i love starcraft

You will be hard pressed to find someone who likes NaDa more than me. I have watched him since his first games, revered him as a terran genius and found myself elated at any success he finds.

You will be hard pressed to find someone who dislikes the Protoss race more than me. I constantly joke at it and am frustrated at it as a terran player.

I used to hate free. I always felt that he was hugely overrated. This season, in MSL and in Proleague, free changed my opinion about him. free is DAMN GOOD now. One of the finest Protosses I've seen. Kudos to free, you have to do something really special as a protoss to gain my respect.

Despite all of this, NaDa didn't lose because of any protoss imbalance, real or imagined. NaDa didn't lose because free is insanely good right now (even tho im sure that didnt hurt). I have always and will always look up to NaDa as an amazing player, but in this MSL quarter final match, NaDa was just not himself. There were lots of mistakes in NaDa's play. Basic mistakes that NaDa shouldn't be making. But he did. I looked into NaDa's play on a commentary looking specifically for what went wrong in this horrible 0-3, something that should NEVER EVER EVER EVER happen to NaDa.

Enjoy:

NaDa vs free 1
NaDa vs free 2
NaDa vs free 3

I hope NaDa re-finds his indestructible flare.

http://www.scforall.com/sctv/sc_tv01.asp?mNum=s03&movNum=156

myself, tasteless, and daniel lee all went to a korean restaurant, and i had a camera on me so what the hell, i interviewed them. in the video i ask many amazing questions and we drink plenty of soju. a must-see.



fixed. sorry

Artosis@TreX Games

Just before USA finals I had the chance to play in an invitational amateur tournament located in Busan, South Korea. Originally it was going to be 4 top amateur Koreans who qualified through a large tournament, Lx (Legendary the Chinese progamer), IdrA, Tasteless, and myself. Unfortunately IdrA had his flight to USA finals a couple days before, and Tasteless had to cast GOMTV that weekend. With those 2 dropping out, they narrowed it down to the top 2 Korean amateurs from the tournament, Lx, and myself.

Sadly, I hadn't been in the best shape lately from lack of practice. Still, I took one solid day and played about 6 hours against ClouD (Lx was the only person who's race I knew from the tournament.) and I felt my TvP was at least in decent shape. I left with PuertoRican from Seoul far too early in the morning on a KTX train to Busan, praying not to have to play TvZ.

When we got to the event (called the TreX Games) it was actually pretty large. People from all different countries were doing little exhibitions in all sorts of sports, etc. There was a stage area for the eSports finals with some seats, not too many people watching that though. The first matches were actually played in a computer area set up in the exhibition center. Right after I arrived we started quite quickly.

I met Lx again, and he was super nice as always. Then the Koreans came in. Some guy sat down across from me with an SKT1 keyboard bag. Thats when I knew I was in trouble. I asked the bilingual guy in charge what race he was, and he said Zerg. Damn. So a bunch of people crowded around as I got destroyed TvZ vs this SKT1 practice partner. Really gross games. I felt quite bad afterwards. It ended quite quickly, so I got to watch Lx vs a terran playing Korean amateur. After watching both them play, I felt a lot better. Both looked good but quite beatable. Lx ended up losing 1-2, and thus I would end up playing Lx for 3rd place and about 200$!!

The 3rd place match was played on stage, with a decent amount of people watching, but still nothing close to any other event in Korea. Game 1 was on Andromeda, and I lost to an endless stream of zealots because I can't micro. Game 2 I chose Othello, the map from the tournament I felt best on. He chose to not zealot rush me, and I won in a macro game. That was quite a relief. The third game was on Blue Storm. Lx once again zealot rushed me, and I lost tons of SCVs. God I'm bad vs zealot rushes. I pushed out, took half the map, he went carriers. Sadly, I paniced when I was newly maxed out, and instead of sitting still, making a few more factories, and securing my side of the map before moving out, I unsieged and 1a2a3a4a5a up some hills. Not my brightest moment. So Lx beat me 2-1 and I got 4th! (quiet you. 4th sounds much better than last).

All in all it was a pretty good time. Lx is a manner bear, and quite a good player as well.

anyone know some quality programs to just record whatever i say into a microphone on my computer?

so uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

im going to blizzcon to cast with tasteless. SO DAMN EXCITED OMG GONNA BE FUN C U ALL THERE

1) Ginseng candy tastes like bengay.
2) If you order a sundae from baskin robins it will have tomato slices in it.
3) Sometimes if your korean friends order something for you without meat in it the little korean ladies will argue with them that it has to have meat because it tastes better that way. They will not get the point.
4) You can absolutely drink in public.
5) Koreans dont like peanut butter. they are missing out.

on a side note the stairs are still a death trap and seaweed is delicious.

If you know who [B_BLaDE]LEADER is, you have either done your homework, or you have been interested in StarCraft progaming from the very beginning. He was the runner up to X'Ds~Grrrr... in the last Blizzard-held World Championships about 9 years ago. He was one of the original fathers of terran. I remember reading about how he made speed and mines before siege against protoss and thinking "HOW CAN HE POSSIBLY LIVE!!!".

Well, you might not remember all of that, but im quite sure you know his face, because he is one of the oldest OGN commentators now. He was also one of the commentators who went to Italy for WCG 06, so some of you might have met him there. Anyways, turns out that I got to interview him haha.

http://www.scforall.com/sctv/sc_tv01.asp?mNum=s03&movNum=98

really a treat for me. an original father of the hardest race answering whatever i wanted to ask him. =P

a combination of 2nd hand smoke from pc bangs and casting a bunch made me completely lose my voice last night. i still dont have it back this morning.

how fix yo?

there are some things here that as an american i just cannot explain.

today i was at a pizza hut that had a salad bar. in the salad bar there were 2 interesting items. one was whole, unpeeled bannanas (ok not too too weird). the other was nacho cheese. the thing about the nacho cheese is there was nothing at all to put it on.

gas here is 2x as expensive as in usa. its literally about 8$ a gallon. yet the taxi rides are about 1/3rd as expensive as in boston.

peanut butter costs 5$ for a tiny jar. ouch. really all foreigner food is hella expensive. a small pan pizza at pizza hut was 14$, but if i go to a korean restaurant and get a huge amount of food it is very inexpensive.

the stairs are not uniform heights. often times the top or bottom stair just doesn't line up with what the stairs are leading to, so its some vastly different height. i've almost fallen about 9 times. infact, yesterday it was raining and i went to this pc bang. i start walking down the stairs normally (concrete steps) and fall. my ass bumps down about 6 steps before i finally stop. i look back and the concrete steps are slightly SLANTED FORWARD. WHO MAKES STEPS LIKE THAT? rofl thank god it only made me sore.

today i saw a little singing group of maybe 15 people singing The Yellow Submarine on a busy street corner.

fun times!

so we all took a nice long trip down to busan from seoul. took about 5 hours. i tried to document it some with some videos taken with a camcorder. a whole bunch of videos have been put up, including a short interview with myself and idra. heres a link to the whole group of them (i think) http://www.scforall.com/sctv/sc_tv01.asp?mNum=s01

ok gotta go idra owes me a pizza XD