Follow Grubby on his Pro-Gaming Adventures

2011-08-01T19:41:00.005+02:00

Hey everyone,

I've recently launched my new website "FollowGrubby.com" (Beta). This is the official Grubby homepage - the one-stop website for all news regarding me, including blogs, updates on my next tournament, results, when I will be streaming, the ability to download my latest replays, wallpapers, and you can watch VODs - Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2 commentaries and so on. Be sure to also check out the photo gallery and Grubby Shop (Coming soon, Team Grubby jerseys, jackets).

Though the page is in Beta with improvements and changes on its way, it's already fully functional, with a few hundred users signed up. Signing in with your Facebook account is possible - Just click on the Facebook icon on the top left. Come join our sweet community today, hang out in our discussion forums, discuss strategies and make friends with the same passion, talk about anything under the sun!

See you at http://followgrubby.com/ !

Warmest regards,

Manuel "Grubby" Schenkhuizen

3 Tournaments in a Row!

2010-03-28T07:08:00.001+02:00

Tomorrow we will be leaving home and will be on the road for a month. Firstly, we will be traveling to Beijing for TopGamer, which is a 2 weeks long tournament with the best Warcraft III progamers in the world. Then we will rush over to Shanghai for Star Wars Reborn......

Read the rest of the blog at:
http://www.myeg.net/article/article_detail.php?article_id=641

Two new blogs from Cassandra on myEG.net

2010-02-20T03:43:00.002+01:00

Cassandra talks about Olympics, Starcraft II Beta, Snowmen
http://myeg.net/article/article_detail.php?article_id=586

Cassandra made Grubby and Moon wallpapers for the fans!
http://myeg.net/article/article_detail.php?article_id=578

Check it out and leave your comments there! ;)

Holiday at home, recent playing, EG.wc3 2010

2010-02-12T04:36:00.005+01:00

Overview
A quick overview of how I'm doing at the moment. I've gained 3-4 kg, unnoticeable in my face because it's pure muscle (I now move mountains). I'm doing all the things that I can't normally do in the rest of the year such as - eating slowly, reading books, spending more time with family, reading letters (a year's worth pretty much - with all the kind of "This is the last warning" that you can imagine) and so on. It started out being a huge relief. Well, obviously it started with our snow boarding holiday, which was amazing.

Holiday at home
It went on into a kind of holiday-at-home. Though I played WC3 and watched replays and followed the scene closely, I allowed myself to breathe easy by not practicing every hour that I have, as I usually do. At first it felt kinda naughty and relieving, like I said. And the part where I can be there for family birthdays and the like feels very gratifying and wouldn't grow old. But the part where I have no serious competitions for WC3 does grow a bit old. I won't have to wait for too long because there will be several events lined up not too long from now, and before too long I'll be training just as I always am. But for now, it's kind of the calm before the storm. It feels lazy but I try to appreciate it because such moments are rare. I'm still appreciating my finishing performance in 2009 at WEM.

Recent playing
My shape hasn't deteriorated much, only my speed a little. With a few days that should come back. I've had a few public appearances, like vs Winners and ThomasG in the WC3L and I must not have done too bad since I won both. I haven't played any ZOTAC Cups because I'm not feeling like it right now when there's so much other things to do before the LAN Tournaments start again. After the Chinese New year, Evil Geniuses is up against World Elite and I don't think we have much chance to win. Maybe a miracle will happen and we do, we'll see.

The weather
In Netherlands the weather has been absolutely unprecedented as far as my life time is concerned. And I wouldn't be a real Dutchie if I didn't discuss the weather. It's been snowing nearly non stop for like 2 months. Every time you think it has stopped, I wake up to a bright window and I know that it's the sun reflecting off a whole new blanket of snow all around my house. It's enchanting but cold.

EG.WC3's future
Only thing left which I want to share is EG.WC3's future. Ciara and me are buddies and we enjoy being in the same team. For as long as that's possible, it will probably remain that way. For me it's great to be part of EG and to have the sponsor backing that we have. In 2010 I'll most likely continue to play here, if it works out, and that would make me happy. We're not sure if we will pick up any new players, as we're not sure what's going to happen with WC3L yet and whether it's still worth it. Anyone who knows me for a while already, knows that I love WC3L and have always played my best in WC3L. Still, I feel that the scene's attention has definitely shifted from team leagues to 1on1 competitions more than ever. Even SK and Mousesports have disbanded their WC3 team and pulled out from WC3L.

I'd love to get a new player who can show his power at LAN's as well as in online leagues. If someone catches our eye, who knows.

Cassandra's blog - WEM and travel

2010-02-05T01:29:00.002+01:00

Hi everyone!

I started my column again on myeg.net
Read the first picture blog about World e-Sports Masters and travel adventures at:
http://myeg.net/article/article_detail.php?article_id=570

Grubby Pro Event - SteelSeries - XFire

2010-01-24T01:38:00.002+01:00

Hi everyone,

Few days ago I did a show match against ThomasG and against some challengers. I'd like to post the links for you, in case you might enjoy watching it. There's also a transcript of a chat session I've done with XFire users / Warcraft 3 fans. Have fun!

http://www.xfire.com/communities/officialsteelseries/

* Show Match: Grubby vs ThomasG (shoutcast by EndarSpire and hosting by Thorzain)

http://www.livestream.com/xfire_steelseries1/video?clipId=pla_23d6338a-d9b6-4ded-b087-264aebb821c0 (1st Map)

http://www.livestream.com/xfire_steelseries1/video?clipId=pla_11bb10a0-4ae0-4472-a8c0-064f4d2727bb (2nd Map)

http://www.livestream.com/xfire_steelseries1/video?clipId=pla_00b671c9-48b8-4c37-a615-6359cc93a9df (3rd Map)

* Grubby Live Chat:

[Xfire] Matteox (matteox): Welcome to the live chat with WarCraft III Legend, Manuel "Grubby" Schenkhuizen. We're very happy to have him! He will start taking your questions now.

[Xfire] Matteox (matteox): Please ask your questions in the question room. Grubby will answer the selected questions in this room, central command.

[Xfire] Matteox (matteox): At the end of the chat we will awarding a couple of prizes for the best questions. Enjoy!

Grubby (steelseries3): mileycyrusarena (mileycyrusarena): Hi grubby, i was wondering how old were you when you started gaming like a bit more seriously?

It always interested me to become better at games, but it was only about beating my older brothers.. it didn't have special meaning until I was introduced to eSports which was when I was 17 years old.

Grubby (steelseries3): 18:59] regnasta: hi grubby... i was wondering if you played any other game than war3?

Which game didn't I play? Haha... I've been interested mostly in RPG's, RTS's, Turn based strategy and adventure games... think about Settlers, Civilization, Populous, etc...

Grubby (steelseries3): (forza67): sup grubby,what are your best memorys of wc3?

Undoubtedly that's winning some of the big titles that I've won... but also moments where a few simple words from a supporter touched my heart (sounds mushy but it's true)

Grubby (steelseries3): tatu90 (tatu90): Hello Grubby! Is it hard to concentrate if you have problems in life?

That's really difficult... it was important to have a good relationship with my mother in the first 3 years of my eSports, and in the last 3-4 years the relationship with my girlfriend. They helped to "shield" me from worries when they could mess with my mindset.

Any athlete needs to have a mind empty of worries to give their top performance. I did notice that, later on as I became more experienced in dealing with such things, that I've been able to better concentrate on shutting 'problems' away from my mind for the important times

Grubby (steelseries3): fu'Z (xcacos): Hi Grubby, just wanted to ask what you felt when you won a WCG Championship for the first time?

I was so young and I didn't have ambitions to win. In the finals, I felt that I will surely lose and I was OK with that because I'd already gotten top 2. It was unimaginable for me to win, so the moments that followed after I did actually win WCG 2004 are a complete dreamy blur. It felt like I was being pulled at from every direction by everyone. A very strange, blurry feeling which seemed to pass by so fast. It felt extraordinary.

Grubby (steelseries3): Nikfiuri (pansmith): Hello Grubby, do you play any team games at wc3? Which give you more fun - solo or team and why?

When I play team games, that's usually 2v2 or 3v3. I like to try and win with bad strategies, like massing banshees up to 100 food and so on =] or heroes only..

