EPT
WCG 2003 Prelims - Toronto
This was the first ever LAN I had been to. I knew nothing of competitive StarCraft at this point; I enjoyed reading the team Canada website where Pride, Testie and a bunch of other big names would post. At that time Canada was fairly dominant in StarCraft and would always put up good results in nation wars. I went more to observe than anything.
At this time I was going to school in Kingston and the tournament was in Markham. My family lives in Whitby, so I went home for the weekend to visit and play in this LAN. I believe the entrance fee was $40 which seemed pretty fair as the organization was pretty good. It was run by the TFL (Toronto Fun League) which I just see now has closed its doors and the images are down from our LAN.
The center was actually really big, through the entrance there was a food area on the left, a huge area of booths with big screens set up for the console games, and all the computers were on the far right. There were hundreds of people there. I remember not knowing anyone except Pride, but obviously I didn't talk to him since he didn't know me. I watched some people play Halo and was surprised to find the dominante strategy seemed to be charging the pistol and then spamming it as much as possible after the charge was fired.
We split up into groups (I was using the ID ImJustMe) at this point, which made things really confusing when they called for me. My group was: HnR)Pride, rS.Exit (DeBiT), H_Paul_Wii, and SoulBrother.
Game 1: Me (Z, 6) vs HnR)Pride (P, 9) @ Lost Temple. Pride did a two Gateway rush with two further proxied Gateways which I didn't scout (they were slightly north east of my natrual) and ran my HydraLing over with Zealots. We shook hands and he said I did well. I hadn't even realized he had proxied until H_Paul_Wii told me the following day.
Game 2: Me (Z, TR) vs H_Paul_Wii (Z, BL) @ Legacy of Char. I didn't know how to ZvZ properly really, and I know Paul's name. In the end he got more Mutalisks, I flew in while he was out and killed his spire but he caught my army while I tried to run. He killed my army then finished me pretty easily.
Game 3: Me(Z, 12) vs rS.Exit (T, 6) @ Lost Temple. I did three hatch Speedlings with burrow. I burrowed them and let Debit move out all the way to my natural (which was adequately Sunkened) and then I ran into his main. I seriously destroyed almost his entire main, but didn't Sunken enough to live the counter attack and died.
Game 4: I can't remember this game. It was against SoulBrother (a really bad player) on Hall of Valhala. He asked if it was an island map and I told him it was. After he said that I knew I had already won.
So those four games took about 12 hours to complete. It was now 2 AM. Considering I was 1-3 at this point I figured I shoudn't come for day 2 since I didn't have a chance of advancing. I didn't even have an alarm at home since I had brought it to school. By the time I got to bed it was nearly 4 AM. Somehow my mental alarm woke me up at 6:30 AM, and I decided to shower and head back to the LAN. To my surprise I had actually qualified (through their crazy system) to advance to the next round.
I played against an unknown player (at the time) named Bulloch, and he cleaned me up pretty quickly ZvT on Jungle Story (what a gay map).
Around this time (1 PM) Paul and his brother (SpiritSoda) arrived. They had been dropped into the losers' bracket since they showed up late to goto church. What good Korean boys ^^;
I had to play Paul next. I can't remember game one but I assume I got raped. Game 2 I picked Hall of Valhala and went Protoss, but Paul massed pure Mutalisks and eventually finished me with Devourer/Guardian/Mutalisk. It was now around 5PM and I had to hustle to get home to get on my 6:30 bus back to Kingston. I barely made it and everything worked out.
Some other fun moments from this LAN:
- Pink was there. She was like 13 at this time I think. I saw her dying to pure Drones in an official WCG match.
- The first game I osberved was Louden[Akuta] vs Bulloch, and it was a sick TvP. Louden eventually won right as he stormed Bulloch's maynarding SCVs and I cheered really loudly (so did everyone else).
- My parents were there at that time and asked why everyone cheered. I said "He stormed his SCVs" to which my mom replied "Haha what a fool!" having no idea what that meant.
- After I lost to Pride my dad said "It's over already?" Haha that sucked.
- 3D.Open had his "crew" (why does it always seem like the idiots bring a crew to LANs?) He was playing against Paul and his crew kept going to Paul's monitor and then walking around and whispering things under Open's headphones. Paul's crew (manner Koreans) noticed this and made a wall around his monitor so no one could see.
- I beat Pride in the rematch after, but it was casuals so it's meaningless.
- I met my SC friend Blatant, and I remember his buddy asking for PvZ builds just before he was about to play - that's how bad we were at this time.
- Around 10PM the LAN center got really creepy. The "restaraunt" side filled up with business men in suits, each in a booth with one or two young asian girls. Weird!
