CSL - Dream Come True Pt. 2

CSL – Dream Come True Pt. 2

Link to Part 1 here: CSL – Dream Come True Pt. 1

Okay, have been kinda unproductive the past few days, and decided I wanted to finish this up.

Friday Preparation

Let’s pick up again, but backtrack a little bit to Friday, the day before the event. I wanted to talk a little bit more about Friday but totally forgot in the last blog. Friday was designated the day for photo shoot and rehearsal. Our team specifically tried to sleep early in order to get all our “college sleep schedules” back to a normal sleep schedule so that we’d be fully awake and alert by 10 AM on game day, although one of our 2v2 players actually ended up sleeping at like 5 AM because he had an essay due and decided to play several hours of LoL too o.O. I didn’t say anything but I was a bit worried / distraught that he stayed up so late playing LoL of all things. Even in the weeks leading up to the event I would tell people to not even play HotS and stuff. But anyways we woke up and got to the event, did a photo shoot and had a lot of cool poses that Carlton, my good friend who I see at almost every event, helped take (which unfortunately later did not get used for the most part) and prepped for rehearsal.

I love you all

We waited several hours for the rehearsal to happen and in the end, since both Chunnam and Washington left the venue earlier, there was no rehearsal. But it ended up being decent since our team and Aarhus ended up chatting quite a bit while waiting. We ended up going downstairs to get dinner and ate at Johnny Rocket’s, and had a huge gigantic disgusting but amazing meal, with unlimited fries and 3,000+ calorie burgers, etc. etc. In retrospect it was probably a bad idea to eat so much, but whatever it was really yummy.

Walking around in LA representing ESPORTS!

[image loading]

Don’t we look legit? Fan is a beast

The whole day we were trying to figure out how we were going to get some practice in. We had been practicing earlier in the game room where tables were set up, but by the time we got back from the huge dinner, all the LoL teams had taken the computers and tables. We had to decide whether to go back to the hotel to practice on laggy internet, go to the nearby Koreatown PC café by the hotel which apparently also had laggy computers, or play at the CSL venue where we had no power or internet. We ended up deciding to practice at the venue, and first had to walk like 40 minutes round trip to an Office Depot to get some power supplies, but afterwards we were able to get a solid couple hours of practice (but we still definitely wanted some more!). Robbie aka GHOSTCLAW then offered to drive us back in the CSL rapist van (huge 14 seat van or something crazy) and he took us to a 7/11 where we got some breakfast foods for the next day, and I specifically remember Robbie telling me not to worry so much because “in twenty four hours you’ll be CSL champions.” At the time I told myself not to have too high expectations as there was a good chance it wouldn’t happen. But I really appreciated his prediction and the entire rest of our team was also enamored by Robbie’s incredibly friendly and encouraging attitude. We went back to the hotel, tried to sleep early but some of our players decided to watch some GSTL or whatever (which was HotS goddammit xD). Anyways we went to sleep but I had trouble falling asleep, probably excited / nervous for the next day, and ended up not getting a great night’s sleep, but the next day I thankfully didn’t feel too tired.

Practicing in the hallway of the CSL venue

[image loading]

We pretty much just hijacked this random table. Those are DayaL's peripherals btw not mine!

Washington vs Chunnam

Alright, well skipping forward in time a little bit to after the match with Aarhus that I already described, we had a small celebration and sat down to watch the match between Washington and Chunnam. Like I said last time, we all thought Washington was going to come out on top – we knew how much they had prepared for CSL, doing bootcamps, scouting us so thoroughly and knowing all our smurfs, etc. and we definitely underestimated Chunnam as well. We sat down with Aarhus and began discussing the matches, and I remember talking to Thor about how confusing the game was that we were watching. It was the first match, Salgoud vs Chunnam Barcode Toss I believe, and pretty much neither player scouted. In particular, Salgoud took three bases, three gases and only had like 50 drones, and without scouting anything, just started MASSING roach ling. We were so confused, but when Chunnam’s player pushed out, Salgoud crushed the first army. Despite his army being roach ling against a colossus army, the fact that he had been making pure units for so long made him crush the attack. He ended up not having a solid transition afterwards though, and lost to warp prisms and a follow-up all in from the Protoss. Actually, pretty much ALL of the games we watched had this strange aspect to them – Washington barely scouted and seemed to be playing blindly half the time. Later we found the reason why the players played so strangely – Kawaii had, in writing, predictions for every single one of the builds the Koreans were going to do, and what the corresponding Washington player should do in response. His prediction rate was 100%. I think this is the best example showing Washington’s amazing preparation for CSL.