Grubby (steelseries3): GD Raz1el (razielge): Hey Grubby, i just start now with WC3, do you mean that it´s to late, or should i try it??

If you play for the right reasons (enjoyment), it's never too late to start. Set yourself small goals, and be satisfied with each goal you achieve! Choose for yourself what sacrafices you're willing to make for getting better, and stick to it. That will you would never regret your decisions.

Grubby (steelseries3): DeathWing (deathw1ng): Grubby, did you ever at one point think about quiting warcraft 3? and if so at what moment in ur carreer was this and what made u decide to keep playing?

- I felt like quitting after I lost in Winner Bracket of WCG 2003 qualification to AcidPsycho at Night Elf Mirror. My brother suggested me to switch to Human, and when I did I ended up winning the qualification. Thanks, bro!

Grubby (steelseries3): (forza67): Do you find it hard to get used to a different setup at a tournament/cup than say your normal setup at home?

I only have trouble with that when the tournament set-up is in some way malfunctional, OR is drastically different from what I have at home. To prevent such things, I learned to mimick tournament conditions at my home.

Grubby (steelseries3): (proesmans): which pllayer you prefer: Sky, Moon, Infi, Lyn or ReminD?

Prefer in what way? :P They're all very talented and have worked hard for where they are.

Grubby (steelseries3): Majorichter (majorichter): Grubby, for you who is your best partner for playing ? Why ?

I really liked playing with Creo, because when we partnered I used to play Random and he NE, and we won nearly everything =)

Grubby (steelseries3): CyDoN (blackmetaltemplar): 1st. If you could choose a normal succesful non gaming life you go back in time?

Never. I have no regrets, and I am very happy with my life.

Grubby (steelseries3): ivanuz: Does Your Friends support you?

If they don't, they're not really friends.

Grubby (steelseries3): GD Raz1el (razielge): Aloha Grubby, what do you mean at what age a person should start with eSports, and at which age better Quit?

I believe there are no real age limits. That's the beauty of eSports in my mind. Technically, a 10 year old could play against an 65 year old. Perhaps in the future we will see that in some other game :p That could never happen very well in real sports because of the physical requirements.

Grubby (steelseries3): kunzile: If WC3 never existed, and you could become a professional in any other game what would it be?

Another RTS, but I haven't seen any (that's not from Blizzard) that's as good as WC3... so who knows..

Grubby (steelseries3): mileycyrusarena (mileycyrusarena): Hi grubby, who is the best friend you have gotten out of The whole gaming scene, like who you really enjoy hanging out with etc?

Someone I know since I was 3 years old. They say a person is lucky if he has one true friend.

Grubby (steelseries3): (forza67): Who introduced you to wc3,and what kind of stimulouses kept you playing?

My brother of 2 years older. The stimulus was the enjoyment I got out of the game.

Grubby (steelseries3): mileycyrusarena (mileycyrusarena): Hi grubby, i was wondering if you have ever had problems with your gaming life and your real life messing each other up?

Let's just say it's a delicate balance :p

Grubby (steelseries3): SendMeASign (sendmeasign): Grubby, if you meet some players in battle.net, would you talk with them and tell them who you are orc just ignore them?

When I play, I play to play, not to talk. Most likely I would not talk. When I want to talk, I do something like this on Xfire :P

Grubby (steelseries3): chumpesque: Based upon how fun it is to play, what is your favourite hero (i.e. irregardless of results)

That would probably be the Warden and the Tauren Chieftain, because they both can be very fast and got damage spells =)

Grubby (steelseries3): 9|FrIsti™ (santaskimzorz): Grubby how long do you play DotA and what is Your Favourite character to play with

Let's deal with this now: I don't play DotA ! :p

Grubby (steelseries3): Nikfiuri (pansmith): Grubby, how often do you play "in public" on battle.net? I mean, like I never saw you online playing. Do you play on some other accounts to make your opponents not know who are they playing with?

It's possible you've already played me, but didn't know. I'd like to keep it that way, too.

Grubby (steelseries3): crusher (crusher2010): grubby, yesterday I read that Happy left EG. what do you think about that? and will you try to find a new 3rd player for EG or will it stay you and ciara only?

I can't say anything about this yet, but I suggest you follow the news

Grubby (steelseries3): (proesmans): Do you stay in the Netherlands during the year.. or do you stay in Asia (because of the ping) so you can challenge players like sky & moon with a lovely ping?

So far, I've always used Netherlands as my home base to fly out from and to come back home to and practice. It's served me well enough so far.

Grubby (steelseries3): skillz'Siffics (19magiman91): Grubby, when did you started to play Wc3? And what are other games you play except Wc3?

Started with WC3 7 years ago, and I played a lot of other games before that. But since I play wc3, I play very few to no other games.

Grubby (steelseries3): GD Raz1el (razielge): how thinks your family, when you start Gaming?? did they cheer and support you and said you make it reight, or the opposide??

We support each other in what we do, no matter what it is... I was not an exception in this, and they saw it made me happy

Grubby (steelseries3): fu'Z (xcacos): Which was you're very first prize on a WC3 tournament?

$10,000 in CXG , but it was never paid out. A 'bitter' intro to eSports, but it was an uncommon occasion which can be expected in a young industry ;p

Grubby (steelseries3): Apart from that there were some €100 from small tourneys, I guess you could count those too.

Grubby (steelseries3): Mp.єҳє® (hcmaitrepoul): Hi Grubby ! What is the biggest price you won? thx

Probably WSVG $20,000 + the Rolex watch in 2006.

Grubby (steelseries3): mileycyrusarena (mileycyrusarena): Hi grubby, i was wondering at what time did you feel most proud or happy for a team mate?

Probably when Creo won WCG against Sky. At the same time it's also a shameful memory, because I did not support him live. I thought he had no chance to win, and for this I haven't forgiven myself. Yet he made me proud

Grubby (steelseries3): skillz'Siffics (19magiman91): Grubby, While you playing a game against someone, and you are about to lose against that oppenent, what is about going through your mind?

When I first feel that "I may be losing this game", I re-double my efforts. It's a very scary but also exciting feeling, and sometimes my best plays came forth from those moments.

Reflecting on WEM victory

2009-12-20T01:53:00.001+01:00

...as posted on myEG.net:

I've just had an incredible 10 days behind me. It's been so enjoyable for me, and I don't only say that because I ended up winning. Although the success and the results really put me in a good mood which I suppose will carry over really nicely into the planned vacation I'll be taking around the end of this year.

To me, "World eSports Masters" is starting to become synonymous with professionalism, excitement and comfort. I see this as the 3rd edition of the tournament that I join (the first being WEG Masters 2006 and the 2nd being WEM 2008), and it keeps getting better. Like last year, the organization has provided for the players very well. There were dozens of translators (chinese-korean-english), nearly all of whom were (English) students at the university at which this event was held. These guys, who happened to be fans of CS & WC3 big-time, also turned out to be really great guys and I have much to thank for with the help they've given. Special thanks to LeBronc (that's not his real name, but they use English names for our convenience) and Alex who ran to get me some food before my semi-finals match.

Although the match format is BO1 and this produces some randomness to an extent, at least the groups were announced several days before my departure from Europe, so there was a certain amount of control a player could have over practicing his specific opponent and map. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all the people who I've practiced with (you know who you are). I'm sure it was mutually beneficial but I am very grateful.
The BO1 format does make things very exciting though, and pushes you to try your hardest. I may have got unlucky a few tourneys, and maybe now I got lucky. Whichever way, I can't describe how happy I am to take the last big tourney before the year 2009 is over. In a final against Moon no less, whom I respect a lot.

We got food provided for every morning, afternoon and evening (if you happened to be around or awake), which although it wasn't haute cuisine, was not spicy and therefore suitable for everyone. It was also well varied, so it helped to keep me at least healthy and fed. There was a special VIP area in a PC cafe (same as last year's WEM 2008) with a very likeable PC Cafe owner who really makes the pro-gamers feel special I think. There were plenty of PC's for every time to practice at any time they liked.