WCG 2004 TFL LAN - York University
There was a one day LAN at York university. I went there and brought two of my friends along to observer. I remember my one friend being really angry when he got there: "There's cover? What the fuck?"
I don't remember much about this LAN, there was iamimat, who was a really big talker. Debit was also there and had just won a huge WGT money tournament under the name rS.Exit. There was also the guy who posts here under MPXMX. We had a good series ending on Korhal of Ceres. I did burrowlings again, raped his main, and died to the counter. I was pretty sad. There wasn't really any drama here or anything. Blatant was there again, and he was always just a little bit better than me.
WCG 2004 Prelim - Toronto
This one I remember was at YK Cafe, a LAN on the second floor of some ghetto shops at Young and Finch. I drove up with Blatant (he lived in Ajax - the city near mine) and we obviously got lost several times since I'm terrible with directions. As we were pulling in Debit was outside having a smoke and recognized us. I was also supposed to meet MrCanada there, as he had told me he saw me at 2003 but never said anything (typically shy nerd?). So this year he said hi and we talked for a bit.
Oh wait I forgot, earlier that day we had to go in person to register. It was ridiculous, after arguing with the organizer for days we had to drive two hours round trip to write down our name and then give our money. Apparently it couldn't wait until the next day when we would be there anyways? The point is that we saw Testie there practising, and it was the first time I had seen him. He went to the vending machine and bought a chocolate bar and said "ooooooo choc-o-late bar!" in this really thick greek accent that made him sound like Apu. Testie actually turned out to be really nice and funny, I just always remember this first time I "met" him because it was so awkward.
Anyways, Blatant's first game was a ZvP against Testie and he was a hair away from beating him. Literally if he targeted one Observer with Hydralisks he would have won. Blatant was really good at this point and we were pretty sad he came so close and then lost. My first game was a ZvRT on Chow Chow (Martian Cross) against FinalJustice. My nerves got the best of me and I 9 Pooled (even though I never 9 Pool) but I got lucky with scouting and killed him with it.
Bulloch was in rS. at this point and was pretty beefy. Pride was still good and up to his old proxy tricks. Testie was a beast, obviously. Debit and Paul also were there raping people. In the end I got eliminated by Diclawsus in a ZvP on Chow Chow that ended in map split and Carrier / Corsair vs Mutalisk / Devourer. I also remember beating iamimat on Chow Chow ZvT with a lot of HydraliskLurker drops.
Bulloch ended up taking that LAN and I believe he won a computer. The starting map was Gorky, which Bulloch would win (obviously) then lose the second game, then pick Gorky again. This happened against Paul and against Debit. I felt kind of bad for them. Bulloch would always get his scouting Barracks over to the Zerg's natural 2 seconds before the Drone dropped out of the Overlord, so Zerg couldn't even expand. It was rough.
Other moments from that LAN:
- Testie shrinking his monitor size all the way down since he was used to playing on a 15" monitor.
- Testie disappearing after Pride eliminated him with proxy Gateways PvZ on Dhalia of Jungle
- Pride getting eliminated by ZergRaptor after ZR dropped Lurkers in his main 2 seconds before Cannons finished.
- Koreans playing 300+ APM with their legs crossed in the chair. It looked so weird but I always see Koreans do it since then.
- Blatant and I made some random UMS game to kill time. To our surprise, Paul joined too. We launched and realized we had made on melee, so we just had 5 random workers running around killing each other. I had my legs up on the desk and was laughing pretty hard. I look over at Paul and he's at around 400 APM furiously controlling his workers.
- This random guy named ExecutorJ walked in off the street to play. It was a TvP on Dhalia. He was at 9 oclock and built the Barracks at the bottom right of his base. He was mousing over the Marines trying to figure out the hotkey for them, at which point someone yelled out "It's M!" A Reaver drop killed all his SCVs and all his Marines and Medics, save 2. The guy forget to build more Scarabs, so two Marines were working on this Reaver for about 10 seconds. When they killed it, then entire LAN errupted in a cheer, at which point about 40 Dragoons walked up his ramp and everyone yelled awwwwwwwwwwwww. At this point ExecutorJ picked up his bag, typed GG, and walked out the front door.
- Testie arguing with the cute tournament organizer (Dianne I think?) because he wanted to play Paul on Gorky and Paul would have none of it.
- Paul was always 7 Pooling people on Korhal of Ceres. Testie played him TvZ and said out loud while playing "Alright, you want to 7 Pool me Paul?" and went Depot, Barracks, Bunker. Paul still raped him. That's how good Paul was.
