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Dumbest Tournament Ever Played: A Battle Report

Blogs > Arrian
Post a Reply
Arrian
Profile Blog Joined February 2008
United States889 Posts
June 28 2020 21:12 GMT
#1
Got a story to tell that probably wouldn'tve been told except for the incessant boredom of lockdown, so strap in kiddos.

Back in 2010, prior to SC2's release, there was brief renewed interest in Brood war at the university I was attending. By happenstance I saw flyers or some other notification that some guys were organizing a tournament on campus. It was going to be held in one of the campus rec rooms, and there was going to be a prize. Now, since I had organized some Smash tournaments on campus, I knew how difficult it was to get university resources, so I was impressed and excited for a chance to meet other BW players on campus who I had otherwise never managed to find. I played probably an hour or so of BW a day, but I was barely D+ on ICCup. Figured I wouldn't get far in the tournament, but I thought I would play anyway.

My best friend also played BW, but mainly he just 5pooled on ICCup for fun, or, when he felt enterprizing, practiced becoming the best at the Royal Stove. He wasn't terrible, actually - he grasped the basics strategically but his main holdups were mechanical. He wanted to tag along as well, try his luck, by which he meant 5pool everyone until they cried out for mercy.

Somewhere along the way, forget when, I became aware (probably by email) that the rec room was no longer where it was going to be hosted. It was instead to be hosted on the top floor of a dorm. Mind you, at this university, the top floor of a dorm was where the upperclassmen would live. These were mainly people who didn't have enough friends to get a house or something with, so this was...contrary to my expectations. It wasn't the worst, though, since in this particular dorm the rec rooms were rather large.

Well, I decided to plow through anyway (wearing my CJ Entus shirt and everything) and me and my friend went to the floor at the appointed time and we quickly discovered that we had downgraded from a rec room on the top floor of a dorm to some dude's dorm room. I did, however, learn that the prize was real enough ($50 to a local game store! Sweet!)

Now I don't know if you have ever played BW or any Starcraft on the floor of a dorm on a laptop (I had a desktop with a proper keyword, but you had to bring your own computer), but it is not an easy thing. In total there were like 8 guys including me and my friend. Some of them were actually pretty cool guys, one of them was a major douche (who runs scammy anime conventions now), and only one of them was aware of pro Starcraft.

We played on such classic and well-known competitive BW maps such as Wheel of War and Blood Bath. Being unaware of maps outside of the normal pool, they baulked when I asked them to use even a vanilla map like Python. They wanted to institute 5 min no rush rules, and I got to play Lost Temple whenever possible. The major douche even put up a picture of one of the maps he was playing on on another screen while he was playing and called it a "map hack", as if knowing what a map you are playing on looks like is some kind of cheap trick.

It was around this time that I realized I was going to murder every last one of them.

First game against a terran I had a dozen mutas at the 5 min mark and it was over after 6 minutes. He had one rax, some marines and no medics. Second game against a toss, hydra all-in against no wall = gg. Fourth game was against my friend, who played toss and tried some DT bullshit but he knew he wasn't going to win anyway.

Last game was against the other guy who was aware of pro starcraft. He did a one-base tank rush build and actually almost busted by natural but I had probably C+ muta micro (my best attribute) and cleaned it up.

The best game was actually between him and my friend for 2nd/3rd place, and I swear it was the best lower-tiered PvT ever played in the history of Starcraft, like two people who can kind of mimic what they think it's supposed to look like but with all the brilliant flailing creativity of those who cannot perfectly execute. It featured dark archons, a DT killing most of a base by itself, tank vs. cannons for like 6 minutes. It was just a lot of stupid fun. In the end my friend was beaten but it was great.

When that was over, I suggested that we play a 6v2 - six of them versus me and my friend. They accepted. I picked Zerg, did a 9hatch9pool to protect against the rush that would have surely beaten us, into 2 hatch muta, and then proceeded to kill all their workers. The major douche insisted they should fight on after my mutas had picked off 4 of them, and my friend's DTs were killing the others, but one of them literally said "Dude there are no more workers on our entire side".

So I walked away with $50 and it was fun but also I'm pretty sure the dumbest tournament of BW ever played.

****
Writersator arepo tenet opera rotas
TelecoM
Profile Blog Joined January 2010
United States10673 Posts
June 28 2020 22:14 GMT
#2
Well regardless of you thinking it was the dumbest, trust me there has been worse lol. I bet it was actually really entertaining and funny / fun to see, you should dig up the replays and do a battle report with pictures. =)
AKA: TelecoM[WHITE] Protoss fighting
pebble444
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
Italy2497 Posts
June 28 2020 23:49 GMT
#3
this was a very entertaining read, sounded like fun!
"Awaken my Child, and embrace the Glory that is your Birthright"
JTCC
Profile Joined June 2020
Netherlands21 Posts
June 29 2020 07:37 GMT
#4
This was a really cool read. It is great to learn about old tournaments and random college stories
BigFan
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
TLADT24920 Posts
June 29 2020 16:06 GMT
#5
Sounds like a lot of fun to me. Thanks for sharing.
Former BW EiC"Watch Bakemonogatari or I will kill you." -Toad, April 18th, 2017
AirbladeOrange
Profile Blog Joined June 2010
United States2573 Posts
June 29 2020 20:14 GMT
#6
Sounds like you tempered your expectations, which is a good idea for any kind of tournament like this. Good read, thanks for sharing!
WombaT
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Northern Ireland25270 Posts
July 01 2020 18:24 GMT
#7
And I thought the tournaments I help organise were bad...

Cheers for the glorious blog, brightened my day
'You'll always be the cuddly marsupial of my heart, despite the inherent flaws of your ancestry' - Squat
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