EPTWelcome back, ladies and gentlemen from Thanksgiving break! If you were celebrating thanksgiving with your friends and families, chances are that you missed the STL cast for week 6. If you did watch the STL cast, chances are you missed out on thanksgiving and on being a true patriot for USA. You win one, you lose one.
With Thanksgiving, black friday, and prepping for the Christmas season, it was a tough week for any american-based player that wants to stay in top shape. Can’t play well with being stuffed to the brim of freedom turkey and freedom stuffing, while emptying one’s wallet for freedom products.
Let’s jump into the reviews with a perspective of a 14 year old girl (Gecko’s secret personality), and we of the SBWI writer team would like to wish you all a merry Christmas! (Yes, it’s technically Christmas and if you celebrate another holiday, I’m still wishing you a merry Christmas)
Review: Week 6
Important: XKCD and me agreed on a topic and then only later noticed we had no idea what we actually wanted. He wanted to promote American culture, so did I. I wrote like a 14 year old weird spoiled girl. I don't know what he had in mind.
So, there were like two wars this weekend. In the first, there was like, this iFU Russians, who are soooo manly, because they drink водка all the time, have this lots of hair on their chests and are not afraid of anything. But then, they chose to not send out many Russians, because they were probably fighting bears or something, while playing intrinsic Motivation, with their strange logo, I'm sure it's super post modern and I will buy shirt with this picture on it soon. It was so exciting!
This Spanish kid eOnzErG totally killed it off in the first set, he was super bossy. He just walked over Fazers, or whatever his name was, which was because eOnzErG is so super good with Zerg and that's probably too good for a new comer. I felt bad for Fazers, or whatever his name was, hopefully he is not too sad.
On Colosseum II they send out Alfio. Alfio is Italian and Protoss, which makes kinda sense, because the Colosseum is in Paris, right? Totally smart, an Italian knows this totally. He knew it so well he picked Terran and somehow took the lead with his first push, because his opponent, Porbertmugabe who probably has a sexy accent (he comes from the UK), was not training too many units. But the English never give up, and he made it back with these flying cloacking units, Arbiters. However, he also psied a lot of his own units and then lost.
Cryoc played in the fourth set, and he's a German and German have no mercy. He soooo destroyed widowkiller_, who was probably still sick, because he ate too much turkey.
In the last set we finally saw a true Russian, mustafa or so they said in this Russian chat, who made it 4-0 for his team against this C Rank dude MVP.
In the second war the eagles, who don't like to be called eagles, played the guys from Peru, LaGFree. The opener between this super old legend CaStrO and non was super funny, because it lagged a bit, so they had to play without lanlatency. Zerg tried to use these lings, but couldn't do much, because non built these flamethrower mans. So CaStrO went for these flying worms, but there were too many rocket towers and he lost.
For the second war the eagles used their Croatian Protoss dsaqwe against the Zerg hard. I can't really remember much of the game. The Zerg was a few ranks lower, but tried to do his best, but couldn't keep up with these flying Corsairs long. That made it 2-0!
Things finally got really, really interesting, like even more exciting than the Paris Hilton videos, when this guy with the creepy pic at defiler, Astro played TerranBoy on Outsider. Terranboy was Terran, haha, a witty nick, and went for a lot of drop ship play. DRaW was really depressed, because he wanted to play on another map, but ZaRaki wouldn't let him. You can't be mad at ZaRaki, he's so cute. Anyway, DRaW was thrown off and didn't know how to counter these super large drops all the time. There were a lot of explosions, and this blue goo everywhere. It lasted long and it was a nail biter, not that I bite my nails. Terranboy made it 2-1!
Next was this Michael, who used to be super good, but then went into a slump and now is bad, playing in the ICCup main event and all. He played Zerg against Wapool, who is super unknown and a big mystery, which makes him really famous among the few women watching. Wapool really kept up well with Michael for the most part of the game, and there were storms and blood again and more storms hitting more Zealots, which I think wasn't really good. Eventually Michael took it and the eagles were up 3-1.
