Hello everyone!  I have a lot to talk about, especially the MLG event in Raleigh!  Let me go ahead and explain what’s been going on with my real life, my gaming life, the development of my style, and, last but not least, the MLG Raleigh event.

                I realized it was entirely impossible to train Starcraft and have a full time job like I use to do it.  I had to come up with a schedule on when to play in order to get the time to play Starcraft.  For the weekdays, it has been roughly 8am to roughly 6pm where I am at work.  After work, I’ll generally eat and then start my training at 7pm – 10pm.  I work out from 10pm – 11:30pm, and then I game casually after this.  It’s so amazing how making a regiment like this actually forces you to learn much better.  I think it has something to do with knowing that you cannot play, therefore you try to get better and look for subtleties in play.  I strongly suggest everyone make a regiment of when to play.  I know I’ve fallen into that ‘Ladder mode go!’ trance, and I realize it’s horrible for training.  Thankfully, I can still compete at the higher levels, and I’m learning more and more about the game every single day!

                Weekends have been tough lately, as real life has been affecting my ability to play in tournaments and play for long amounts of time.  This month, there has been a death in the family, and with that, a lot of my relatives and friends have come to my house.  I had a wedding (where I looked oh so handsome), but at least I topped off the month with a great Starcraft weekend in Raleigh North Carolina for MLGJ!  Regardless, Life is good. (My favorite brand!)

                My gaming life has taken off quite a bit, and I’m becoming more and more confident with myself and my game.  It used to be that every matchup was a puzzle to me not too long ago.  I was doubting myself because my builds weren’t working, and I was losing to people that I thought I was better than.   It’s because of that, I reconstructed all of my builds for every match up.  This is basically what was happening: due to my Starcraft 1 style, and the style I generally like to play, I would expand to take my advantages.  This was especially apparent in my TvT at mid game.  It would be where both of us have an expansion each.  Instead of me massing in units, I would try to defend with 3 barracks 1 factory and 1 starport and expand, however, I would get beat so many times.  This is because of the strength of harass with medivacs being so strong.  It makes it almost impossible to defend every area with such a minimal amount of production facilities, disabling my 3rd base from ever catching up to make it worth the money. That’s why in TvT, I have been getting a lot more units, and straying away from tanks in the early mid game, since they really get beat to mobility If I choose to take a 3rd.  I think it warrants strictly marauder marine for the early to mid game stages, and then tank later on because of that.  My TvP changed in that I now know how to defend against fast colo builds with my marine ghost build I use.  A big thank you to Lzgamer for giving me the idea J!  Lastly, my TvZ.  I’ve had a lot of trouble with this matchup, but I took advice from my TvT, and started doing builds that are much more aggressive.  It is because of this that I’ve been w inning a lot more of my TvZ’s and it’s been going much better.  All in all, I’m becoming a much better player, and I’m doing it extremely fast.  I’m quite happy with my play style, and my progress right now, and I know there’s so much more to come!

                So I’m sure a lot of you want to know about MLG.  3 words, “it was AWESOME!!!!!”  I’ll start with day 1.  It was a Thursday, and I got up at 8am, excited to leave for Raleigh.  I got to the airport, and my flight was at 12:00.  The people on the flight were quite fat, and there was someone who brought a sub to eat.  It was gross, not only because it was a huge sub, but because the smell of onions, oil, and vinegar corroded the insides of my nostrils. 

                When I got to Raleigh, I was instantly greeted by Payam, aka TT1.  The guy was awesome!  I gave him a big old hug, and then found out that Xeris missed his flight and was showing up 4 hours later.  Then I found out that the airline lost TT1’s luggage so we had to wait in the airport for 3 hours for the luggage to actually come in.  During that time, we talked about Starcraft 2.  We talked about the evolution of the game, the fundamental problems with it, the imbalances of terran, protoss, and zerg, but more on the terran’s early game if anything.  We had a great time and really hit it off.  I’m glad to have ever met TT1, because he’s a true gentleman, and he’s hilarious!  We finally got his luggage, when we got a call from Josh, aka Paiilicious.  Paii is a student from NC State, and he invited me and Payam to his place.  We had never met Josh before, and TT1 was bugging out, worrying that he was going to steal all of our stuff and rape us.  I calmed him down and told him I have the skills of a 7th degree black belt in every martial arts, plus I was a world class grandmaster of chess.  With those skills combined, I HAVE THE POWERRRRR. 