WCG 2006 Prelims - Vancouver
So, having graduated university, I put about 20 minutes into looking for a job in Toronto before I decided I had to move. I loaded up my car over a week, and drove west to Calgary. I was now staying with my second cousin, which is an entire plot line in itself for another time. Friday morning I awoke to a stickie note asking if I could be gone for the weekend. Apparently my cousin had forgotted that I didn't know anyone in the city. So, with nowhere to go I PM'd Mora asking if I could come visit him and goto WCG. He said sure.
At 8PM I loaded my computer into my car, took a four pack of energy drinks, and drove west. The drive from Calgary to Vancouver takes you straight through the mountains, and at some points the highway slows to 40 km/hr. In retrospect, driving that route that late at night was an incredibly stupid thing to do. Around 7AM I rolled into the outskirts of Vancouver. I decided to pull over into a farmer's field and sleep for a few hours. I got about 5 minutes of sleep over 5 hours, when I decided to change, wash up in a gas station to look presentable, and then go over to Mora's house.
Mora's house was super oldschool and super huge. I didn't really meet much of his family except for his dad briefly, who seemed super friendly.
I remember giving Mora so much shit because he couldn't follow the map haha. I didn't know he'd never driven so he didn't really use maps. Anyways I got us to the LAN center (a school gymnasium) where we hooked everything up. Mora asked about the tournament format, where the organizer said he was thinking of "just putting you all in a game and letting you go at it", to which Mora said "Hmmm, how about bo3 double elim, bo7 finals, Gaia first map, loser picks map?" So that was that.
I remember seeing Alborz, and I just thought that was the funniest name ever. He was like a 15 year old highschool kid, and everytime me and Mora saw him we just yelled ALBORZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!! He's probably like 18 now but it was funny back then
Mora and I steamrolled everyone and I beat him in the end. I won this thing that fit your hand and was a keyboard and mouse in one, called the Progamer Command Unit or something. I still have it in a seal box -_-. With mostly highschoolers LANing now, there wasn't much to do. We went back to Mora's place (kinky) and screwed around on BNet, played chess (I lost 1-2) and then crashed. I was so tired. In the morning I didn't know if he wanted to hang out or wanted me to gtfo, so I just said I'd leave. In retrospect I should have stayed a bit I think since it was a 24 hour round trip drive -_-. I think I left around 10AM and got home around 9PM.
Other memorable moments:
- Mora killing someone with Defiler / Queen only.
- There was a girl dressed in a cape. A FUCKING CAPE. How weird / epic is that?
- I expected Mora to be like HAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY but he was completely normal.
- Getting inside information about Manifesto7 when he used to live in BC
.WCG Canada Prelims 2006 - Calgary
So I almost forgot this one! A few weaks after the Vancouver prelims were the Calgary prelims. I showed up and there were only 5 people: Myself, IcarusFalls (who was in my nS-g. clan but didn't remember me -_-), Star.Selwyn (a Chinese guy from Lethbridge who I've tried to contact recently but he never responds, he was so fucking manner
), a good inactive Protoss, who may have been 88)Remote from Edmonton but I can't remember, and that guy's Terran friend.I started against the Terran guy on Gaia. He was 11 I was 7 and he did a Tank rush down the left edge of the map. Rather than deal with it I simply countered up the right side to his main and won. I don't remember the second game.
Next match was against the Protoss. I can't remember the games but I remember he was way out of practise and I was surprised I was winning so easily because it was known that he was at one time A+ on PGT (God damn I can't remember his name).
Anyways, next was against IcarusFalls. He wasn't very good, but I was inexperienced at ZvZ and did cheesey all-in attacks, while he played defensively and economically based. I think I lost 1-2, which I was pretty angry about considering I thought he was a scrub.
Next I played Selwyn ZvZ on Gaia and got raped. For the rematch I decided to try PvZ and got raped even harder. Whoops! So this LAN taught me to stop doing all-in tactics and to just play my normal solid game, because it can work against players much better than myself.
Overall I've got to say this LAN sucked. I talked to the Protoss guy a little bit, and he was actually just visiting Calgary for the night. He invited me to go out for beers which I dodged and always felt bad about. I thought it would be awkward being with all his friends and his sister when I only knew him through StarCraft. I really regret that. I talked a lot to Selwyn and had random conversations with him over the years since then (until recently). He commented that my mouse was very accurate, but being asian he had huge APM. I remember he messaged me on MSN in 2007 to play some games with his friends on Hamachi, and I cleaned them up and then beat him ZvZ and PvZ in a ridiculous game on Luna (yes RaGe, I didn't attack. I literally made Cannons / Templar / Reavers / DAs and starved him out ^^).