In my hands are Kawaii’s godly notes. I believe we still have them in someone’s backpack

It’s all very hypothetical, but I think that if Washington had won a single match they would have stood a very strong chance of defeating Chunnam. Their strongest two players, Kawaii and Caliber, were the 5th and 6th matches, and were definitely favored in their matches. Additionally, I feel like in EVERY single one of the first 4 matches, Washington’s players were so close to winning – ESPECIALLY in game 4 on Ohana where Washington’s Zerg Hwangpo held off the first Terran bio all-in with banelings, only to essentially completely miss injects and have his banes morph out of position to lose to a complete, utter desperation second all-in from the Terran. At the very least, Washington could have brought the match down to an ACE match. I can only imagine how Kawaii and the rest of the Washington team must have been feeling after losing to Chunnam.

Well, just as Kawaii was shocked that we started off down 0-1 against Aarhus, we were quite shocked that Washington was defeated by Chunnam (especially by such a large margin). We didn’t feel completely overawed by Chunnam’s play, but the fact that they had seemingly out of nowhere improved so much and defeated Washington did scare us a lot indeed. So in one sense, we were incredibly happy that we wouldn’t have to face the extremely prepared Washington team, who definitely had a lot of snipe builds prepared for us (as we learned later), but also were quite worried about the enigma that was the Korean team.

Calm Before the Storm

Almost immediately after the match, to my surprise, Kawaii came right up to me and handed me his predictions/notes that he made for the match. It was then to my shock, as I mentioned earlier, that I realized his players had all been playing so strangely because Kawaii had predicted what was going to happen in every single one of the games. I was surprised that Kawaii and Tilea immediately came over to help us prepare for Chunnam (who we really didn’t prepare much for since we assumed Washington would be our final enemy), because for the several weeks leading up to the event our teams were basically rivals and nemeses. It just goes to show I guess how regardless of how people may act in a game or in an interview or whatever, outside of the game they are still themselves, and in this case, Kawaii was extremely helpful and supportive and proved incredibly useful in helping us to defeat Chunnam. That said, I still really, really, really dislike PartinG, even if he might be different than how he is in his interview. He should go eat poop and poop it out his butt.

KawaiiLighT and TileaLighT giving us crucial tips before our match against Chunnam

We had a couple hours before our final showdown with Chunnam was to begin, and we spent the first hour coming up with our map picks. Our choices were facilitated by the fact that Chunnam had zero Zergs on their team – unfortunately this was also pretty upsetting for us since most of us had been practicing a crap ton of XvZ for Washington’s Zerg heavy lineup. We ended up running a pretty standard lineup, with the exception of me on Antiga Shipyard (which was actually the plan were we to face Washington in the finals) – the plan was for me to snipe one of their strong Terrans either eins or the CJ Entus B-teamer NosSave since I felt decent about ZvT on that map. When we saw that they put a Protoss on that map I was a little bit disappointed and surprised – Protosses generally don’t like the map and often resort to 2-base all-ins, which can be difficult to stop if they get past the rocks to your third and get in that amazing chokepoint. So I was in fact quite worried for the matchup, but we had to go get dinner first. We got some Subway and some people got some Sushi, and I told everyone to not eat too much – it’s best not to eat a lot before a battle to the death.

