Nv Update - May 2012

Well now. It's been far, far too long since our last update. I'll do my best to summarise everything that has happened over the last few months.

Firstly - we saw 4 of the 5 Nv guys qualify for the ACL Sydney Championship playoffs in the weeks leading up to the event. Everyone except YoonYJ was seeded directly into the group stages, as he was unable to attend a regional event due to recent surgery on his knee. This meant he'd be forced to compete in the open bracket alongside some of SEA's strongest players - including JazBas and Pokerface from Xeria Gaming, Techtron from Eve, Fenner, Jimdiddy, neKo and Dippa from Carnage - and SQL's ACL Gold Coast Open Bracket Champion - yang. 

As Pinder, deth and I made our way to Melbourne airport in preparation for our flight to Sydney, deth wasted no time - securing one of the computer terminals at the airport so that he could watch some Korean Terran streams and keep his mind active. He explained how he intended to defeat iaguz in the championship playoffs, providing a glimpse into what would become an epic TvT series.

Once the three of us arrived in Sydney, we saw a familiar face waiting for us at a nearby gate - YoonYJ had just disembarked his flight from Canberra. (Sorry for the blurry photo! Walking whilst taking pictures is bad.)

The four of us headed over to Mascot to get some food and check in to our hotel. Unfortunately the camera flash ruined the photo, but we couldn't pass up an opportunity to take a picture of YoonYJ on High street.

After filling ourselves with kebabs and chips, we headed back to the hotel where we chilled out and discussed everyone's plans for the following two days. Things weren't going well for YoonYJ, who was suffering from a terrible flu/cough. Meanwhile, back at the Aus Gaming House - mOOnGLaDe & Rossi were practicing hard.

The four of us headed to our respective rooms for a big night of rest before what would be slated as the most competitive tournament in Australian history. The next morning, Pinder, deth and I arrived bright and early at the UNSW Roundhouse where things were about to kick off.

As of April 21st, 2012 - Nv became part of Team GAMECOM - sporting world class players across multiple games and genre. Cheekyduck was quick to interview YoonYJ about the implications of this partnership.

The open bracket had commenced, and the Xeria Zergs were looking fierce! By the end of the day, YoonYJ managed to land himself 4th in the open bracket, qualifying him for the championship playoffs alongside the 16 seeded participants. Meanwhile, mOOnGLaDe took first place in the Team GAMECOM in-house Street Fighter 4 tournament with Livibee by his side!

We wrapped up day 1 of ACL Sydney with one of the most anticipated games of the day - Xeria's Ace Zerg 'MaFia' up against our own Terran Stallion 'Rossi'. These guys have faced off in more tournaments than I can count, and this series did not disappoint!  After the dust had settled, MaFia managed to edge out Rossi 2-1, where he later emerged as one of eight Zergs to reach the Championship bracket.

The next morning, our remaining players arrived bright and early to finish their playoffs. We can see Pinder, Myuu, TargA, Fourby, tgun, West and mOOnGLaDe below - all carefully deciding which maps to veto in their opening rounds.

One of Eve's star Zerg players - West - made an astonishing debut at the ACL Melbourne Regionals a few weeks beforehand where he dominated the event, taking first place after only losing one series to Dox. If everyone wasn't already wary of him before the Sydney nationals, they certainly were after he managed to beat both mOOnGLaDe AND GoSu's tgun in a best of three series! Unfortunately he wasn't as successful against the other players in his group, and wound up falling short of the Championship Bracket. 

At the end of the day, only 1 of the GAMECOM Nv players managed to emerge from his group - with Zerg players making up 100% of the top 8. As we watched for hours as Banelings collided, Roaches were Fungal'ed and Mutalisks rained down devastation, one Zerg player emerged victorious with his second ACL National Championship in a row: mOOnGLaDe.

For more photos from the ACL Sydney event, be sure to check out our Facebook page or the Australian Cyber League Facebook page.

