"Hi there.. I'm hiding from a 30 year old women... I promised her we would meet today IRL"
-Breeze
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| i2e2 Chicago Round 1: T.T.Boy vs. Infamous (with tournament observations) | | | Author: | | | IP: | 1Cust243XXXX | | Date: | 01/17/00 08:01 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 4, Max: 9, Min: 6
Lifetime Rating for T.T.Boy: 7.1250 |     | Good day sportsfans. I would like to take a little time before I get into the battle to tell you about the i2e2 Starcraft tournament held at Gurney Mills Malls about an hour north of Chicago this past Saturday (1/15/00).
First a bit about myself. I have been playing SC and BW since the days they came out respectively. But I have never been able to play with the big boys. My melee record of 284-198-44 (with several loses turned into allied vic's due to pity), reflects my at best, "average", ability. I have always thought that seeing the greats in action in person would be an excellent way to improve my skills.
When I saw that i2e2 was having a tournament in Chicago, I thought that this would be my chance. It is only a five hour drive from Detroit. And my sister lives there so it would be a free place to stay. I packed up the bags and the kids (I took my two daughters to visit their aunt) and headed out Friday night.
I drove the hour north of Chicago on Saturday morning to arrive around 11:30 am. The advertised start time was 11:00, but UltraliskDrop told me in NoHunters that they weren't going to start until 3:00 pm. I had no way to find out for sure so I got there early. Well, when I got there they were still setting up the place. This was a joint venture between i2e2 and some company called iPlay or something like that. There were about 20 PC's and about 10 Sega Dreamcasts all loaded with various games to play. No Starcraft had been set up yet.
I checked in at the booth (I pre-registered at i2e2.com). I was on the list, and was told it would be about 30 minutes before the games started. Everyone got a name tag at check in, and I soon found UltraliskDrop and Hegemony, two NoHunters players I had previously learned were going to be there. We chatted briefly. Meanwhile the tournament organizers posted the brackets for the tournament. They posted real names instead of Bnet names, so I had no idea what Starcraft God I was facing.
The organizers did have a giant check for $1,000 ready for the winner, and I took the opportunity while no one was looking to write my name on it, (it was one of those dry-erase boards made up like a check) and then accosted a passerby to take my picture standing in front of the check. (It was the only way I was ever going to get MY name on it). While I was having my picture taken a kid nearby exclaims upon seeing my name on the check, "Hey, that's who I'm playing in the first round!". I quickly went over to him and introduced myself explaining, no I am not Grrr or Maynard, just some schmoe pulling a prank with the check. In hindsight maybe this was not a good idea, I should have let him think I was a God.
I found out he was "Infamous", real name Alex H., also not from Chicago. He too was on a road trip, but unlike me, he needed his Mom to drive him to the tournament. He turned out to be real nice kid. I am glad I met him.
A few more observations about the tournament before I get into the BR are in order. With all of the PC's they had at this event (there was also an Unreal tournament, and a NBA2K tournament on Dreamcast) only 6 were devoted to Starcraft. The tournament was very loosely organized. There was no clear start time, no real directions, no practice time, no referees, no pre-selected maps, etc.
Out of the 16 guys (no girls/women) in the tournament (16 plus 19 alternates had signed up on i2e2.com, I don't know how they determined who got in that day), the average age of the players was 18, with me included. Take out my 35 years and the average age dropped to 16. I was by far the elder statesmen of the group (gramps to the kids).
The organizers, in the brief directions given out, said that any Brood War ladder map agreeable to the contestants was eligible, speed was faster or fastest, again based on agreement of the players. I wondered what the process for settling disputes over which map was picked would be, however, I need not have worried. Every single game of the tournament was played, by agreement of the players mind you, on venerable Lost Temple. I thought there would have been some island specialist or something out there, but no I guess not.
Of all the games played, and I watched at least part of each game if not the whole game, the race selections were 60% Toss, 30% Zerg, and 10% Terran. As the tournament got going, several games had to be restarted due to players getting kicked out of games by some computer malfunction, some up to 20 minutes into a very competitive game. This was extremely frustrating for those involved as you can imagine. These games meant real money, and people were visibly nervous (yes me too). Afterwards several people told me that during their games their hands were shaking, they were sweating, and they made many mistakes that they would never make at home in a "meaningless" on-line game.
The six starcraft computers were set up three on a side so you and your opponent were across from each other. They had a small rope barrier to keep the spectators about a foot behind the competitors. During the early rounds when the spectators were fewer, you could watch a game from both players' perspective (not at the same time) if you ran around back and forth to check out the action from each person's point of view. During the semi-finals and final, the crowds became too large to go back and forth, and you needed to stake out a good position behind one combatant and stay there, and just wonder about what his opponent was doing. They should have had some overhead monitors out of sight of the players where you could watch the action from both ends.
For those of you readers looking for a battle report somewhere in this mess, ok you've finally found it. Alex (Infamous) and I (T.T.Boy) agreed on Lost Temple - speed faster. I started the game, and found the keyboard and mouse took some getting used to. Alex selected Toss and got 3 o'clock. I selected the suprise race of random (I saw very few randoms during the tournament) and drew Terran at 12 o'clock.