University of California, Berkeley vs. Chunnam Techno University

PulseTwoOneJ <GSL Daybreak> eins

Abstinence <ESV Cloud Kingdom> IIllIlIIIlll

Sunshine +

Reach <iCCup Deconstructed> SungJae Jo

+ Rex

EGSuppyRC <GSL Antiga Shipyard> NosRedBlack

MnMDayaL <GSL Metropolis> nosmyfortic

bnYFan <GSL Entombed Valley> llllllllllll

The Final ~~Exam~~ Battle

Well, what can I say. Each one of these games was a rollercoaster of emotion. I could not sit still in my seat. My team and I actually ended up sitting outside since it was getting way too hot in the viewing room. I was so nervous for each and every one of the players on my team, holding my breath at key moments and screaming at the top of my lungs the very next. No wonder our whole team lost our voices and couldn’t talk well for the next two days.

First game was TwentyOneJ, our high masters / once GM Terran against eins, the apparently “cheesy” player on Chunnam’s team. The game started off rough. TwentyOneJ got essentially no scouting information, and since we had told him that eins was probably going to cheese, he played SUPER safe. Eins was actually expanding with an in-base CC. Immediately we were devastated by the build order disadvantage. But the very next moment, TwentyOneJ pushed out and managed to kill quite a few SCVs. It didn’t seem like it was enough but when Day[9] and megumi opened up the workers lost tab and we saw like 20+ SCVs killed and our player with 34 SCVs to ein’s 14 SCVs we knew we had the game in the bag.

TwentyOneJ about to kick some ass

Unfortunately, we didn’t. I’ll let you imagine for yourself the frustration and disappointment everyone felt as TwentyOneJ essentially threw the game in horrible fashion, mispathing units and losing several carelessly while doing an all-in, eventually giving the Korean Terran a win. It was a loss that should have been a win.

F**K I’M AN IDIOT!

Frustration and disappointment

Our morale was definitely pretty low going into the next match. Things looked promising once again with our player, Abstinence’s, 2 rax against some sort of early expand and quick gas build from the Protoss, but the 2 rax didn’t do enough damage. Our player still had a great chance with a follow-up timing, but his tanks were sieged too late and his micro wasn’t all too correct. Again, just a few things needed fixing and it would have been an easy win. It wasn’t to be this time though, and it was loss number two. Megumi made quite a funny joke about abstinence (his ID is Abstinence) towards the end though haha, since he wouldn’t leave even when he only had one supply left.

Our famous player Abstinence. Check out his interview with IPL here

Next up was our 2v2 team, and this is a matchup we were pretty confident in. Our 2v2 was extremely consistent through the entire CSL season, losing only one match and also performing as one of NA’s top ladder 2v2 teams. The Koreans on the other hand, according to an earlier interview during CSL, appeared to be pretty much 1v1 players who ended up practicing 2v2. Well, our players actually consulted with some other top NA 2v2 players who were locals and attended the event, and came up with a great counter build. As far as I can remember, our team had opened ling hellion versus Aarhus, which would have prompted a response from the Korean team to open hellion / ling bane. That’s exactly what they did, and it was perfect as our players opened instead with hellion roach, managing to heavily damage the Korean Zerg, essentially crippling him and making it a 1v2.

Initial reactions

It was very much to our shock at how amazingly the solitary Korean Terran played however, with quick upgrades despite being on only 2 bases, he put up a nasty fight against our 2 players (we speculate that the Koreans shared control in order to help with the micro). At one point things actually looked REALLY sketchy for us, a quick 2-2 timing push with tanks and bio pretty much killed both our players armies, forcing a massive SCV/drone pull that barely held off the push.

Are we about to lose a 1v2!?

From there our players had a large enough advantage to stabilize and slowly win the game, but the Terran did stay alive for an absurdly long time. It was an incredibly scary moment though when that Terran did that huge push. We got so nervous during that game that moving into game 4, my game. My arms and hands were actually still shaking slightly from all the adrenaline from just watching that game. That 2v2 was definitely the beginning of a change in momentum, however.