In other news, the entire team was invited to participate in the "Plunder Down Under Invitational" - a tournament designed to produce entertaining games by forcing players to play Random on some of the most ridiculous maps available. I had to play SlayerS`Cella, one of my beloved heroes in the first round, and in a surprising turn of events, it became a crazy series in which I emerged victorious, using a "Cloaked Cannon Rush" to beat him in a PvP on an island map in Game 1, and came back to win an epic TvT with less than a dozen workers against 70+ in game 3. Unfortunately the VOD's are no longer available, but you can find the replays here. I went on to face my good friend and teammate mOOnGLaDe in the semi finals, before he eliminated me and went on to take 2nd place. This was one of the most enjoyable and entertaining events I've ever participated in, and I look forward to more of them in the future!

The team is currently discussing and deciding exactly when we will be travelling to America to attend a live MLG event, as it's difficult to arrange a flexible timetable between 4 university students. Hopefully we'll have more news to share on this soon! In the meantime, we've also been contemplating spending some time in Korea when season 3 of the GSTL kicks off...

A month or so ago, myself and the team at ACL were proud to announce that we were working with Blizzard to present the Australian & Oceanic World Championship Series this year. Only two qualifiers have been played out so far, and we saw GAMECOM.Nv snatch up both seats without hesitation. Rossi and mOOnGLaDe will be participating in the Australian finals in August! And to celebrate this, they're also scheduled to play a Best of 7 showmatch at a LIVE Barcraft event in Sydney this weekend! Even though both players have already qualified for the Australian WCS event, there is pride and a wad of cash on the line, so expect to see both players put on one hell of a show. Thanks AusProLeague!

Last week we saw GAMECOM.Nv take the 9th and final spot in the Xeria Gaming Team League, an online event hosted by Benji with $600 cash up for grabs. We went up against SPR, Carnage and Eve in the open bracket before emerging victorious. Despite all of the guys sporting some terrifying level 60 Diablo 3 characters, it seems they've still got what it takes to bring it home in SC2!

Last but not least, we have the ACL Melbourne qualifiers coming up in the next few weeks. Once again, we'll see participants from around Australia gather around their regional venues to see who can earn the valuable points they need to reach the Championship Playoffs. But that's not all - winning an ACL Regional will also score you a WCS Australia seat! Expect to see everyone training harder than ever for these ones. Can mOOnGLaDe take his 3rd consecutive championship? He's walking around with one hell of a target on his back - there are a lot of people aiming to see him fall! We'll just have to wait and see!

By the end of the day, we plan to announce two more sponsors who will be coming on board. Be sure to keep an eye on our Facebook and Twitter page for all the details! We were also intending on releasing a replay pack for each of the players after ACL Sydney, but unfortunately I've been relocated to Perth for a few months and no longer have access to my PC! We'll be sure to deliver an exceptionally large batch soon.

Thanks to everyone who supports the GAMECOM Nv players - all of us truly appreciate all of the love and respect they receive from their fans and the community. Soon, we'll unleash it upon the rest of the globe. Soon.

Dear Troy

One of our readers decided to leave some feedback after reading the March blog. 

Wow 

Just ended up here after looking at some stuff on team liquid. Was very impressed that an Australian team was taking on the Starcraft word in what I assumed would be some sort of semi-professional state. 

I was wrong - get your act together - I just read a series of ridiculously unprofessional actions - people getting drunk before a tournament they were committed to playing, people pulling out of tournaments because they were too tired. But that’s ok it’s an online game and people have no idea about why people pulled out or why people were playing so bad (tired, drunk etc) – but wait --- all this is on public display in a blog written by someone who I assume is the manager and is charged with organising and focusing the team. 

I notice the sponsorship section has a strategic “Can’t say anything now but some “big” news to come”. I wonder what company would be happy to put money towards a team that couldn’t be bothered playing in a tournament because they couldn’t manage their sleep time or alcohol consumption. 

As an Australian and someone who would love to see e-sports taken seriously here I am mortified that the first real attempt that I see is nothing more than a group of frat boys whos behaviour and approach may win a few local tournaments against decent opponents but will lead to a disappointment at higher levels. In this country gaming is viewed as a joke and kids play by most people and the actions of this team are not going to change this. We live in a world where sadly people are judged by their actions and dress, I would love to turn up to work in T-shirt and shorts but it will never happen. The GSL casting has become more professional over the past year with the casters now in suits and now been more careful with their general comments. They are not doing this to cater to the average gamer but to the people with money, to the corporate world, to people parents (they control if their 13 year old kids get money for a GSL subscription) and to first time viewers (no matter who they maybe). These should be the people you want to be putting a good image to.

