Thursday, January 27, 2011

Planetary Assault

In the last Guam Starcraft 2 tourney over the weekend, I went 2 and 4, which was alot better than I thought I would do. I didn't think I would win a single game, I didn't practice or play at all the week before and since I have very little experience against humans, when I do play against people of any level, I tend to make stupid mistakes and give away the game very easily. This past tourney was no different, as I found that the strategies I use against AI on insane and VH didn't work very well against humans.

My biggest win was on Scrap Station, Protoss v. Terran. My opponent likes to rush cloaked banshees, which doesn't work as well against someone like me, who noobs it up by always going forge first and building canons. It doesn't even matter what race I'm playing against or what their strategy is, I almost always go forge first and lay down canons, especially to prevent any Dark Templars or burrowed units from giving me nightmares. The problem with rushing the cloaked banshees is that you don't have much for other units. You wall in but don't have much defense at your base. My plan was to rush void rays and also proxy pylon with zealots outside his main.

He arrived with two cloaked banshees when I finally got my first void ray out. Thankfully I had some stalkers who could take advantage of the vision that the canons provided to stave off the banshees. And when my void rays arrived at my opponent's main, he had a handful of Marines who were easily taken out. I warped in two zealots to attack in the front and start killing depots. While I was killing off my opponent's base, he built some vikings and was able to take out one of my void rays while I killed off his vikings (charged void rays are the best). When he stopped resisting my killing his base I began to get suspicious. I warped in some zealots and sent them down to the gold and the side expansions, and of course he had built a command center at the gold and was mining like crazy. As I sent down some zealots and my remaining void ray to take out his gold base, I notced that he was attacking my main. I assumed that he still had his banshees left and was trying to snipe my buildings and probes, but I was pretty sure that I would be okay.

When I looked at my main to see what was happening, I was pretty certain that I'll always be a horrible macro player. While I was distracted in my opponent's gold base, he had snuck a command center into my main, landed it and morphed it into a planetary fortress. Thankfully for me, he had landed it at a point where it was getting hit by one of my canons. He started bombarding my buildings with his fortress, and so I left my zealots to take out his expansion and search for others and moved my void ray back to take out his fortress.

Since I won the match, the fact that he was able to build a planetary fortress in my main was a "lol moment," and it was really hysterical moment. If by some chance he had built the fortress in my base and I had lost, then it would have been a major "I suck" moment.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Liquid Jinro Interview

In the past two GSL tournaments (Season 3 and Code S) Jinro from Team Liquid made it into the semi-finals, the Round of Four, but lost both times. Against oGsMC he was soundly defeated, and while things were sometimes close against MarineKingPrime.WE, he still lost 1-3. Most of the things I read about Starcraft 2 are from American sources, in English and so they are naturally biased towards non-Korea or "foreign" players. In the case of Jinro, since the most popular Starcraft website in the world is dedicated to the team he is a part of, he gets far more attention than most. But one thing you have to like about Jinro is both his honesty and his humility. I think he'll

I've been let down by the incredible dominance of Terran players in both the Code S and GSL Season 3. It has led to some incredibly exciting and mind-boggling T v T, but also to alot of Terran Cheese Rushes, which are probably the least interesting to watch. I'm not really looking forward to the finals for Code S later this week, even though I find MarineKing's style to be unorthodox and interesting to watch. I've already noticed that Zerg are finding ways to come back on the ladder, developing various cheesy rush tactics of their own to take our Terran and Protoss just in the way they've been taken out with SCV all ins and Four Gate rushes. I hope that at the highest levels of SC2 the best zergs in the world can find similar ways of coming back. I did see some fantastic play from IMNestea in Code S, although he did not make it to the finals.

When my brother made it to the Master's League and then broke back into the 3000 points level, I decided to buy him some Jinro to celebrate. I told him, hopefully someday he'll be able to drink Jinro with Jinro at the OGS house in South Korea. Returning to LiquidJinro, I came across this interview on TeamLiquid.net after his loss last week, and decided to paste it below.

*******************************

Tough loss. What's your take on what happened vs. MarineKing?Hm, well I was definitely outplayed in the last game, in the Jungle Basin game I just messed up really hard because I got overenthusiastic when my marines were killing his depot :D . In the Steppes game, I got a bit overeager to end it too, and then his good defense bit me in the ass. Game 1 went according to plan, except for him getting siege tanks - didn't expect that.