One other thing I really liked was the time schedule. Having one best of one over the course of 1 or 2 days means that you really get a lot of freedom as to how you wanna spend your day. Enough rest and time to eat are important factors for comfort and health. I really like the set-up of this tourney. Maybe that's why I went the extra mile to try and get into the finals. Once I was in the finals, I felt, dunno, redeemed, ecstatic, happy, and privileged to be able to battle out a grand final match once again. Whether or not I'd come out on top was a 2nd concern, which I took very seriously, but wasn't essential for my existence. Having won it, I'm happy that I did =]

Hangzhou really made me feel at home. It felt weird going to the Training Center; there was posters of Sky, Moon, Infi, me and others all over the place. It all felt strangely familiar, as if I was at home or surfing the net. Hundreds of people recognized me outside of the tournament grounds. We even had dinner with some very nice fans after my semi-finals game against TeD. They were students at the university and knew the neighborhood well, and we ended up eating very nicely with some Fusion western-chinese food.

When we approached the restaurant, there was a group of 3 guys sitting near the window. One guy, who looked a bit like Jet Li, smiled congenially and waved enthusiastically. I wasn't sure how to respond. I mean, there's a chance this guy is a fan and I should wave back and smile. There's also a chance that he isn't, and that he's interested in me. In that case, I shouldn't be encouraging him. But we entered the restaurant and it turned out they were all WC3 fans and just wanted to say hi and so on, haha :P

The fans in Hangzhou were really amazing. I really want to thank all the fans who supported me, who gave me the strength and energy to win this tournament. After disappointments at other tournaments, I received nothing but words of encouragement (including from fellow pro-gamers) and this really helped. I really mean it when I say this victory doesn't only belong to me, but also everyone who cheered for me, be it from the live audience or sideline at home. That includes my family, for example my mom, who, when my match with TeD had about 2 hours delay, could hardly work as she kept skipping to the PC to press the infamous F5 (refresh). Thanks for being so involved and supportive, mom.

Needless to say, but I want to anyway, thanks to my fiance, who, although she fell sick with the flu about 5 days ago, has stood by me every step of the way.

Well, there's so much to tell (we've been here for a long time, it seems!), but I'll cut it short here. We finished the closing dinner around 10 PM this sunday, where I was forced to consume large quantities of booze from my Champion's cup not entirely against my will. Fnatic promptly followed on CAN's urgings. I have lived nearly like a monk the last few weeks (months?), so it was nice to unwind and have a laugh and a glass with everyone.

It's 4:42 AM on monday morning, chinese time now, and we're leaving with the bus at about 6:00 AM to go to the airport, preparing for our long flight back. Needless to say, we haven't gone to sleep and hope to do so on the airplane. Hopefully we can! BTW, I thought it was cold here with near-freezing, but it's -10 + snow in NL.. whoops! Going to have a white christmas :p

Best regards,
Grubby

Winners of "Favourite Grubby Replays" Facebook contest

2009-12-06T17:49:00.005+01:00

We spent a few hours going through the entries. There are more than a 100 entries, and it was really hard to decide the winners. It was even harder to decide who is #1 and who is #2. We like most of the entries, because they were written with such passion, it touches our hearts. This is what REALLY makes it worth it to be a progamer - having so many fan's support and appreciation for your work.

Without further ado:

First Prize goes to: Adam Zhang
(gets Grubby's autographed 4Kings T-shirt, a Christmas card and Grubby bookmark)

Second Prize goes to: ROnan Larkin
(gets Grubby's autographed SEC 2005 T-shirt, a Christmas card and Grubby bookmark)

3rd - 20th Prize (in no particular order) goes to:
(will receive a Christmas card with Grubby bookmark)
Jeroen Van de Pol
Sergei Vilbik
Jim Zenox Salte
Christoph Geisler
Lukas Smolka
Tory Boudreaux
Xi Yan
Nick Dorazio
Orion Yan
Albert Gonzalez (Di Xu)
Wang Oceanus
Matt Schlenker (Inclnerator)
Jannes Tjarks
Wang KeLong
Minh Duc Vu
Tony Zhang
Ben Macdonald
Xi Zhang

Almost forgot, honorable mention to Sam McCafferty whom we were until the last moment considering for Top 2 position as well, but we couldn't squeeze in more than 2. Thanks for sharing your story with us. We will be sending you a Christmas card accompanied by 4 different designs of Grubby bookmarks.

Congratulations to all the winners. Please send a private message with your full name and full mailing address to "Cassandra Ng" on Facebook (can be searched by email: cassandrappg@gmail.com).
NOTE: You need to message me with the account that you submitted your entry with. And please do it soon now/soon so you will receive the items before Christmas!

Thanks to all for participating so far. This has been a very enjoyable contest. We read every entry with joy! We wish we can give everyone a prize. We are paying for all the postage costs ourselves so this is the best we can do for now. If you don't get any gaming souvenirs this contest, don't worry, because we plan to do many more of these activities in the near future. Grubby has put aside lots of other gaming T-shirts/souvenirs from his home to be given away. The next contest will be announced on "Grubby page" on Facebook.

Before we sign off, here's the entries of #1 and #2:

# 1 Adam Zhang:
King of Orc, allow me call you like this. You never know that in faraway China, in a self-studying room of my college, I wept for your WCG2008 Champion before my laptop, as if there were nobody else in that room. When Moon tapped out "gg", when I saw you brandishing your double arms, when you turned around and showed "WCG2008" on the back of your orange T-shirt before my eyes through webcast, I couldn't stop tears welling up in my eyes, only because that you are the King of Orc, and you regained your Crown of WCG which lost for years.
As one of your faithful fans, you led me into the world of Warcraft3, you are the pillar of strength for me when I suffered successive loses and you always give me new ideas of the game to keep me happy and keep me on edge. The reason I choose the replay to be my favorite one had little to do with the strategy or micro-controlling, instead, this replay arouses all my passions inside my body, toward my king, toward my Warcraft. At last, GL grubby, sincerely.

Replay File: http://w3g.replays.net/doc/cn/2008-12-1/12281486919135066360.html

#2 ROnan Larkin:
It’ s like trying to pick a grain of sand on a beach. An endless number of them. Some shinier than others, some unnoticed and yet as brilliant. But people like stories. I like stories. That’s why, taking the risk of the unoriginality and cliché prize, I went for the glittering.
Avoiding, bootlicking - and had Moon held the same contest, he would have got the same answer -the WCG 2008 Grand Final was one of the best Warcraft III moments ; and I’ll tell you why.
The very core of the question raises the philosophical “what’s a good replay ?” . A last minute saving invisible spell, a wisp surround do provide excitement, they’re real turn-on to any fan. Creativity, risk-taking, magic moves. But in the end, what will we remember ? I’ll remember the story beyond the encounter that day. In sports and elsewhere, that’s what build legends.
This final was made of that rare wood. I’ve always found it hard to talk about e-sports History with the noble connotation of the word, but no second thoughts, it was. The two most recognized TFT players, the WCG finals. What else could one ask for ? Once fierce rivals, then teammates, on opposite sides once again. Those two kids fighting on Korean TV back in 2004 have won everything since, but had vanished. Two young men still at the very best level took their place. Sure, you could deny the rivalry bit, but the shared joy, the beam of light on your face after the WEG 2006 win betrays you. Grubby – Moon has always been something special. Like Connors and McEnroe, when both met, you supported one or the other; but take a side for God’s Sake. Moreover, at the time, some felt you both weren’t enjoying that total domination that used to be yours back in the old days. It was a matter of pride for each of you to take that one home (plus Moon missing a WCG title).
Out of the great games, I picked number 2 on Secret Valley. Game 1 was about raiding the elf base, Game 3 was of course fireworks for you, and the worst but so touching black hole feeling for Moon. He collapsed a bit under pressure on TM.
But Game 2 was the core of the encounter. Right before, Moon has a psychological advantage. Right after, It’s the other way around. That game turned the match. I would lie saying It’s the most brilliant piece of Warcraft I’ve ever seen entertainment wise. An early archer-kill advantage, a few nice surrounds, and Moon seeming to always recover until the end, even with only his tri-hero left. A nice game ; But it meant so much more to all the community.
To all the scepticals, to the “Warcraft III is dying” believers you both gave the best reply; to fans, a waking dream. It was like, the ideal ambassadors of the game had arranged a final match. After it, Warcraft III could have just died.

More give-aways added to "Favourite Grubby Replay" contest!

