The StarCraft II thread

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Moratorium.246 here.

I play Protoss, wondering what other Protosses here have been using as a build for PvP since 1.3.3 added 20 seconds to Warpgate Research.

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Can someone look at this replay and tell me how badly I fucked up?

http://www.mediafire.com/?d6ple17adjntwyr

- No scouting (first recon of a potential enemy base at the 12 minute mark with your main army)
- Nowhere near enough SCV's (18 at the 10 minute mark, you should be saturated on 1 base and getting near to it on a second by 10 minutes)
- Supply blocked a few times (27 supply, 59 supply)
- Never expanded (If you're one basing, your main attacking thrust shouldn't be at 15 minutes)

Scout with an early SCV at the very least. Make SCV's constantly. Look to expand at around the 7 minute mark and take a third at 15 minutes (just general guidelines, you can go slower or faster). Don't get supply blocked.

If you only take one piece of advice out of all of it, make more SCV's. Just constantly make them. Just that alone and you'll improve a lot.

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Two things to add to this:
1) It's often a good idea to scan before you attack. It's a bit of a tip off that you're about to attack, but for the extra few seconds, you're often better off knowing what you're going against. At the very least, scanning after the first set of baneling bombs went off could have helped.
2) If you're going to go with few marines, you should probably get either vikings or turrets. Unless you've scouted and seen your opponent has no air units (easier to do against zerg, since the spire has to be on creep), you should really have some sort of anti-air. Not having anti-air leads to this (not exactly my best game...I'd prefer it it wasn't analyzed >.> (I'm the zerg player in that game)).

Preemptive apology if this sounds overly confrontational, it's not meant to be.

I truly feel that Reckoner would profit much more by simply working on his macro mechanics, and completely ignoring (for now) things like attacking micro (like pre-battle scans) and army compositions (like deciding on anti-air).

- He lost that game because he didn't have enough stuff.
- He didn't have enough stuff because he didn't have enough buildings to make stuff.
- He didn't have enough buildings to make stuff because he didn't have enough bases to generate an economy.
- He didn't have enough bases to generate an economy because he didn't have enough money to expand.
- He didn't have enough money to expand because he wasn't making probes.

- Imagine that same replay where all he did different was make probes. All the time. Nothing queued, but just constant probe production.
- Now suddenly, with the same sized initial army, you've got enough extra minerals to expand appropriately.
- Now that you can expand, you can make even more SCV's and your income increases dramatically.
- Now you've got a good income, you can make several more production buildings/upgrade buildings while still building your army.
- Now that you've got more production buildings, your army grows much faster.

That attack at... 14 minutes or so.. should have been with an army much closer to 200 supply than the 80 or so he was at. With more efficient macro, even slightly so, he could have roflstomped that zerg. No need for pre-attack scans or concerns about Vikings, he could have 1a'd his entire army to the back of his opponent's enemy base and not even look at the battle and just win.

And it all comes down to SCV's.

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Bad Manner.

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How does worst of the worst work exactly? Is this actually a thing?

Whoever loses with the most artistic flair? I'd probably spend my whole time lining up my probes into little stick figure men and trying to "walk" them to the enemy base...

Or maybe something like this...

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I gladly accept the "odd and unfamiliar" warp-in mechanic in exchange for being able to summon units anywhere on the map. Hotkeying pylons for quick production is useful also.

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http://starcraft2terranstrategies.com/t ... otoss-zerg

Good luck in the tournament.

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mouseover your avatar for your character code

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I'm so friending you.

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Well I wasn't going to say anything about joining until someone could give some detail on what this is about, are we playing to lose, playing to win, playing to impress a judging panel on how "artistically" we can lose, what is it exactly?

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Ok, I'll play.

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We're doing best of threes?

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Is this going to be at a set time (like some weekend afternoon or something), or just pairings where the two involved need to settle on a time to play each other and report their results?

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KOTH would be good in that we'd get to observe if the date/time of the match is preannounced

e: well that's the case whatever we do but with KOTH there'd only be one match going on at a time guaranteed

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Also, we need a prize for the winner. Preferably a really, really terrible prize.

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For each league you are above your opponent, opponent may select one keyboard key that you may no longer press for the match duration. Custom hotkeys not permitted.

I also like forcing higher-ranked opponent to use mouse only or something.

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Gamma, that just means you'll have more to slaughter us with.

For each league you are above your opponent, opponent may select one keyboard key that you may no longer press for the match duration. Custom hotkeys not permitted.

I also like forcing higher-ranked opponent to use mouse only or something.

Ahahahahah that's brilliant. Impossible to police but brilliant.

i'm thinking that those handicaps won't change anything; the reason why good players are good is not because they have a high APM, it's because they have a better understanding of the game in general

i think the best route is to just restrict the upper players out of it, unfortunately

I wasn't seriously suggesting handicaps.