Self-explanatory

DayaL gives Sunshine a big fat smooch for winning

2v2 swag

Next up was my match. I already talked about how I wasn’t totally happy with a ZvP on Antiga. Additionally, I was told beforehand that I was playing their worst player on their team (which ended up being untrue, as we had mixed up two of the players by accident). Upon hearing this, I decided to play super super safe and just make sure I didn’t die to any all-ins. I was still a little bit jittery after watching the 2v2, and you can actually see in the beginning that I actually sent my first scouting overlord back to my main on accident, which could have been disastrous as I had basically zero scouting information on my opponent for the first part of the game (crucial in scouting if its FFE or gate first). Thankfully it was standard FFE play. Heading into mid game, I made like 3-4 overseers to try and scout what he was doing, and I basically didn’t drone at all, skeptical that his late third was a fake to-be-cancelled third like in the first game from Washington vs Chunnam. I delayed my hive for like 2 minutes and made very few drones, expecting a quick attack. He ended up not attacking, which basically meant I was maxed on a crappy economy with bad tech and would be in a terrible position if he just sat around and got a huge army then attacked. It was REALLY dangerous when he did some warp prism play, it pulled all my infestors out of position and I almost lost ALL of them. At this point I was actually extremely worried that I might actually lose, his late late late attack was actually going to work out to his advantage because of my low drone count and lack of tech to get necessary broodlords to hold off a bigger colossus timing attack. He engaged up to kill my fourth, and all my infestors were late, but somehow, and even now I don’t really understand how, but my army of just ling corrupter (my infestors were lagging behind ) slaughtered his stalker colossus sentry composition. I still don’t know how that happened. But thankfully my over-safeness didn’t bite me in the butt and I was able to take the game, evening it up to 2-2.

Momentum swinging

The fifth match was our senior, MnMDayaL, vs the player we affectionately dubbed “JulyTerran.” DayaL was quite busy in the weeks leading up to the event, missing out on a lot of potential practice. This was particularly worrisome to me since DayaL is a very strong mechanical player, but he needs a lot of practice in order to play at the top of his game. However, it didn’t really matter – this game was over in less than 7 minutes. It was a 5 rax play from the Terran. Oh I remember this game so clearly. It was crazy. Our entire team screamed and yelled and cried and rejoiced due to a single overlord. At first the Terran swifly denied the overlord from scouting the lack of a natural CC, and we groaned in apprehension. But just a minute later, with some foresight that even I don’t think I would have thought to have done in that situation, DayaL sent in that same overlord a SECOND time to scout for the natural CC. He said he was suspicious after seeing so many marines with a scouting ling, particularly seeing them not in a bunker either. Well he didn’t see a natural CC. I can’t even explain BUT I JUST JUMPED UP and TwentyOneJ jumped up with me and WE HUGGED WE WERE SO FREAKING HAPPY. I can’t even explain the feeling. The rest of our team also erupted in cheers I’m sure but I can’t even remember since it was literally just a blur, I just remember jumping up and embracing my teammate like I had just won the lottery or something. We knew DayaL had scouted what was coming by not seeing the CC, and immediately 6 spines were put down, AND HE HELD. I remember still so clearly how he was just standing there with a big old grin on his face as our entire team ran in and doggie piled on him in a giant team embrace. Now, with this crucial win, it was guaranteed to go to an ace match at the very least. 3-2.

DayaL’s emotional reaction after winning

It’s 3-2!

6th match was our DotA beast and SC2 beast Fan. He was, however, up against Chunnam’s best player, the CJ Entus B teamer NosSave. Although Fan is arguably the second best player on our team, and practiced a lot for CSL, I knew that it was likely the game might go to ACE since it was the other team’s best player. Things started off decently, and we were happy with a slight build order advantage that Fan got early game. However, the stream ended up going down for like 15 minutes, resulting in a 15 minute pause that really probably messed with the momentum / mindset that Fan had going into the match. Kind of like the recent NBA Superbowl after the power outage, a long delay can really change the pace of the game. That’s actually what PartinG did to me in BWC, after losing the first games he took like a 20 minute “bathroom break,” but ok whatever that’s a bit off-topic. After the unpause, Fan got hugely supply blocked and had to make like three pylons at the most inopportune time – as Nossave was attacking. Nossave had some great drop play and did terrible damage to Fan, and at this point I just started pacing back and forth in order to stay warm and prepare myself for the ACE match. Fan held on valiantly for quite a while, but eventually was forced to tap out, I didn’t really catch most of the rest of the game as I was just walking back and forth, making sure I went to the bathroom and got hydrated at the water fountain, etc. to be in the best possible condition for the ACE possible.

