CSL - Dream Come True Pt. 1

CSL – Dream Come True Pt. 1

I actually don’t know how to start this. Usually I write down an outline of all the ideas I want to talk about and in what order, but for this blog I think I’m just going to wing it. I’ve been trying to catch up on homework and missed classes and stuff since CSL so I’ve been pretty busy, and to be honest it’s been a whirlwind of stuff after the finals. When we came back on Monday there were so many pictures being uploaded, blogs being posted, the UC Berkeley FB Page sharing our photo and people commenting, etc. that I literally was glued to Facebook and couldn’t do anything productive. Currently I need to study for a midterm this Monday and a match against Maker for MLG on Wednesday in HotS (that I really am underprepared for since I practiced so much for CSL), so I’m feeling kind of stressed but really just wanted to write down some thoughts about CSL and the amazing experience we had.

Previous CSL Experiences

CSL Irvine Regional LAN February 2012

Last year we attended the UC Irvine Regional LAN, about the same time too in February. We went undefeated in group stages but were still knocked out on Day 1, so it was extremely disappointing, especially because I was basically the main contributor to our loss, losing to a mid-masters Terran by losing my first overlord to a 2 rax and then losing in the ACE match to my teammate at the time, xSixMystik. Overall though the event really gave me my first tastes of the emotion that CSL can bring. When we won, the shouts of joy were deafening (in a good way). When we lost, we were defeated, devastated. I particularly remember when we were down 1-2 or 0-2 against Mystik’s team from Fullerton (it was bo5 at the time) and the 2v2 was being played – it was a critical match (and by the way, remind me to talk about how awesome 2v2 in CSL is later), and we had decided to put one of our 1v1 players in the lineup to play the 2v2. Our team started off in a terrible position, and with things looking grim the rest of us watching already began hanging our heads low, resigned to our fate. Then somehow our team managed to come back, even with our Terran playing having 100+ SCVs and long distance mining from a center gold base. When they won the match we all went crazy, jumping up and down like maniacs. It was such a crazy good feeling.

On the other side of things, there were the feelings of absolute and complete depression. I lost the 2 rax game to the mid masters Terran and when I gg’d I immediately heard the roar of cheers coming from his team and I buried my face in my hands. I stepped out of the room and walked around alone for 15 minutes because of how absolutely disappointed I was in myself for letting down my team, and then losing in the ACE match after that was just horrible. Even though the regional LAN was just for something like $1,000, far less than the AZUBU CSL Finals this season, the pride of winning for your team and for your school, and then letting them down – it was a terrible feeling. These are the kinds of emotions that CSL produces, even if there isn’t $40,000 on the line or thousands of people watching. I have to be honest, but I have yet to see the kind of emotions that you see in CSL events in typical individual tournaments, and that’s what makes CSL so special.

ACE Match versus Mystik, with my team behind me. I was devastated after losing this match.

To be honest though, I have to say that I probably deserved those losses at that tournament. At the time, February of last year, I barely played at all and simply tried to rely on my mechanics on the tournament. It was a huge mistake, and I definitely paid for it and learned from it. Other good things came from that CSL tournament too, however. Our team had a blast driving together and talking all the way down the 6-7 hour drive to Irvine, and we all got a lot closer as a team. We also talked a lot about how we could improve the club, start running events, practices, etc. and that semester we really actually did a LOT of things, including lots of social events like bowling, karaoke, etc. CSL definitely can be attributed a lot of the credit for our growth as a club that semester.

Playoffs

Well, fast forward to this season. This season we were stronger than ever. I had joined EG and started playing much more consistently, three of our players were top high masters that consistently were beating GM players (and TwentyOneJ and Fan both hit GM at one point too), and our somewhat lackluster (although dedicated) 2v2 team from last season was replaced by an extremely strong 2v2 team who were one of the top teams in North America. This didn’t mean we could relax though, as I previously had discovered at last year’s CSL event – we practiced our asses off, and starting in playoffs we began to do scouting reports on every opponent’s team. Their players, their map vetoes, their favorite maps, their ranking on ladder, their favorite builds, etc. etc. and it really did make all the difference. Two of our players were playing cross server since the games were played over winter break, and it added a ton to the stress of things. However, our preparation really paid off.

In our most tense and nervewracking match of playoffs, in the semifinals (winner qualifies for the live finals) against University of Western Ontario (Ostojiy’s team), everyone practiced a ton. Knowing that the match could go to a potential ACE on Whirlwind, I practiced a lot for the map as well, and that is just what happened, it was 3-3 and I had to play ostojiy on Whirlwind. I have to admit this was the match I was the most nervous for, throughout the entire game my heart was beating so loud and I could feel it pumping through my chest, adrenaline flowing through my veins. Not even in the final match against Chunnam did I feel so nervous. This was the match that would determine if we would go to the live finals or not for the experience of a lifetime. Well, the preparation paid off and I managed to win in a 35+ minute ZvZ on Whirlwind which honestly must have reduced two years of my lifespan because of how scary it was. After winning we all got on a group conference called and screamed in joy for a few minutes. Just thinking about it puts a smile across my face.