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Just bought starcraft 2!
Any tips?
Who should I be?
im thinking zerg due to almost everyone being terran....
is there a big learning curve?

If this is your first time with Starcraft, I'd recommend playing through the Single Player campaign.

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What does everyone think? Assuming everyone's still on board, we can start sometime this week.

Love it.

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ABR isn't ranked in 1v1, but he's Diamond in 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4. Does he qualify?

We have to qualify?

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Are we going to have a Wiki page or something to keep track of this?

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Still think he should be allowed to play, good starcraft players are people too

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^ This.

I'm tossing the idea around with JD of doing a 2v2 tournament after this, where top ranked players get paired with newbies.

My favorite tournament format was where they had pairings of players, one was master (or so), the other was bronze (or so). Each pairing would get on skype, Bronze player would drive, Master player would tell him what to do. Made for some interesting moments, with well-executed build orders being busted out at 19 APM.

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Well, for map pool, I guess the question becomes what is it that you are trying to accomplish with the map pool? Do you want to tailor it to newer players in some aspect? Do you have any particular goal with the map pool? If not, taking a GSL list is fine.

Consider that several players may have relatively little concept of how to adapt their playstyle based on the map. So I don't think you can go very wrong with just a varied list of map styles.

Also, is it worth considering Bo3 to at least try to lessen cheese for pool play, or is that just too many games... (and at this exact moment I'm thinking to myself I'm using way too many brain cells on a bronze/silver tournament).

I'm generally good with the tournament format.

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apparently someone kicked you out or something

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Let the man play, what's the worst that could happen, he could win? Let's just have some fun.

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In other words, he gets carried. I'd say JD or someone gold-league minimum should test him out, see how he is solo.

can't reliably test solo

we could probably run an analysis on some of his 2v2 replays

i'd say the "he gets carried" excuse is bullshit in randoms

in other news, my logo is better than agar's

This logo is insinuating something about zerg....

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Let the man play, what's the worst that could happen, he could win? Let's just have some fun.

I don't particularly think it'll be fun for quite a few of us involved if we allow someone in who's likely to just storm through the entire tournament. The idea is pitting together people of equal skill; everything shows that he's not of equal skill to us.

Ok well now I feel like i'm unnecessarily promoting drama, so just do what you feel is best I guess.

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6 Terran, 4 Protoss, 1 Zerg, and 1 Random.

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Btw, I watched ABR's replay, and for what it's worth, he got carried in that match, so based on that I wouldn't have any problem personally seeing him in a 1v1 tourney.

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I use 2 hotkeys: "S" for SCVS and "A" to attack and to make marines. Everything else I click.

Remind me to go Colossus against you.

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I demand to know when these matches are so I can make cheesy comments in observer chat.

This is a must, match replays should contain random disparaging comments at whoever happens to be winning.

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Anyone on tonight that wants to do some straightforward customs? I'm looking for a practice partner, I'm silver league protoss.

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Buzz me ingame, you or anyone else, Moratorium.246, I'll be on all evening.

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Thanks for the games Kiwi and DRK.

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Meh, I just missed you guys, spent the whole night playing SC2

Moratorium, if you always play at this time, and want to do somewhat regular training matches, let me know! Mid-silver Terran.

Sounds good, I should be on again tonight.

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I've played SC2's mafia before, it has a bit of a flaw to where it won't properly detect win conditions for scum. So you'll get down to 2 scum 2 town or something, and it will just proceed into the next day...

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http://www.mediafire.com/?z2bvd0kswlnq6ky

Anyone wanna take a look at that replay and tell me what I can do BETTER? I mean, I won, but I'd like to improve on that. Also, I'm proud of that game

Ok, here's a straightup analysis of the first 10 minutes of the game. Just to give you some idea on what you could objectively improve:

1) Idle SCV production time
- Idle at 14, 17, 19, 28, 34, 35, 44 and 45 supply
- Times of 10, 30, 6, 39, 20, 14, 3, and 61 seconds
- Total time lost producing SCV's: 183 seconds

- Amount of SCV's not produced in that time: 10.7

2) Idle Barracks time (both)
- Idle for 8, 16, 30, 18, 9, 4, 3, 5, 3, and 9 seconds
- Total time lost producing Marines: 109 seconds

- Amount of Marines not produced in that time: 4.36

3) Idle Factory time

- ALL. Factory never built a thing. All you did was swap the factory around to allow the starports access to the tech labs.

- Solution: Build it later if you're going to build it at all.

4) Idle Starport time (both)
- 8 seconds. You really wanted those Banshees.

5) Idle 2nd Gas
- 2nd Gas was mining with a single SCV for 17 seconds before you transferred two more.

