MLG Dallas 2012
edzwoo, Nov 07 2012
Hey guys! Haven't blogged in a while, but I wanted to write about some stuff, and this site just feels like the best place to do it for me. I know it's probably more appropriate on TL but I don't really post much there.
I went to MLG Dallas over the weekend since I have a bunch of friends living in Austin/Houston who were willing to drive up as well. I always thought it would be fun to go to an MLG, but this is the first time it worked out for everyone. We had 10 people in our crew, and 6 of us were competing. Some of the other guys are top masters (one's a GM on NA, Oobios), and I'm only like a top 20 masters player, but I figured it would be a fun experience. I also thought I probably had a decent chance winning a round or two seeing as there's a lot of fish that like to compete.
Entrance to the venue
First awesome thing about MLG is that they had unlimited free Dr Pepper and Flipz white/milk chocolate covered pretzels. So basically expect to get diabetes.
If you ever decide to go to an MLG event for SC2, you definitely want to get the competitor pass as opposed to the spectator's pass if you enjoy watching pro matches. Aside from the fact that competing is just fun, you basically get to see like 10x as much content in first person view. It's also just pretty cool to have all the progamers walking around nearby, who are usually willing to talk to you given they aren't busy.
Pic with Taeja. I'm at the very right. Have more pics with different players, but I figured this is most relevant it IS LiquidPoker
I'll recap how my games went really quickly. First match was against a zerg who seemed to be around my skill level on ladder based on his previous seasons. First game was on Metropolis and I went Mvp style mech (1rax FE, 2fact blue flame hellion into Starport viking). He went for roach nydus allin which was basically instant gg. It was just bad scouting and inexperience from my part, esp since I was aware there was no third expo. After the game I looked at him and laughed a bit, saying I get owned by that build a lot. He laughed and said he's not really confident in his ZvT.
Second game was on Ohana and I went 1rax FE into a +1 timing with medivacs for the third. I did this mostly because I figured I would come out really far ahead if he did some sort of roach opening again. I'm not entirely sure how good it is against a roach/bane allin though. I put supply depots around my base just in case and managed to pick off an overlord that was just sitting in my main. I saw banelings morphing in front of my nat, so I put like 4 more bunkers down, but he never attacked. I just kinda a-moved him once I got medivacs and he couldn't hold it, but he got infestors into all my bases and killed a ton of SCVs. I just kept rallying units and killed him though. His mechanics seemed really off, because he had like 6 overlords sitting at what seemed to be a rally point near my nat. That seemed potentially game ending.
Third game was Cloud Kingdom and I figured I should be able to beat him in a more defensive macro game. He was really, really aggressive with things like counterattacking, but it seems like his mechanics weren't that good. I did a build I saw on Ganzi's stream tbut modified it a bit. Ganzi goes: rax, double cc, 3 more rax nat walloff, double refinery, double ebay and upgrades, then finally techs to medivacs. He just plays super aggro bio afterwards. I got the 3rax before the third CC though cause I figured he might try to do some fast ling attack, which he did. He couldn't really do anything cause of the rax walloff, and I think he cut a lot of drones/tech early on because I just a-moved him and won around 12:00 game time or so.
Getting ready to play! Channeling the power of Taeja's signature.
Random story. When I was in the bathroom sometime after my first match, some random younger guy did a double take, looked all nervous and was like "ooooh what game are you here for?" I said I was here for SC2, and he was like "did you win?" I was like uhhh I won a match. Then he asked me, "are you going to win the whole thing?", and I say definitely not. Then he said, "oh. You look like a pro." RACIST LOL
For my second match, I was playing Shew, a bit of a lower GM level protoss player who I think is somewhat known in the community. The cool thing about this match is that I was on station 2, which is separated from the players area and on an elevated stage. It also has your monitor mirrored above you on a TV screen for people to see. In any case, my game plan was to cheese both games.
Game 1 I went double reactor hellion with SCV pull around 8:00-8:30, which is probably the most gimmicky cheese you can do in TvP. I saw SelecT do it against some diamond player, but I tried it on ladder and have like an 80% winrate with it. I took out a top masters protoss out with it in a playhem daily once too, so I figured there was a high chance he would get blindsided and lose. Unfortunately he countered it perfectly by just sac-ing his nat, running his army to his main and FF-ing his ramp. There absolutely no transition from this so he just stalled until he got a big army and just killed me.