The last set was very short, because Lumix built a bunker on Tau Cross against Leo and won with that. This made me a little sad inside, but it was ok, the other games were great.
Preview: Week 7
As European it's hard to anticipate what the average reader wants. As this week theme's going to be about America, this week's preview will be American, too. That means a lot of statistics, before you'll be able to read up on some more important stuff, then we'll blend over to advertisment.
Our statisticians figured, that every Protoss who lost so far made a pivotal mistake. All of their games have one thing in common: the Scout vision upgrade wasn't researched. Furthermore, the mirror matches seem to be balanced. In PvP every Protoss loses as much as he wins. This is good news and hints that we shouldn't care to test maps for imbalances in mirror matches. Other findings suggest that the likelihood of succeeding with a 5 Pool decrease significantly if Zerg builds more than nine drones before a Spawning Pool.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/idgPxL8.png)
The standings are more interesting: LRM and the eagles are still leading with an iron fist. LaGFree lost their first match, while iFU was able to actually win a war. To be perfectly honest, the next week's winners are already set. To use Largo's words: the eagles are the clear favourite, only if all of their players would get cancer and die an upset was possible. The same is probably true for iM vs PsB (sorry XKCD and iM). However, PsB does need to win as good as they can. They can't afford to lose more sets, as it'll be a hard competition between iFU (who started as bad as they possibly could), LaGFree and PsB to qualify for the slots #3 and #4. Same goes for sas, if they want a good seed, they shouldn't drop more games.
Hence, AoV and iM could play a very important role here. Every single set they'll take might change the outcome of the Playoffs.
Ah, the pause is off, now to more serious content.
RING RING RING RING!
Step right around, Ladies, gentlemen! The WBFSBWI (The World Boxing Federation of the Swedish Brood War Initiative) is proud to announce an annoucement:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/YNOYlSW.jpg)
At this point of time, we can only confirm that the Ukrainian monster Terran will be playing a showmatch live in Stockholm next Sunday. Apparently Marwin currently resides in Sweden, quite close the headquaters of the SBWI (Jaevlaterran's kitchen). It was the opportunity for Jaevla to set up a small meeting; not only to watch the seventh week of the STL, but also to play a bit afterwards. Damn right, vOddy, the Swedish star, will most likely take on Marwin in a Terran vs. Terran.
The mode, the maps and details will be worked out soon. We recommend that you'll stay after the "ordinary" cast, it'll be awesome. Instead, have this incredibly gosu promotion video about Marwin, which we found on reps.ru!
Interviews
For this week it has been particularly hard to find someone to interview. I just wanted to share how it usually works. Just so you get some insight.
+ Show Spoiler [JaevlaTerran] +
Explanation: JaevlaTerran motivates his writer team with a strategy he copied from a certain Korean coach. He threatens us with a bat. If we do well, we receive a "no bat" prize. He didn't want to answer questions.
yea I go get bat
bat bat bat
+ Show Spoiler [Marwin] +
[19:21:23] GeckoXp: do you have time for an interview?
[19:21:31] marwin: now?
[19:21:37] GeckoXp: yes
[19:22:03] marwin: sorry i'm tired a bit, it'll be convinient for me next week
Don't you worry, Marwin will play. Futhermore, we WILL force Jaevla to do interviews!
+ Show Spoiler [2pacalypse-] +
[20:00]
[20:00] <_2Pacalypse> hi
[20:00]
[20:01] <_2Pacalypse> if i'm needed to do any work, then yes
[20:01]
[20:01] <_2Pacalypse> please no...
[20:05]
[20:05] <_2Pacalypse> shoutout to gecko for all his hard work!
+ Show Spoiler [Largo] +
...Getting blamed that his gf sends him duck pics after seeing some video and reading up some history...
[17:16:47] GeckoXp: btw, have you watched the STL casts or were you busy?
[17:18:35] Largus: what is STL?
[17:18:44] GeckoXp: SBWI Teamleague
[17:18:49] Largus: didn't watch
[17:18:57] GeckoXp: ooke.