Finals Preparation

Now onto the preparation for the finals. KawaiiRice and I rolled dice for which team we’d play, they got Chunnam University and we got Aarhus University. At the time, our team was a little bit disappointed because we thought on paper Chunnam looked a little bit weaker than Aarhus. However, as we saw at the grand finals, that turned out not to be true, those eSports majors definitely practiced a ton and improved a lot for the finals. Apparently they could choose their homework as “practice Starcraft,” so I guess it’s no wonder they were so strong at the live finals, even with some of their players recent switches from League of Legends. Regardless, we started preparing, scouted Aarhus and scouted University of Washington and began formulating strategies.
Against Aarhus we picked a standard lineup, we were hoping to just play solidly and be able to beat them since our players seemed to be slightly better by ladder ranking. Our picks ended up working out perfectly, with our best player playing against their best, and our second best player playing against their second best, both matches slightly favored for us. For Washington, we decided to switch up the lineup since we were so predictable throughout the season, and were hoping for me to snipe one of their stronger players (Caliber or Kawaii). We didn’t scout Chunnam at all, expecting Washington to be our final opponent if we made it to the finals.

In terms of practice, we all started ramping up the practice time and started practicing with each other. We all made smurfs so it would be difficult to scout us. However, we later learned that Washington knew each and every single one of our smurfs and all of our builds/maps too. They were even all running smurfs and sniping us as we queued on ladder as barcode accounts, so they even got a firsthand taste of how it would be if they were to play against us. Washington was definitely the most prepared team going into this event. Shoutout to Scarlett though who was stuck in San Francisco and came over and helped me strategy wise and gave her backing to our team, it was a nice morale booster!

As the event approached, we got more and more apprehensive about our matches. We did not want to face Washington because we knew that they were quite prepared, although we didn’t even know that they were prepared to that extent. But closer and closer to the event we got more and more nervous about Aarhus, and realized we had been preparing too much for Washington (I had been practicing exclusively ZvP / ZvT for some weeks before the event, until a few days beforehand I realized I needed to definitely do a lot more ZvZ practice to prepare for Thorminator, a top top EU masters who is basically GM).

Aarhus University

Stoic Danes vs Smiling Asians (+1)

We flew in on Thursday night, and I remember started to get incredibly worried about Aarhus. The first team we met was Chunnam University. We immediately noticed that they had JulyZerg on their team, who had switched his race to Terran. We also later realized that they were quite strange, as the Korean player on our team mentioned how they basically didn’t talk at all and almost never smiled. It was quite intimidating seeing them like that, particularly when they were dressed up in their uniforms. They told us that Aarhus University was confident against us, and I began to get increasingly paranoid. I remember seeing their video about how they were doing a bootcamp for the event just like Washington, and it scared me a lot about how much they might have potentially improved. We met with Aarhus on Friday and had a nice talk with them, and they were super nice people, and by the end of CSL we were very close with Aarhus. I was very glad to have been able to meet them. But, the next day we woke up and found our new friends to be our enemies, and I feared for the worst when our freshman player who was the matchup we were most confident in ended up losing the first match.

Getting along with Aarhus on Friday while waiting for rehearsal

Thankfully, as we later learned, Aarhus actually didn’t prepare that much for us in terms of scouting, and weren’t as prepared as we had feared. We ended up winning the next four matches, winning 4-1 and moving on to the grand finals. It definitely scares me to know that Aarhus did not prepare, just think about how they’re going to do next season when they prepare for matches as extensively as us and Washington did (which they promised they would do after learning about how much we had prepared). They even took out Lucifron/Vortix’s team in the EU playoffs! I guess this event for them was basically like my experience at the CSL Irvine Regional LAN the previous LAN, they met just after qualifying for CSL and must have bonded a lot thanks to CSL. I think they had a fun experience too, soaking up some much-needed sun and getting to visit the States – I think next season they will be more determined than before, and that’s definitely quite a scary thought.

So, I realized that I’ve written a ton so far, and that’s partly due to my loosely structured style of this blog (I’m basically just writing as things come into my head) and partly because there is so damn much to write about. I’m going to split this blog up so that the other parts are written better and so that there isn’t too much text to read at once, so look for the next part soon. Thanks for reading, and let me know if you want me to address something in the next part or if you have any suggestions!

Link to Part 2 here: CSL – Dream Come True Pt. 2
Link to Part 3 here: CSL – Dream Come True Pt. 3

Photo Credit:
Carlton Beener
Robbie "GHOSTCLAW" Nakamura

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