Your first reaction on reading this will be no doubt be “who the F@#$ does this loser think he is - he is just another F!@#ing hater” but I really hope that this is taken as intended – a harsh but fair observation.

I do wish you luck in trying to bring an e-sports team to Australia and would love to see a positive human interest story on Wide World of Sports or Sixty Minutes or even Today Tonight but if what I read is the public image you will be projecting I can’t see it ever happening and nor can I see a bright future for growth and expansion.

Troy 

Unfortunately my reply was too big to fit in a comment, so this is my formal response to him.
=================================================================
Hi there Troy. I'm going to reply all out of sequence in an attempt to address your concerns as concisely as possible.


My immediate reaction isn't aggressive at all. It is a fair observation, albeit a skewed one. I hope to elaborate on the "issues" you raised and help to put things in perspective.


Firstly, may I ask how old you are? I ask only out of social curiosity. My next question, is to ask exactly how active are you in the Australian eSports scene? Do you compete in local tournaments? Do you attend events like ACL or WCG as a spectator? Do you get involved in the community (ie. SC2SEA.com)? None of this is terribly relevant, but it helps me to understand your background, and where your ideologies stem from.


To keep things fair, I'll answer the same questions about myself. I'm 27 years old. I work full-time for a global engineering firm. Over the last 11+ years, I've been managing Australian eSports events from StarCraft and Unreal Tournament, to WarCraft 3, Halo, Counter-Strike and of course now StarCraft 2. I'm very familiar with the "industry" of Professional eSports, and what sponsors expectations are. I've hosted events on behalf of Samsung, aBit, ATi, Blizzard Entertainment, Tt eSports and dozens more. I have a close relationship with many of these organisations, and continue to represent their brands on a regular basis today. Over the last 18 months, I've invested approximately $11.5k of my own funds into eSports ventures, including sponsoring tournaments, and now the five Invidia players. I challenge you to find someone in Australia who takes eSports more seriously than I do.


So with the introductions out of the way - please keep one more thing in mind, before you continue reading. This blog serves two purposes:


1) To keep interested parties ("fans") informed on the progress of our team. Notice I used the word "progress", instead of success? Because no matter who you are, or what team you represent, everyone has their ups and downs. No-one wins everything. And I feel it's important to communicate our failures as much as our successes, because these are our most valuable opportunities to learn from our mistakes and improve.


2) To entertain our readers. People want to read interesting stories about human beings they can relate to. They don't want to read about a group of omnipotent robots with no personalities and carbon copy press releases. Empathy plays a very, very important role in user engagement. On top of all that, I tend to embellish the events to make things more interesting to the reader.


Having said all that...


The IMGUR Team League was a very minor event. First place is $300. The incentive for everyone to wake up and participate in such a low-value event at 3:00AM is incredibly low - especially seeing as though we're in the middle of the ACL season and all of our attention is currently focused on that. I don't think it's fair to criticise the entire team and label them as "ridiculously unprofessional" because they chose to attend a social gathering for the GSL Finals with their friends the night before. When it comes to important, high stakes events, you can surely bet that each of them will manage their fatigue adequately. This has certainly been the case for WCG and ACL. Nonetheless, we learned a lot from this experience, and bounced back much harder the following week. I'm disappointed that you failed to acknowledge this.


As for your next point about people pulling out of tournaments - again, I don't think you understand how insignificant this is. You cannot expect someone to wake up at 3:00AM for a tournament, and participate at the best of their ability for another tournament later that afternoon. No-one wants to embarrass themselves - or their team - by performing poorly. I'm a strong advocate of "all or nothing." (As a twist of irony, an Invidia player went on to win the event anyway.)


To further clarify, it's not like they simply chose not to show up to an invitational event and caused distress to the tournament director. It was free for anyone to sign up as they pleased, and I personally contacted the tournament host 5 hours prior - before the brackets had been generated - to give him the heads up. No harm was done. No professional lines were crossed.


If you would truly like to see exactly how serious eSports is being taken by Australia right now, I'd recommend you come along to an ACL event in the near future. Or at the very least, tune in to our broadcast. 


