NaNiwa Fan Club! - Page 415

How did you prepare for Dreamhack? Did you focus more on ladder or internally with players living in the EG-TL house?

NaNiwa: I prepared almost exclusively with playing ladder. The few times I played custom games with HerO, Oz, etc. they just stole my builds, so I didn’t see any point to keep doing that. Besides that most of the maps I played were proleague maps, which were totally pointless for me at Dreamhack. I only played in-house when the coach asked me, and played ladder the rest of the other time I had. I think ladder in Korea is perfect because you play almost every single player, race, and tournament map. It’s really an amazing way to practice. I wish I had the same quality in Europe.

Your 1-Gate expand into Stargate was something not many people had seen before. Is that your own build? Do you think coming up with new builds is important to succeed as a StarCraft player

NaNiwa: Yes, this is a answer I found in Korea since PvZ is my worst matchup, I felt I needed to make a change and I saw sOs opening with a gate expansion, so I thought it was viable in PvZ. After a lot of practice, I came up with this follow-up and I don’t think we’ve seen everything from it yet.

The way I see it there’s different kind of players, some players like me and sOs we focus a lot on thinking about the game,meta-gaming and making new builds. we might not have the BEST mechanics but they are good enough to keep up with the very top. I think heart of the swarm allows people who use their brain more than their hands to do very well since there’s so many things u can think about and tweak. But you can for sure be successful too without thinking up a new build, like innovation. but of course its a huge plus if u are the first person do a build that’s really good.

On May 14 2013 06:46 Neantix wrote:
Since Stephano is leaving the E-sport scene in august. It's up to you now to bring as far as you can the foreign flag .

I am really excited to saw your R016 matches, it's kinda remind me when I was watching you winning GSL Groups.

On May 14 2013 23:43 Sholdar wrote:


When was Stephano even relevant in this subject anymore? Naniwa have been the only true foreign hope since since forever

On May 15 2013 20:10 ne0lith wrote:


Probably just trolling or too biased because you're a swede. Naniwa has been up there with the koreans, being able to beat them but not quite crush them as Stephano on a good day. And Stephano used to have a lot of good days...

On May 15 2013 20:14 Radi0active wrote:



When did Stephano "crush" Koreans? When you reach more than RO32 in GSL Code S, that's when you've "crushed" some Koreans.

On May 15 2013 20:32 ne0lith wrote:


IPL, NASL, Lone Star Clash, a bunch of other foreign tournaments where he almost always beat at least 1 top korean in a very convincing manner. Naniwa did play solid in GSL; and if you want to call some not very one-sided matches in a good bracket for him as "crushing" Koreans, I've got no problem with that. I just wouldn't go further than saying Naniwa proved he is on their level by beating a few of the low-mid tier Code S regulars, crushing is when you make your competition look bad. He just never had the same consistency and convincing wins as Stephano.