2009-12-03T23:46:00.006+01:00

Good news to participants! Because there are many good entries for favourite Grubby replay contest, we decided to add more give-aways:

1st prize giveaway: Grubby's old 4Kings T-shirt, Christmas Card and laminated Grubby bookmark.
2nd prize giveaway: WCG 2005 SEC gaming T-shirt, Christmas Card and laminated Grubby bookmark.
3rd to 12th prize give-away: A Christmas card (Best wishes from Grubby for the festive season!), accompanied by a laminated Grubby bookmark.
(Pictures of the gaming T-shirts/souvenirs: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=9759931&id=141554855166#/album.php?aid=342774&id=141554855166)

WCG 2005 Samsung Euro Championship T-Shirt (Back) This T-shirt is signed 4K.Grubby because he signed it 4 years ago and we found this in our closet recently. Second prize of "Favourite Grubby replay" contest

Christmas card, best wishes from Grubby for the festive season! (Accompanied by a laminated Grubby bookmark)
1st - 12th prize

Laminated Grubby bookmarks, autographed at the back. (to go with the Christmas cards)
1st prize - 12th prize

Thanks to all for participating so far. We wish we can give everyone a prize. We are paying for all the postage costs ourselves so this is the best we can do for now. If you don't get any gaming souvenirs this contest, don't worry, because we plan to do many more of these activities in the near future. Grubby has put aside lots of other gaming T-shirts/souvenirs from his home to be given away.

Once again, thanks to everyone for their support, this contest will end in 3 days, on Sunday 6th Dec. We will announce the winners at 6pm CET. Good luck guys!! :)

Submit your entries here:
http://www.facebook.com/FollowGrubby?v=feed&story_fbid=350734420166

Autographed old 4Kings Jersey give-away!

2009-12-02T14:46:00.006+01:00

Hey peeps,

Grubby is giving out his old 4Kings Team Jersey!

Grubby's old 4Kings Team shirt - Front

Grubby's old 4Kings Team Jersey - back, autographed by Grubby.

Here's how you can win the 4Kings Jersey:

1) You have to be a fan of Grubby page on Facebook.
2) Tell us your favourite Grubby replay and why (in no less than 50 words, not more than 500 words.) Provide a link to the replay if you can. The replay can be from any patch.
3) This contest is international and open for all. We will send the 4Kings T-shirt to your address by post.
4) Submit your entries to the Grubby page Wall entry in a comment. All comments/entries will be read by Grubby himself.
5) The winner will be decided by this Sunday 6th December 2009.
6)All entries should be written in the comment on this page: http://www.facebook.com/FollowGrubby?v=feed&story_fbid=350734420166

Grubby page on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?ref=profile&id=532721975#/FollowGrubby?ref=mf

Grubby's old 4Kings Team Jersey give-away:
http://www.facebook.com/FollowGrubby?v=feed&story_fbid=350734420166

Grubby gives back to fans:
There will be more souvenirs/articles/gaming T-shirts (from Grubby's home) to be given away to fans. We would like to give all these to fans before Grubby's retirement from progaming (whenever that may be), so do expect a lot more of such activities going on at Grubby page on Facebook! Come and join in the fun, and perhaps win some Grubby souvenirs!

EPS Benelux concluded

2009-11-27T18:56:00.003+01:00

EPS Benelux results:

Semis:
2:0 vs DeSnodeSnodaarD
FisT 2:0 vs Sushilicious

Finals:
2:1 vs FisT (yeah yeah, he was gosu!)

3rd Place:
Sushi 2:0 Snode

Was a nice event, nice to meet everyone again! And tomorrow, Sushi/FisT are going to come by and we'll all play ZOTAC together :D

Greets,
Grubby

EPS Benelux

2009-11-23T20:48:00.001+01:00

Hey guys,

Today, tomorrow, wednesday and thursday I'll be playing all of my EPS matches for EPS Benelux. The finals will be on friday at a LAN called "HME". It stands for "The multimedia event", and it will be held in the Jaarbeurs (an exhibition hall) in Utrecht. Alongside the ESL stand that will be there for the EPS matches, there's always lots to do. It coincides with the "hcc-dagen", which means you'll be able to buy plenty of hardware stuff all around from booths set up by not only Dutch people but also Germans from over the border.

I should be able to qualify and finally get to play a LAN really close to my house once again, namely about 6 km. That's a big change compared to the last LAN I was at, IEST, which is about 8500 km away hehe :D

Here's the link to the homepage of EPS Benelux:
http://www.esl.eu/benelux/pro-series/season3/wc3/1on1/

Greets,
Grubby

"When Orcs Clash" - Date modified: 20-8-2003, 12:48

2009-10-22T02:06:00.003+02:00

When Orcs Clash By 4K.Grubby

Orcs have been battling the other dominant races for decades. The Humans, Night Elves and the Undead Scourge have invaded upon their turf without being so much as invited. The endless strife has not done well for the interracial harmony, of the Orc Horde.
From one on one brawls and barfights to clan battles and complete civil wars, the Orcs have been killing one another with great fury.
When Orcs fight each other, they should know what to expect from each other. As a warchief from your clan of loyal followers, you should be prepared for anything. This can be done with great effectiveness in a mirror match of Orcs.

There are several paths the opponent Orc can take. Three shall be briefly explained up next.

“The Wind Rider Surprise”
In this approach, the goal is to surprise someone with fastly pumped out Wind Riders (the old ‘wyverns’). A Far Seer first and a second hero of choice (preferably Naga Sea Witch, Shadowhunter or Pandaren Brewmaster) will distract and harass the opponent fiercely enough so that the Wind Riders can focus fire the enemy’s burrows and unsuspecting units to great extent. This is typically executed with 17 or 18 food (12-13 peons) and erecting 4 burrows so soon as possible.

The strength of Wind Riders lies in their speed and mobility. Because they’re a flying unit, they can hide above a patch of forest as they are being damaged. A good build order for this strategy is altar, burrow, voodoo lounge in succession, and go for the 17 or 18 food. Build a War Mill at around 17 food and tech up as soon as you have the necessary 190 wood. Building the Voodoo Lounge so fast enables you to effectively harass the enemy. This strategy is generally only done vs Human or Orc. What I find most effective is shamelessly focusing the enemy hero. You use feral spirits and your far seer to to attack the enemy hero (far seer or archmage most likely) until he is dead. You can then go on to stealing the item from his nearby creeps, killing peons or waiting until his hero is out again.

You’ve added burrows while teching up to get 4-5 well-placed burrows. If you feel you are in danger of a rush, add spikes. You should avoid building a tower since this takes away some of the speed of a large wind rider group.

My hero of choice as second is he Shadow Hunter. Take Hex first and use it to slow down the enemy hero. He also can’t Town Portal while being a crab or seal!

You can get in trouble if the opponent orc has gathered enough headhunters to keep you at bay. In this case, prevent him from getting any expansions and fortify your burrows. This option for burrows requires having teched up to tier 3, which you should always do. The few tier 2 wind riders are useful, but you can get some real damage out by using envenomed spears (ideal for hit and run). If it comes to late game, don’t let him get any expansions! Your burrows should keep him wondering outside your base, as you go back and forth focus firing his headhunters 1 by 1. Try not to pick fights where you will lose wind riders: they’re too expensive for such jokes. Only kill 1 unit at a time and stay safe. The cover of the forest can be used extremely well with these hit and run tactics: having a heal salve on you will allow you to heal the wind riders while they take shelter where the orc can not see them.

The final menace is the bat rider: only raiders can prevent a most quick and painful death. Be quick with the finger, and throw nets on his batriders before he can justify the means on your wind riders.

This strategy will fail if: the opponent sees through the harassment with the Far Seer and will conclude the base defenses are minimal, and take appropriate measures: a tower/demolisher push. Try to keep him away from your base (killing the hero usually breaks the backbone of any attack).

A micro tip: the dogs can brutally focus a hero. You simply don’t have to micro much. Burrows and towers killing units don’t yield experience either, so you don’t have to worry about him running into his burrows if you can still deal damage. Your Far Seer however can be micromanaged very well: an attack in warcraft 3 always has a cooldown. This word refers to the necessary time you have to wait before a unit will attack again. You can use this cooldown time to run closer to his hero every time! This requires extensive concentration: right click his hero, run towards him, click again… Here is a sample replay showing what I mean.