The companies who have approached us with regards to sponsorship are doing so because they recognise that we represent strong brand value. We have a group of intelligent, sensible and likable people, who perform incredibly well when necessary. Did you know that NesTea won't be participating in the MLG Winter Arena this weekend, due to a wrist injury? Would you criticise Incredible Miracle for being incapable of managing their health and safety? It's all relative, except in our case it was a low-key tournament that no-one really knew about.


It's interesting that you mention Wide World of Sports and Sixty Minutes, because myself & Rossi are scheduled to be interviewed by Gamespot in a few weeks, whilst mOOnGLaDe is being interviewed for an article on News.com.au. 


I'm not even sure that you'll check back to read all of this, but in the event that you do - if you'd ever like to learn more about the team, or Australian eSports, you're more than welcome to get in touch with me via:


e-Mail: derek@sea-play.com
Skype: Dox_au




- Derek
================================================================= 

ACLPro League 2, Online Round 2

Wow. The Grand Finals are currently underway, between YoonYJ & mOOnGLaDe. And the team atmosphere is so positive right now, I can literally feel it over TCP/IP.

Why, you might be wondering?

Because throughout the entire bracket, none of the Invidia players lost a set to anyone besides eachother.

Let's recap the results:

ACLPro Online Round 2 Brackets

Upper Bracket

Round 1

(Z) Nv.mOOnGLaDe 2-0 cR.JimDiddy (Z)

(T) Nv.Rossi 2-1 xGKing.Myuu (Z)

(T) Nv.YoonYJ 2-0 Nv.deth (T)

Round 2

(Z) Nv.mOOnGLaDe 2-1 Nv.Rossi (T)

(T) Nv.YoonYJ 2-0 xGKing.Bielsko (P)

Round 3 (Semi Final)

(Z) Nv.mOOnGLaDe 2-0 Nv.YoonYJ (T)

Round 4 (Winner Bracket Final)

(Z) Nv.mOOnGLaDe 2-0 xGKing.JazBas (Z)

Lower Bracket

Round 1

(T) Nv.deth 2-0 kez (Z)

Round 2

(T) Nv.deth 2-1 cR.SenSei (P)

(T) Nv.Rossi 2-0 cR.EdgE (Z)

Round 3

(T) Nv.deth > cR.JimDiddy (Z) - Forfeit

(T) Nv.Rossi 2-0 SQL.HuT (T)

Round 4

(T) Nv.YoonYJ 2-0 Nv.deth (T)

(T) Nv.Rossi 2-1 xGKing.MaFia (Z)

Round 5 (Semi Final)

(T) Nv.YoonYJ 2-0 Nv.Rossi (T)

Round 6 (Lower Bracket Final)

(T) Nv.YoonYJ 2-0 xGKing.JazBas (Z)

GRAND FINAL

(Z) Nv.mOOnGLaDe 2-0 Nv.YoonYJ (T)

Very proud of you guys, well done! <3

March Blog

It's been a while since I've had time to write a blog, so I'm jumping at the chance to capitalise on the 27 minutes I have spare before I need to dash to a meeting! Let's begin with a quick recap of recent events.

BARCRAFT

Rossi headed in to the Sydney Barcraft for the GSL finals between MVP team-mates Genius & DongRaeGu. It was a pretty fun series with some carriers being made along the way! One can't help to wonder how serious these two friends were as they went into this match, with a very high possibility of split winnings either way. Nonetheless, it was a very entertaining series with some fantastic personality emerging from each player. My personal highlight was DRG running into Genius' booth and waving his arms around after crushing him.

As for deth, Pinder & I - we made an appearance at the Melbourne Barcraft - and oh man, what a huge event it was! As the games weren't scheduled to begin until 7:30, we decided we didn't need to arrive until 7:00pm. Boy were we wrong. When we arrived, the entire venue was already packed wall-to-wall, as inFeZa and Mayo defended their prime table position with vigilance. deth & his girlfriend compromised by kneeling on bar stools, whilst Pinder & I stood on a coffee table at the back of the venue to see over the ocean of screaming fans. This was a wild night, and I think everyone involved was blown away by the tremendous attendance. I think we had something like 350 people. Insanity. Unfortunately, we couldn't make a late night of it, as the guys needed to be up bright and early for the IMGUR Team League Qualifier at 5:00AM the next morning.