MarineKing plays a very unique style. How did you do against it in practice?

Decently, but I think to beat him I'd need more prep time, as he plays this style everyday whereas most other Terrans don't play in that style, so I don't know this specific matchup (his style vs a more normal terran style) as well as he does.

Looking back on your Code S run, what are you especially proud of? What do you regret?

Winning TvP with mech on TV was a very nice feeling. I regret losing games I should have won, such as vs Check and the first match against MarineKing, which led to team mates getting knocked out. I also regret not setting my goal as winning the tournament and nothing else (I had a goal of making it back to the semis), as during the semis I didn't feel nearly as nervous as during any other game, which isn't good - it indicates I didn't want the win enough.

In a previous interview, you said you felt you needed to prove last season's run wasn't a fluke. You made it back to the semifinals, where you finished before. Do you consider that progress?

I think I played a lot tougher opponents this time, and even in the games where I lost (ie vs MarineKing), I was at least for the most part playing pretty well. So yes, progress in that regard.

Do you feel player and fan opinion about you has changed in Korea?

The reception to me losing seem to have been a lot better than last time I lost, i.e. no "overrated" posts at all from what I've seen but I have no idea how I'm supposed to tell if people are see me differently apart from that. The oGs guys treat me like they've always done. Lots of people ask for autographs, but that's not new.

We've heard you've been feeling under the weather lately. Are you going to take a break or rest up before the next Code S tournament? How long do you have?

Well, as soon as the games vs MKP ended I noticed a pretty serious throat-pain, and everything just got worse from there - fever etc. I actually thought it was all caused by not getting any sleep, so I even went to the gym when I got back. Not such a good idea as it turns out, now I'm sick AND sore. I don't know when the next GSL starts, I didn't plan to take any real time off but since I'm sick there's no choice really.

What are your goals for the next GSL?

To win and only to win. Both this and the last GSL my goals weren't victory focused enough - for GSL 1, I wanted code S and when I played the semis I was kinda expecting to lose. For GSL 2, I wanted to prove my last run wasn't a fluke so once I got to the semis, I wasn't really expecting to lose but I was a bit too... satisfied I guess.

You felt different before these matches?

For every other GSL game, aside from last Semis, I've been nauseatingly nervous. Every time I'd have something to drink after the first game, my arm would shake - especially if I'd just won. But this semis, nothing. While its good in that I didn't make the kind of mistakes I sometimes do when nervous, like miss depots etc, I don't think its good from the standpoint of being mentally sharp, on edge. So my goal for next season is to get into the semis, feel terrible and win them then get into the finals and feel the same way and win those too.

How will you prepare differently next season?

I want to work on my overall game and mechanics for the next GSL. Both MarineKing and MVP are extremely active ladder players, and I think their ability to just beat opponents with standard, strong play saves them a lot of mental strength in the earlier rounds of GSLs, whereas I usually spend a lot of time and effort preparing new things from the first round to the last, energy that could be better saved for the later rounds I think.

Any last words for your fans?

Thanks for watching and supporting, hopefully I'll see you at the finals next GSL.

Thanks for the interview, feel better!

Thanks.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Gualo

[UPDATE] Unfortunately, my brother did not make it into the Top 200 last week, apparently there was an error when they were calculating the rankings and so he was mistakenly included.

Was on Battle.net yesterday and came across the unbelievable. Each week Blizzard releases a list of the top 200 players for Starcraft 2 for each of their regional servers. Getting on that list is a real honor, even more so since eventually there will be a Grandmaster's League which will be for the top 200 players in each region only. I should note that this list is not based on ladder points alone, and so even the people who have a huge number of points or who are at the top of their division don't necessarily get to the top of the Top 200.

The way of determining who gets to the top of this list is partially hidden, some secret formula that Blizzard uses, but it is clearly not based on pure wins and losses, percentage or points. It comes down to who you win against and who you lose against. If in the course of a week you beat top tier players and don't lose egregiously to players at your level or beneath you, you have a chance at being in the Top 200. It should be noted that the Top 200 is not necessarily the best in the region for all time, but merely in the last week. So even if no one knows who you are, if you have a fantastic week in SC2, you could jump into the Top 200.