Far seer micro demonstration.w3g

“The Grunts with Beast Support”
Possible to explain shortly, the enemy will make a barracks followed up by two beastiaries in order to use Kodo Beasts or Wind Riders to give the edge to his or her army. Kodo beasts are underestimated: appropriate counters are Wind Riders or Headhunters, which can be exposed of with Bat Riders and respectively Taurens. They are effective counters versus casters, grunts, taurens or combinations thereof. Devour can be used very effectively with a speed scroll or teleport.

Why a combination of grunts and wind riders? This all boils down to armor and attack types. It goes like this. Enemy headhunters with piercing rip up your wind riders, but your grunts eat his headhunters. You have melee attack versus their weak medium armor. Typically, you will want to put your grunts on the headhunter’s ass, and use your wind riders to dispatch of his unarmored and melee units. They stand no chance against 38-46 piercing damage! These units include grunts, witch doctors, shamans, corporeal spiritwalkers and kodo beasts.

Using this odd couple is pretty solid, but you have to attack fast. That’s basically undeniable. If you wait too long, he will get batriders versus your wind riders, taurens against your grunts. You can counter these with respectively raiders and kodo beasts, but it may already be too late then.

“The Safe Headhunters”
Why are the headhunters safe? Because a contingent of Taurens and stasis wards can cover their defenses. The buildings made here consist of 1 barracks, 1 spirit lodge and 1 tauren totem. This strategy is popular and deemed to be able to take care of anything. You have anti air, strong ground, heal and stasis wards, and the sentries for extreme map control. Berserkers can go into berserk mode (as their name suggests). For those who don’t know, this increases their attack speed and thus damage output by 50%, but also let’s them take 150% of normal damage (so 50% extra). The way to by-pass this increased taking damage, is to add taurens, so that the bulls with their beefy 1300 Hit points can protect the frenzied trolls. Witch doctors will give you the edge over grunts, taurens since their magic damage rips up heavy armor (which grunts and taurens have of course… :] ). Pulverize, stasis wards and berserker skill should all be researched really fast. It is my opinion most Orc units only get good after their unit-special upgrade.

Scouting
I’ll admit fair and square that I don’t like scouting. Therefore, my ambition has been to find a build order and strategy that pretty much takes care of anything. That includes the 3 strategies I have just unfolded! You will likely meet the opponent enough times to find out the development of his strategy to adjust appropriately. Here is the Build Order.

You always start with the Far Seer. He is too all-rounded not to pick.
- 1st peon to gold
- 2nd peon to gold
- 3rd peon to gold
- 4th peon to gold
- 5th peon builds altar
- 6th peon builds burrow
- 7th peon builds barracks (we assume you have a 4 peon mine, if this is not the case, first fill up the gold mine and follow up with the rest)
- 8th peon to wood
- 9th peon to wood
- 5th and 6th peon finish with buildings, they are sent to wood
- 2nd burrow needs to be made: at this point you have 4 peons on wood.
Attempt to send back the 4 peons prematurely to make them bring back enough wood to have 40 lumber in your reserves. You can guess, go by feeling or count the number of chops, but letting them bring back the wood sooner can allow you to build the 2nd burrow in time to let your flow of grunts go steady.
- 10th peon to wood
- 11th peon to wood (together with the first grunt and the Far Seer you will be at 19/20 food)
- burrow finishes and 2nd grunt is made
- build a war mill at 22/30 food

What we’re doing here is starting up with 4 grunts, enabling you to creep many of the small groups. You will hold your own against harassing far seers, optionally backed up by their grunts. If you don’t, take some micro lessons :P

I standardly go on to adding headhunters until I have about 6 of them. This gives you a well-balanced army of ranged and melee that can take care of enemy grunts-only, or allowing you to have a head start on producing anti air, if the opponent has indeed chosen to go wind riders. The obvious next option will be adding bat riders also, if you are sure he will keep making them. There are also ruses of using a couple of wind riders after which to switch to heavy ground (tauren/witch) so that the guileless opponent has useless batriders / headhunters. None of these 2 stand a chance versus tauren/ witch doctor.

Anyway, from 4 grunts 6 headhunters you can go on to many different ways. If the opponent has chosen to go with the tauren/headhunter/witch doctor strategy, you can try to mirror him and attempt to win by creeping advantage, item advantage or a micro advantage, or try and EAT HIS TAURENS. Kodo Beasts are really funny and effective versus taurens. After having devoured his heavy melee, your damage bonus from the kodo will allow your headhunter/witch to dominate his.

My habit of scouting usually involves sending nearly dead feral spirits used for creeping purposes to spawns. If you see the opponent is going for the little surprise involving Wind Riders, the next step is the bat riders or this if you’re fast: having a grunt/headhunter army and a war mill, you are free to take 3-5 peons accompanied by your army to his base, to erect “defensive towers” at his base within shooting range. This should end his fun prematurely because the poor enemy will find himself unable to stop the Watch Towers from finishing with just a far seer and maybe a second hero. Having teched up will help you to bring Demolishers from the home base to throw too-heavy-to-catch stones to the enemy.

vs RoX(DUNE) [49-3] anti-windrider.w3g

To address the Wind Riders, optionally with Raider support, you absolutely have to scout the opponent. If he’s teching up without so much as a tower or tier 1 units, you know he’s in trouble.

However, if the opponent has chosen not to tech straightly to Wind Riders, here is the rest of the strategy. Over time you will lose the Grunts but keep making more Headhunters and after that Troll Berserkers. Generally, my ideal army consists of the following units.

A group of about 8-12 Berserkers.
An assembly of about 4-6 Witch Doctors.
A contingent of about 2-4 Taurens.
Optionally a Kodo Beast.

Far Seer => Chieftain accompanies these units preferably.

When or if you add the Voodoo Lounge is up to you. Whenever you can miss the 130/30 I guess. It’s important to have the Lounge though, it is my opinion that 50 gold for a Speed Scroll is no money for the effect it can have (Saving your troops or hunting down enemy ones). Always carry one ;)

Extra:
If you have problems with hotkeys when you get many sorts of units, this works well for me.

I start out with:
Group 1) Far Seer, Grunts
Group 2) Scouting Peon or Headhunters
Group 3) Barracks
Group 4) Great Hall
Group 5) Altar

Later as I don’t need to have hotkeyed my main anymore, it changes to this:

Group 1) Far seer, Chieftain, Kodo beast, Grunts, Taurens
Group 2) Headhunters/ Troll Berserkers
Group 3) Witch Doctors
Group 4) All of my unit producing buildings grouped.
Group 5) Altar
Group 6) War Mill

If I’ve chosen also to add Shamans, I change the lay-out slightly.

Group 1) Far seer, Chieftain, Kodo beast, Grunts, Taurens
Group 2) Headhunters/ Troll Berserkers, Witch Doctors (they’re all trolls)
Group 3) Shamans
Group 4) All of my unit producing buildings grouped.
Group 5) Altar
Group 6) War Mill

Expansions
In Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, Orcs had the hardest time erecting a successful expansion. An expansion is of course a new great hall built at a unoccupied gold mine in order to increase gold output. Their Great Hall was costly (450/150), while Night Elf had walking Trees of Life (400/150) which can suck dry expansion after expansion, Undead had cheap gold mines (300/170) and the unsummoning ability, which would allow the Undead to lose next to nothing if the expansion was found quickly, and Human has the insane power build, which can be used to finish an expansion at great cost but very fast.

The Frozen Throne has changed this! Orcs no longer have the biggest disadvantage for keeping expansions. The “Tiny Great Hall”, which can be purchased at the voodoo lounge when you have tier 3 (meaning your Great Hall has been upgraded to a Stronghold and then a Fortress) for 600 gold and 150 wood. It’s carried as an item on your hero. The expansion is done in 10 seconds!
How can this be used? Well, in most of my strategies I use quite a lot of peons to give me the necessary wood fast. For example teching fast to wind riders needs a lot of wood. But also when you’re going grunts, you can use the extra wood as a back-up stash, allowing you to take some peons off wood to put up towers at the enemy. Or, later at tier 3, you can take 4-5 peons to your expansion. The great hall is ready while they wait if you use this miraculous invention, of the tiny great hall. I like to call using 4-5 fortified towers at an expansion shameless, but also cruelly effective. They won’t be able to take it … :)

The ideal moments for an expansion are after you’ve won a big fight (never assume you’ve won already, there have been comebacks you can’t even imagine!), because your army will be sufficient to defend the expansion while it is being built. Another good moment is when you know the opponent is far away, or while you are attacking / harassing him. All these moments he is busy so he can’t take time off to scout for or attack your expansion.