Myself, deth and Nom picked up some food on our way home, only to discover that Flinders Street Train Station was "locked down" for some reason or another. There were replacement bus services running, I don't really know what the deal was. But we ended up having to walk to a different station and waited 30 minutes for our train to arrive. Finally homeward bound, we ate our dinner on the train (I still can't believe you're allowed to eat on Melbourne trains, but SWEARING is a criminal offense. This town is so backwards) and deth & I watched with amusement as Nom managed to spill a vast majority of her meal all over her lap. I managed to get home at around midnight, whilst the other two had another 40+ minutes until they arrived back home. And special thank you to deth for hooking me up with a PS3 copy of Eternal Sonata, one of the greatest (Co-op!) games ever made. <3

IMGUR TEAM LEAGUE QUALIFIER #1

So, I kept myself entertained by laddering and playing HoN (I'm a dragon) until the check-in opened at 3:30AM. I was naively hoping that everyone got home "early" and managed to get plenty of sleep before I sent the "wake up" text at 4:00AM and started calling phones at 4:30AM. Much to my surprise, almost everyone was already awake. In fact, they were STILL awake. In Rossi's case, he was still drunk from the night before. No-one had slept, everyone was exhausted, this was not gonna be pretty.

Pinder suggested that we send out each of the Terrans first, in this all-kill format, allowing them to draw out the games with turtling and mech styles, allowing the rest of the team to get some sleep. Rossi managed to catch a few extra hours in order to sober up, but ultimately and embarrassingly, our team was all-killed by a Terran player who pretty much opened with Cloak Banshees 4 games in a row. 

I wasn't surprised, given the lack of rest and preparation - it was unfortunate that this event occurred immediately after a Barcraft evening. I re-assured everyone that we would perform better the following week with adequate rest, and stressed how important it is to get to bed early, wake up early, shower, eat, and play some warm up games before participating in an event like this. Waking up 5 minutes before your matches with only 1 hour of sleep and diving right into the game is always a recipe for disaster. deth and YoonYJ were especially hard on themselves, spending the rest of the day practicing furiously on Korea, rather than sleeping. But the ACL Online Round 1 was only 4 hours away...

ACL ONLINE ROUND #1

Group Stages. They were pretty wild. Due to a lot of "un-ranked" GrandMaster players signing up (including ZeNEX.Ryoomak - wielding an Australia/NZ dual-citizenship), some of the groups were extremely lopsided. But hey, that's how just how the numbers work. They'll sort themselves out after a few more events have been played.

So anyway, the team results were fantastic. YoonYJ, deth and Rossi topped their groups, with YoonYJ emerging with a convincing 2-0 victory over mOOnGLaDe. This meant that GLaDe would be the 2nd seed from his group - forcing him to play RyooMak in round 1. This is pretty much the only person in the entire bracket he didn't want to face. Pinder also emerged from his group as 2nd seed, losing only to RyooMak.

Now before we go on, I need to provide a little insight. YoonYJ had just received a knee operation the day before. He was in so much pain the night before that he couldn't even sleep. And he was hopped up on so much morphine that he wasn't really making much sense. After crushing through all of his opponents, he kept talking about how disappointed he was in himself, and how he should probably forfeit 'cos he's playing like crap! Unfortunately, he proceeded to take out Pinder (2-1) in the first round of the Double Elimination bracket on Sunday. To make matters worse, his next opponent was Rossi. At this stage, the pain had become too much for Yoon, and he asked me if he was allowed to forfeit. 

Rossi advanced to face tgun, where he was knocked to the lower bracket. Unfortunately deth was eliminated in two straight sets by SQL's yang and Xeria's Mafia. He finally threw in the towel and decided to sleep - I don't think he emerged from his coma until the next afternoon. Pinder managed to eliminate Dippa and Kez before dropping to Mafia in a very close series. 

Rossi managed to avenge his fallen Protoss teammate by eliminating Mafia 2-0 - only to be knocked out by mOOnGLaDe in the lower bracket semi-finals, scoring himself 4th place overall.

