Pony Express Issue 74: May 5th - May 11, 2009

http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/games/12016_Casy_vs_RorO

This week's vod of the week is the proleague game between casy and roro. With ace being 2 up already, this game was a must win for roro, but casy had some tricks up his sleeves to throw roro off his game.

The battle unfolds on outsider, with casy taking the bottom right position and roro taking top right. Casy quickly reveals plans to get aggressive quickly, opening with a proxy 8 rax at the mineral only, directly between the 2 mains.



With roro's overlord going in the wrong direction, and his drone scout missing the forward rax by mere inches, it looked like luck was against roro today. As his drone reached casy's main, a handful of SCVs begun to make their way out, setting off the first alarm bells. Unfortunately for roro, with his 12 hatch/11pool build, he was in no position to defend the rush, and as the bunker was nearing completion, he knew the expansion was lost, and he cancelled the hatchery.




With lings on the way, and expansion plans abandoned, roro started a lair with his only hatchery in his main, while casy decided to cancel his almost completed bunker, opting to start his refinery and then factory. Having kept his drone alive in casy's main, roro was privy to all that casy was doing, starting his spire and retaking his nat after his lings had forced casy's marines home.

As the game continued, casy added 2 more raxes and an academy, upon completion of his factory, and it seemed he was going to go for a drop. However, roro's spire was done, and with mutalisks on the way, casy's defense of a mere 6 marines, no turrets, and his academy just done, looked to be shaky.


As the mutalisks spawned, a stray vulture was quickly dealt with, and the small group hurried down to casy's main along with 6 speedlings. Despite having bought himself some time with the vulture, casy's defense was still a paltry 9marines with no stim and 2 medics.



Roro promptly loses 2 mutalisks shortly after this

I think, in the hands of a more competent muta micro, this would've been it for casy, but with 3 rax hard at work, he replenished his marine numbers faster than roro could add to his muta count, with his few drones and 1 extractor. Roro's attempts at harass did not pay off, and he was unable to put a dent in casy's quickly growing marine group. A starport was on the way, and if vessels followed, that'd put an end to roro's harass, and with it, his only chance at the game.



After accumulating a group or so of marines, casy finally got sick of roro's underwhelming attempts at harass, and ran his stimmed marines across the map, aiming to once again put roro's nat out of comission, and force roro's mutalisks back to defend. With 2 sunkens thrown up in haste and about 8 mutalisks for defense, roro's nat was fine for the time being. Roro's mutas however, were forced to engage casy's marines in the open ground of the centre of the map now, where he strangely did better at picking off a couple of marines before giving up and flying down to casy's main again.

Strange choice for roro, as his mutas were quite key to the defense of his nat, and with his mutas out of position, casy stimmed his marines and attacked the 2 defending sunkens which were taken out with relative ease. Luckily for him, the mutas made it back just as the 2nd sunken fell, and with the muta drone combo, he cleaned up casy's reinforcements as well,






You could see panic in casy's eyes after the loss of that army. Lurkers were now morphing at roro's nat, and things looked even despite casy's early game advantage. With his remaining mutalisks and a couple of scourge, roro made a foray into casy's main, hoping to scourge the first vessel. However, fast reactions for casy landed him an irradiate on the group, netting him some good damage on the 3 or so mutalisks that remained.



Roro then decided to switch tactics to a lurker contain, but casy was more than ready, and a tank forced the burrowed lurkers to retreat, allowing his army down the ramp. Hoping to catch casy's army in a poor position, roro ran his 5 lurkers in to engage casy's army of 1 marine medic group and 1 tank and vessel, but good spread micro for casy netted him 2 lurker kills and forced the rest to retreat.




Reinforcing with a second tank, casy continued his push onwards to roro's nat, where roro had morphed more lurkers in preparation of a flank. Not wanting to fall for it, casy tried to engage the flanking party of 6 lurkers first, and being forced to a corner, roro had no choice but to engage. With some good micro once again, casy defeats all 9 or so lurkers with his army despite losing his vessel, coming out of the battle with about half of his army still alive.





Immediately following the engagement, a drop lands in roro's main and the drones are quickly pulled to the nat. Because of a severe lack of fighting units on roro's side, casy's drop wreaks a tonne of havoc in his main while another army from casy heads up the front to roro's nat. After losing the couple of lurkers that he had for defense, roro knows the game is up and ggs out.





Old school style game from casy, sticking with 1 base play, and relying on solid micro, reminiscent of boxer's old style. The early bunker rush put him in an advantage and forced his opponent into an unfamiliar situation, which he further compounded on by sticking to 1 base play. Nice to see some of these games once in a while.

