IdrA, Artosis, Fakesteve and more

So the singapore TL outing concluded like 2 days ago, and if you wanna see pics and read about the awesomeness of fakesteve and how the outing went, check out konadora's blog and generic's post in general as well.

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=96999
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=96959

To start off, I arrived late so I missed konadora announcing to the rest who the special guests were going to be. Anyway, so after the whole fiasco with not being able to find a lanshop (PC bang), we finally got settled and started playing some games, nothing out of the ordinary. This was until the arrival of fakesteve, idra and artosis. And my thoughts were instantly, OH MY GOD. these were people i only got to watch on vods on youtube, the sort of "admire from afar and never expect to meet them" kinda thing. they are, in their own right, celebrities of the SC world, mostly anyone who follows the foreigner scene would know artosis and idra, and here they were standing just 5m away.

fakesteve, (and i'm not just saying this cause he's a mod and i'm trying to suck up to him), is one of the coolest dudes i've met. he's a fascinating, charismatic and endearing (not sure if this is the right word to use) individual. there was this point after dinner where he came up to me and kona, and started telling us about how he once lost his wallet at clarke quay (an area with a tonne of pubs), and how the next day some guy called him up at his office and offered to return his wallet. if it were anyone else telling that story, i'd be like "wtf, why am i listening to your life story, blog that shit man", but with fakesteve, he just made it so much more entrancing, to the extent where i was actually interested in finding out what'd happen to his wallet. its like you just wanna listen to him (endearing?).

Anyway, idra and artosis quickly got seated and started playing a TvT on destination, if you wanna watch that check out the videos in generic terran's post. i wouldn't attempt to post my thoughts on the game cause my knowledge of tvt is abyssimal, but basically artosis opened with 2 fac vult, idra opened 1 fac CC, defended against the vults, artosis tried to set up a contain across the bridges, idra killed it with dropships and took another expansion quickly, eventually taking the game with expo advantage.

afterwards, everyone continued playing (after taking a break to watch artosis and idra), and i watched idra FPview against some rather noob zerg player (he left before i could catch his name). both games, idra would scout a very low unit count for zerg (just cause he was noob), and because of the low unit count, he'd prepare for a drop that he thought was coming. anyway, i didn't want idra to leave with such a poor impression of singaporean gamers, and seeing i was probably the best singaporean player there (jukebox, singapore's top player was absent), i challenged him to a game. here was a progamer who was willing to play, why in the world would i not jump at the opportunity. other people queue for ages, trying to get a game against him on TLattack and all i had to do was ask. its not every day that a random nobody like me gets to play against america's top players.

--mostly ingame stuff--

naturally i create python, a map that i have a decent amount of practice on, but more importantly, a map that idra doesn't play 13 hours a day on. i was hoping that with that advantage and with him being unused to the keyboard and mouse, i might have some chance. some the first game plays out mostly standard except that i pick off his first tank despite him walling and me opening 1 gate ob. i scout his 1 fac CC and i do the standard double expo. i make the first mistake of leaving goons at his choke instead of defending at my expoes, so his first 4 speed vultures that he moves out with nets a pretty good amount of probes (like 8 or so).

you know the feeling when you're playing against an A grade player and you kinda just sit behind the computer and wonder what just hit you. thats what i experienced on the first vulture raid. when his vultures came to my nat, i transferred my probes almost immediately, and had like 4 goons firing at his 4 vultures. he ran up my ramp and i sent my maynarding probes to surround, and he microed his vultures out of that, and killed more probes. if i had been controlling those 4 vultures, i'd have probably gotten 2 kills before those vultures met their end.

anyway, long story short, i stop most of the other raids, minimising the damage, but he moves out with a whole bunch of tanks to defend third, i have a 4th warping in, am 20 supply ahead, and lots of gateways and a shuttle full of templars. he makes his first aggressive move, unsieging about 3/4s of his tanks and pushing them foward. i engage, flying my shuttle in to drop the templars and storm only to find out i forgot storm (lol). i end up killing most of his tanks anyway, not that it matters cause that was only 1/2 or so of his tanks, and i retreat with roughly 2 groups of goons. he reinforces and i engage again (which on hindsight was a rather silly decision), and my army gets toasted. GG game 1 (and idra did say gg).