[17:23:24] Largus: why do you ask?
[17:29:06] GeckoXp: just doing interviews and search for anyone i could interview
[17:33:27] Largus: get a duck
[17:33:58] Largus: Gecko: quack quack quack. Quack?
A Duck: quack urself, bastard. Quack-quack.
+ Show Spoiler [AleXoundOS] +
He's a super helpful researcher and does a lot of stuff for this league, so he's really interesting, even though you might not know him
[20:02:56] GeckoXp: ALEX. TYT?
[20:03:02] AleXoundOS: тут
[20:03:17] GeckoXp: watever.
[20:03:48] GeckoXp: do you have some time for an interview?
[20:04:01] AleXoundOS: (tmi)
[20:04:39] AleXoundOS: I think I don't have much(anything) to say at this point publicly
+ Show Spoiler [vOddy] +
We heard that you're going to play Marwin next Saturday. How do you feel about it?
It'll be good practice for me, and it'll be fun. I don't expect to win.
Do you have any idea of the mode, the maps, the match ups yet?
I assume the match up will be Terran vs Terran. I don't have any idea what maps we will play on, or how many matches there will be.
I'm hoping it'll just be casual practice matches, so I can get to play as many games as possible
How did this whole thing start? Jaevla threatened the both of you with a bat?
He told me that Marwin was in Västerås, a place in Sweden not too far away from where we are, and that Marwin is good at swedish. He decided that we should try to get Marwin to come over to his place and play Brood War over a LAN. Then he decided that it should be streamed, too. I basically agreed with everything.
It's a great opportunity to meet a pretty high level player in person, and to play vs him over a LAN. Why not use it?
Yah, Ukrainians and why not. You'll also be playing in the ICCup Main Event next saturday - any feelings about that yet?
I wish I didn't have to study so I could spend all my time practicing for it. If I don't play my best, I feel a little bad for the sake of Brood War and any potential viewers, as if I don't do the game justice. To illustrate my viewpoint, I'll use bad cheese as an example:
The more people who lose to bad strategies that should not work, the more those strategies will continue being used. On the other hand, if you smash strategies that are bad, you are contributing to the player using them being forced to adapt, and to adopt superior ideas, thus contributing to the welfare of the game.
Alas, much of my time is devoted to studying, so I am not an upstanding citizen of Brood War
Hm, but Jaevla still seems to be a big fan of you, so you at least have that. Have you considered using meta-gaming against Marwin? I heard Jaevla just brewed 50 litres of mead, maybe just get the guy drunk?
You heard correctly. He has massive containers of mead and cider standing around in his room, brewing, but he was doing that before we decided to try to contact Marwin. He's just a beverage enthusiast.
I asked him about the unfinished cider, and found out that it's actually a failed brewing project started by one of his older relatives, who was a little ashamed that he was unsuccessful at brewing. So JaevlaTerran took the cider and decided to fix it with some skillful rebrewing, so he can give it to the man as a christmas gift, which I think is pretty cute of him.
That doesn't answer my question, but let's leave it at that, you're apparently not mean enough to poison people. Let's switch the topic. A bit.
Who's going to stream the match?
Oh, right, meta gaming. I got too caught up thinking about alcoholic beverages. I apologize. No, I won't meta game, I have no up-to-date information about Marwin's TvT style. Anyway, it will most likely be JaevlaTerran who streams as an observer. Maybe Marwin could stream his first person view as well, but that's up to him. I couldn't stream my first person view even if people were interested, because the crappy laptop that I have in Jaevla's apartment isn't good enough.
Well. My notes also say "grudge match". It doesn't sound like it though. Will you artificially flame each other for the sake of the viewership, or why "grudge" in the title?
I have no idea why it's called a grudge match, or who named it as such. I have nothing against Marwin, and will not betray my philosophy of justice to appease the savage crowds!
But you have a grudge towards Julia. Explain. Feel free to use harsh words. Actually, we encourage you to do so, so we get a bit of grudge into the grudge match!