ShoCkeyy: First tell me and the readers a little about yourself

Hot_Bid: I was born in China and smuggled out in a suitcase at the age of 4. I lived in New York and New Jersey for most of my childhood, went to NYU for undergrad and now I'm at the University of Michigan Law School; second year student at Michigan

I don't play many computer games outside of StarCraft, and I don't visit many forums outside of TeamLiquid. As recently as just a few years ago I wasn't a very "internet" person, but here I am now very involved with this site.

If you were to travel back in time and tell 2006 me that I would be flying cross country to a gaming convention and stay with people I've only met over the internet, I'd have said you were crazy.

If you told 2006 me that I'd be staying up until 4:30 AM to watch koreans play a computer game, I'd have said you were crazy too.

Funny how things change so much.

ShoCkeyy: Yea, this is true! So I'm guessing 2006 was when you joined TL?

Hot_Bid: No, I registered in 2003, I wasn't heavily into it really until 2005-2006
that's when Saro, who you may know as "the original coder" asked me to head a forum roundup project similar to PX called LiquiScoop.

ShoCkeyy: Oh yes, I remember that! When you got asked to lead LiquiScoop, what was your first reaction?

Hot_Bid: I thought this would be a cool thing to do. I became good friends with IntoTheWow and dronebabo, and LS helpers like Smurg and lil.sis. LiquiScoop turned out to be a lot of work for us, and ultimately led to its death. We weren't as dedicated or persistent as you guys, that's for sure. I think LS barely lasted five months, and while myself and ITW are still sane, it drove Smurg and lil.sis into exile and led to dronebabo's descent into madness. Very few people know this, but I am one of the three TeamLiquid users alive that have actually seen dronebabo in real life. He was an ordinary kid, but post-scoop he is now an anime image one liner spamming gollum, and the internet is his Mordor.
We got some cool looking progamer cards out of it though, check those out in the articles section.

More on dronebabo:
His mind works like a four year old's in real life, but when you plug him into the web he's like some sort of internet savant.

Two examples come to mind, first when we were hiding easter eggs for the initial TSL announcement in the TL layout, Sonuvbob and I were betting on when it would be discovered (the hidden link under the poll in that weird blue space)

ShoCkeyy: Do you have a picture of him?

Hot_Bid: I did take a picture of him but when i uploaded it to my computer he wasn't there, I swear to god i took one of him, but the image is just of a blank room

ShoCkeyy: Ghost, vampire maybe?

Hot_Bid: I sometimes wonder if he actually exists or if he's just in my mind
anyway bob said that people would find the hidden link within 24 hours, i said more like a few days and dronebabo found it within 2 minutes. Two minutes! we were still talking about our bet on how long itd take people and he already found it

ShoCkeyy: Oh no... What a bummer...

Hot_Bid: Second example is, I registered a username liquid`nazgui (with an i at the end) and trolled all the staff members with really hilarious PMs.
everyone fell for it but when I PM'd dronebabo he sent a PM back within 2 minutes figuring out the trick he is not someone to be trifled with.

ShoCkeyy: Guess not! Now we all know. Did you ever think that you would be in the position you are today because of the LiquiScoop?

Hot_Bid: I wish I could describe a meteoric rise to power, where I plotted and destroyed people in my path, but I can't. I was just an ordinary user who liked to make jokes and troll a few years ago. All of my "promotions" occurred out of necessity or weird circumstances. I needed to be blue to post LiquiScoop, then I needed to be red to edit people's writing when TLFE launched.

I became an Admin after TSL, when it was necessary to discuss sponsorship and other site planning things with the other Admins. Now I feel pretty connected and responsible for the site. In addition to admin work, I currently work on Fantasy stuff with Abydos1 and semioldguy.
And I will hopefully be covering the next season's MSL, last time was really fun doing it, though I probably won't think that when I have to edit another 100 screenshots of VODs into my newsposts hehe.

ShoCkeyy: As it grows and changes, what potential do you see in TL? Can we own the internet one day?

Hot_Bid: TeamLiquid has a lot of potential. It has great opportunity to be the #1 SC2 site for quite some time. The strength we have over other sites is our large yet tightly knit community and our staff. Not many site owners can be as flexible and smart as Nazgul, who does a lot of behind the scenes work but never really meddles or micromanages the other staff. I see a lot of other site owners being very dictatorial or greedy, but Naz usually lets us do our own thing. There's a great amount of trust among our staff - it's been like six years and we've had one truly bad staff promotion (I think?). I see the reds and blues as one big staff family that sometimes has flaws and arguments, but in the end it doesn't even matter because we come together.

Its the same for our community, i feel our users have a great sense of ownership for the site. They feel like they are a part of TL and that the site represents something. It's not just a place to get VODs or to check who won last night's match or to find an opponent. Rather, it's somewhere you can chill out with friends and really be proud of being a member. We want to continue that sort of bond into SC2.