Final point: managing an expansion
What many people do wrong, is not realizing more gold from an expansion must be accompanied by more wood as well or will end up with something like 3000 gold 150 wood resources. I typically build these extra wood peons at my expand and not my main, so they can help to repair towers that are being attacked.

If you town portal to an expansion which you have equipped with towers, you should watch how you aim the portal. I am sure some of you are and some of you aren’t aware of the option to aim your town portal. You can click in a radius around your great hall with the portal to get there. This range is generally about 3/4th of a screen. The ideal place to town portal is behind him so that you trap him between your army and your towers! Watch and mutter evil satisfied guttural sounds as his army is caught between the crossfire!

WCG wc3 Groups Drawn

2009-10-21T10:21:00.002+02:00

Today is 21 October. You know what that means? I know what it means. You wanna know what it means? I'm gonna tell you what it means.

Double You See Gee Group Drawing!!

Yep that's right ladies and gents, at 3PM GMT+9 (8 AM GMT+2 / CET), the groups of WCG 2009 Grand Finals were drawn for Warcraft 3. I woke up early to watch it live. And I'm gonna be the first to report what the groups are like (since I haven't seen any news on sites yet :D). Here's my group.

Group C:
1. Manuel Schenkhuizen (Grubby)
2. Tomasz Pilipiuk (TeRRoR)
3. Yap Tong Lian (Serry)
4. Jun-You Wu (Ferfe)
5. Du-Seop Chang (WhO)

I like it a lot! Not so easy, which means I will be made sharp right from the beginning. Let the games begin. (Ok in 20 days)

3on3 Battle Report

2009-10-14T15:34:00.001+02:00

http://myeg.net/blogs/user_blog.php?blog_id=678

2009-09-25T23:35:00.003+02:00

So because I'm not from Singapore, unlike some people, I have to get Visa every time I go to China. Luckily, the process of applying for visa for China is extremely simple. It's basically just a matter of filling in a few forms and paying the price and I can get it like that.

The only downside is that I'd have to travel about 2 hours, leave at 7 or 8 AM in the morning, wait for 2 hours at the embassy and travel 2 hours back. That would eat up almost about half a day of practice, something which I usually can't afford to lose when I'm preparing for a tournament in china :D So this time, like last time, I hired the services of a Visum Application Service company. Paying a small amount of money, I can save on the costs of 2 tram tickets, 2 train tickets and more importantly save myself the time to practice.

Yesterday they delivered my passport, but I slept right through the door bell. Unfortunately that meant I had to go pick it up today. Fortunately I applied enough in advance to have that kind of leeway, so that my flight to China does not come into jeopardy.

The schedule for IEM has been released, and it looks as follows:

Thursday, October 1:

Group A
Group B

Friday, October 2:

Group C
Group D
Quarter Finals 1
Quarter Finals 2

Saturday, October 3:

Quarter Finals 3
Quarter Finals 4
Semi Finals 1
Semi Finals 2
3rd Place Decider
Finals

I'm in group D with Infi & ReMinD. Everything's BO3, maps are TS TR TM EI SV AI MV. Play-offs is Single Elimination. The opponents are TeD, Focus, Lyn, Fly, Moon, Check, Remind, TH000, Sky, Infi and DemusliM. I've practiced the most against Human I think, followed by Orc, then Elf, then Undead. The reason I didn't play Elf as much, is because I was still in good shape for Elf after BlizzCon. But Human needed more working on, and also Orc mirror is a match-up that always requires a lot of practice for timings and so on.

Well, we've prepared as best as we can for Chengdu's spicy cuisine. Been eating spicy at home to get adjusted to it, and cassandra also got a lot of food supplies like healthy cookies, chocolate breads, just things to keep me alive if there's nothing else to eat :)!

That's all for now, going into the last day at home,

Greets,
Grubby

Warcraft Short-story written by myself

2009-09-24T01:14:00.004+02:00

Heh, here's a little something I wrote about the Orc's race origins. I got inspired by The Dark Tide and Beyond the Dark Portal, as well as other Blizzard books on the universe of Warcraft. I like to read those books to enjoy the Warcraft lore, especially if it's being written by entertaining writers like Richard A. Knaak or Christie Golden. Anyway, hope you like to read this short-story I wrote and can appreciate the analogies for my upcoming IEM tournament!

Regards,
Grubby

Read the story here:

http://myeg.net/blogs/user_blog.php?blog_id=649

VOD of Grubby on Gamer01

2009-09-22T03:37:00.001+02:00

Hey guys,

The VOD of Grubby on Dutch TV (Gamer01) is now up on the website. Everyone will be able to watch it. It's in Dutch though, and there are no subtitles yet, but it will come later.

Here's the link: http://www.101.tv/page/gamer01/video/217a2d5cd638e553b9c79ea32a19d868

Grubby will be on Dutch TV (Gamer01) tomorrow!

2009-09-19T15:26:00.002+02:00

Yet again, Manuel "Grubby" Schenkhuizen will be on Dutch TV! This time, he's being interviewed by Gamer01. Dutchies can watch this on digital TV tomorrow (Sunday 20th September - 9pm CET) on BNN channel. The name of the programme is Gamer01.

Good news is that it can also be watched online by people and fans all over the world. You can watch it online at http://www.101.tv/page/gamer01/
English Subtitles will be added later on to cater to the international viewers.

The interview is about Warcraft III, e-Sports, Blizzcon, "Beyond the Game" documentary, Manuel's proposal, and more!

So guys, remember to tune in tomorrow (Sunday 20th September) at 9pm CET!

IEM Groups drawn!

2009-09-17T17:57:00.002+02:00

http://myeg.net/blogs/user_blog.php?blog_id=632

IEM Drawings 17.30 today!

2009-09-17T00:13:00.002+02:00

Greaaaaaaaaat news! At 17.30 CET on thursday, ESL will announce the groups for IEM chengdu!!
They'll do so on their internet TV channel "ESL TV", which you can find at http://tv.esl.eu/de/

Going to watch that for sure.

For me that's great because I can get more specific with who I should practice against. There's only 10 days left of practice now. I'm playing pretty well but it could definitely be better...well I like to know what I'm up against, good preparation is half the work :)

Greets,
Grubby

Vote for Grubby for IEST!

2009-09-15T16:30:00.002+02:00

Calling out to the fans and community! If you would like to see Grubby in IEST tournament.. please vote for him here once everyday:

http://iest.gamespot.com.cn/news/2009/0722/52.shtml

Hereby, Manuel give thanks to anyone who votes / voted for him. Cheers!

12 days left

2009-09-15T02:10:00.002+02:00

12 days of practice left before I go to IEM. Today was fruitful... practiced vs Orc and Human. Want to make the most of tomorrow as well.

You know how there may be increased risk of getting mugged /robbed on the street, right after you come from an ATM? Because they know you're loaded with cash? Something similar happened in my dream last night..

I had a dream last night that I won WCG 2009 and overtook Lyn in the prize money listings. Lol. The only problem was, I received the first prize in cash... and there was someone who wanted to mug me! I was running around for god knows how long (probably a few seconds in real time, but seemed hours in dream time). Funny dreamworld ;)

Warcraft 3 Rollercoaster

2009-09-09T11:44:00.000+02:00

Finally something to write about again, as the Warcraft 3 scene is propelled into a rollercoaster of events again!

NGL ONE's been a constant source of entertainment for me personally. Day-in, day-out, there were interesting games to be seen. Now sometimes I wake up, look at the day's match ticker and think: what the hell, no matches to watch today? Boring! But I think back to the year 2005 or so, and I remember there would sometimes not be online match coverage for a whole week or so. And it'd just be waiting and looking forward to the next big LAN event (which I'd usually be part of). So in a way, we as an eSports community have come a long way, and it's changed for the better. Now a match-less day is the exception!

