Yesterday the TeamLiquid brass set out to draft ourselves a team. Things went fairly well, and although we made some mistakes, we are pleased with the overall results. This post will tell you all you need to know about the draft process, and then what is going to happen next.
The Draft Order
I hate to start on a sour note, but it can't be helped. This thread will show you why TeamLiquid picked 6th. Are we happy? No. The image was shrunk to 2/3's of its original size before judging. In addition, the logo one step up from us is simply a website image. I would have thought, in a community event, Blizzard would have appreciated the community effort brought forth by our site. Kudos to everyone who submitted something, and shame on those decision makers who lacked the comon sense to make a good choice. Anyways, the draft rounds alternated 1-8 8-1, so we were given the 6th and 10th pick.
Draft Strategy
Believe me, I did not do this myself. At TL we are blessed with some great SC minds, and I would like to thank BroOd and Plexa for helping me predraft, and also Nazgul, Yosh, Midian, and FA for forming the Draft squad during the proceedings. Our strategy was to create a list of 6-7 players we wanted to target per round. In addition, we wanted to save money mid rounds to have greater flexibility in the end. Here was are targeting list:
Round 1 Nal_keke Dong-hyuk Lim Z Korea 376 Sea.Jang Hee-jong Shin T Korea 340 Kosiro[Shield] Jae-uk Lee Z Korea 272 Polaris[Arnc] Hak-jou Kim T Korea 244 Tempest)Is( Jae-young Park P Korea 334 Siz)FanTaSy Myung-hoon Jung T Korea 292
Round 2 Siz)o.ov Chang-gyu Hwang P Korea 370 s2[fOu] Seung-suk Lee Z Korea 280 Sea.Pie Ju-hyun Park P Korea 322 Only[S.G] Hyun-sik Jung T Korea 300 Nal_Paris Yong-sam Shin T Korea 310 Sea.FinePix Chul-min Bae T Korea 358
Round 3 Super Minglu Zhang T China 268 Lx Luo Xian P China 364 Pheonix66 Chuanhai Zhuang T China 252 White_ra Aleksey Krupnick P Ukraine 352 In_Dove Ho Young Song T Korea 440 MidiaN Jamie Hallam Z England 296 etc.
However, we made a mistake while drafting: The mistake we made was thinking out an eight round strategy. The other teams spent all their money in seven rounds, and essentially got a free player in the final round, not caring who it was. Because of this, we underestmated the amount of minerals they would have in round 7. Does this suck? Yes, because we would have drafted differently. Other teams basically got a free player. However, there are upsides as well. Regardless, here is our lineup, by pick order:
Kosiro[shield] siz)Fantasy Lx Plto ret theognis FiSHeYe DaZe
However, according to asta, FiSHeYe said he quit the sandlot tournament after failing to win Germany's WCG Finals. This has yet to be confirmed, but if it is true, it is very disapointing. Nevertheless, we are happy with the players we chose, and were not forced to "accept" anyone because we had no minerals.
Tournament Procedure
Now that we have our team, we await our first opponent. The eight websites have been divided into two divisions of four teams. Each team will select 5 players each week to play, and seed them any way they see fit. This means our players will be numbered #1-5, and we will have no idea who they will play. Team captains will send in the rosters to blizzard, who will release the schedule. Games can be pre-played, but any no-shows = an automatic 2-0 walkover. The seeding process will be part of the strategy of the tournament. Every player on the roster must play at least once.
Prize information and other rules can be found here.
Again, thanks to everyone who spent time on the logo's and is follwing this tournament. Also, a big thanks goes to Theo, aka nvnplatypus. The Sandlot was his brainchild, and although he is no longer with Blizzard, I hope he will remain an active member of this forum in his new capacity at Razor. Check out his story here.
Good stuff, I would have gone to the actual draft on Bnet Europe, but it was at 6 in the morning here (I wake up at 8-9am and I'm a HEAVY sleeper).
Oh no, more bad news after more bad news. Fisheye might not even play in the Sandlot tournament after losing WCG Germany? That sucks! Fisheye should just kick back and relax in this tournament to take his mind off a disappointing finish at his WCG.
I think our line-up, given that we were TOTALLY FUCKING SHAFTED on the logo contest, is actually a very decent one. And I think, as long as all of our players are actually active and have their hearts and minds into this, we can do well.
I also think that some teams will have to use their worse players at some times. And as our team is more balances we can concentrate on strategy a lot more. If we are facing a heavy P team we can go Z nuts and have good odds, since our team is more balanced. they cant exchange their players as easy as we can
Nice news post . A good summary of everything from the topic. I think we did a good job with the picks. Or more precisely, Midian and others say we did a good job, and therefore we did (because honestly I would have no idea who to pick if it wasn't for them T_T).
I hope the Fisheye thing works out, somehow. It'd probably be best if he is replaced, since that seems to be what he wants, too. In which case, I hope we get a fair replacement.