Knowing he was Toss, I decided on heavy metal from the start. I build my first depot on 9 (losing some time due to mouse unfamiliarity to get that darn scv over to the ramp) followed quickly by rax and then depot to complete the ramp block. While the first depot was building, who should stroll in but a little robotic pest doing some snooping around.
****I will now relay the one piece of strategy that I thought up myself and have not seen posted anywhere before, of course I could be wrong****
When your opponent sends his scout through your base (probe, drone, or scv) ignore it until it wanders between your minerals and your hall (nexus, CC, hatch). Have all your workers pre-selected (double click on one) and as soon as the scout comes between your minerals and your hall click on the enemy scout. It will be quickly surrounded and killed, unable to escape by having it's path to freedom blocked. This works almost every time and it is easy to do, and most people do wander their scouts into this dangerous territory. (The time you lose mining is very small, 3 seconds or so).
Back to the game. I next built my gas and then a zealot wandered in. With marines dancing (running in fear of their lives, actually) and scv's attacking I killed the odiferous zealot at a loss of one marine. I backed up the depots and barracks at the choke with a bunker in case his brethern came calling. I started my factory as soon as I hit 100 gas. Next came the eBay so I could erect the Terran's poor excuse for early to mid-game detection, the non-mobile, non-ground fighting turret.
Spider mine research had just finished when about four of those darn goons came knocking on my front door. I thought, oh-oh should have done siege first. I quickly ordered up a tank and clicked siege and added a machine shop to my just completed second factory. Luckily he had not finished his goon range research so my marine's in the bunker could fend off the goons, protecting my ramp depots, and denying access to my defenseless mining area.
His range finished as my still siege-less first tank rolled off of the assemlby line. I raced him, as fast as those tanks will go, over to the ramp and then sieged in time to smack the goons around some as they stumbled around in that artifical "intellegence" stupor units get when they can't reach the unit attacking them. Infamous noticed this in time to save most of his goons from the soup nazi, retreating them a safe distance.
He forayed a Dark Temlar up my ramp a bit later, but the turret, tank, and bunker vaporized him almost instantly.
The next offensive moves belonged to me (amazingly enough for those who know my level of play). After starting a CC in the left of my base for island floating, I loaded up one tank and four marines into a newly constructed slow ass piece of shit, slower than molasses, turtle slow, Terran dropship. (yes I neglected to tell you that I built a starport and control tower, it was "recently").
I send the dropship to the top of the map to avoid any goons that might hanging out in my natural then to the right side and down to his main. To my surprise and relief I found no defense, no cannons, and landed all troops safely. I seiged the tank, put the marines on hold, and watched the lovely little probies explode into tiny shards of robotic nothing-ness. I waited for the reprisals, but only two goons challenged my drop and both were quickly converted into liquid form. I think his building placement with gates and pylons strung out in a line prevented his forces from reaching me in an expedious manner.
With all probes now dead or having run for their lives I concentrated fire on the nexus. I made a crucial mistake: not sending the dropship back for reinforcements and ordering up more troops at home. Instead I watched the nexus fall to less than 100 hitpoints when dt's reached my forces eliminating them as I frantically pushed the hotkeyed scanner button, but to no avail as four marines are no match for 2 dt's detected or not. If I had quickly been able to reinforce this drop I may have changed the course of history.
I later learned that as I was microing my drop, he was expanding all over the map. He soon had 20 goons come a knocking, with gay web to back him up to nullify my siege tanks. However, like the good turtle that I am (unintentional turtle) I had over 12 tanks in position that I unsieged, moved out of gayweb, sieged, repeated until the goons were all dead dead dead.
I quickly scanned around the map and saw four expansions to my one. I knew the end was probably near, and I had no hope if I sat on my turtle ass. So I unsieged everybody and saddled up. I moved out about 15 tanks, 10 gols, and about 20 marines into the open abandoning the safety of my ramp. I tried a modified push on his main to try to destroy key structures, knowing that he probably had minerals and gas up the ying-yang, and that stopping any particular expansion would be of little value.
Well, boys and girls, you can guess the rest... D-web, dt's, goons, zeals, temps, archons, (no carriers or reavers) came out of the woodwork from all sides. My troops fought valiantly to the last man and machine. The last brave Terran offensive was swept aside with heavy casulties on both sides, but the Terran's could ill-afford one for one trades at this point. Soon the protoss hordes (usually it is zerg hordes, no?) swept up my ramp and into my base hungry for phontonic energy as they spit their balls of goon fire out at my now flaming buildings. Rather than make a last hopelesss stand on my remaining island base. I offered the traditional "gg" to my opponent and surrendered as honorably as someone who has just lost to a kid less than half his age can do.
Whew what a battle, what a battle report. Thank you for reading this far. I plan to do another battle report tomorrow on the championship match of this i2e2 tournament.
It has taken me two hours to type this darn thing. Give me comments to let me know you care (or don't).
Lessons learned: Attend a tournament if you can. It was really a good time for everyone. Five out of the 16 players won cash, three more got prizes. I will write more observations of the tournament in my next report.
For now it is T.T.Boy signing off, saying so long and happy 'crafting. |
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