Star Blog #53

I’ve tried to write this one a couple of times but due to technical errors and my own retardedness I’ve lost what I have typed a number of times.

Skyrim – still good. Still enjoying it. Still fighting to get time on it with my 2 sons. It seems Saturday and Sunday mornings (early) are my best time for this. Which is too bad – it’s also my preferred time to ladder in SC2.

MLG Global Invitational and MLG Providence National Finals. I watched sooo much damn Starcraft 2 this weekend….I didn’t play a single game but man I watched a metric shit ton. It was great. NaNiWa was tearing it up in the Global Invitational on Friday night taking down MVP (arguably the best Terran in the game) and Nestea (arguably the best Zerg in the game) to win the Global Invitational. He played really strongly and was just dominant….I mean it wasn’t really even close.

He continued his reign of terror in the National Finals where he was looking unstoppable….until he ran into a 16 year old kid from Korea. Leenock had a much harder road to the finals than NaNiWa and had to play a ton of games after getting bounced down to the losers bracket but he fought it was way back and eventually took out NaNiWa in the finals. This kid was so good – and the fans really loved him. NaNiWa might be a great player (he definitely is) but I think his some what matter of fact attitude combined with his language barrier makes him come off as some what of a dick lol The fans really didn’t seem to be on his side despite his amazing play.

Amazing play aside….the finals weren’t so much amazing play. NaNiWa did a forge fast expand (nexus fast expand) 3 games in a row….and he did so with very limited scouting. Leenock countered this each time with a roach rush. One time NaNiWa scouted Leenock early – saw Leenock starting his fast expand in his natural and left…..Leenock cancelled the fast expand and roach rushed NaNiWa knowing the NaNiWa would assume he was safe to fast expand if Leenock was fast expanding…..tricky Korean! I think the finals were a little underwhelming compared to a lot of the other tournament games just because NaNiWa refused to change his strategy and Leenock really exploited that with early aggression that often ended the game. Regardless – I think the 2 best players from the tournament made it to the finals and it was a great weekend.

Other oddness. Greg “Idra” Fields might have a gone loco at this tournament. He just didn’t not look like wanted to be there – he was “gg’ing” at really strange times…..seemingly giving up before he needed to. I found it really strange and little disappointing because Idra had been playing so well coming into this tournament – it’s a shame his mental attitude isn’t on par with the rest of his obvious skill and deep understanding of the game.

I played some 3v3 and 4v4 with buddies last night and it was pretty good. We played some hard matches and really couldn’t get a super good groove going. I had a headache so I’m sure I wasn’t giving it my best but it was fun none the less.

Hoping to hit my 1v1 ladder games again soon. I’m top 25 and about 100 points out of top 8 (so maybe 5 wins out of top 8 ). I’ve gone back to just a 4 gate almost every game (except when I can safely FFE). Just trying to get that build crisp and work on just making a lot of shit and then A moving it.

Oh yeah Starcraft 2 LAN 2.0 coming up in December . I’m really looking forward to this one because we are going to do some 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, and maybe 4v4 and FFA tournaments – should be a lot of fun.

Peace!