Despite dropping his first series 0-2 to ZeNEX.RyooMak, mOOnGLaDe battled his way through the lower bracket, ultimately getting payback on his newly appointed Terran nemesis, where GoSu's tgun awaited him in the Grand Final. Tgun had two lives in this Grand Final, as a reward for being the champion of the Upper Bracket, which meant he only needed to win a single Best of Three in order to take the event. GLaDe needed to win two Best-of-Three's, and managed to do exactly that - taking first place with an impressive 4-0 victory.

But we still hadn't announced our 5th player at this stage...

INVIDIA REVEALS 5TH PLAYER:

Andrew 'mOOnGLaDe' Pender

To some, this came as a huge surprise. As one of the most sought after players in the western eSports scene, various comments were made with regards to his decision to join such a "small" and "unknown" team. I guess this decision speaks for itself, and demonstrates exactly how high our ambitions and goals stand.

CSN RUNDOWN #14: Ft. ROSSI

Rossi was waving the Invidia flag last Thursday as he went up against KiF1Re in the first round, dominating him in convincing fashion. In the second round, he had to face the undefeated Korean from xSix Gaming - Sleep. Rossi shattered him in game 1. But unfortunately, some impregnable defenses and critical mistakes combined to see Rossi eliminated 1-2 in the semi finals. 

IMGUR TEAM LEAGUE QUALIFIER #2

Fortunately (some of) the guys were better rested this time around. But unfortunately it's a very difficult routine to adjust to. So whilst some of the guys were a little tired, we managed to use portions of our roster whilst others would sleep in shifts. Without going into too much detail, the guys hammered through their first two rounds in some back and forth series. My personal highlight was watching Pinder almost all-kill an entire team, with some amazing Warp Prism + Psi Storm drops on Shakuras.

 Whilst I chose to stay awake all night again to check the team in at 3:00AM and ensure that everyone was awake on time, I overestimated my own fortitude. By the time we reached 8:00AM, I couldn't keep my eyes open any more. I felt terrible. I had to abandon the team and retire for the night, as they battled on without me. Unfortunately they were eliminated in the 3rd round, but the overall experience and attitude was positive. We learned a lot about Team League dynamics, and managing fatigue that day. Especially me. As for the team, they were all very supportive of eachother, and the CSN commentators (Gwin & ButteryGreg) were very generous in their praise, following our team as the Australian underdogs throughout their run.

So unfortunately, Invidia didn't make it to the IMGUR Team League Finals, but the overall experience was good. And Eddie's Masters Cup was only hours away!

MASTER'S CUP #14

Everyone made the mistake of staying awake and practicing all day for this. By the time the event began, everyone had decided to pull out and go to bed - except mOOnGLaDe. Complaining about how sore his eyes and muscles were, he dragged the Invidia banner all the way across the finish line, scoring himself $100 after defeating SQL's Ninja - who deserves a very special mention for showing exactly what he's capable of throughout the event.

SPONSORS

Unfortunately I can't reveal too much at the moment, but some very exciting sponsorship opportunities have been under discussion over the last few weeks, and they're coming to a conclusion soon! We're really looking forward to announcing these details very soon.

TEAM APPAREL

Unfortunately due to these sponsorship opportunities, our team apparel has been delayed! We're hoping to have them ready before ACL Sydney, but at this stage it's very difficult to say!

ACL ONLINE ROUND #2

This weekend the team will be competing in the 2nd ACL Online Qualifier. Be sure to cheer for them, and be sure to keep an eye out for a post-event blog!

[WNG] Weekly Open #6

Hurray! We have more sponsors coming on board! This has been especially awesome because I haven't really had time to source sponsors yet, but fortunately for me they've been doing all the walking!


Today I distributed some stream overlays for each of the guys to use, they're looking pretty swish! I haven't gotten around to updating their twitch backgrounds/banners or twitter backgrounds yet, but you'll see those transform pretty soon.


In the meantime, you can check out their stream pages here:
Rossi | deth | YoonYJ | Pinder

Back again for another shot at the [WNG] $20 Weekly event, Pinder, YoonYJ, deth & I all decided to sign up. Unfortunately Rossi is still pretty exhausted, having just returned from the TA retreat, so he isn't participating this week. 

As luck would have it, I'm actually 0 wins and 7 losses for the day. I've been struggling to break even this season, and somehow, ZvZ has turned into my best matchup, whilst I've only won 1 game of ZvP this entire season. I don't even know how this happened! I'm playing very poorly lately. To make matters worse... the brackets have just been published, and hey! Nv.Dox vs Nv.Pinder round 1. Hurray!