WCG Canadian Finals 2006 - Montreal
So, being that I don't really care too much about money, I decided I should go to the WCG finals once in my life. I didn't really plan anything, just got on a flight, rented a car when I got there, and randomly drove around looking for a motel near the event. The event was at La Ronde, which was a big amusement park, so it was kind of neat getting exposure when people would come in from the park into the event.
I first noticed Testie and Pride, said hi to them. I didn't think Testie would know me but he did so we talked a bit. I found out this time that Testie was really funny to hang out with.
The actually event was terribly run. StarCraft had like 4 computers meaning you played a game every 6 hours. My first games were against Fayth, who had won WCG Canada 2005, so I was pretty nervous. I ended up just doing some sort of HydraLing Sauron and winning 2-0, which was pretty surprising considering he was basically famous. I ended up first in my group beating Arikin and CuteGuyNo.1. I actually was one of the few stage games playing against Arikin ZvZ. Fayth ended up rallying back and finished second in the group to advance. Pride was knocked out.
I forget who I played after this. I think I played JianFei first, who was like 15 at this time. He raped me on Paranoid Android, so I picked Azalea and Hydralisk all-in'd him. Then for some reason he picked Azalea and built a few more Cannons so I built a few more Hydralisks and broke him again. Then I think I played Testie and got raped ZvP pretty easily. I tried to Hydralisk all-in him on Azalea and he literally built 20 Cannons and a Pylon wall. After build so many Hydralisks I was screwed. I eventually got eliminated by Bandit. Bandit lost to Vasmos who lost to ZergRaptor. ZergRaptor got raped by Testie but still finished second and got to go to WCG.
Here's the old thread:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=43313
Some other memorable moments:
- After Fayth was on the brink of elimination he had to play CuteGuyNo.1 PvT to advance. I asked him which strategy he would use in this match, and he was running through all the builds he might use. After mentioning over 10 builds, he said "Oh what the hell I'll probably just DT drop"
- Fayth's girlfriend WAS CUTE!
- Fayth can seriously breakdance. Seriously.
- My driving makes Testie nervous. "Isn't this a 50?" "Yes." "Aren't we doing 80?" "Yes." Meanwhile I was getting passed on both sides. Fucking Montreal.
- After the event was over I was watching War3 with ZergRaptor. "So when's your flight back?" "At 6:30." "So in 45 minutes?" "Yea." "Shouldn't you be getting ready to get to the airport?" "Nah I've got plenty of time."
- This was when I first started realizing Xeris is insane, since he always seems to magically be at every Canadian and American LAN. He was there with all the Light members and they had this hat they drew Light on in magic marker. It was sick.
Waterloo LAN 2007 - Waterloo
This was sort of an impromptu thing. I was going home for Christmas and decided to see if some Waterloo people wanted to get together for random gaming. After much begging, even though I said I could pick anyone up between Whitby and Waterloo, only four people ended up going: Myself, infinity21, Bill307, BloodyCobbler.
There's not much to tell since this was mostly private. I picked infinity21 up in Misassauga and let the GPS take us to Waterloo, despite making several wrong turns. We met up with Bill307 in Waterloo, grabbed him, rolled to the LCBO (Where I was EXTREMEMLY disappointed that no one wanted anything) to get some boozer to pay BloodyCobbler back for letting us use his place. We got lost and ended up driving around randomly. Turns out his place isn't on the GPS map and doesn't have a street sign it was that new. Anyways, lunch was made for us when we arrived (which was really fucking good as you would expect from the author of The Stove). We shot the shit and then hooked up some computers to play various games. I remember infinity21 always proxying everything in our 2v2s and losing for us and I was getting pretty annoyed haha. Infinit21 plays like 300 APM on a laptop keyboard, which is pretty ridiculous to see.
Anyways, we moved on to SSBM, where we all sucked but sucked equally making it fun. We played that for a bit, got dinner, played SC for a bit, talked awhile longer, and then decided to pack up and leave. After infinity21 made such a fuss about being home to be with his parents, he said he was disappointed I made us leave so early. -_-, Jaesung, --__--...
Anyways it was fun! Everyone who didn't go is stupid! There I said it!
OSL Finals 2008 - Calgary
Before the OSL got started at 2AM, we LANed from 10PM to 2AM. It was pretty fun, two people playing back to back and then the observer was on the big screen TV so we could all watch. I remember fusionsdf running past Razorsuke's friend's sunken line and cleaning the entire main base, and then losing to a two Lurker counter. We gave him a lot of shit for that, and of course he fell back on the vodka excuse. I got spanked by Kau on Monty and by Razorsuke on Blue Storm (I believe) but it was fun nonetheless. Two guys from Shacknews who got into StarCraft through the TSL and GOMTV leagues came over, which is always cool.
