HuK: Hey guys, this is GosuStarcraft, aka HuK on SC2, and i'm here with my good friend AmiPolizeiFunk, and he's going to be interviewing me for gamereplays.org so please say hi Ami.
AmiPolizeiFunk: Hello gamereplays. Yes, Gosu had to kick this into gear because I was giggling like a fanboy as i get some time with my old buddy Gosu, whose had a meteoric rise in SC2. He used to be this second place Company of Heroes scrub, but now he's like king of the world at SC2
H: Well I'm getting there. Sooner or later I'm going to be king of the world at SC2, hopefully at least. So I can't ask the questions. I can do the introduction but you have to ask the questions.
A: First of all I have to say, congratulations on your win at Raleigh, North Carolina at MLG Raleigh. And thank you for your shoutout to good old Reborn clan.
H: Yeah I don't think I even remembered my sponsors, or at least half of them. And then I get home and I shout out to my grandpa but not to my grandma, and I didn't shout out to a certain cousin but I did this other cousin, and everybody was all offended. It was pretty funny.
A: Hey but you got grandpa, and I think you did say millenium. I want to talk about the finals, PvP, against KiWiKaKi. can you talk a little about it? You got some distance from it now, it was a week ago. What were those games like for you?
H: Every game I went into after we started the new series, I was thinking "Man, he's gonna do something crazy this game. He's gonna do proxy voidrays, proxy 2gate zealot rush, he's gonna do mass blink stalkers, he's gonna fast tech to collosus, something like that." Every game I was so surprised when he went the exact same thing. I won so I was pretty happy, but going into them I was always expecting something different.
A: Its like when you ladder and you get protoss as an opponent, you are thinking "How's he gonna cheese me this time." It just seems to be the way. Then there was this crazy game with all these collossi, war of the worlds, laser beams, and that was NUTS. Do you remember that game, and did you feel in command that game?
H: I was playing pretty blind for a while, which basically means that either I don't have an observer on him or neither of us have observers and you kinda...you expo, so you are scared to stop making colossus because if you stop making colossus at some point and try to sneak out an observer, he's going to timing attack you, and since he may or may not have expo'd you could die. Or you will die if you try to sneak out that observer. So I was playing pretty blind for a while, which is really scary for me because I never like playing blind, and other than that once I did get an observer out and I saw, "Ok, I got my upgrades before his, I have two robo before he does, I'm going to have a better spread because all his units are clumped up." As the game progressed and I got vision of him I felt more and more confident.
A: So you were able to actually click on his units and look at his upgrades. I think that upgrade thing was so close, because when that big battle actually happened, I think for the first 5 to 10 seconds your upgrade had completed. Is it +1 attack for ground, is that what we're talking about here?
H: Alright, well, the upgrades weren't that big of a difference, I don't think, because I had armor going and he had his attack done pretty quickly, so I think the upgrades were the same, but my units were spread out better than his obviously. He was kinda stuck in this clump and he could have retreated to his base but he would have lost 1/3rd of his army if he tried to, so he decided to attack and I just had the way better arc than he did, and that's why he lost the battle.
A: That's one thing I appreciate in the replays of yours that I've seen. You seem to have a sense for when the big battles are going to happen, and right before they do, you managae to individiually micro your units into this huge arc so that they are completely prepared. A lot of times, when you are preventing someone from coming out of their base, you get this great arc going, and it gives you the little edge in close battles. Cause that one was really tight, it was 6 on 6 collossi, both with extended lances, it was nuts.
H: Yeah, I know when the big battles are coming because I maphack, that's the 100% honest truth. (said jokingly)
A: And you're good at it, because you never move your screen into the fog of war when you couldn't see anything like the other knuckleheads. I watched that Youtube video of the guy outing some crazy guy that was such an obvious maphacker.
H: I saw the post but I didn't watch the video. I assume its just the guy staring into the fog of war.
A: Yeah, constantly. When he expos, the guy looks at it, and he follows his mutas around this huge arc in the fog of war. It's so obvious. Hopefully Blizzard bans him mercilessly, and maybe send a team of ex-overseas militant agents to go do horrible things. Maphackers are the lowest of the low.
