Looking back
Greetings, fellow TLers. I'd like to link my previous blog post, as it's relevant to this one and I feel that it was overlooked by many blog viewers due to the fact that I posted it in the middle of the night. http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=157287 titled "Moving Forward."
Despite linking it, a summary of that blog post is probably a good idea. I had, for awhile, felt very unmotivated in Starcraft II. I spend a lot of time in custom games perfecting my macro, designing new and interesting builds and then finally stream lining those builds. Unfortunately, I hate laddering for various reasons I won't go into. Because of this, I would often go several days without playing, only to come back and have my macro slip as I repeatedly missed pylons.
I needed something to move forward with, hence the title. I pondered finding practice partners and then perhaps forming a team. I ended with an air of incompletion because I was still very uncertain of what I should do.
Brewing some Madness
However, that puzzle has been solved! I discovered another TL member looking to make a team and we kicked it off quite nicely. I put together some forums and sped everyone along to decide on a name. We now have about 6-7 active members and call ourselves "Requiem."
I have felt a lot more motivated lately to just play Starcraft 2 and I hope we can churn out one or two players capable of competing and representing our team. Sadly, my computer is too weak to run the game well enough to compete myself. Despite the lowest settings, my game becomes almost unplayable under certain conditions (the middle of the Xel'naga Caverns map, large unit numbers), resulting in embarrassing losses when armies collide. It's hard to play when your Colossus take 3-4 seconds to process a move command.
Regardless, I will continue to practice. In fact, I intend to improve my overall ability and knowledge across all of the races with the hopes of acting as team coach. I already have a comprehensive understanding of the game itself, as well as the current metagame. I also find myself quite creative in designing builds, or improving on those already in existence, and am not afraid to simply toss out those with no real potential. At the moment, though, all of that is focused on Protoss, resulting in a skewed experience, so I have some improvements to do if I intend to act as a coach.
I hope that some day, not too far into the future, you will see one of our members representing Team Requiem in a notable tournament. Wish us luck!
Let the Madness...BEGIN!
Requiem only recently finished final organizational preparations. As such, we felt it necessary to kick off official events with a King of the Hill. One of our members won 5-0, defeating every one of us. While observing, I noted specific things that even the best of us need improvement on...just something more to get excited about.
Afterwards, we held a second one without that winning member to determine a sort of second place. I won the second match and went up against our team founder. He requested Scrap Station, despite it being my map choice, and I conceded. parkLife was the only member not on our vent server at the time, so I asked everyone if I should Mothership Rush. They thought it was a great idea and one of the most interesting (read: hilarious) PvP matches ever followed:
+ Show Spoiler +
He apparently picked Scrap Station with the sole purpose of rushing to a Mothership, as well. Needless to say, I was completely unprepared when I saw his Mothership!