So, the unbelievable thing that I saw yesterday was that my brother tQmagnavox had made it into the Top 200 for the past week. Well, gi minagahet, that isn't really ti hongge'on. He's been in the Top 200 before and for the past few months as his score has gone up, he's been Top 100 and Top 200 for points in the North American server. But what was unbelievable was that he didn't just appear in the Top 200, as in crawl his way to number 199 or 190 or something. He leaped, flew, zoomed, I have no idea what the right verb is to use, but he demolished his way to the number 8 spot in the Top 200.

That's right, hunggan magahet enao, you read that right, he was NUMBER EIGHT LAST WEEK.

In addition, Kuri's clan TQ or think quick fighting, had four members in the top 20. A very strong showing for the week.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Got You Where I Want You

If you ever play against my brother tQmagnavox on the ladder or in a tourney, there is a very good chance that he is listening to this song below while he fights you.



Slowly overtime I've developed a similar habit of having a queue of Youtube videos loaded up and repeating over and over as I play for long periods of time. I find it can be helpful when things get intense to help keep you focused even as you hear screams and explosions are your forces and buildings are being ripped to shreds.

I unfortunately missed the last GUSC2 tourney that was held over the weekend (congratulations to tQprobe the winner this week!), because ti maolek i siniente-ku yan mumayulang iyo-ku keyboard, but as I was preparing for it last week I found myself listening to one song over and over again. My most difficult matchup has been kontra Terran, as I find the M and M and M deathball so frustrating and so difficult to take down in a straight up match. I have found as I wrote about in my last post, that if I can proxy pylon rush Terran and take down their army at their ramp or eventually wear them down an hour into the game by warping in an almost endless supply of cheap kamikaze zealots, I can beat Terran, but if the game ever moves into the middle to late stages, Terran eventually overruns me with its M and M and M.

The song I was listening to in order to give me inspiration for a nice way to defeat Terran was "Got You Where I Want You" from The Flys, which was a popular song in the late 1990's (when I used to be into contemporary popular blah blah music), and was featured in the soundtracks for Disturbing Behavior and Dawson's Creek. I have always loved the sound and tortured feel of the song and over the years, as I have changed my interpretations of what the point of the intent of the song (and the singer) are. Sometimes it feels sardonic. Sometimes angry. Sometimes hopeful. Sometime earnest.

When I added this song to my Starcraft 2 playlist, I found myself once again enamored with the lyrics and the sort of slow, twisting angry style of the song. Last week I actually translated it into Chamorro, or rather created a Chamorro version of the song. Here's a little tinamtam of what I came up with (the first is the original English lyrics, the second part is the Chamorro version and then an English translation of the Chamorro)

Hey, what's the point of this?
Oh hey, what's your favorite song?
Maybe we could hum along.
Well, I think you're smart,
you sweet thing,
Tell me your name,
I'm dying here.



Got you where I want you


*****************************


Nene para hafa este?
Sangåni yu’ i mas ya-mu na kanta.
Buente siña ta akanta
Kao malate’ hao
Siempre siempre
Sangåni yu’ ni’ na’ån-mu
Sa’ esta kumekemåtmos yu’


Hågu i magoggue-ku!


*******************************

Baby, what is the point of this?
Tell me your favorite song
Maybe we can sing it to each other?
Are you smart?
Of course of course
Tell me your name
Because I'm just about to drown

You, are my salvation!

The moral of the story is that eventually I was able to figure out some cool builds against Terran and the song was the perfect soundtrack as I found myself picking apart the Very Hard AI piece by piece, killing them on both land and air, and switching back and forth between units and tech to keep the advantage, limiting their expansions and even using warp prisms for drops. And the whole time, that song in the background shrieking the perfect followup to what I was doing, na put fin, gaige hao manu na ga'o-ku.