H: That's why I like lans though, that's the time to prove it. And there are so many coming up. All these players that are really good online that could be watching the streams. Obviously Morrow's not one of them, but I played Morrow today in a showmatch and if he's anybody else, he could just watch the stream and know exactly what's going on, without looking into my base on his computer. He could have a laptop set up on the side or whatever. But at lans, you can't fake any of that, you know 100% real how good people are at lans.
A: I like your lan learning curve. First lan, fly to Cologne, IEM, get the shaky hands, knocked out in the group stage. Second lan, get in there, and just clean house. What up!? You went from zero to hero in like 6 days, that's a good learning curve. Now you've raised the bar, and raised the expectations, so you've got to live up to that achievement.
H: For sure.
A: Since we've mentioned IEM and MLG, could you do a quick comparison of the two? First compare the venues.
H: Esl was a lot bigger and better in most ways. The only problem I had with ESL was it was my first lan, I was super super nervous, and since there was more people and a bigger stage it added to that fact. The stage shook when, like, a mouse crawled across it basically, it felt like an earthquake beneath your feet. MLG had the player area separated, which was good and bad. People weren't all over you, watching it, and it wasn't such a big distraction because you just had players to your left and right. But as far as size, it was a lot smaller, and I'd like to see MLG become something like ESL. They (MLG) had a main stage but Halo was playing on it, and I'd rather see Starcraft 2 up there.
A: Yeah, definitely. Hopefully it will move its way into the spotlight position in these bigger tournaments. Let's talk a little about gear. You bring your own keyboard, mouse, mousepad. There was a little video that Team Liquid Tyler made about his gear, and he's showing off this fancy keyboard bag. What kind of gear do you bring to the lan?
H: Just a regular duffle bag. My Logitech mouse which is the (worst) mouse you can get, but it doesn't matter for sc2. Gateway keyboard that I've been using for the last 7 years, that came with the (bad) Gateway computer I used to play on.
A: Oh no! You're pro now, you've got to leave all that bad gear behind. You gotta represent with the good stuff.
H: I have so many mouses, but you're scared to change mouses because it's totally different. You're gonna suck for a while. I have so many mouses I got from different events, showmatches or whatever, for free, but they're just sitting in boxes. And then I got a SteelSeries mousepad that I did buy because I didn't use a mousepad at home. A week before ESL someone said it might be an issue, because their surface might be totally different, so get a mousepad. So i got one. Headphones are Sennheiser, I payed for those too.
A: Did MLG pay you yet? Did you get your check yet?
H: No, it takes 2 months or something.
A: 2 months, ah man!
H: Yeah, and it sucks, cause I go out with my friends around here, and they're like, "What are you talking about, you just won 2.5k, pay for all this (stuff)."
A: Yeah, buy me a bottle of champagne! Well, do you have any plans for what you might treat yourself to when it comes in?
H: Man, I got kids to feed. I gotta pay child support. (joking) Na, I'm probably just gonna help my family out, to be honest, with bills. My older brother is gonna start going to school soon. Honestly, I'm not going to be throwing any lavish whore parties or cocaine parties, probably just gonna spend it on bills and helping family out.
A: Well, that's not the glamorous answer I was looking for, but man, you gotta take care of your fam. That's more plus points from your fanboys, I think they'll appreciate that, taking care of family. Have you been following this debacle with GomTV and Gretech and them saying first free stream, then no free stream, then free streams again. Have you been following this at all?
H: Uh, no. Basically I just know what you just said. I knew they were offering it, then took it away, then reoffered it. I saw a post on TL this morning saying "GomTV concedes," then torch said "GomTV is awesome." I saw that it was 20 pages long and I was like "I'm not reading this."
A: He (Torch) was like "They care, they really care." They should float him a pretty penny for that post because he just did them such a service, won over thousands of people that basically wrote them off, so they got a chance again. Anyway, that event starts tomorrow, the prize pool is 150 grand around, first place 85,000 dollars-ish.