Our greatest asset right now is our reputation among our users and the connection they have with each other and TL. Not many forums have it on the level that we do.

ShoCkeyy: Talking about the TL forums and its connection. Everyone knows you as an amazing troll. What was your favorite moment in trolling moment in TL history?

Hot_Bid: My trolling days are behind me and I don't troll anymore. Trolling is bad for the forum and a waste of time. Don't troll. Stay in school kids.

But if I had to pick a moment...

It would probably be the thread on World Wonders, where people were convinced I was trying to nominate Central Park as a world wonder.

That or the the private exchange I had with zulu_nation8 where he thought I was Klazart.

The World Wonder one was probably the best because I didn't have to use a fake username.

ShoCkeyy: How did that turn out to be in the end?

Hot_Bid: People argued with me for several pages before realizing I wasn't serious. Overall, I actually don't troll that much, but my "troll rep" really outpaces the amount of actual trolling I do (which is actually very little). Now, everything that sounds even remotely fake, the staff suspect its me.

ShoCkeyy: What was your favorite moment in TL?

Hot_Bid: The first TSL broadcast was the culmination of the most work and preparation I've done for TL, but my "favorite moment" has to be meeting Savior, Reach, Nal_rA, Xellos, Iris, and Yellow backstage at Blizzcon and giving them the TL cheerfuls. For quite some time it was just me, Manifesto7, the six progamers, and that hot translator lady. Overall that whole Blizzcon was awesome.

ShoCkeyy: If there was one thing you had to give up for TL, This thing being something of importance to you, what would it be?

Hot_Bid: I gave up part of my social life already.

I used to not really be an internet person, and I would have a relatively normal social life. But recently, I became more comfortable staying home, where I would screw around on the internet or watch progaming or play some BW. There's this stigma attached to being a "nerdy internet guy" but I really don't see that. I often actually choose to do these things over going out. It's about balance, if you're comfortable and confident with these sort of choices then there's no problem. Often people are insecure about this and feel they need to show others that they have a girlfriend, or they go to parties, or that they aren't some nerd who just plays games. You don't need to do that. Sure there are people who may fit right into the stereotypical internet loser, but there are plenty who don't and are perfectly well rounded. I know this isn't what your question was asking but I went there anyway.

Usually theres a guy who spends all his time on the internet then busts out as this party-hard socialite in college, I suppose for me the process happened in reverse.

ShoCkeyy: Good enough! Last question, what do you think about the Pony Express, and how it's going so far?

Hot_Bid: I love it, and I think you guys are doing a great job. It's really smart to spread all the work among a bunch of people. I think a more non-staff driven community thing like PX is perfect for our forum. I read it every time it comes out.

ShoCkeyy: What did you think about the last interview? and who do you really think it was?

Hot_Bid: I don't really know, who was it? micronesia?

ShoCkeyy: You just ruined my ending statement. But yes it was Micronesia.

Hot_Bid: Did you know?

ShoCkeyy: Did I know what?

Hot_Bid: micronesia was the worst player (other than Last Romantic and Fakesteve) in our summer league last year he was ranked even lower than GTR its his deepest darkest secret. I think he went like 3-12 or something and was whining about imbalanced matchups..

ShoCkeyy: Oh mah gawd, I probably would of done worse so meh

A little game between me and Hot_Bid, where I say a word that deals with TeamLiquid and he replys with what pops into his head.

ShoCkeyy: fakesteve

Hot_Bid: e-penis

ShoCkeyy: kau

Hot_Bid: burnout (soon)

ShoCkeyy: blogs

Hot_Bid: emo

ShoCkeyy: incontrol

Hot_Bid: large

ShoCkeyy: idra

Hot_Bid: fuckingskillessnewbies

ShoCkeyy: honestea

Hot_Bid: missing

ShoCkeyy: lilsusie

Hot_Bid: boobs

ShoCkeyy: chill

Hot_Bid: angry

ShoCkeyy: artosis

Hot_Bid: nevergg

ShoCkeyy: sonuvbob

Hot_Bid: wizard#2

ShoCkeyy: nevergg

Hot_Bid: asianmanfetish (sry artosis)

ShoCkeyy: charliemurphy

Hot_Bid: imbecile or greatest troll ever

ShoCkeyy: savior

Hot_Bid: bonjwa

ShoCkeyy: reach

Hot_Bid: REACH

ShoCheyy: jaedong

Hot_Bid: skyhighftw

ShoCkeyy: teamliquid

Hot_Bid: .net

ShoCkeyy: So any shout outs?!

Hot_Bid: Shoutout to Peanut, my #1 homegirl call me yo. (im making the phone gesture with my hand right now)