I got mikeymoo drunk for the first time ever! I'm sorry mikey but someone had to send you down the path of glory. I bought around 36 beers for the event and there were about 20 left after the night, mostly drank by me. I was not impressed.
Anyways, we'll definitely be repeating that for this upcoming OSL finals! Tell your friends!
Can LAN 2008 - Montreal
Two weekends ago Xeris and TT1 organized some random LAN in Montreal. As I was was overdue to go home and visit my parents and Toronto friends (hadn't been home since Christmas '07) I decided to roll them together into one vacation.
I rolled into the event about 4 hours late (Started at 12:00 I was there around 3:30 I think) and the organizer (Dan I think?) was not impressed. I pleaded with him ("I sent a PM to TT1!") and he said he would let me play.
The first thing to note, this place was hot as hell. Like hotter than outside. We later found out someone nudged the airconditioner, so the hot air was feeding directly back into the gaming area. I was in a full sweat while playing, so much that I remember my hair wax stopped working and I had to revert to a backup hair style haha.
Set 1: I forget who I played; ZvT. He 8 Raxed me game one. he 8 Raxed me game two. That was gay but I defended with Drones.
Set 2: I forget who I played; ZvP. He proxy Gated and 1 Gated, which were both beaten fairly easily.
Set 3: JF; ZvP. Yea he's fucking JF what do you think? I got raped.
Set 4: Octopuss; ZvP. Apparently we had played before in previous clan wars. I didn't really know Octopuss (Simon[Light]) was active, but he was still really good. I ended up winning some long games.
Set 5: I really can't remember the matchup or maps. I just know I won.
Anyways, Octopuss had beaten JF (WHAT?) 2-0, but then lost to me and some other random guy so he didn't even advance past the group stage. He was giving me shit for not beating JF forcing a 3 way tie, to which I gave him shit for losing to the other guy which always would have forced a three way tie.
Event thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=74944
Pics: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=74944¤tpage=23
We ended up going out to dinner (Aerials, Schism, JF, Freaky, Octopuss, Oldy, me, Xeris). There were talks of going out to a bar / club, but we missed Freaky's magical guestlist window and hence just went back to JF's hotel to play poker. I can't remember who won since I was so exhausted at this point. My memory says Xeris beat Oldy heads up, but it could be wrong. Anyways, JF is such a baller that he gets a free hotel room from MYM, while Oldy and Freaky went home, and Xeris and I went to Schism's place to crash (thanks again). I fell asleep like instantly.
After a shower + bagel, we were back to the event. I had to play Oldy the first round ZvP. I didn't know how good Oldy was since he's slow as fuck as seemingly inactive, but he's good enough to beat me evidently! I lost 1-2 and went down into losers. Freaky got knocked into losers as well by Aerials after trying to most ridiculous Muta to Ultra build on Blue Storm. <3 Freaky.
Freaky and I then played the worst ZvZ series the world has ever known. Seriously. There are times where I remember hitting keys and then saying to myself "WHAT AM I DOING?" Neither of us have Mutalisks but were making armies (>36) of Scourge and throwing them at each other. In the end the Gods smiled on me a little more and I luckboxed him out.
Then I played Schism ZvT. He tried a Tank rush on Andromeda the first game, which I defened decently but it still turned into a long game which I won. Game two I thought he was doing Vultures / Wraith so I put a HydraDen down, then I saw the CC float out. So I decided to try HydraLurk which he beat with 2 Fact and good harassment at multiple points. It was a good game but he ground me down and took the game. Game 3 I wan't to go Spire but he scouted it so I went Lurkers, AGAIN. I got up to Ultras with reasonable upgrades and won from there.
Then it was time to play Oldy again! I knew I couldn't beat him straight up so I 5 Pooled him on Andromeda. He scouted it and defended his main properly and won easily from there. I can't remember which map we played second but I got owned. Oldy's pretty good
So that was that, I finished fourth and after all that work I got my entrance money back. Oldy beat Aerials in losers' finals and then JF cleaned up. JF's a baller.
After that we pretty much went to the car and started the drive back to Toronto. We gabbed about StarCraft, TL Attack, TSL, how big a baller JF is, etc. etc.
Was fun times!
Wow this is long and there's no preview so it's probably even longer than I remember. Anyways, I hope people add their LAN experiences, if they relate to mine or not. You can even just skip the bulk of it and put just the funny / memorable parts if you want.
Also, I think it's funny I remember every game from the LAN I played in 2003, but I can't remember what map I played Oldy on fucking 2 weeks ago. What the hell?