H: Yeah i need to win that next season.
A: That's the next question, what are you thinking about? Would you like to go to South Korea and try to qualify for one of these seasons? Are you actually planning to?
H: Yeah, it's in the works, its in the works. If its possible I'm going to do it, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to do it. I'm looking forward to it.
A: Is this within your millenium contract?
H: I don't know, that's kind of a tough question to answer at this point. But if its possible, yeah.
A: But you would like to try to qualify for the next season, which is next month?
H: Yep. I think there are way worse players, I won't say who or what, that qualified this time, that really, everyone was like, "How did they qualify?"
A: Considering there's only four westerners, you just dissed on a pretty small group. So its not like its any mystery who it was.
H: No man, you never know what I could be thinking.
A: Have you been following the Korean scene? Have you been looking at the ladders and looking at the replays from oGs or any of these Prime guys?
H: No not really. I play with Cella, that's my only contact, really, is I'm playing with Cella a little bit. (Cella = CellaWeRRa)
A: He's becoming really popular with these streams. He seems like a funny guy, and a really nice guy, so he's won over lots of people. So do you have practice games with him?
H: Yeah, the last two days we've been running a lot of games. It kinda sucks, the time schedule, because I wake up as early as I can, which is 11am my time, but for him that's like 12-3am.
A: So as far as other Korean Protoss players, guys like Tester (oGssSKS) and NexGenius, can you rate these guys?
H: Tester is better than NexGenius. I've seen a few NexGenius replays, and he has high apm, but that's about it. They are both really good, I can't say they are bad, but I would put Tester way ahead of NexGenius, but both are still really good. I can't really rate them that well because I don't have any Korean contacts. I don't play with them on a regular basis, but I think the foreign scene is a lot closer than what people expected, especially after the GSL results, and I think IdrA is one of the favorites to win it, maybe even TLO. TLO is pretty strong lately, so I don't know. It's closer than what people expected as far as foreign versus Korean.
A: Well, I think they seeded IdrA #1 so he should have an easy match tomorrow. He should win this opening day match. It's smart marketing on their part to put him in this first day match, so they can attract all the western viewers.
H: I think GSL said "We're not gonna seed anybody anything" at first, and then they thought "Yeah, we want the foreigners to do well," so they seeded (them very well). TLO said the games were super super easy. And IdrA would have made it anyway, but they are smart about it. They want to make sure the foreigners have a good shot at making it pretty far. I expect IdrA to make it out of his group.
A: Its all single elimination from here, so we'll see. If he gets beat tomorrow he's done. But he should have a winnable match tomorrow, so he can go further. Anyway there's so much going on this weekend. You're playing in the IEM America group stage, is that right?
H: Yeah, sure am, sure am.
A: And you're with your countryman, fellow Canadian KiWiKaKi, who you just played in those finals (at MLG Raleigh).
H: Yeah that kinda sucks. djWHEAT rigged that, i know it. (jokingly)
A: Are you guys buddies or what? Canadian Protoss, are you guys pals?
H: We get along, I don't know if we are buddies. We're totally cool. I took him out to lunch at MLG. Just sucks that I have to play someone as good as him.
A: I see. And you've also got Machine, the zerg player, and lastshadow (ajtls) the terran player also in your group.
H: Mhmm. I should make it out. I beat KiWi at this, and last time me and machine played at ITL I beat him, and I'm pretty confident against lastshadow. But they are best of threes and i beat him (KiWiKaKi) 4-3, 4-2. It was real close, and in any given series he could easily beat me.
(skipped a question about double elimination at MLG Raleigh, sorry I'm 18 minutes into a 28 minute interview)
A: There's also the Gosu tournament (GosuCup), and what other things are coming up? What's on your plate for the next couple of weeks?