The logo contest was bullshit. How in the hell did our logo and ygclan's logo rank LOWER than pgr21's logo? pgr21's logo is a piece of text with a circle behind it. Did they even bother to make a new logo for the contest, or did they just submit their standard site logo? It is obvious that our logo and yglcan's logo were both made specifically for this event, and it is obvious that far more effort went into making them. I cannot comprehend how anyone could rank pgr21's logo higher. It is hugely disappointing.
hmm imo our lineup *appears* to be the weakest.. but in all hoesnty.. i dont think we're that bad off we also got shafted in the logo =(, and 6th is arguably one of the worst spots.. 8th and 7th are best imo then 1st and 2nd im interested to see how this turns out... i mean, most of our players are undderated, so it should be fine... lets go tl
I'm also very suprised how the selection comittee could pick a logo that is just some text with a plain background with no thought or effort put into over TL's. That is pretty ridiculous IMO.
I think you did fairly well in the draft. Being as 6th pick, then 10th is a pretty hard spot to be in. the first three picks are very nice picks, although LX was majorly overpriced compared to others, but he isn't a bad pick as third at all. Picking up Jamie as 4th would have been a smarter move IMO, no offense FA =p, then just bumping everyone down a notch.
Overall TL's team is very well balanced with two very solid Kors and an assortment of talented foreigners who can compete with the other top foreigners and pull a win out any day.
I really like our line up. I think we did nice overall. If Fisheye can't play... can we get Naz to play ^_^ ? That would be so cool. I don't care AT ALL if Naz loses. I just wanna see the poker star in action now a days. We have Sonjjang in this thing... I wanna see Naz play too!
On September 17 2006 03:26 DirtyBirD wrote: I'm also very suprised how the selection comittee could pick a logo that is just some text with a plain background with no thought or effort put into over TL's. That is pretty ridiculous IMO.
I think you did fairly well in the draft. Being as 6th pick, then 10th is a pretty hard spot to be in. the first three picks are very nice picks, although LX was majorly overpriced compared to others, but he isn't a bad pick as third at all. Picking up Jamie as 4th would have been a smarter move IMO, no offense FA =p, then just bumping everyone down a notch.
Overall TL's team is very well balanced with two very solid Kors and an assortment of talented foreigners who can compete with the other top foreigners and pull a win out any day.
I agree, I said the same (about picking midian before me) :>
Fighterforum has 5kors + draco, talk about imba t_t but don't think team liquid did that bad, we have decent players... kosiro is really good, fantasy is ok, lx was overpriced but good player, ret can own them all if he's active , and lets all pray for nazgul to play. fa ognis and daze should be good enouf to win few games as well...
I don't understant that logo contest result. The man that judged didn't even look at the logos or what? Would have been better to not do anything if they were not doing it seriously.
On September 17 2006 05:32 Mango wrote: Fighterforum has 5kors + draco, talk about imba t_t but don't think team liquid did that bad, we have decent players... kosiro is really good, fantasy is ok, lx was overpriced but good player, ret can own them all if he's active , and lets all pray for nazgul to play. fa ognis and daze should be good enouf to win few games as well...
tl ftw !!!!
Well, its not that imbalanced. I wouldn't really count Dae as a korean player in the sense that there are plenty of foreigners who are better than him. (FighterForum picked Dae up right?) Also, Draco was WAYYYYYYY too overpriced and not worth the 500 minerals at all. There are so many other foreigners who are better than him that were so much cheaper.
As for Fantasy being okay, he is fucking good. Not okay, really good T player.
I would also love to see Naz get back into the ring and go a few more rounds with these youngsters, but getting someone who is in shape would be a lot better for the team overall =p
IMO the team to watch out for is PGR21. They have such a good lineup.
my theory is that blizzard didn't want it to look like they were preferring the non-korean teams. so they chose the best korean logo and put it above the worst (sorry, but that's how they decided T_T) non-korean logo. no matter if the non-korean one was actually still better...
On September 17 2006 05:32 Mango wrote: Fighterforum has 5kors + draco, talk about imba t_t but don't think team liquid did that bad, we have decent players... kosiro is really good, fantasy is ok, lx was overpriced but good player, ret can own them all if he's active , and lets all pray for nazgul to play. fa ognis and daze should be good enouf to win few games as well...
tl ftw !!!!
Well, its not that imbalanced. I wouldn't really count Dae as a korean player in the sense that there are plenty of foreigners who are better than him. (FighterForum picked Dae up right?) Also, Draco was WAYYYYYYY too overpriced and not worth the 500 minerals at all. There are so many other foreigners who are better than him that were so much cheaper.
As for Fantasy being okay, he is fucking good. Not okay, really good T player.
I would also love to see Naz get back into the ring and go a few more rounds with these youngsters, but getting someone who is in shape would be a lot better for the team overall =p
IMO the team to watch out for is PGR21. They have such a good lineup.
I think it's pushing it to say there are MANY other foreigners better than him :[ it's more like a select few.
i appreciate the effort our draft war room put into this, it's unfortunate blizzard allowed teams to go over the cap and also sabotaged our logo, imo if fisheye is really dropping out then blizzard should replace him with iloveoov to repair our damaged relationship
If fisheye quits he should be replaced by somone on a very high level. He was rated within 20 minerals of testie and PJ. Those guys play some of the best players in the world on a very regular basis. This actually may be a wild card for the TL team. If he gets replaced by somone actually worth that many minerals I can only see an improvement for the team. Not saying fish is a bad player, just that he is not nearly as sharp or in practice as some of the people rated close to him. It is kind of a bummer that TL got screwed for following the rules as they knew them.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://broodwar.ingame.de/news/upload/Klagelied/ygclan.JPG)