Our CSL manager ArcaneFox’s reaction as things started to look grim

So that was it. It was time to play the ACE match. It was time for everything to be put on the line in a single best of one. A $20,000 best of one. A best of one that would determine if history would be made. All of our hard work over the entire season culminated in one final match.

And yet, strangely enough I didn’t feel nervous at all. I sat down and was ready to play. I don’t know why I didn’t feel nervous. Either I was resigned that fate would decide the victor, or I was so determined that I was unaware of any nerves. Kawaii told me before the match that the 1/1 roach build was broken in his eyes, and I knew it would be a great build to do to prevent cheeses and also potentially deal devastating damage. It was the build I was actually prepared to use against him, had it been Washington in the finals. I knew what I was going to do, and there was no going back.

The final game of Season 6

The build I used was one that I basically designed three days before the CSL event. It was a variant of a typical 1/1 roach timing, except that it gets an early gas to make the Terran think it’s a speedling opening / 10 roach push opening. Either way would hopefully force an incorrect decision by the Terran, either going hellion heavy to take advantage of zerglings, or make more defenses against a nonexistent 10 roach push. That is why I mined 100 gas and then stopped mining gas without using it at all. Nossave scouted this, and I think this scouting information + the fact that on stream I typically go heavy zerglings might have contributed to his decision to open 2 factory blue flame hellion, which ended up playing exactly into my build.

Things looking good when the builds were revealed

I’ve rewatched the VOD of the final moments of CSL countless times now, just reliving what happened. I remember exactly as I saw him push onto my creep with like 8 hellions and try to get up the ramp that I was in a great position – with so many hellions, my roaches were likely to prove extremely strong. I really began to feel like I had a heightened awareness of what was going on when I pulled my queens back just in time to block the ramp. I pushed out. Somehow I just got a feeling that I should keep my natural walled off, so I rallied some roaches to my evo chambers and also put my queens to block, opting not to spread creep. And that’s exactly what he did, a hellion runby attempt with a bunch of BF hellions, and it was completely blocked. My roaches moved up his ramp, his SCVs blocked the ramp and for a moment I thought his SCVs might buy enough time for the siege tank to siege up and stop the attack since I saw I was getting shot at by a siege tank. But his SCVs started dying so quickly, and I seized the opportunity to push up, killed the depot, killed the tank. I saw him shaking his head across the table from me, and start typing GG. He hadn’t even finished typing GG when I had already left my chair, bolted from the room screaming at the top of my lungs to meet the unforgettable embrace of my teammates. We had won.

They say a pictures are worth a thousand words, and since I’ve already written thousands of words, let’s let the pictures speak for themselves.

So that was it. We had done it. We were the champions. Honestly I am still in disbelief about it. I have to say this tournament was the most rewarding tournament I’ve ever attended thus far. It will be an experience I will never forget.

Link to Part 3 here: CSL – Dream Come True Pt. 3

Photo Credit:
Thank you so much to the wonderful photographers who were at the event and whose pictures I used in the blog. I wasn’t able to credit each photo individually since tbh everything is in a massive jumble, but please do me a huge favor and check out the rest of their work and check out their CSL albums as well! They took amazing shots.

Carlton Beener – CSL Album
Robbie Nakamura aka GHOSTCLAW – CSL Finals Pictures
Jonathan Tayag aka itsjustatank – AZUBU Collegiate Champions Album
Silverfire – CSL Finals Album
iSktsalz aka Kathryn Salzler – CSL Finals SC2 Pictures

CSL - Dream Come True Pt. 2

Completed

Ongoing

Upcoming