He (I've been told he is male, I wasn't sure earlier because of the name) has flamed me for, I estimate, more than 50% of the games we have played in which I have won, and I've played vs him on and off over the past two or so years. In the beginning, it was mostly standard stuff.
I'm a bad player who got lucky (multiple times in a row...), my style is lame, I abuse cannons and reavers and high templars (I used to play Protoss, and then Zerg / PvZ), and so on.
Then it changed to imbalance. There was no way for Zerg to beat the deathball. I asked him if it would be better if I played Terran, and he said "at least it would be balanced". Later on I actually switched to Terran, which kind of reset the process. I started out being lucky again
And then Terran was imbalanced, too
And the reason I race picked PvZ and TvZ instead of playing ZvZ was that I wasn't good enough to play that difficult match up. I actually tried learning ZvZ for a while, and did beat him a couple of times, and then ZvZ was a luck based match up
Eventually it turned in to me being a map hacker. I am ashamed to say it, but at that point, Julia kind of pissed me off. Whining about imbalance and calling me lucky is one thing, but accusing any one of a crime without evidence is another. Even if it's just about cheating in a game, that's not something you should do.
Julia is a person who deceives himself to feel better, rather than search for truth honestly. The ability of self deception is among the worst traits of humanity. It leads to much undue suffering, and I strongly dislike it.
At this point you could actually start to tell how his family doesn't like him or go for the Korean "you're a dog" thing...
pussy pussy sex hair!
I will tell Nina to teach you how to grudge match. You apparently need a bit more experience there. Nice guys and grudge matches...
We're not sure which topic to pick for this week's write up. It's going to be about Murica, I guess. What are your random thoughts on America? Especially about their stupid people...
Random thoughts on America? Hm. Well, I'll tell you one thing about Central America: I used to dislike the sound of spanish, but now I've come to associate it with King Of Fighters, like I have come to associate korean with Brood War. Because, you know, Mexicans play King Of Fighters. And now I kind of like it.
As for North America, I believe the people there have more or less the same potential as other peoples, but they are held back by parts of their culture, and their religion. Their stupid people are bad, but if we want to talk about stupid people being bad, I think the middle east is the worst. Their stupid people are the worst, even worse than North America's.
Other than that, I am very sympathetic to the North American cause of purging corruption from the United States government, which is fought by organisations like WOLF-PAC and MoveToAmend. It's almost debatable whether the United States is even a democracy anymore. Certainly not an effective democracy, due to legalized bribery. I can't really offer much help to the cause, but I follow your strife by reading and watching news, and I wish you the best!
(Besides, if you manage to fix your government, maybe it will control its banks better, which would be nice for the rest of the world, too)
Quite political. And badly phrased by me, obviously, we were talking about 'Murica and rednecks, but what the hell, that's nice too.
Next unrelated question: what do you think of a Marwin fanclub? Would you sign up? Should it be girlish? Would the color pink match the curtains?
Marwin is an excellent player (at least when he's in good form). Certainly better than I am, but I still wouldn't join a fanclub of his. I simply don't consider myself a "fanatic" of any one. We are all humans. I will only be fanatical over ideas or ideals, really.
If you do make a fanclub, however, I don't think it should be girlish. It should neither be masculine nor feminine. It should be gender neutral, like the game itself.
I don't like pink, so I don't think it would match the curtains.
"Is it a boy or a girl?" "Well, we certainly don't want to pressure it with roles already, no?" Nevermind, Monty Python's not the theme. Any last words?
You put me in the difficult position of speaking to the Brood War community, and I am not prepared!
I'm going to have to be boring and admit that I do not, in fact, have any last words.
Jaevla put me in the difficult positon to do write ups. You don't know how hard that is. I constantly live in the fear of getting bat'ed. That's not nice. The pressure is killing me.
Thanks for the interview nontheless!
+ Show Spoiler [MVP] +
+ Show Spoiler [SBWI Writer's Group] +
[19:46:37] XKCD: interview mvp
Let's start. Apologies in advance, we're almost at the deadline and we have to make up the interview. Could you please introduce yourself to our audience?