How has 2009 been so far? Events-wise, we had a very slow start. I remember it's been one of the longest lulls of my tournament history yet, where in the months February & March I had nearly nothing to play at all. After that, the pace started picking up and the summer has been quite filled. The most recent tournament was one of the most important to me, namely BlizzCon. Unfortunately, I made it to be only 2nd place. Fortunately, I made it that far even after dropping to LB in Round 2 already. My game against the Korean Elfs was up to my expectations, but I failed myself a bit in the Orc vs Orc matches.

2009 hasn't disappointed me so far. My goal at the start of the year was, to make it my year. I'm going to have to step it up and take no prisoners for the coming tournaments to make that true. I feel like the hardest part is yet to come. The end of the year is going to be very interesting indeed, with IEM Chengdu coming up first. There's a sick player list, namely: Sky, Lyn, TeD, Moon, FoCuS, ReMinD, DeMusliM, Check, Grubby, Fly100%, infi and TH000. (4 humans, 4 orcs, 3 elfs and 1 undead).

I'm still anticipating WCG Netherlands Qualifications, WCG world finals, possibly a WEM (it was said that the eStars champion will be automatically invited), and possibly more.

September is free from tournaments. Time to get in monster shape as the rollercoaster starts riding in October. My break (Las Vegas holiday + recuperation time from wisdom teeth extraction) is come to an end, and preparations start in earnest.

BlizzCon Discussion Place

2009-08-19T03:37:00.001+02:00

Hi guys,

I'm going to Anaheim in less than 12 hours now. The Tournament will start on 21st and end on 22nd of August. I'm not sure but it probably starts around noon US West time. That's CEST-9, so if you're from the Netherlands like me, it's 9 hours earlier there. So you should be able to follow it on the Blizzard streams at like 9 PM those days.

As for the tournament itself, I didn't accept any interviews / do any blogs recently. Nothing to say, only that I will let my actions speak for me.

I can keep this factual... the tournament system is going to be a Double Elimination with Best of Three matches. The seedings are as follows:
1. Lyn (#1 Asia)
2. LucifroN (#1 Europe)
3. Longwalk (#1 America)
4. Grubby (#2 Europe)
5. Sonkie (#2 America)
6. Shy (#2 Asia)
7. SocceR (#3 Asia)
8. Nicker (#3 Europe)

So as you can see, they rated the #1 for each realm as top 3 seeds, with Asia, Europe and then America in descending order. For the #2 of each realm, they did it in reverse: first America, then Europe, then Asia. The #3 placings were reversed once again, with SocceR and then finally Nicker.

The fixings are then as follows:

Upper half:
A. Lyn vs Nicker
B. Grubby vs SonKiE

Winner of A meets winner of B.
Loser of A meets loser of B.

Lower half:
C. Longwalk vs Shy
D. LucifroN vs Soccer

Winner of C meets winner of D.
Loser of C meets loser of C.

Losers of WB R2 will find themselves in reversed Loser Bracket, meeting someone from the other half of the bracket who also has 1W, 1L. Hope that's clear enough.

Feel free to discuss the tournament progress here with other visitors and/or cheer me on, always gives me energy :)

Greets,
Grubby

Unfair changes in NGL Scoreboard

2009-07-30T16:33:00.002+02:00

There are 24 players in NGL ONE. It's a round-robin system to determine the Top-8 that gets to go to the offline playoffs. So each player has to play 23 matches.

On July 29, HoT got too many penalty points and was disqualified. At this point, HoT had already played 21 out of 23 matches.

NGL resetted all of HoT's scores, giving everyone a 2-0 default win against him.

This is how the scoreboard was affected:
http://www.readmore.de/index.php?cont=news&id=5731

I don't think it's fair that people who lost to HoT get their loss converted into a win. The season is nearly over. It would be much more fair and logical to simply give the last 2 players a free-win over HoT. Just leave the other results alone. People worked hard for their wins against HoT in the whole season: that effort is now being punished.

When WinNers was disqualified, I already didn't think it was fair that everyone got 2-0, even if they lost to him. About 18 matches had been played, so we were about 80% of the way into the season.

Now that the same happened with HoT with already 21 matches being played, I think it's ridiculous. People who had no chance to qualify anymore suddenly have a chance. Other people who were 100% sure qualified already, suddenly are in danger. All through no doing of their own.

The net change for anyone who won against HoT is 0.
The net change for someone who lost to HoT is +2 points. Their loss (-1 point) gets converted into a win (+1 point).

The people who lost to HoT are being rewarded with points. Whereas the people who won HoT are being punished by going down in ranks.

I do not think that NGL's decision is fair. The season was nearly over and there was no need to reset everyone's score. HoT has played 21 matches, and all of HoT's opponents had put in time and effort to play their best in those games.

What do you guys think about this? What's most fair for the majority of the players? Please vote in the poll on what you think is the right decision for NGL on how to treat the score table. Hopefully NGL would change their mind if the majority of the community votes on the 2nd option.

__________________

Go here to vote:

http://www.wcreplays.com/forums/showthread.php?t=116684

Streaming concluded

2009-07-29T20:01:00.003+02:00

Sorry to everyone, thought that chat was off. It probably was, until I had to restart cuz of disconnect... and it's ON on default.

As for the games, I'll leave them for on-demand viewing, so that you can watch them again.

In game 1, I play against gS.FM-Fischieee with only 1 hand, as HU vs ORC. My SteelSeries Ikari never made so many actions per minute, I think ^^ at the end of the game, my right hand felt really overworked.

In game 2, I play against "Running" from Russia on Ancient Isles. I picked a 70% handicap, playing as Undead against Human.

You can watch them now because I put it live at 20:08 so it will run for about 40 minutes, both matches in a row until 20:48.

You can also find it in the on-demand library at www.livestream.com/followgrubby and then pressing "On demand" below the channel window. It's called "1 hand and 70% 29 July".

HF hopefully!

Livestream to celebrate eStars victory

2009-07-28T21:06:00.007+02:00

EVENT:

Date: Wednesday, 29th of July, 2009

Time:
PST: 10:00
EST: 13:00
CEST: 19:00
Chinese time: 01:00 (+1 day)
Korean time: 02:00 (+1 day)

What: I'll be doing some streaming at 7 PM CEST (or your local equivalent) to celebrate my victory at the eStars King of the Game tournament.

Where: www.livestream.com/followgrubby

Hope to see you there! :)

Greets,
Grubby

e-Stars 2009 - Article 1 - 23rd July

2009-07-24T04:48:00.003+02:00

Read the first article of e-Stars (with pictures) from myeg.net.

http://myeg.net/article/article_detail.php?article_id=250

Read Cassandra's blog on myeg.net!

2009-07-21T05:49:00.003+02:00

Hey guys,

Besides reading Grubby's blogs, do read my blog too! :)

Cassandra talks about DeMusliM bootcamping with us, leaving for e-Stars, and RotterdaM's funny slip-up in GOMtv.
http://myeg.net/blogs/user_blog.php?blog_id=527

Have fun watching e-Stars! Check back on myeg.net for pictures of e-Stars.

If you haven't seen the pictures from Blizzard European Regionals yet, here it is! Plenty of pictures here!
http://myeg.net/media/gallery_detail.php?gid=10

Greets,
Cassandra

Pre eStars Blog

2009-07-21T01:42:00.002+02:00

On NGL...
Season coming to an end, and my Top 8 rank is all but secured. I'm still pretty curious as to how the NGL ONE finals are going to be looking. As far as I know, no one really knows where it's going to be held, how the system is going to be, and which date it's going to be on. I kinda feel like such things should be announced when a league commences, not when it's drawing to a close. It was a good experience so far, with a LOT of games man! We've never played anything of this length before, so I hope it will have a beautiful finale.

On eStars...
I'll be flying on the 21st to Seoul, where we'll make our way to the hotel. Arriving on the 22nd is one day earlier than the default day, and I like to do that to accommodate a little to the time zone. The drawback of course is having one day less of practice at home, but I hope the improved adjustment to the environment is going to beneficially outweigh the reduced practice. In the past, I've tried to do the same - having a bit of rest - and I would say it's helped me.