6) Supply Blocks

- Blocked at 11, 35 and 59. You responded to the 35 and 59 ones by building 4 supply depots each.

- Solution: Don't get supply blocked, don't build more than 2 depots at a time by the 10 minute mark, keep up with building supply depots as you go.

7) Floating minerals
- You had 400 minerals in the bank for pretty much the entire 10 minutes. You could have grabbed an expansion at basically any point and been much further ahead than you were, and still had enough money to do what you were doing.

8) Initial Scouting
- Your scout at 13'ish supply went to a corner of the map, and stayed there for 90 seconds. Use Shift-queue to queue up waypoints for your scout so that you can scout all possible enemy starting positions, and when you see one appear on your minimap, stop the scout there.


So overall advice: Always make SCV's. Don't get supply blocked. Keep your money low by constantly making more stuff and expanding when you have the spare minerals to do so.

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Wait, Factory is prerequisite for Starport, right? (i don't play terran)

if so, advice there is to actually build things with it instead of letting it idle

As for getting flustered, well, now you know what you need to work on. Repeat until not flustered.

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http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comme ... elow_your/

It's all about macro in the low leagues, baby.

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This isn't really an argument I want to get into, so Reckoner, take whatever advice you feel helps you the most from this, I'm sure there are also other players on this forum and others who are way above my league and can help you out as well.

Good luck.

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pretty much what i do

1-3 army/obs

4 nexus
5 gateways
6 robos
7 all different research buildings (tab through)
8 stargates

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If anyone wants to play some 1v1's just for fun tonight, let me know.

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Participating in rCraftGaming (reddit) KOTH Silver league tournament tonight, come watch live casting of me getting my ass wooped starting at 7pm central.

http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comme ... redditors/

Stream: http://www.justin.tv/rcraftgaming

edit: but i'm 14th on the list of players probably won't get to play

edit2: did get to play, won three matches, lost the fourth when I made a snap decision to four gate a fast-expanding zerg that I scouted last on metal, if I'd won that I would have won an hour's tutoring with EdwardStarcraft.

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If anyone wants to see the cast of those games:

http://www.justin.tv/rcraftgaming/b/288154593

I jump in at the 1hour 45 minute mark. And into a large portion of Part 2 of the video.

Spoiler for Game 1:

I get my face nuked at Bel'shir Beach, losing all drones at my main. And still win.

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he plays as the entire state of iowa

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yay huk

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http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/2943356#blog

S3 LADDER MAP POOL GOGOGO

I wish they would get rid of "rush maps".

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how do you go into a final ace match, for 15 grand, and think to yourself "man, I'm gonna six pool"

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post-match interview with day[9] onstage, huk basically states that as soon as he scouted the 6 pool (and he scouted it first right off the bat) he thought he had won because he knew how to stop it... apparently he regretted raising his arms in the booth before the match was over, but you could see how happy he was once he held off the initial push and the followup roach push, he knew he had it right then and there...

...but he did mention mind games several times... must be fun to play SC2 at the "mind games" level... i can't think of a single thing i do ingame that would qualify as a "mind game", i'm too set in my ways...

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What was strange about that decision for me is that the two wins Moon actually did get in the series were in the longer games, the ones where he won due to good flankings and good surrounds. The losses were quicker games, one a 4gate and the other the infamous mistakenly-cancelled hatchery game. So the decision to cheese was very much hoping for a surprise change of pace and hoping the large map (tal'darim altar) meant scouting would be delayed (it wasn't).

How often does 6 pool work at the GM level (nevermind in a tournament final)?

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Silver KOTH again, if anyone's interested in watching, starts in 45 minutes, and I'm in the first match. (just posting this because there appeared to be some interest last week, I promise I'll stop... )

http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comme ... s_tonight/

stream: http://www.twitchtv.com/rCraftGaming

ingame channel "rCraftGaming"

If you are Silver and want to participate, the signup sheet is here: https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewfor ... E6MQ#gid=0

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you forgot to install the instawin drivers

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huk vs idra incoming

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Pretty pumped that huk won both dreamhack and homestory. Looking forward to watching the next GSL.

He's my goto guy to watch because he's also an American-Canadian Protoss like me

Noticed that him and MC do the exact same 1 gate core opening now in terms of placement (they put their pylons/initial gateway/cybercore in the same exact spots every match against certain races), and they seem to be doing pretty similar builds lately, i guess when huk said him and MC sit next to each other in the oGS house 12 hours a day every day practicing and sharing info, he wasn't kidding.

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You have to win when it counts. In the bracket, MC 2-0'd Stephano, but Huk 3-1'd MC.

Probably my favorite frenchman there was the one that kept casting (tod?), he seemed the most insightful...