H: The Gosu thing I can't really discuss results until they release them. Right now they said that I made it out of the first round, and its three rounds. So hopefully I win that, because it's a lot of money. I just failed against Morrow in the showmatch, as you know, I lost 4-2. Other than that I'm just focusing on New York. In the foreseeable future there's not too much. I think HDH2 is gonna be semi-soon, within the next month, that's going to be pretty big. Other than that there's just weekly tournaments. The only problem is it's super frustrating because if you get a bad day, and there's a lot of delay, it's (hard) to play against an opponent that can micro perfectly, and your units have 2 or 3 seconds on response time, so it just kills you.
A: You're talking about living in North America and playing on the European server?
H: Yeah, Europeans have the same issue from Europe to North American. And it's not a for-sure thing. Any given day it could be nonexistent, or it could be a little bit of delay, or it could be you're (screwed), you got 3 seconds of delay and your units aren't going to do (anything). And when you get attacked and you move them back and they aren't going to move back for 3 seconds.
A: I'm sure it depends on how ISPs route their traffic in these certain timeperiods. I remember being in a clan, and every Sunday night at 8 there would be a massive bottleneck and pings to vent would go through the roof, and it was almost unusable because the ISP was behind in tracking that traffic and opening up more routes for the stuff to travel, so I'm sure it fluctuates massively.
H: Yep, so if there's nothing else to do and I feel like waking up at 5am to play in the European tournament, it's gonna happen. If it doesn't, I'm not going to kill myself either, because its such a hassle. You play for 3 or 4 hours and you get to the quarterfinals and all of a sudden, click, you got 3 second delay, and you're playing against a Terran that knows what he's doing, you're (going to lose). He could be a mediocre Terran, or any race for that matter, and if they are good enough, they don't have to be the best, but if they are good enough, you are going to lose to that player. And then all of a sudden you have people asking "Why'd you lose to this guy, why'd you lose to that guy, what happened here, you played (terrible)" and you're just like "I don't want to deal with this." Every week people are saying stuff to you and they don't understand what it's like.
A: And you play for a European team, Millenium is based in Paris, France. Can you tell us a little bit about your sponsor?
H: Yeah. www.Millenium.org is their website. They run WoW, SC2, some Counterstrike. Their main sponsor is Winamax, which is a poker site. They've been really great to me. They flew me out to ESL, they flew me to Raleigh. At ESL we went to France first, Paris, and met my teammate, MoMaN, and my manager, Remy, who was with me throughout, went to lunch. It was really hectic because we had to go to Germany, too, within the same day. Got back, saw the sites. Everything I ask for that I need they give to me. It's not an issue. They are on time with everything. With all the shadiness that is esports, with all the deals that fall through, Millenium has been nothing but true to their word. They're great.
A: Did you go up in the Eiffel Tower?
H: Na, I got back Sunday night, and they drove me through all the sites, but we never stopped. I don't think I would have been up for it anyway, to be honest.
A: Do you have any funny stories from your two different lan experiences?
H: There are so many good stories. You'd expect at a lan with SC2 you'd get a bunch of nerds and it would be boring and have no good stories. There are so many good stories, but I don't want to be that guy.
A: Oh come on, tell us one, just tell us one. How bad could it have been, it was just a bunch of Starcraft nerds, right?
H: I'm thinking of a semi, already known thing that happened, that people wouldn't be that offended because it's already kinda out there. Well, ok, I'm not going to tell the whole story, I'm just gonna name one person too. A bunch of players went to place A, a strip club, and had a good time. This is Cologne. Player A got 400 euros stolen from him by a hooker / whore, and she stole a bunch of his gear and stuff. He got most of his gear back but not the 400 euros back. There's a lot of other small facts to this story in there, but that's one of them. There's plenty more stories, but I don't want to be that guy. What happens at the lans stays at the lans. But its a lot more fun than people would expect. We're a crazy bunch of SC2 players.
A: Well on that happy, thrilling, exciting, and notorius note, I think we can all say thank you very much Huk for joining me here.
H: Thank you.
A: You're welcome, it's been a pleasure. Good to get some time with my old clanmate. It reminds me of good times. You're the busy man, but you keep it real, you remember the little people, that's what I like.
H: For sure man.
A: Alright, good luck tomorrow, hope you kick some ass.
H: Thank you, I hope so too.