Friday, January 14, 2011

I Uttimo na Tinigong Zealots Siha

My brother often tells me that the AI is harder than humans. For a long time I wasn’t convinced of this, since most of the games I watch people play in Starcraft 2 are high level, professional mampos kapas players, who are able to play the game at a level I will never reach. But I always need to remind myself that the majority of people who play SC2 are nowhere near that level and might be just as good as I am.
Recently it seems like the computer has gotten harder when I play against it. They mix up their strategies and are making units they never did before. This seems especially true with Terran, which I detest playing against on VH or Insane. I’ve learned the hard way recently that Blink Stalkers is not a good choice for early strategy against Terran since Marauders seem to have an uncanny ability to take out all their pent up frustrations (perhaps over Don’t ask Don’t Tell) on my delicate units. Stalkers look pretty cool, until they get hit by Marauders and then you realize they are made out of glowing origami paper or something and not as high tech and awesome as they seem.
One thing which the computer has started to do recently is build ravens, which irritates the hell out of me. I’ve never had a human use a raven against me and I have certainly never had a human use a Point Defense Drone against me and so I was blown away the other day when I found my attempts attacks muffled by two PDD thrown on the ground. When I had a computer use Seeker Missiles against me, that was the moment I knew that the apocalypse was here. Makpo’ i tano’, na’listo hao sa’ esta mamagi Si Yu’us ta’lo.
Last week I tried a FFA match against 3 insane computers. Whenever I try FFA games against a diverse number of races Terran tends to emerge as the last man standing of the computers. I don’t know why this is the case, but usually in these matches which in one instance stretched for 2 hours, it is usually me barely clinging to life trying to take down an incredibly OP Terran goliath. There were two zergs, me a Protoss and one Terran. One zerg was taken down in 10 mins. The second zerg was almost taken out by the Terran and by me who killed his expansions, but was able to sneak a hatchery into the base of the dead zerg without any of us seeing it. That left me and Terran, who sent army after army of Marines, Marauders and Medivacs against my ramp. My canons and colossai held them off very well while I expanded onto both islands on the map. While I was distracted and building up my expansions, Terran hit me again and overran my defenses. I quickly sent a prism to his main and warped in some zealots to try to distract. It worked for a minute before they returned again to my main. I decided to sacrifice my main and work on fortifying my islands. With one island almost mined out by that point, I wasn’t quite sure what to do.
I had been fighting with a land army, but by now Terran had made six BC which were part of the reason why they had been able to take out my main. I built a few air units to try and snipe the BC, but they had Vikings with them and I wasn’t able to do much damage. By now I sent my observers around and saw that Terran had five expansions including one gold. Thankfully, the zerg had regained some strength and computers never lose hope and so they constantly rebuild expansions hoping to come back. Terran was somewhat distracted with zerg and so I could use that to my advantage to weaken Terran. Knowing that my resources were limited I decided to use a daring kamikaze strategy of warp prisms and charge zealots all over the map. I warped in units at two places at once and followed around the Terran main army with my observers and phoenixes to make sure I had the breathing room to have my zealots do some damage before the main army came back.
One by one, with great patience I took out all of Terrans expansions and whenever their main force would find me, my zealots would slowly whittle down their ground army. Eventually their air forces which were still five BC, attacked my island with all my leftover tech and buildings. They slowly took out my canons but gave me the chance to warp in six stalkers who slowly but surely (with the help of the remaining brave canons) took out their BC. With no Terran resistance left I started sending out my zealot army after zerg, who had by now expanding to three bases, but still have pretty weak units. In all the game lasted about an hour (in-game). It is interesting, because against P and Z I have strategies that usually work, but against Terran, unless I can kill them early with a rush or distract them effectively with VR, the only way I can win is by that last desperate charging of the zealot brigade.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

GOMTV

I don't have cable at home and so there is no plopping on the couch to watch TV each night. Instead my television each night is actually GOMTV, which is a website where they broadcast matches which are part of the Global Starcraf 2 League or GSL. They've had three seasons of tourneys so far and right now are knee deep in their Code A and Code S matches, which make use of a system which I don't quite understand but are still fun to watch since there are still plenty of great players there.

