EPTI searched every forum I could for strategic help. I knew I was already a good player. I could consistently beat my school friends on fastest map possible with maxed carriers! All I needed to do now was learn the right units to make on a normal map and I’d be at WCG the next year. Obviously I needed to connect with reality and eventually I did. After getting some advice from the forums I found PGTour (the SC1 ladder before iCCup) and I began to ladder there. It wasn’t long before I was sitting, completely bewildered with a record of 3-500 in the my season. This made me realize the amount of work I would have to put in to become the best in Canada. (Best in Canada was a more realistic goal for me because I thought that the since the population is fairly small I should have a good shot at it.) I decided to wake up every morning to practice 2 hours before school (5am-7am) and then play 2 more hours when I returned home from school before doing homework. I did this for months. During a ladder game a player I played against said one of the most hurtful things I’ve ever had to read about myself. He said, “You must be the worst player on this server.” I must have been. I was D- with another single digit win - 500 record.
My friends all told me how good I was at Starcraft (they all played UMS and fastest map). This was the hardest thing to hear when I knew that I was actually trash. I felt completely defeated. I was trying so hard and I had seen little to no improvement. It was at this time that I realized that gaming was not for me. I left Broodwar thinking that I was not a skilled enough human to master it. I figured I was just not cut out to be a professional gamer.
In the time between my departure from Broodwar and the beta of Wings of Liberty I slowly discovered my second passion in life. Music. I began participating in jam sessions with friends playing metal music on electric guitar. I started to write my own songs. This passion soon developed into a love for classical music. I had played the harp since I was ten and on this instrument I became involved in my cities’ Youth Orchestra as well as participating in music competitions in my city. To me music was a better fit. I thrived in my city’s youth music scene and for the first time in my life I felt like I was actually developing good skills at something.
When Wings of Liberty was released I was just finishing studies in Toronto in music (just summer studies, I still had one year of high-school left back home). I remember downloading the game in my hotel room and playing it on my old laptop with only a touch pad. While the campaign was fun and I thoroughly enjoyed it my relationship with Wings of Liberty was a strange one. Just after release I bought a new computer and began to take it seriously (like I had with Broodwar). I thought, “this is my chance! The mechanics are easier and the entire world is on a level playing field!” But after less than a week I released how far ahead of me everyone was. While I had been able to reach high diamond at release I was still no where near the level of any of the pros. Realizing that the simplification of the mechanics was not the ticket to fame I thought it could have been I left behind the dream and began to play for fun.
I played many 2v2 games and the 1v1 I played I was insanely greedy crossing my fingers and hoping I’d get to play a macro game. I maintained high diamond throughout Wings whenever I decided to play for a season. Near the end of WoL I finally lost interest completely. I completed year one of university and was completely immersed in my music studies.
Fast forward several months well into year two at university and my girlfriend’s friend was organizing a LAN event at McGill. She convinced me to participate in it. After a bit of, “but if I do this I won’t be as focused on my work.” I finally caved in and said I’d play in it. I hadn’t even touched the game for at least 6 months. The tournament was two weeks away and I had no idea what builds were good anymore. At that point I could’ve attended for fun, but that isn’t me. I rapidly consumed online content for two weeks. I learnt a stable build order for each match up that was designed to get me into late game. This time something was different. All of my time in music had taught me how to learn extremely efficiently. I spent a great deal of my time in custom games vs very easy A.I. refining my mechanics and making sure I could execute my builds perfectly. I didn’t play more than 15 ladder games in preparation for the tournament. I instead spent hours memorizing my builds, refining my hotkey setup and playing vs AI.
I had been a diamond player since the beta of WoL and when I played my placements for the final season I was still diamond. Looking at the players in the tournament I realized I didn’t have a shot even within Montreal to ever compete. I went into my first match at the tournament vs a platinum player and easily won. I was still beyond nervous; my hands were shaking so much after the games ended. For the next match I had to play the 4th seed in the tournament, a rank 1 masters Terran. After seeing that he was high masters I resigned myself to the fact that it was over and I had had fun with the game and who was I fooling, I had always been bad. I played the first game and after defending his harassment I won. I was so shocked. My mind was spinning, was it possible that I actually improved my game this significantly in two weeks from inactivity to the ability to beat a high masters player? We took an hour break in the series as he had to play against Quantic with his team. After the break we played our second game, and as I originally had suspected he quickly won with his early game pressure which crippled me too much to stop his mid game push.
The final game began. It was on Cloud Kingdom. My girlfriend (perhaps more nervous than myself) was watching over my shoulder as the game began to develop. His early game pressure was tricky to stop but I did it successfully without too many loses. However, his midgame push as two medivacs popped out simply walked up to my 3rd and destroyed it. At this point I took my hands off my keyboard preparing to type gg. At this moment I remembered Marineking; he never leaves games! It was the last game fo the tournament for me and so I put my hands back down and started to try harder than ever. I reestablished my 3rd and then even pushed out and took my 4th getting templar tech to augment my colossus. Finally, as I approached max I threw down the DT shrine as I normally do for harassment late game. I moved my DT’s around the map spliting the terran up as much as I could, killing add-ons, killings SCVs. It went to the 40 minute mark and finally I pulled back into the lead. My multitasking with the DTs had been enough and I moved into Terran’s main and destroyed his production. He typed out gg. 2-1. I had won. I had accomplished something. Throughout the life of WoL I never could’ve beaten a Masters Terran. Now after two weeks of intelligent practice I could.
This win renewed my passion. I wanted it more than ever! With HotS only a few weeks away from release I rededicated myself to the game. I’ve spent the last six months working on my play intensively. Originally, I wrote this to be posted back in May. I wanted to blog my progress over the summer and stream my games while I tried to break into GM. I’ve always held myself back because I felt I didn’t have anything to say. But I do have something to say. More than anything I love this game. I want to contribute to the community and help it grow. As mechanics are something I’ve struggled with in the past I’ve done a lot of research and personal practice refining mine so in the next two weeks before school starts I will be releasing a guide on mechanics that hopefully will help others avoid some of the mistakes that I have made.
Thanks for reading!
Deadzerg
