EPT![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/ebTCa.jpg)
No images of me in the process of actually playing, so this will have to suffice.
I started playing vanilla StarCraft (not BW) in High School (~2004), way after all my friends had moved on to Dota. I got the CDs from someone, installed the game on my laptop, and thoroughly enjoyed playing through the campaigns, sticking to the reliable rule of turtling and massing up Carriers or Battlecruisers and then cleaning out the map slowly.
The friend whose CD I was borrowing also played occasionally, so of course the topic of 1v1 came up and I decided to give it a shot, first trying my skills against the AI on Challenger, TvZ. I was completely destroyed by "mass" hydraling, losing Marines easily and thinking that Ghosts must be better since they were more expensive, and getting eliminated in humiliating fashion. I had a vague inkling of what the game contained, because I had stumbled across SCLegacy's Pimpest Plays series and I had been astounded by this "Boxer" player and his amazing micro tricks, and I started off as a Terran player. Eventually though, after switching from Vanilla StarCraft to Brood War, I switched to Protoss, because Dark Templar were awesome. Permanently cloaked ninja, what's not to like? (sorry Artosis)
The first game I ever played with friends was in a web cafe in Penghu, one of the outlying islands halfway between the Taiwanese mainland and China (middle of the Taiwan strait, basically). We were on our high school end-of-the-year trip, and there was some free time to kill so a bunch of guys headed over to play games. Most of them stuck with CS 1.5, on good ol' Bloodstrike, which I absolutely detest as a map, because one most "normal" CS maps, you can get lucky and surprise someone and still have a decent time even if you're a bad player, but that's not possible on Bloodstrike. I managed to convince one of my teachers and two of my friends to play some BW FFA on The Lost Temple, and they agreed. I'm fairly certain the web cafe was still using version 1.10, because you couldn't right-click to rally locations. I played Protoss the first game, going for a cheesy DT rush, sending one to each base while keeping one at home to block my ramp. My teacher had made cannons! This one was skilled, I could see. I can't remember what happened in that game - the next one, I decided to choose my main at the time, Terran, slowly crawling across the map with siege tanks and being a generally annoying dude with dropships. I won after a long-fought battle, and I started to grasp how wonderful it was playing BW with other players.
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The way PvT was meant to be played on Lost Temple - Battlecruisers, Carriers, Lockdown, and Dark Archons.
However, Taiwan's a place that tends to gravitate to whatever's "hottest" at the moment. At the time, it was Dota. Now it's SC2, to a certain extent. (you can tell by the professional league we have now, which I have to admit, is freaking awesome, though I'm not really a fan of the game) My friends didn't come back to BW, though they'd *all* played when they were younger - also, since BW was pretty much the only game I played regularly, I kept getting better, and no one liked always losing against me.
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This is probably how they saw me.
I learned of iCCup eventually from TeamLiquid (I didn't register until 2007 but I'd been visiting the site since 2004~2005 or so), and decided to make an account and play some games. My account name was HES_Funnytoss (it's been deleted now from iCCup, I think - too long a period of inactivity), and I went 6-6 D my first season. Losing those 6 games was a pretty big blow to me, because I lost them very horrendously, and it made my shy away from playing on the ladder. So I pretty much continued to play against my high school friends casually on LAN, stomping them and generally not getting that much better.
Then I graduated, and moved (back) to Michigan to attend the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, where *gasp* there were some people playing Brood War!
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East Quad represent!
They were terrible too, but I had a great time playing with them - I was Protoss, Hans was Terran, and Sei Jin was Zerg, and while I won every game except when I offraced, I was enjoying myself. Yet something started to feel wrong. I'd started watching the Korean progamers at that time, and I wondered what it would take to get even half as good as them. I still wasn't touching iCCup, and there was no one good to train with at Michigan. (in actuality, there were plenty of good players at Michigan as I later found out through creating the CSL Michigan team, but I didn't know it at the time. Obviously, I needed to learn how to go out and make StarCraft friends, which I'm much better at doing now)
Because I only played on LAN or Hamachi, my main opponent was my younger brother, Alex (known to most as nozaro33 here on TL)
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The kid's a dance major who also plays StarCraft. As they say in Chinese, 文武雙全.