While I was checking out the schedule earlier tonight I saw something interesting. Like everything else in the universe except me, GOMTV has a Facebook page and so they have the widget on their page which shows their FB updates and also the number of people that "like" them. The number is above 10,000 and so usually when I pass by there the random profile images they show are of people I don't know. But tonight I was shocked to actually recognize one of the profiles as being my brother's! I snatched an image of it and I've pasted it below.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Oran Fatitigao

When you think of epic late game moves, there’s probably a handful of units and moves that you think of.
For Zerg it is often masses of Ultralisks carving up the enemy. Slicing down, like a crew of seasoned bushcutters, their foe’s army like tender and delicate blades of bleeding grass. Earlier tonight I saw EGidra create 17 Ultralisks in order to finish off OGSensare. An armada of Brood Lords is always something to see as well.
For Terran, it might be Battlecruisers or Thors, but a truly epic late game move would be to create a coven of Ravens and wreck the enemy with Seeker Missiles.
For Protoss, Carriers come to mind, an army of Archons as well, although the coolest, but most desperate late game moves I’ve ever seen are the warping in of Mother Ships. They are so rare to see on the battlefield, since nowadays most games are cheese-laden and are meant to end very very early. But to see a Mother Ship warp out of a Nexus onto the Battlefield in the heat of a battle is the SC2 visual definition of dues ex machina. It is like watching the hand of God appear to plop a huge, unwieldy vessel on the field.
The inverse of this is that there are plenty of moves which you would never expect to see in the late game, moves which happen early, units which are important early, but become cheap chaff later.
The other day while playing a 2 v 2 with Davis against Very Hard AI, I found myself, in the very late game, i tiempon fatitigao, resorting to a strategy which almost had me rolling on the floor laughing.
We were playing on Twilight Fortress, PP v PZ. Twilight Fortress was, in my early days one of my favorite and least favorite maps, gof ya-hu, lao gof ti ya-hu lokkue’. The reason being, that your naturals are easily defendable and your ramp, while wide can still be easily defend as well. But at the same time, turtling and holding off the enemy gives them free range over the rest of the bases. There would be some games where we would literally kill off 700 or 800 enemies units, but still get overrun because although we could hold them off at our ramp, we would always lose plenty in the process and never be able to send out a decent army to meet them on the battlefield.
Eventually, we began to facilitate rushes or drops with zealots or if Leevin was playing Marines and Marauders in order to harass their mains’ but also keep their expansions in check. Nowadays we win on the map pretty consistently. In this game we were set on a course to winning once again. Davis had set up pylons on the left side of the enemy base and was warping in zealots and stalkers to harass. I went heavy robo in order to both defend the ramp and also, after defeating their main army, move out with a massive death ball. By about minute 20, everything was great, their expansions had been limited and I had a 30 unit death ball (with five sentries) that I was ready to head out with.
Unfortunately, as the game gets more intense I have a big tendency to press the wrong hot keys. I had my death ball on 1, the stalkers in my death ball on 2 and an observer that I was using to help Davis blink in stalkers to their main on 3. Right before I was about to move out, I moved my observer into position so that he could harass to keep them busy while I moved into position. It took me a few moments to realize however that I had pressed 1 instead of 3 and was “moving” and not “A attacking” my death ball right into the path of the enemy main force. I lost half of my units, including all of my colossai, but kept pushing with my stalkers, sentries and immortals. I took out most of their units but eventually lost them at the ramp of their main.
I retreated and rebuilt and within a few minutes the next big wave came which I did hold off. My death ball at this point was about 27 units, and so I decided to move out again, thinking that they wouldn’t have much. This was not to be the case, since the computer makes units at the rate at which people on Guam make excuses about how they remain a colony of the United States, and by this I mean constantly. I soon encountered their new MAX force.
I took out two of their expansions on my way to their ramp. As I travelled a protoss army of mainly zealots, but a few well-placed immortals ransacked my main. They killed most of my gateways and left me supply blocked. I entered the computers’ main and started taking out buildings. By now, zerg wasn’t much of a threat and their twenty units were easily taken care of. But right behind them was the Protoss force, which had just let my main. When I watched the replay, they had four pages worth of units in that force. No colossus to my four, and I thought I could hold them off, but the the Protoss AI had gone heavy immortals and they ended up doing as Artosis says “sick” damage when it was just a couple colossus versus a couple immortals at the end of the fight.  
I was mined out and not sure how much the computer had left. Davis at this point cautiously expanded, and was warping in charged zealots non-stop to fend off the computer and snipe buildings in their mains’. My minerals were minded out at this point and I had over a thousand. Not sure what to do, I sent out my probes to start exploring and found that the computer had expanding to the right side of the map where I had killed them in an earlier raid.  
I rebuilt a pylon at the ramp and warped in a forge to put up some canons for defense before I built my gateways, but as my forge finished I cancelled my gateways and decided instead to go with another strategy which I never ever imagined I would use in the late-game. With my scouting probe I built a pylon on the edge of the Protoss expansion and then built two canons next to it instead. Hunggan, magåhet este, achokka’ esta manmåtto ham gi i finakpo’ i mimu, mandiside yu’ na maolek este na momento para bai hu tugong este ni’ kañon!
I realized that making units would take too long, waiting for the units to build and the gateways to finish, since I already had my forge, why not canon rush instead? It worked. The computer, was, we later learned, much weaker than we had initially thought. They were mined out in their mains and naturals and we had taken out all their expansions except for the Protoss one which I was canon rushing. After a couple charge zealot onslaughts their roving band of immortals were taken down.
For my late game canon-rush, the probes which usually become aggressive when you build too close to their base didn’t respond at all and had to flee once the canons started firing at them. I don’t know if this was an issue of them REALLY needing the salåpe’ or if their aggressive tendencies meant to ward off canon or gateway rushes in their main don’t apply to their expansions as well?
As we looked back, my canon rush was unnecessary. The computer was on the run, even if we didn’t know it, and Davis still had a good economy of pumping out charge zealots and blink stalkers. In fact, as he was warping in units he brought some zealots over to the Protoss expansion to kill it, but I typed something to the effect that “I got this Guam,” go and look for other expansions, because I didn’t want him running my epically noob late-game moment!