So let's see how everyone is tracking: 
Brackets
Live Stream

ROUND 1 (Bo1)

(P) Nv.Pinder 1-0 Nv.Dox (Z)

(T) Nv.deth 1-0 syntoX (Z)
(T) Nv.YoonYJ 1-0 wT.Ace (T)

ROUND 2 (Bo1)

(P) Nv.Pinder 1-0 Hydroid (Z)

(T) Nv.deth 0-1 Balloon.SPR (P)

(T) Nv.YoonYJ 1-0 Venom (P)

ROUND 3 (Bo1)

(P) Nv.Pinder 0-1 Danmate (Z)

(T) Nv.YoonYJ 1-0 feLicity (Z)

Quarter Finals (Bo1)

(T) Nv.YoonYJ 1-0 raZIel (T) 

Semi Finals (Bo3)
(T) Nv.YoonYJ 0-2 Balloon.SPR (P) 


Nv.Dox: 
nice work man!
ripping it up

Nv.YoonYJ:

 nah, I'm just chilling
eating while playing


Unfortunately Yoon fell to Balloon the semi's, but TA's EdgE will be waiting in the grand finals to get revenge!

How to SimCity - By Pinder

Pinder has written an awesome blog on how to correctly (and incorrectly!) SimCity as Protoss. I'll probably migrate it over here in the near future, but for the time being, you can find it over at SC2SEA.

Notes about this guide: 

In none of the walls (except tal'darim, where it's unavoidable) is the pylon vulnerable, only the higher hp buildings are vulnerable.

In all simcities the 1 cannon covers all your buildings from lings.

The gateway i have not placed, but am trying to build over the top of the simcities, completely wall off the wall (for example, vs early pools, you may need to build 2 gates to fully wall yourself to allow time for the cannon to get up), the actual build positioning shown is a 1-hex gap which a zealot blocks. Hopefully this makes sense when you look at the pictures themselves.

I've included a small guide of how to place the pylon without messing it up in each one, since that's the easiest thing mess up with these sim cities.

Awesome stuff Pinder!

[WNG] Weekly Open #5

Well, today has been a pretty big day for the team. I was delighted to discover that a few organisations were trying to get in touch with me today because they were wanting to sponsor the team! No time to waste! We're at the negotiating stage at the moment, but things are already looking bright.

Having just arrived home from work, I got started on the Twitch/Twitter page designs for the team. I realised (3 minutes ago) that the [WNG] $20 Weekly event was about to kick off, so YoonYJ and I have signed up at the last minute to participate. It's not a huge cash event, but there are an immense number of really good players competing in it - Pokerface, Danmate, Stallion, kez, tgun, MaFia, JaBiTo, yekke & techtron - just to name a few!

The brackets have just been published (and unfortunately they haven't randomised, so seeds are distributed based on who signed up first, eek!) and the stream is live, you can find the links below. Fingers crossed! Eek, my round 1 opponent is a GrandMaster Terran and we're playing Antiga first!

Stream

Brackets

ROUND 1 (Bo1)
(T) Nv.YoonYJ 1-0 Techtron (Z)

(Z) Nv.Dox 0-1 Deneb (T)

Well, that was expected. Without any opportunity to warm up, I kinda just flailed around helplessly with 2000+ minerals in the bank whilst dying to a 2-Port Banshee. Woo! Hopefully YoonYJ has better luck!

ROUND 2 (Bo1)

(T) Nv.YoonYJ 1-0 HDLockeMD (Z)

ROUND 3 (Bo1)

(T) Nv.YoonYJ 1-0 yam (T)

ROUND 4 (Bo1)

(T) Nv.YoonYJ 0-1 Danmate (Z)

Watching YoonYJ in round 3 destroy his Terran opponent with pure Hellions and 400 APM micro was actually insane, hahaha. So scary. Danmate played an extremely strong game on GSL Daybreak, hitting YoonYJ at a vulnerable timing where he was trying to take his 3rd. Very impressive! He's now in the Ro4 (ZvZ) against Yekke, good luck Danmate!

Danmate:
 fuck, im shaking!
i didnt expect to win that game