Game 2 I did this build: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=290571, which went perfectly (hellion drop got like 6+ probe kills) until I dropped the PDD too far from his nat and accidentally lost my raven a minute later. I ended up engaging too late and lost. Can't say I felt too bad because I'm definitely not nearly as good as he was, but I think I was in a strong winnable position for a bit.
viOLet! Got some pics with other people but I like his flair.
I was done playing until the next day, but there was this booth where they were running a marine split contest every 3 hours. The top score would get various Sandisk SSD products. The map is "Marine Split Challenge MLG v1.3" if you want to play it.
I actually play a marine split trainer map a lot cause I find it really fun, so I was pretty pumped to give it a try. You get 3 minutes to get as far as possible, and once the timer runs out you go until you die. First thing I noticed is the sensitivity/DPI was REALLY high. I think it was probably set around 2k or so, whereas I usually play on 800. Anyway, there weren't that many people trying, and they allowed you to get back on list to try again if you wanted to beat your old score.
Try hard
Feels good man
The second place guy's name was Daniel, who wasn't competing at MLG. He was a nice guy, and we talked a bit about the best strat. Unfortunately I had to leave to play my first round, and he kept playing and eventually got a 16. He won a 128gb SSD, and when I came back later and got a 15, I won one of these: http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Desktop...g-SSD-SDSSDRC-032G-G26/dp/B008U3038I. Sort of lame because it was the worst prize they gave out.
There was this really young kid (probably around 15-16) that came by and tried it out. In terms of actual marine splitting ability, he was absolutely INSANE. He didn't really know how the map worked and got a 12 on his first try, but he definitely could have done way better if he just tried a few more times. I was super impressed and told him GL at his games.
Funny thing is the next day, that was the kid I ended up playing and he knocked me out 2-0. While packing up my stuff, I told him gg and that he should go back and play the marine splitting thing cause I was positive he could just win a free SSD or something. When I went back to the booth later, and he had the high score of 18, which I can't even get now at my own computer.
Now what's REALLY lame is the guys at the booth told me they were going to have a contest where the top 2 scores of all the winners would go on the main stage and compete for a 480GB SSD, and I had the third best score. Oh well.
joLin from LP playing. He got the furthest and took out KeyDPotiguar, who won WCS Brazil.
There was a sense of relief after getting knocked out, because I could finally just relax and enjoy spectating the tournament. My girlfriend, Catherine, made me baneling and overlord plushies that we kept waving around when the camera was looking at our direction. I'm not sure if it got recorded, but if anyone has an MLG pass, check out Flash vs TheStC. There was a lag spike in the whole venue and the game went down for a while. During that pause, Clutch (the announcer) stood in the crowd and said some stuff. We totally video bombed him since the camera was directly in our line of sight.
Wearing the plushies as hats.
DEAL WITH IT
MLG was really fun. I wish they ran an event in Chicago so I wouldn't have to take so many days off from my business, but the trip was well worth it. I don't know if it would work out attending the other events, but if they have it in Dallas again next year, I'll probably go again.
Our group!
Moving also means a new home
edzwoo, Jul 13 2012
Welcome to our condo!
Living room
Living room
Kitchen
To our rooms
My room
Jason's room; he's got the master bedroom and bath cause he outbid me on it.
Some buddies on our terrace equipped with zero gravity chairs and a hammock. Jason's the one on the left in the first pic.
Check out Jason's last blog post if you missed it. He also took some pictures of our recently stocked warehouse that he's going to get around to putting up here.
Microsoft Entertainment Pack
edzwoo, Dec 21 2011
Someone brought up an old game I played a long time ago called Skyroads:
I had the sickest case of nostalgia and remembered all the games I used to play from the Microsoft Entertainment Pack. Anyone else remember these awesome games?
Rattler's Race:
Pipe Dream:
Chip's Challenge:
Jezzball:
Rodent's Revenge:
Best games ever.
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