New Guam Starcraft 2 League!

In an attempt to jump start the Starcraft 2 scene on Island, the fine folks at Guam Starcraft League are hosting a bronze to diamond only tournament with a 50 dollar donation being the prize for 1st place! They need to spread the word and don't worry if you/your friends are afraid to lose, it's all about good fun and camaraderie and hey, with a well executed strategy, you have the chance to beat anyone. ^_^

Click the link for more details.

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.

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.

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!

GSL Finals

I have to admit, I was let down by finals of the GSL last weekend.

I was all excited and pumped up, I even decided to write about the GSL in my column in the Marianas Variety this week just to share even a faint engram of how excited I was. My brother's friend had GSL watching party, where we had pizza and endured the incredibly long and mind-numbing interludes between matches, only to watch TSL_Rain get completely outplayed by OGSMC. There wasn't really a lot of suspense, although there were some interesting plays.

I got the feeling that most people expected Rain to act like Bitbybit and simply all in rush every single game, but I felt like he was straining against that and trying to prove himself to be a bit more than that, and as a result a sort of cautiousness crept into his play. He made the unusual move of going siege tank against protoss in his first two games, as if to prove he wasn't one of those kaduku taisensia na all in freaks, he brought some siege, some marines and medivacs and would bunker like crazy just outside of MC's base. He wasn't rushing but trying to blockade. In both instances, his timing was a bit off. Although he had no way of actually knowing it, MC had already expanded in both games, the first to his protected natural, the second to a hidden base, and so the blockade didn't work since Rain was stuck on one base. In both cases he didn't press effectively, and so MC was allowed to come back.

This is not to say that Rain is not a great SC2 player. You don't get to the finals of the GSL by being lucky or super-cheesy. You have to have alot of skill just to play at that level. But you could definitely see Rain's newness in his play. He started off in a way that seemed to doubt himself and to doubt his style of play.

In the 3rd match, Rain was able to come back by playing with the mind of MC and tricking him into thinking he was going to go two barracks when in fact he was going for the infamous partial "Tasteless Build" to rush out cloak banshees.

In the 4th match, MC almost completely mindf-cked Rain by doing the cheesiest most despicable rush possible where you build your gateway in your opponent's main, pylon on 7, gateway on 8 and then just chronoboost out zealots to tear the base to shreds. The map was Steppes of War which is one of the smaller maps ideal for quick and brutal rushes and I like most people watching was anticipating a super fast Terran Rain rush, but MC shocked everyone (ko'lo'lo'na Si Rain) by rushing his attack before Rain had even built his supply depot.

The 5th game, was the final, although it was very close. Both players got attacks into each other's bases at the same time. Rain snuck blue flame hellions into MC's base and took out all his probes. Rain tried to defend off a zealot-immortals-stalkers-sentry force which invaded his main but could not. It was somewhat close, but ultimately Rain's command center could not escape as it was surrounded by sentries and stalkers picking it off.

OGSMC is a great player. The way he picked apart LiquidJinro in the round of four was so brutal it should have come with a warning for people watching. But I was disappointed that one of the more macro players did not make it to the final to make the last games more epic. It seemed that many players had practiced techniques to try to kill your opponent in that first timing window when they expand, or get them with some sort of blitz tinigong before they are even ready for aggression. I was glad that at least one of the final games (game 2) went to an epic level, with nearly all bases taken and so many things happening at once not even the commentators could keep up. I hope that in the next tournament however there is a good mixture, because the first layer of strategy, the mind games which take place at the very start can be fun to watch, but there is nothing more satisfying than a game which pushes the limits and endurance of both players and the audience by going far beyond what you could imagine at the game's start.