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Gonna be the Zerg flavour of the month now that Destiny surprised Bomber with it.

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I did it by going Mass Air, and keeping the three entrances walled off.

Mass air as in, never build a single ground unit (only use the ones they give you for some of the initial fights), make liberal use of cannons, use graviton beams on hybrids to halt their high dps, and by the time you get near "winning", you should have three control groups of only Phoenix, Void Rays and Carriers, plus the given Mothership, each group "led" by a Protoss leader character, and a cannon-making probe. I forget how many stargates I had, I think it was 4 total (2 free initial ones + 2).

Do that and you will not only beat it on Hard but get all the achievements (2000 kills or something?) as well.

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Aces High = Bunker up, Siege tank up, Perdition Turret up, kill everything that approaches. Use Mind control towers on Ultralisks and have them tank their particular wave of baddies, prepare for the one big overlord drop with several missile towers on the southeast side of your base, have a squad of banshees constantly going around hunting Nydus worms. Hopefully you did the pre-mission that removes all enemy air units instead of the one that clears all the nydus worms, because it's easier to complete Aces High that way.

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My goal for Season 3 is platinum league, but i play so infrequently, and with new job, I'm completely expecting to fail at that goal.

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End of season lock doesn't mean anything other than a temporary halt of promotions, your MMR will still increase/decrease during that period, so if you are getting enough wins during the lockout you'll be promoted immediately following your one placement match at the start of Season 3.

At the end of the day, your "rank" within your particular mini-division of 100 players is what means nothing at all (arbitrary ranking within an undeclared segment of a particular 20% of the starcraft playing population). Unless you are Grandmaster, at which point it means nothing at all for a completely different reason (apathy).

If you care about details: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmes ... _id=118212

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NASL finals looks like high school production

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That's something I need to figure out - how do you set tab to cycle between control units?

Tab is set by default to cycle between subgroups, meaning if you have a control group that contains more than one kind of unit, you tab to go through the various units of the group (useful for spellcasters). You can find that under the Global hotkeys, under "Unit Management".

What you sound like you are describing is whether there's a "Go to Next Control Group" command that you can set.. and I don't believe such a thing exists.

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and have tab set to cycle hatches.

Where as this is done by binding tab to "Base Camera", under the Camera hotkeys in Global.

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it's not the stage...

- It's Day[9]'s microphone not leveled to where he's constantly saturating the mic as he yells into it
- It's the main camera appearing to be operated by Micheal J. Fox, no one thought to invest in a tripod.
- It's Tasteless having to tell the observer every five minutes to look at something important happening
- It's the crazy awkward interviews
- It's the audio being mis-balanced where for the first half day your right speaker was twice the volume of your left
- It's "hey is your mic on? I don't think my mic's on"
- It's the plywood booths that look like they were made in shop class, which are too small (I thought Sheth was going to die in there).
- It's not setting players to busy and Alive having to stop a match because people on the internet were messaging him telling him what the opponent was doing
- It's the projectors apparently being misaligned and so the shots up on the screens for the audience were crooked
- It's the 30 minute gaps between matches
- It's the players not being ready despite those gaps and the announcers having to fill waaaayyy too much time

At the end of the day, it's a bunch of starcraft matches. If you want to see a bunch of starcraft matches, great, here's a bunch right here. But there's a bajillion tournaments now, I can see tons of quality matches between quality players. The inbetween stuff is actually more important to me now, I want to see the good hype and the quality production. And knowing that new viewers will maybe come watch the NASL, think "what's this rinkydink circus show", and be turned off from watching any other events, it sucks, I'd rather this just not exist. It's an embarrassment. GSL is awesome. Dreamhack was awesome. MLG has taken huge leaps and is now awesome. Hell, Homestory 3, a tournament run in an APARTMENT ABOVE A BAR, was head and shoulders far beyond awesome.

NASL is some kids who suckered someone into investing into "that e-sports thing" for the prize pool, and not knowing how to put a production together, much less a live final.

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So essentially your white knight boils down to "give it a chance it'll get better", and my basic reaction is "No thanks."

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http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comme ... r_esports/

Top post on /r/starcraft posted four hours ago, basically restates what I'm stating.

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Haven't looked at or played anything Starcraft in a month, what have I missed?

Gonna watch MLG Anaheim starting tonight though...

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Scumbag Naniwa meme needed:



Go Huk!

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german bar?

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kiwi 2-0's nada wow

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reck get on camera so we can screenshot you

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MLG: Our camera crews are out on the floor, interviewing players, going behind the scenes, and getting reactions from the crowd. Watch all the clips on MLG.tv! Check back frequently- we'll be uploading new video all weekend long.

GET INTERVIEWED

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he must not have heard it