He chose Terran because his favorite player was Nada (or it might have been Boxer, I'm not sure - I know it was Nada for the longest time, before Flash came about). As such, we played lots of PvT over the summers - I still remember the expression on his face when he beat me for the first time (it was on Longinus - memorable events really stick with you), after having lost over a hundred games in a row. I learned a lot from his attitude, his playing the game for the love of it and not for the stats. He's had losing seasons ever since playing iCCup and he's still at it, finally hitting C- last season.
Thankfully, though I was depriving myself of some great Brood War experiences by not playing online, I was able to make up for it a bit by making real life friends. One such individual was Tianyi Liu (known to most as Nubster, now the coordinator for the Michigan CSL team), who I had met through our Acapella group.
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Studying the mysteries of PvZ. Actually, probably looking at some Youtube video.
If I remember correctly, he had played a little bit of BW when he was younger (like most people did), but never got that deep into it. We eventually decided to play some 1v1, and I stomped him, PvZ, PvT, PvP, whatever it was. He hadn't decided on a race yet, so that probably helped my case. I suggested that he pick a race and stick with it to get better, and that's what he did, choosing Zerg. He improved rapidly, and so I started learning from our games as well.
Things changed when I went to study abroad in Japan for the winter semester of my junior year. The internet was fast there (compared to in the dorm at Michigan, which for some reason really detested Hamachi), and I had a fair amount of free time in the evenings because the Japanese assignments they gave us weren't too difficult, especially because as a Taiwanese dude, learning kanji, which is supposed to be one of the harder aspects of Japanese, became the easiest part of the language for me.
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I chose to depart from the ways of the unwashed, becoming a StarCraft monk, playing with one finger and learning to forgive those who cheese, for they do not know what they do.
I decided to start playing iCCup, using an account I had made earlier in Taiwan because I wanted a new cool flag. I was now AIV_Funnytoss, flying the proud colors of the Red, White, and Blue... flag of the Republic of China.
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It's not that ugly "Chinese Taipei" we're forced to fly during the Olympics and other international events.
As the more observant of you might have already realized, Japan is pretty much in the Korean time zone, and I was facing competition even tougher than I had before. But I had decided to actually become halfway decent at the game - my goal was to reach a Yellow rank, and thus I played, achieving a losing ratio for the first time, and finally hitting 25-32 D+ at the end of the season (I had reached D+ easily before in the U.S.). Tianyi had gotten a *lot* better too - he said his goal had been to surpass me, and he did, beating me 2-0 or 3-0, I think.
Michigan hadn't joined the first season of CSL, and I made sure that when I came back to school for my senior year, we would join and, if not be a force to be reckoned with, at least enjoy ourselves immensely competing with other die-hard lovers of the great game ever made and played. That was the year Rob (AcrossFiveJulys) and Matt (DeathByMonkeys) came to Michigan. Hot_Bid was there too but I wasn't aware of it for the longest time, and he was always busy during CSL S2 anyway. I remember him as a pretty chill guy, mainly because when he had the SC2 beta and we didn't he invited Nubster and I over to his place to try it out, and as we did he just took a nap and did his thing. Not a single flying fuck was given that day. I took on the task of being coordinator, with this lovely introduction on TL: CSL Michigan Recruitment
(that OP has been edited several times - suffice to say, I was looking for TL member who went to Michigan and wanted to play in the CSL.)
We were placed in a division with Toronto and Waterloo, two absolute powerhouses at the time, with Toronto featuring JianFei, and Waterloo with their all B-/B team. We went 2-6 or something along those lines, and were all pretty busy so rarely had time to meet up in person or have LAN parties or watch the MSL/OSL at 3AM together (that would come later), but still we had a blast. At least, I did :p
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kimkh, AcrossFiveJulys, and decafchicken at an MSL Party at my apartment. Since Flash thoroughly trashed Jaedong 3-0 in like less than an hour, we had plenty of time left to play.
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NERDS FUCK YEAH
Playing with other guys roughly my skill level helped advance my game a lot, and I was hitting C- consistently, fairly easily as well every season (the fact that I was back in the Eastern time zone helped a bit too), but I never had it in me to really play once I got to C-. I would just sit back and admire the shiny Yellow, but never play after that on the account, fearing a drop back to D+ and red, choosing instead to ladder up other accounts... until they'd reach C- and I'd have to start another one. There were many seasons where I'd have AIV_Funnytoss, hp.Sanaki, TSL-Funnytoss, [UM]Funnytoss, etc. all at C-, and not a game beyond that.
