Day 0

Thursday morning – I woke up at 6 am to catch a flight to Raleigh with my teammate Caliber. We had a pretty uneventful flight – on the connecting flight we had HuK, TubbyTheFat and DJWheat on the same flight though. I guess that was interesting. Both flights came with crying babies in the adjacent row. T-T

After arriving at the Raleigh airport we met up with binski and KnighT, also from team LighT, before getting a cab to our hotel at the Marriot, conveniently across the street from the convention center. Here, the cheapest, closest, fastest and healthiest(?) food was a Jimmy John’s, which we visited many times this trip (T_T).

Fire Emblem~~~

After food, me and KnighT went back to our room and played gameboy games with an emulator on our laptops (I played Fire Emblem lol ). The rest of the night was pretty uneventful.

Day 1

Lunch at some pub.

Standard MLG stuff… we checked in in the afternoon and went inside. This time MLG featured a new floor plan so that more games could be visible from the crowd around the open bracket area. There were also benches (similar to the ones in high school gym lockers lol) inside the zone so that players could sit in and observe easier.

At this point I observed Idra vs StaLighT in the WCS NA round 1. Stalife actually lost 1-2 and was laughing pretty hard since he won a game without playing for several weeks xD. He would go on to beat Magic 2-1 and lose 1-2 to TubbyTheFat, marking the end of his career (for the 1235^th time).

Bye Stalife :[

After a lot of waiting and talking with friends (and assaulting/hugging HwangSin), MLG started at 5:30 PM. I had a round one bye and beat two high masters zergs. Then I went to watch binski 2-0 Ganzi  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_YBoZJY5Bo&list=UU1YyYGHZwZ_ofj3VvxMcnag&index=1&feature=plcp) on the mainstage with my teammates.

It’s not often team LighT gets main stage matches, but when we do, it’s at Raleigh, and we win.

Then I played Hendralisk, a GM zerg from Canada and lost 0-2. Game one on cross map entombed it was a pretty standard macro game with him going muta ling bling into infestors. I took too long to push to his fourth and he managed to get ultras out vs my 0 marauders, and I didn’t trade well. However, I sat back and queued four nukes on all his larva. At this point I was too busy nuking and didn’t macro so my 170 supply and 8k bank got ran over by 10 ultras + ling bling infestor.

The second game on daybreak I went cc first bio hellion medivac and killed his third with my timing. However, he then went ling speedbane attack twice and I forgot to get siege on time, so I traded very badly and Hendralisk took a big lead and won from there.

Day 2

My first match of the day was against Shew, who had just beat Machine and Incontrol in the loser bracket. I won quite easily with two 2-2 pushes.

My last match of MLG was against Complexity’s Minigun. In the first game on Daybreak we both went fast expands, while I opened cc first cloakshee into a third since he had seen my previous game against Shew. However, I missed my 2-2 timing since Minigun stalled well with warp prism and zealot warpins on the sides, and I got rolled over with my late attack.

The second game I played on Entombed Valley. Once again, we both went fast expands. I hit a timing with four Vikings as Minigun took his third off colossus and traded decently; however, I didn’t micro a group of units being killed by zealots which could have won me the game.  I sat back took my third and made only bio ghosts after scanning high templars (but he was hiding colossus ><) and when I tried to attack with my 2-2 timing again, Minigun rolled me over since I had four vikings against 3 colossus with storms.

I spent the rest of the night watching my teammates and giving them advice before their games; binski lost 1-2 to coLKiller, Caliber beat Maker 2-1 and coLqxc 2-1. As I returned to my room me and KnighT played Guild Wars 2 until 4 AM xD

Day 3

After binski lost, our team owner Xeris changed  his flight to leave early in the morning, so he was gone at like 7? AM. Caliber, KnighT and I went to eat at a very terrible, empty restaurant with the saltiest chicken tenders/fries I’ve ever eaten in my life, then Caliber had to play against SlayerS_Ryung  for MLG.

Captain Cauliflower

Caliber lost 0-2 in some disappointing games, then we all went to our room to rotate playing Guild Wars 2 on two laptops. It was super annoying because the $10 wifi which we were told was usable by all devices. However, every time one person got on the internet another would have to relogin if we wanted to do something else (like changing web pages or moving zones in GW2).

On our way to our room, Grubby and qxc shared an elevator with KnighT and I. Grubby said, “Hey KnighT, made any bcs lately?” (referring to an hour long game KnighT played against Moonglade in Oceania).

Overall, I was not satisfied with my performance this MLG. I played very poorly against Hendralisk; however, I learned a bit from my series against Minigun. My next tournament will be the ESWC NA finals at PAX. Hopefully I will do well despite playing four days of GW2 OO;;

Thanks for reading~~