Monday, January 10, 2011

Legacy

With the release of Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty, it carries a heavy stigma of being a sequel of the one of the most popular and most successful PC games of all time. This game literally created E-sports, or at least gave it a worldwide recognition that spawned communities in nations all across the world. Nowadays, South Korea is known as the hub of Starcraft where TV channels broadcast games and players and teams are sponsored by national banks and large food manufacturers. To this day Brood War is still a force in South Korea, but the sequel is making waves everywhere else.

As a spectator sport, the sequel pales in comparison to the original. This might be due to the fact that Brood War has had 10 years to developed and be fully fleshed out. The game is young. But when time passes, I hope games like this will be produced:

Game 5 of Bisu (P) versus Iris (T), art in pixel form.
If you have any knowledge of Starcraft or Starcraft 2, or any Real-Time Strategy prowess you will know why the game itself is epic, as you do not know who is going to win until the last 60 seconds of the 30 minute match. But the background of the game itself is worthy of discussion as well, at this time, Bisu was considered to be unstoppable and was slated to win this whole league. Iris is an aging Terran player who’s two years past him prime and for him to take it to a 5th game was a big surprise in itself. I will not spoil the results but I hope dearly that games like this will be produced in Starcraft 2.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Hiniyong i Inacha'igi gi Painge

Last night the first Guam based Starcraft 2 tournament was held, and although the turnout was a bit low with only 8 people showing up, it was still a lot of fun. The race breakdown was 2 Zerg, 4 Protoss, 1 Terran and 1 Random. Each player got to play four matches and here is the list of winners and their records.
  • 1st Place: tQmagnavox.884 (P) (4-0)
  • 2nd Place: tQProbe.934 (P) (3-1)
  • 3rd Place: TFox.417 (P) (2-2)
I finished out the tourney in a three way tie for last place. Me and two other players each won 1 and lost 3. I'll say more about my matches later. I learned alot since these were my first matches against humans and not AI, and so I can definitively say that next time I will be better prepared. I made some stupid mistakes in my offense and defense and so instead of finishing 3-1, I ended up with 1-3.

One thing which  made the tourney exciting was the fact that there was even a livestream channel for it and so when my matches were finished, I could log on and watch some of the better players finish up.

The next tournament is next weekend and there is a change in time and day, so here's the update from the GUSC2 website:
Please review the Schedule page. The next tournament has been moved to Sunday, January 16, 2010 at 2:00pm to try to accommodate as many people as possible. This includes all you WoW players who raid on Saturday nights!!!

Registration will start on Monday, January 10, 2010 and ends at Saturday, January 15, 2010 at 2:00pm. We are working on a better registration system so stay tuned.

Also, there have been some changes in the Rules to help things be a bit more streamline. Be sure to check them out.
I find that gof na'chalek that the time and day was changed so that it wouldn't conflict with peoples' WoW raids.