I'm mvp, Canadian 15 year old protoss player, have been playing bw for 4 years, infamously recognised for bm.
Well, 15 years and already playing the big venues. Tell us a bit about your team. How and when were you recruited? How's the atmosphere?
Morale is fairly good in and about the team, we seem to lack in the organisation area if you will, i wasn't quite recruited, so i started my own team, partnered with a buddy of mine XKCD who also financed the team, atmosphere seems to be swell, hopefully season 2 will go much better than season 1, we are using season 1 to prepare ourselves for the higher up ranking players
So you're the manager. Did you manage the recruits or how did the idea form that you wanted a team in STL?
Not manager, more the founder if anything, xkcd definetly seems to be taking the iniative in pulling the team together and making sure everything is going well, i was put on the spot to find 15 players for fox team, so i thought if im finding a full team, why not just make my own, it took me 4 hours to get a bunch of friends and we made a team!
That sounds great. 15 seems quite young, especially with all the people telling us how Brood War was outdated and about to die. How did you find to Brood War?
My parents own a restaurant, and we had a waiter who was studying in college at the time 4 years ago whose now a pilot, he introduced us to starcraft, me being as intoxicated by society as i was, thought it was nerdy, bad, grusome even when i saw my brother playing, so i started watching him and eventually gained interest and things esclated from there!
Are your players still playing? If so, are they in your team? If not, why?
Yes they're on the team everyone except rush and bibiane are playing
What's your impression of the two new maps? Did you play a lot on them for training?
To be 100% honest i hate them, its hard to practice on them for me but my teaamates dont seem to have much of a problem with it
What exactly do you hate about these maps?
ive been annoyed on these maps whilst playing on them
lack of opportunity
constrictions on play
reminds me of the map outsider
You mentioned you're known to be bm. Do you have any grudges or what's the background of that statement?
Nope, its mostly just troll being taken seriously
We have some sort of showmatch coming on. We're not exactly sure if it's supposed to be a grudge match or not. Anyhow, could you give vOddy some advice to actually trash talk? E.g. pasting some good basic flames would be nice...
I just found out he went afk to play games
+ Show Spoiler [Writer's Staff again, he was afk for a…] +
[21:06:21] GeckoXp: he's afk
[21:06:22] GeckoXp: o/
[21:19:47] Tomas Kratka: Don't add that one too the list
[...]
[21:38:43] Tomas Kratka: he has match against elegant
[21:38:47] Tomas Kratka: wait till hes done
[...]
remove my comment in mvp interview
[21:55:14] Tomas Kratka: the 2nd one
[21:55:21] GeckoXp: nope
[21:55:24] Tomas Kratka: fuck you
[21:55:26] GeckoXp: nope
[21:55:30] GeckoXp: I NEVER CENSOR
[21:55:33] GeckoXp: #stopeywa
[21:55:36] Tomas Kratka:
I would like him to pretend he cant speak english and bm
for example "your economy poverty"
he should take lessons from mvp, im a very good troll
Congratulations to your win btw. Did you ever get into real trouble for your trash talk?
nope
aside from like 10 temp bans
and 1-2 perm ban
Any good ban reasons? Something which made you laugh?
Yeah, most of them were hilarious
List some examples, please, so we can judge.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=370903
"his is the sad day when idra the rager got raged on by a gorilla who tackled him at the petting zoo and died. i feel bad for all you gay people who watched his stream.
he was a terrible person, and had a terrible attitude. he wont be missed
R.I.P GREG IDRA FIELDS AKA GREG RAGING FIELDS
"
Uh, that's harsh. Nobody ever created a grudge match call against you? Not even Telecom or somebody?
Nope. Telecom figured i was to good for him.
Aside from your trolling, did the STL season pay out for you so far? Did you train more, were you happy to play some of the established players?
yes
all of the above were applied
and made my life better
Ok, any last words?
I love my fans
hate my haters
Thanks for your time!
Writers: Comradexkcd, GeckoXP