game 2 on python again, i open 2 gate ob cause i scout a starport just as my probe is leaving his base. i was hoping that he'd cancel it since i saw it though. he also sees my fast robo. he pushes with FD, killing 1 goon. and i'm expecting drop to come any time, but it doesn't, so i'm kinda certain that he's cancelled the starport and opted for a faster CC. i move my 5 goons out to go poke at his expo, and just as i do so, the drop comes, my goons return, but lots of probes die anyway. i stick in it, but the game is over already. turns out idra actually got a wraith first cause he thought i was going reaver. therefore the drop was late and fooled me into thinking that he'd cancelled. kinda silly since my goons wouldn't have done any damage anyway and i could've sent an ob to take a look first.

third game was against artosis. after the game he told me that he thought he was just playing against some random noob and didn't expect me to play so well. i felt so good about myself. anyway the game opened with him doing 1 fac CC at 22 supply~. with my scouting probe still doing circles in his main, i scouted his build and went for 1 gate range double expo, securing an early economic lead, with my third base warping in roughly at the time when his nat got set up. however, he does a 1tank2vult drop slightly after that really fucked me up for a pretty long time. after finally stopping it, my ob sees only 4 facs, 1 tank at his nat sieged up and 2 at his cliff, and i go for a bulldogish nat bust thing only to find out that his facs are actually rallied to the top of his ramp out of sight of my ob, and i retreat with heavy losses.

at this point he's like 20 supply ahead and has taken the island, and i've taken a 4th base. we both go macro mode, with him pushing out with about 160 supply. we're about even in supply now, and i basically try to pick off vultures and force him to siege and unsiege his tanks. in the meantime i do a 4zeal drop on his island. it seems that the drop took his attention off his push for a while to defend his island, allowing me to run my army up beside his tanks, and we end up trading armies. my macro slips a bit and i accumulate about 2K minerals here and my damned arbiter tribunal refuses to start.

his main and nat are mostly about dry, and i've still got nat, third and 4th running, and i start a 5th base. unfortunately, he sneaks 4 tanks to my 4th base, mines up the entire area, and i know it'll be impossible to take out without losing a whole bunch of units, so i exchange it for his min only. but soon after my nat and 3rd dry up, and with no expansion (5th cancelled cause of his tanks), my situation is getting dire. his island is still running full capacity, and he builds up a huge army with 3/2 upgrades, pushes out and rapes my army. GG.

--end of ingame stuff--

so after these games, we go for a meal of chicken rice. i was beside konadora and opposite eugene and we had an interesting conversation on when we joined teamliquid, when we started watching/playing sc, what was the most influential games on us. (eugene's was nada gorush, luna YATGK MSL. kona's was boxer oov requiem ever2004 finals. i'm still rather undecided, but for the moment i'll go with oov reach mercury game 5 ever semifinals).

after the meal a group of us went drinking. (idra, fakesteve, kona, jingguo, eugene, redstorm, artosis, me, thestoryteller, and htennek. i was probably the weakest drinker amongst them, excluding jingguo who's 17). so anyway this is what i remember from a slightly fuzzy memory of the whole thing.

there was this point of time when we were talking about konadora's lack of masturbation, and artosis was giving him tips on how to masturbate. (put your hand around the shaft, and do this -pumping motion-). fakesteve and jingguo were some distance away, fakesteve taking a smoke. when he got back, he was like "jingguo just threw up. when you're 17 and you drink enough to throw up thats something." and red_storm told him something like "hey, you missed an interesting conversation on konadora's masturbation habits" and fakesteve replied "i did something better. i witnessed the evolution of a child".

other things we spoke about were idra's games at ESWC, and how he just went up on stage grinning after he'd won, thinking "wow that was an easy 4 grand", and artosis being all bitter,"you don't deserve 4 grand for beating tossgirl and white ra." pretty funny moment there. also SC2 and the first wave beta, teamliquid, rekrul, other korean players, recent games.

we left at rougly 3am when the place was closing. my thoughts were that idra's a pretty quiet guy (for a white guy anyway, although obviously us asians spoke a lot less than he did). artosis is really funny, and fakesteve is just, well, you have to meet him.

and to end off, here are the replays of the games i spoke of.
+ Show Spoiler [idra vs pangshai 1] +

+ Show Spoiler [idra vs pangshai 2] +

+ Show Spoiler [artosis vs pangshai] +

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IdrA, Artosis, Fakesteve and more

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