EPT![[image loading]](https://i.ibb.co/jDXJZd7/kek.jpg)
Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/broodwar/comments/1gvkld8/serious_how_to_contact_flash/
Hello Miro! Thank you for agreeing to do this interview for tl.net and being a good sport!
You have disrupted the Brood War reddit with your recent post about Contacting Flash and I quote "I found a new way to play TvZ that is likely incredibly strong".
Can you please elaborate on how did you come up with this new way?
Miro:
Hello!
Yeah, I am the one that made that Reddit post.
Maybe I'm a little out of touch but I think saying I disrupted the Brood War subreddit is a little bit much.
I'd just say I made a post that turned out to be pretty popular.
Admittedly, most people were making fun of it. I'm okay with that though.
As for how I came up with this, it's a bit of a complicated answer.
In general, I tend to formulate my own strategies.
Generally that involves pulling little ideas together from a large number of source games.
Additionally, I think it's important to break things down and look at them in terms of "situations" or "positions",
and then also evaluate weaknesses and solutions available in those positions, if that makes sense.
From there, with a large amount of note taking, you kind of start to formulate a decision tree and figure things out.
Hopefully that makes a little sense.
Sounds reasonable.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your gaming history (including Brood War)?
Miro:
I started playing games when I was really young, around 3 or so.
Both video games, and my dad was teaching me Chess.
At some point I got into StarCraft after a neighbor introduced it to me.
I joined a cool clan named The Conquerors on US West.
This was way back a long time ago. Around 2004 - 2005.
I jumped around on a lot of other games at the time, such as WoW.
At some point I decided to play PGTour, then ICCup.
For me, I was interested in the community side of it as well.
I was an admin for what felt like quite a while - probably 5 seasons.
Although I played on those servers, I definitely didn't ladder anywhere near as much as I could or should have.
I mostly played with people on my friends list, and joined a couple Korean clans.
After StarCraft 2 came out, I switched to it but found it fairly.. boring?
I liked the game itself but it felt weird socially.
Especially with clan and chat channel systems weirdly implemented (or not at all).
At some point someone on TL had commented that the community had a shortage of Terran streams.
I volunteered to come back for a few days. Turns out that was way more long term.
I had so much fun I was streaming 18 hours a day for a while.
Then, at some point, I met a girl and kind of disappeared to life and other games. (lol)
Around a year before Remastered came out, I came back to StarCraft.
As many know, ICCup was fairly dead around this time so I primarily bounced around the Brainclan and Fish servers,
mostly playing against Koreans either through their ladders or, again, Korean clans on those servers.
That helped me improve a lot and changed the way I looked at the game a little bit.
When remastered finally did come out,
I played for a few months but reconnected with a long time friend of mine and went to go play WoW with him.
I came back again, very hardcore about it all.
Playing games and analyzing replays or vods 12-16 hours a day.
Around when the BfA expansion dropped, I disappeared again. Met another girl. gg
Since then, my time actively grinding BW has been very on and off.
I always come back to try and play but always leave again.
Ladder tends to lead to less than enjoyable experiences so I just go do something more fun with my time.
Until the itch returns, and here I am.
Love it! What about other match ups?
Are you working on new TvP and a TvT strategies perhaps?
Or even ways for Zerg and Protoss to defeat Flash (something to prepare against in advance)?
Miro:
The short answer is no.
I do like thinking about the game and trying to come up with new things,
or explore areas of the game's strategic landscape that don't get much attention.
I still do that, and do have some things I've been thinking about.
At the same time, if I'm going to post something I want it to be fairly relevant but also fairly complete.
As an example, at one point around 2018, I was writing a TvT guide to post either on TL or Reddit.
I spent probably 200 hours and had roughly 35 pages of stuff fully sourced out to what were fairly recent games by top Korean players.
I had several other valid reasons I chose to not post it but I felt if I trimmed it, it would be incomplete.
I'm just one guy that likes StarCraft. I can only do so much with my time.
I do want to say though, as an expression of personal opinion, I feel the quality of strategy discussion within the community has gotten significantly worse over time.
I don't know if I should call specific people out at this exact moment but I feel various content creators or well known members within the community have invariably built a culture that incredibly limits the thought processes, understanding, or discussions people have.
People are far too quick to discredit ideas rather than discuss, or simply consider them.
This game is incredibly deep and *everyone* can do a little bit more learning.
The community has a lot of room to do better in this area.
Well I'm biased so I would say call em out (it makes for a more spicy interview haha).
I think the general line of thought is that the game is pretty mature and mapped out at this point.
What I mean by this is radically different things tend to not work.
Of course maps play a huge role in what's possible.
I think the recommendations on what people should focus on are tried and true, that's why they are there.
I personally LOVE things like Total Recall (Clustered Recall) exploit that we have seen on streams and once in ASL.
Miro:
That's kind of what I mean.
The community has been saying the game is pretty mature and mapped out since they decided iloveoov solved TvZ like 20 years ago.
ZvP was fairly mapped out back when savior solved the match up, etc.
The whole point is that *things aren't ever as mapped out as we think they may be*.
I think there's a lot of value in understanding why things *dont' work* as well as why things *do work*.
Back when I was working on that TvT guide I mentioned,
I reached out to several somewhat well known foreign Terrans to ask them certain questions.
By far the most common answer I got was some variation of, "I don't know".
I appreciate all the honest answers I got but it felt weird at the time.
I see. Well thanks for the interview!
Miro:
Thank you for your time.
Cheers! ^_._^
