nicest guys and most professional tournament admins on the planet asks me if I would like to attend the finals. Of course I would love to, but I don't have a ride or a place to stay. Being good-guy Ken, he offers for me to ride down with the crew and crash in one of their rooms. I just need to let him know in an hour or two from then. I quickly hop onto Google to check out the situation in Long beach. Nice beaches, check. Bars, check. High-level StarCraft, check. Fuck it, let's do this shit.
Thursday: We're off. One or two delays here and there, but we arrive at the Performing Arts Convention Center around mid-day. The crew has already been hard at work setting up the event venue, tweaking camera angles, rehearsing performances and all of that jazz. I chill for most of the afternoon just chatting to the personalities, fans, players and so on. It was also a rather interesting experience to see all the work and planning that goes into setting up a tournament of this caliber, I've never been on this side of the curtain before. The evening arrives and Kevin knowing that he doesn't have any serious work to do the next day suggests we go check some of the local night life. It's only 5PM, but I'm not the kind of guy to say no to a beer. We start off at the Tequila bar, get some drinks. Next up it's the Mexican bar. Same story. The bars are still pretty empty. Mostly just couples and what not getting a bite to eat. It's just myself and Kev, but that's no problem. Protoss players always have something to chat(read: whine) about. Next up we mission to the opposite side of the street to check out the "Mai Tai" Bar. Live music, chilled vibe, happy hour. I'm sold. About 3 pitchers later and I'm feeling fresh. It's about that time to unleash my beastly moves all over the dance floor. Back to the Tequila bar. Quite a few girls, music is pumping, got a small dance floor going. Can't complain. The rest of the night is mostly a blur for me, although from the stories Kevin has told, it sounds like I had quite some fun.
Friday: I wake up in Ben and Kev's room. I'm surprisingly un-hungover. Mostly just tired. That's pretty much the most cost-efficient trade you're going to get after a night like that. I head down to the venue, chat to some of the people. Hear some of the funny stories from the night before. Nothing too wild, mostly just dancing-up all girls on the floor and diving over fences onto concrete for the fun of it. Can't help but laugh at myself. I go to the local beach and chill in the sun for a bit. Overall it's a pretty mellow day.
Saturday: The show begins at 12AM. Everything is looking great at the venue. Production is smooth as a babies bottom. The casters are bringing their A-game, the games are pretty fucking A. The crowd is enthusiastic. HerO is on fire. I'm pleased. I feel that he's getting pretty lucky in the games in terms of scouting, builds and his opponents making pretty huge mistakes. Regardless, there is no denying this man is actually a machine. Later that night about 25 of us mission to a local Korean Barbeque joint. A pretty decent time is had by all.
Sunday: The finals are here. I decide to wake up early to do some shopping and try find a sexy beach. No pun intended. I end up at Huntington beach. It's more or less the best that the area has to often. It's not bad, actually rather good. Having said that, coming from South Africa, 90% of all beaches are going to be pretty disappointing in comparison to what we have at home. I chill in the sun and go for a swim. I'm the only mofo on the entire beach crazy enough to swim without a wetsuit. The water is refreshing to say the least. I head back to the venue to catch the games. HerO plays a style that is pretty different to what we're used to seeing out of him. A more "all-in" style. It makes me think about some of the fundamental flaws in the game design. Everyone knows how powerful Protoss all-in's can be. Executed with the micro of HerO. Good luck stopping that shit bro. Still, viOlet definitely didn't play to his full potential. I feel bad for him. He's such a nice guy. Such is life I guess. The tournament is over and there's only one thing left to do. Let's set this night on mother-fucking fire. Take a quick shower. Throw on some fresh gear. Pummel the half bottle Rum I brought from home. That'll warm you up. The gang meets up in the lobby. There's about 40 of us. We head on down to the Pier where there is a P.F Chang's. Pretty nice place. The drinks are flowing. Day9 is mind-fucking everyone with his riddles and memory games. Everyone's having a great time. By the time we leave the restaurant there it's already nearing 1AM. For some reason everything seems to close at 2AM in this crazy country. Sadly not much time left for dancing. A few of us head off to the local Irish bar. Others head on home. The bar is dieing down by this time but Ben is still ordering us Tequila's by the dozen. He's drunk more Tequila than I've ever seen a mere mortal man dare in one night. The bar closes up and we head back to the hotel for the after party. It's in our room, rookie-mistake. By 5AM that morning most people have passed out. Words cannot describe the carnage that is now our hotel room.
Monday: I wake up relatively early. Kev too. Ben on the other hand is hanging like a fucking donkey. He's not waking up any time soon. Myself and Kev go to get some food. We get our bags packed and head down to the lobby while we wait for Ben to recover. The rest of the day is pretty much just sitting around and chilling. I'm getting pretty bored so I head on up to the pool to take a swim. I arrive at the pool area and notice there are two of the sweetest honey's chilling in the jacuzzi. I'm not usually the kind of guy to just randomly approach women. But hey, I've got nothing better to do be right now. I pop off my shirt and casually approach. "Hey ladies. You mind if I join you in the jacuzzi?". "Not at all", the slightly taller and more tanned girl replies in the most enchanting Scottish accent I have ever heard. "Would you like a drink?", she asks. Awhhh shit. "I would absolutely love a drink". She turns around and retrieves the biggest bottle of wine I have ever seen. Fuck me. I love life.
All in all I'm pretty pleased to be back at the Razer house being able to play some StarCraft. Over the weekend I decided from here on out I'm going to be practicing HOTS almost exclusively. I received a beta-key with the very first wave of invites but didn't play much more than 10 games in total since then. I wasn't very impressed with the maps or the design on the game. Although I do believe that since then there has been some pretty decent changes, especially regarding the most recent patch. I think it will add a lot of new dynamics to the game, which should be pretty fun to experiment with. I'm gonna grind my way up to GM MMR. Shouldn't take more than a day. Once I have some decent competition I'll start learning some new builds and testing the units out. I'm not a very creative player when it comes to the game. In fact not even slightly creative. I feel like my strengths are my strong mechanics and being able to perfectly replicate a winning build. I'll take this approach to HOTS in the beginning and see how it works out for me. I'll be streaming most of the transition and trying to explain my thought processes as much as possible. Also analyzing some replays of strong builds I can find from other pro's and hopefully demonstrating how you can learn to replicate a build to the smallest detail to your own success. Feel free to check out my stream if this is something that might interest you. You'll find it under the non-featured section here on TL.
TL;DR: NASL S4 finals were sick. I like to party. I'm switching over to HOTS and will be streaming some of the learning\transition process.
Peace out.