                Anyways, during the time we were waiting for Josh to pick us up from the airport, I was greeted by a Peruvian handsome user.  It was Root.Catz!  We always talked online, and I finally got to meet him.  Let me tell you, he’s one handsome nerd.  I gave him a bear hug of course, and we all talked more Starcraft!  J  Josh picked us up and we went out to eat at a local eater.  The food was quite tasty.  Then we went back to his dorm where we played some Starcraft 2, and I played some SSBM!  It was 3 years since I last played that game, and I was uber rusty.  Was such a great game though, and I really enjoyed playing with all the noob Brawl gamers (THAT’S RIGHT BRAWL IS NOOOBBB).  :-D

Later on that night, Payam, Catz, and I took a taxi to the Marriott where we would be staying.  We met up with gamers like drewbie, Painuser, and many more, but most importantly, we met up with FnaticMSI.Xeris aka DURAN!!!!  I hadn’t seen Duran in a very long time, but we’re very close and we talk all the time.  We got into our rooms, and then ventured off the yonder to go eat.  After failing to find a place, we finally stopped in a diner, where we ate the most expensive hamburgers ever.  They were basically the size of a button, and they had a crouton for a bun.  Saddened, we left the eatery, and went to a convenience store before going back home to sleep for the upcoming event.

                The next morning was game time.  We woke up and went to go eat breakfast, but not before bumping into Inka and Future.  Future came and sat down with us, and we all got to catch up a bit and see how we were doing.  We, of course, talked about Starcraft 2, and how excited we were about the tournament. After lunch, we went to meet up with JP to get a photo shoot and a team interview.  We met up with the EG guys right before we went in for the place.  I had the pleasure of meeting so many amazing people such as day[9], HD, Husky, and so many more.  I was so happy to be around these nerds!  We went out to lunch afterwards and we just talked, and hung out.  After lunch, fnatic went to go register, and we bumped into the rest of the players.  JoshSuth was able to catch us nerds palin’ around: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGCb4M4CVIQ&feature=player_embedded

                Afterwards, the venue finally opened.  It was gigantic!  Ontop of the amazing computers, and the big screen TV, there was all you can eat hot pockets, all you can drink dr. pepper, and FREE HAND MASSAGES.  It was quite awesome.  Anyway, the MLG thoughts were documented pretty extensively in the interviews I had with xeris, to which I am going to direct you to these:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfrjXluZkCU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TAlZ6SfMIc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVmj4faWoCo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHYeNc4hH6E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxcNY0t6oRY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1veciFxi9Y

All in all, the experience was magnificent, and I gained a lot of experience from this.  I plan on destroying in DC, so definitely root for me J

                Lastly, I’ll give a little trick that I have learned throughout playing Starcraft 2, and hopefully it helps you fellow terrans out!  The matchup is TvZ and you have marauders and hellions(a great army composition against any ground zerg).  Sometimes, when there’s tons of zerglings, your entire army can die extremely fast if they get a surround.  The hellions don’t become as effective, and some normally die.  Well, what you can do is ball up your marauders.  This reduces the surface area the most, making your marauders live longer.  After balling them up, move command your hellions inside the ball.  This will push the marauders out of the way, enabling the marauders tank the damage.  Then, your hellions will be shooting in safety, maximizing your DPS to its fullest potential!  I hope that helps!

 

Thanks for reading J

-Andre aka FnaticMSI.Gretorp