By the way, for those of you who don't know, the winner of the tourney tQmagnavox is my brother Kuri/Jeremy. And so in honor of his victory, here is a pensive, reflective image of him on a boat, where he looks eeirely like Tasteless of SC2 commentating fame. Sen maolek i che'cho'-mu Kuri! Puede ha' un diha bai hu ikak hao annai umakontra hit gi Kareran Estreyas Dos.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Guam Starcraft 2 League

Mumagahet i guinife-hu siha gi este na simana!

If you are reading this blog then you most likely have some interest in the combination of the game Starcraft 2 and the place Guam, and so you might be interested to learn that there is a new Starcraft 2 league which will be starting up this Saturday, January 8th at 6 pm. The website for the league has more info, but I'll paste bits and pieces of it here.

The schedule with some information on the type of tournament is below
  • Saturday, January 8, 2011 @ 6:00pm - Swiss, 4 Rounds, BO3.
  • Saturday, January 15, 2011 @ 6:00pm - Swiss, 4 Rounds, BO3.
  • Saturday, January 22, 2011 @ 6:00pm - Swiss, 4 Rounds, BO3.
  • Saturday, January 29, 2011 @ 6:00pm - Swiss, 4 Rounds, BO3.
Registration is free and easy, you just have to send an email with some information and you'll be set to go. Click on this link to head to the registration page. There's also some rules to abide by, so be sure to check those out.

The league is not just for really really ridiculously good players, but for players of all skill levels who want to meet others who enjoy Starcraft 2 and want to try out their skills or various varieties of cheese against each other. Although I think I'm okay at SC2, I don't have any illusions that I'll do very well. My APM hovers around 30, and sometimes by some divine miracle where Muhammad, Moses, Jesus Christ, Buddha and Steven Speilberg get together and bless my fingers, I can get my Actions Per Minute up to an average of 50. When I watch professional players and even my brother play, this means that in comparision I play Starcraft 2 at the level of an elephant trying to use chopsticks to pick up mandarin orange pieces. Ti gof maolek, ya mampos gof ti chaddek.

But I think it'll still be fun, and I started this blog to meet more people from Guam and more Chamorros who enjoy Starcraft 2.

I've already told my brother that if I fight against him in the tournament he has to lose on purpose and make it look real!

Monday, January 3, 2011

How Do You Say Starcraft in Chamorro?

Part of my reason for starting this Starcraft 2 blog was to bring together my love of Starcraft 2 and my love of the Chamorro language. I have only been a fan of SC2 for a few months, but I have loved speaking and using Chamorro to discuss strange things for many years. On my other blog, No Rest for the Awake – Minagahet Chamorro, since starting it in 2004, have written in Chamorro about the most random things, such as Bollywood Movies, European philosopy, video games and anime. I often lament the fact that the use of the Chamorro language has become so limited. It is something that you use casually to so simple things, but when you start to talk about more modern, contemporary and complex things people tend to switch to English.
So with i abok-hu Leevin I want to come up with list of SC2 terms in Chamorro. Making up names for units such as SCVs, Immortals or Banelings would be a fun experience to go through. Immortal is an easy enough word to translate into Chamorro (taimatai or taiminatai), but Banelings might be tougher. Maybe I could say something about how they are the worst nightmare of Marines? (I mas atdet na chinatguinifen para i Mansindalu siha)
What I really want to do is come up with names for tactics and strategies that we use. It is my dream to one die at the start of a 3v3 match with myself and any combination of my brother, Leevin or Davis, we check out the map and our opponents and say a Chamorro word to pick our strategy. As I’ve already written on this blog “tinigong” is my way of saying “rush,” since “tugong” means to charge someone or rush someone. But the Chamorro language is full of so many other words, especially words for violent physical activities that we could use. One day when Leevin did a number of successful drops with Marines to take out the hatcheries of our opponents, he said that we won because we were able to hamstring our enemies. I recalled then the Chamorro word for “to cut hamstrings” and said that when we do something like that we should call it “kedera.”
My all-time favorite word which must be one day used as a SC2 tactical term is “chungat.” I am seriously thinking of changing my game id to Chungat, just because it is so cool. Chungat means to cut someone’s belly open, and so I wonder what tactic this might describe? Heading straight up the middle? Taking out their main? Supply blocking them, by shredding apart their overlords/pylons/depots like spilling out their intestines?