After reading a forum post about who in the crew is the best player our dear crew member Esc4toN decided to simply look it up. He created a thread in our General Crew Forum, asking for the interest among the rest of the crew members. The answers were all the same – “Bring it on! I will own you newbs so hard!”.
Said and done, we created a tournament. It was strategically placed right during the BlizzCon days, so we could eliminate three of our members / opponents even before the tournament started. The whole thing started much earlier than the actual tournament did. After weeks and weeks of trash talking, where everyone attacked each other brutally verbal it was finally there – the tournament day.
A lot of people from the crew seemed to have forgotten, or they might have been sleeping or something, due to the very CET friendly time we put as yet another way of eliminating even more opponents on beforehand. After reminding some guys so we could actually get enough players to get it going, we finally started off. Most matches started immediately, but I personally continued with the mind playing games and went for a good long meal of chicken before playing my games, everything to make my opponent, the feared
Patrik “Raistlin” Hellstrand, more and more nervous.When we finally got going we were a bit late compared to the others, but in a tough Terran versus Protoss match (with me as Terran), where I timed my building of turrets extremely well and managed to defend against a number of Dark Templars and Dragoons in a way that would have made the Prince of Terran himself, SlayerS_`BoxeR`, shed a tear. After that the extreme micromanagement with my powerful 121 APM was simply too much for Raistlin to handle, and we could move on to game number two.
Raistlin this time chose Zerg, and I continued to play with my strong Terran. After forgetting to build a Supply Depot due to the high pressure I decided to go for a Barrack, Barrack, Supply-build, and as we started as neighbours it was a good decision. Instead of wasting time I moved in with some SCVs and my first marines to kill the fast expansion Raistlin was doing, and with the supreme micro it was successfully done, and Raistlin typed “GG” for the second time and moved down to loser brackets. I got to round two in the winner brackets, where no one else than the powerful Protoss player
Carn1fex waited.Second round started bad
After a game where I saved my energy to concentrate on the upcoming final, which I was sure I were going to play he actually managed to beat me after getting up too many Gateways, and I was unable to reproduce my army with the same speed as him. I decided to be a bit evil and select the map 815, which I hoped he never had played before. I was totally right, and he took a quick peek on the map before we started. Although, he didn’t notice that the ramps weren’t big enough for a Dragoon to come out, and he left the game immediately after realizing that. Although, good mannered as I am (mostly at least), I said we could re-game so he could adapt his strategy a little better. I kind of borrowed a tactic from Boxer and went for a Goliath drop which Carn1fex was not able to stop, and we got ready for a third and deciding game.
Old school picture from DreamHack Winter 2004
He chose Luna, which is such an imbalanced map in Protoss versus Terran that I only won a TvP on it once or twice before – just to get an unfair advantage. Although, with my great psychological mind I did not let him get me and entered the game full of confidence. After some extraordinary micro/macro from my side I was able to kill his units time after time, and I did not allow him to expand. After a tough game Carn1fex typed “GG” and I was sent to the winner bracket final.
Bier, Bratwurst und Bayern München...
In the WB final I was facing
Texas, the German Terran player. With his pre-game rituals he likes to call “3B” (3B standing for Bier, Bratwurst und Bayern München - working like some kind of doping), he was very confident in himself. His APM is far ahead of mine, and the games he played before he had something like 320, a lot thanks to the 3B method. Although, what he didn’t know was that I had a surprise for him… As I knew he was a very fast player I killed him with some great drops while he was busy keeping his speed up.In the second game he wanted to play Bifrost, but this time he chose to play as Protoss. As Bifrost is pretty much as bad for Terran against Protoss as Luna - I couldn’t remember winning any TvP game on it before, except for a game against an IRL friend of mine, who might have an APM average of 30 – I was a bit worried. Although, with the TvP win on Luna in fresh memory I had no problems defeating Texas’ Protoss, and viola – I was ready for the final.
Final coming up
After some waiting I got a worthy (pfft, ye right, like if someone is worthy…) opponent in
Epidion, the Yankee Protoss who were ready to take on me – The Swedish Terror Terran! After coming from WB I had a 1-0 lead already, in our Bo5 series. We started off with Epidion playing a good first game, but as I played even better and microed and macroed like if there was no tomorrow I went victorious from the game and had a 2-0 lead. One more game and I would be the true champion of the GosuGamers crew!As it was losers pick, he chose the map Imbafrost, where his advantage gave him the win after a game where he kind of dominated me from the beginning. I only remember me being over at his side of the map at one time, and that being with the scouting SCV… This was a tournament of great importance to all of us, and the prestige of winning was huge. I wanted to win it all, and I had an idea of how I was going to do it. I once again picked 815, and hoped he never played it before. Just as I though – he had not. Although, a cheesy two Robotics proxy build he was not going to give up just like that. I continued with the Goliath dropping, and just as I unloaded my Goliaths at his mineral line a Shuttle with two Zealots and a Reaver entered my base. They were unloaded, and he went to get two more fresh Reavers.
His Probes were getting owned by my Goliaths, and my SCV’s were getting owned by his units. Although, I did remember that Reavers needs Scarabs to be effective, and Scarabs actually costs minerals. And if my Goliaths keep Epidion from mining, he will soon run out of minerals, and his Reavers will not be able to build any Scarabs!
My plan worked, and I could after some impressive micro kill the Protoss units in my base off, continue to mining. Unfortunately for me, Epidion could kill my Goliaths as well. But from there I knew just how to play. I took several expansions, since I knew I was far ahead in economy, and with a superior economy I could simply out macro him, and the victory was mine!
The champion himself, the way he looks while pwning n00bs.
Replays from four of the players in the tournament can be downloaded from the link below, and I advise you to check them out. Most of the games should be there.
Note: GosuGamers are not held responsible for your expected extreme increase (or decrease) of skill after watching and being inspired by these astonishing replays of the GosuGamers Crew.
If the inferior losers want revenge I am ready for any kind of challenge, and if there’s interest another tournament like this might be held. And we all know who would have to be the favourite to winning it…
Kind regards,
Tobias “zoxxer” LjungkvistOfficial GosuGamers crew champion
Links
GosuGamers - Dowload replays from the tournament
GosuGamers - Tournament brackets
GosuGamers - Forum thread about the crew skill