CSL Season 3 came along, and for the first time, we really had a chance. For starters, our division was weaker than it had been in the past, though Michigan State and Ohio State still looked strong on paper. Our starting lineup was all at least C-. We swept our division, going undefeated throughout the regular season, adding some strong Koreans that we'd never known about (the awesome kimkh being one of them) to our roster just in time for the playoffs, cruising through the first few rounds until losing a well-fought match to the eventual champion, UCSD. It was the most fun I'd ever had playing BW, but sadly it was to come to a close with the coming of SC2. In a sense, it was good that I graduated at that time (May 2010). Having no one to play BW with would have been terrible.
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Who'd you have for your commencement speaker? Oh, we just had the President of the United States.
I moved back to Taiwan, where my family resides, after graduation, and I've been here ever since.
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YEahhhhhh
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How can you not look at this statue at the Taipei Train Station and not chuckle?
For a while, BW was put on the back burner, allowing me to waste my time on other games, mainly FPS, like Borderlands, or Half-Life, or CoD, all decent games in their own right, but just... different.
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Claptrap!
A few months ago I finally decided to start playing BW again, as I was inspired by Bisu's rise back into his rightful position as one of the elite S-class players.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/gOY4b.jpg)
"I watched Bisu play PvZ and I jizzed... in... my pants."
There was nowhere to turn to but iCCup, and I embraced the ladder fullheartedly for the first time, cheese and losing, all of it. iCCup was a different experience. First of all, I was now back in the Korean time zone, and there were now significantly fewer "casuals" left playing, meaning the level of competition had on average risen, and I was very rusty. Now working several part-time jobs (adding up to be more time and effort than the average full-time job), I didn't have as much time to play as I used to, yet I wanted to see where my limits were - I had never truly tested myself in BW before, always stopping once I reached C-. As all of you know, the way the ladder works, you only know your true rank ceiling when you're truly stuck at a rank, with a roughly 33% win ratio. (any more than that, and the fact that you get more points per win than loss plus MOTW will keep you advancing)
I downloaded NonY's TSL2 replay pack and studied it extensively - his FPVODs were what really got me going in 1v1, and I knew that his style was the kind I wanted to emulate - solid, "standard", and just a joy to watch when he'd go 2gate robo obs against whatever the Terran opened with, taking an econ disadvantage but not giving a fuck because he'd make up for it in the midgame with superior mechanics. I copied several builds for each race - NonY's 2gate robo obs in PvT, though I switched it up a little bit substituting a DT drop instead of reavers, because I knew my reaver control was abysmal. I also used his +1 speedlot dual stargate build in PvZ, though I eventually switched to the "new Bisu Build". In PvP, it was OneOther's 12 Nexus build, though I lost plenty of games due to shitty Zealot micro.
And so, it was back up to C- quickly - apparently, my skills hadn't decreased much over the long break, or there wasn't much to lose in the first place, haha. Perhaps I had even gotten better than before, given that I was now getting back to my old rank in a tougher time zone. I was enjoying random opponents for what it was, mixing up my game with silly builds like The Stove, or 3gate speedlots in all matchups (which still is an absolutely terrible build against almost everything, but when it ever works, it's fucking sweet). After I once again got 3 accounts up to C-, I said to myself, "the hell with it" and started playing at C-.
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What would a TeamLiquidian do? Lose with honor!
Damn... losing -75 points per loss, -93 if it's against a D+ player is pretty tough. And yet, somehow, I made it. Maybe I was lucky that Fighting Spirit was MOTW last week and thus even playing D+ players I could get +97 per win, making it worth the risk. Chances are I'll sit on C for awhile to admire the shiny icon, but my attitude has changed - I'm not afraid to lose anymore, and my new goal is a coveted blue rank. I don't know when or if I'll ever hit it, and even if I don't, it really won't matter, so long as I'm enjoying myself, whether in doing silly strategies, offracing, or playing standard long macro games. All I know is that I'm enjoying BW just as much as I did before, if not more, and I'm a lucky man to be able to say so.
If you have your own awesome BW stories, feel free to share them in the comments!
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Next blog: The game that got me to C!
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Previous blogs, for those that missed them and might be interested in more of my writing:
All Life's Lessons Can Be Learned Playing SC
My First BW Battle Report
Getting C is an achievement that most tlers can't even pull off congrats!
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makes me really happy.