Let me make you guys a bit excited about the tournament.
It's going to have a few different formats. I'm reserving the right to make any mistakes, but I feel like I got it pegged down quite well :P

24 July - Continental Cup
The tournament starts on the 24th of July. It's Seoul, South-Korea, so keep in mind the time zone difference (it's +7 hours to CEST, +13 hours to EST and +16 hours to PST).
First thing that's going to happen is the Continental Cup. This is where we're going to see East vs West in a combined might of WC3 + CS. That's HasuObs, Lucifron and me against Fly, Moon and Lyn.

We'll play two formats.

First one is "Line-up" á la WC3L. There's 3 maps, namely EI, SV and TM. We each seed 1 of our players per map, and play a Best-of-One. The team with 2 or more points, wins 1 point for their Continent.
Second one is "Winner stays". There are 5 maps, all of which will be played in sequence. You seed a starting player against the other starting player, and the winner stays. First one to eliminate all the players from the other team, wins. In doing so, 1 point will be granted to the team's Continent.

The maps for "Winner stays" are SV -> TR -> TS -> TM -> EI.

Counter-Strike will likely maintain the same format, except they will do their dirty work with ugly guns while we use stylish axes.

In the event that both continents obtain 2 points, a tie-breaker will be played in Counter-Strike.

25 July - King of the Game
On the second day, the solo tournament will kick off. All 6 players will play in a Round Robin Best-of-One format. My maps and playing order is as follows:

Grubby - Fly100% @ Turtle Rock
Grubby - Lyn @ Twisted Meadows
Grubby - Moon @ Terenas Stand
Grubby - HasuObs @ Secret Valley
Grubby - LucifroN @ Echo Isles

3 points will be granted to the winner of a match, and 0 to the loser. In case of equal points between two players, a rematch will always be played between them.

The same map pool will also be used for Stage II, which is played on the 3rd and last day of the eStars tournament.

26 July - King of the Game
The top 4 from the Round Robin will place themselves for the Semi Finals. The first ranked dude will play the fourth ranked dude.

1 vs 4
2 vs 3

It's single Elimination Best-of-Three, so there'll be a finals and a 3rd place decider.

Of course, there'll also be the Heritage Starcraft Tournament, so there's plenty to watch for everyone. I hope the coverage'll be good.

---

And on the 27th, it'll be travel day again as we fly back home.

That's all for now, I've finished my practice, wrote my blog now, just gotta get packed, get some sleep, bring all I need to bring and it'll be showtime once again! I'm so excited, I can hardly wait :D

Satisfied feeling; yet new challenges are coming

2009-07-13T17:32:00.000+02:00

Hi everyone,

Extremely busy schedule as of late, and having to squeeze in some time with family and friends (recently doing some catching up with a childhood friend of mine, had lost touch some) before more torrential busy periods such as eStars and BlizzCon. Family issues and busy schedule are the main reasons I can't be playing the Race Wars right now, which is unfortunate. Nonetheless I hope the best team can win!

Thanks for continuing to visit here despite me neglecting the content a bit, it's not always beneficial for me to write down everything I'm doing, but I try to squeeze in some time for blogs any time I can so you know what's going on kinda ;)

Read today's blog here:

http://myeg.net/blogs/user_blog.php?blog_id=511

Greets,
Grubby

EG posts

2009-07-11T20:08:00.004+02:00

Grubby vs TeD announcement:
http://myeg.net/article/article_detail.php?article_id=225

Grubby vs TeD post-game:
http://myeg.net/article/article_detail.php?article_id=227

Thanks to everyone for their support!

Greets,
Grubby

The Blog With No Name

2009-07-03T00:38:00.004+02:00

Season 7 Regionals - 2nd place

Thanks to everyone who supported me for my Season 7 tournaments. This tournament is literally one of the most important tournaments of the year, if not the most important, well together with WCG anyway. I was crushed when I finished 5th last year although my (mental) shape was a lot better now than it was last year around. This year I wanted to do better no matter what.

Major thanks to my love for supporting me incredibly much, putting up with a 24/7-ing gamer and without whom I couldn't have done it =)

Thanks to everyone who practiced with me to prepare me for the tournament...

and big THANKS to all the people out there who supported me mentally and encouraged me! :D

GOMtv - through to semi finals against tough FoV

read the rest at myEG.net:
http://myeg.net/blogs/user_blog.php?blog_id=495

Making good on quiet time

2009-06-25T13:29:00.000+02:00

Hiya all,

Here's my new blog at myEG, just a tiny update

http://myeg.net/blogs/user_blog.php?blog_id=480

greets,
Grubby

Bid for a Warcraft III lesson with Grubby, Happy or Ciara!

2009-06-11T00:08:00.003+02:00

Great news for passionate fans! Now you can bid on a Warcraft III lesson with your points on myEG.net. Let a master of the game give you the best tips and improve your game play - What's better to improve at the game than a lesson with the EG Warcraft III Masters - Grubby, Happy and Ciara?

Now the question is "How do you earn those points that can be used for the auctions?"
Answer: Just take part in the "Match Predictions" in myEG.net. Whenever a player or team of EG has an upcoming match, it will be posted there at least one or two days in advance. Just keep checking back! :) When the team you chooses wins, you win points, but when you guess wrong, you don't lose any points either! You can also earn points by being active in posting comments in Articles, Blogs and Forums.

Bid on the Warcraft III lessons with your favourite EG Warcraft III player HERE!

Note: GOMtv - Grubby vs Moon VODs are out! In one of GenoZStriker's latest articles, read about the VODs, links and more!

ENC: NETHERLANDS VS ROMANIA LIVE!

2009-06-07T19:55:00.010+02:00

*LIVE*

And then: ENJOY! Here's the line-up & matchlink:

1on1: Twisted Meadows, Ancient Isles, Secret Valley
Grubby	1	:	2	NightEnD
1on1: Ancient Isle,
RotterdaM	2	:	0	Kramer
1on1: Secret Valley, Twisted Meadows
Grubby	2	:	0	Kramer
1on1: Echo Isles, Turtle Rock
RotterdaM	0	:	2	NightEnD
2on2: Gnoll Wood, Lost Temple, Turtle Rock
RotterdaM, Grubby	2	:	1	NightEnD, Kramer

http://www.esl.eu/eu/enc/2009/wc3/clanwar/mainround/match/13278228

Sizzling Saturday and upcoming Mirror Weekend

2009-06-07T01:27:00.002+02:00

Hey guys, myEG.net is still taking feedback and criticism to improve the useability of the site. I guess one aspect is the ease (or difficulty) with which you can find some of the content that the page's got to offer.

With that in mind, it doesn't hurt to link to some nice articles now and then, and here's one for example previewing the sizzling saturday Happy and me just rounded off.

http://www.myeg.net/article/article_detail.php?article_id=152

-----

Ciara's picked up a win against the reigning ENC champion, Germany, and EG conducted an interview with the man himself at:

http://www.myeg.net/article/article_detail.php?article_id=150

-----

There'll be a post-match statement up soon on myEG.net regarding my match against Moon in GOMtv. For the rest I can look back with satisfaction on sturdy practice giving rewards. As usual there are certain areas where I need to improve a lot if I want to be consistent in victories (and I do!! :). I wasn't happy with Game 2 for example, some of the decisions I made. And while Game 1 was perfectly played by me, I wouldn't expect another game to go exactly the same there, so I must continue to work on new plays.

Next matches I got will be against Lyn in GOMtv (13 June) and Fly in NGL ONE(14 June). Tough nuts to crack but I'll bring the biggest nutcracker I can find!

Greets,
Grubby

The ENC dream of Netherlands!

2009-06-01T02:17:00.001+02:00

http://myeg.net/blogs/user_blog.php?blog_id=403

more NGL ONE matches, 1 month "respite":) and S7

2009-05-31T00:42:00.003+02:00

Thanks to everyone who's been checking back here regularly. I'm never going to apologize for the lack of content for any period of time - either I blog or I don't. I've been there before, saying "whoo I've been away for such and so long", and once you start like that there's no end to it :) If I'm not blogging, there's probably a good reason for it like me being really busy or I'm traveling for example.

So what's new right now? If you hadn't seen it yet, 3rd place for Evil Geniuses at WC3L, finishing above SK, nGize and World Elite for example. Credit to mouz&wicked for playing so strong despite the unideal conditions. Not going to bore you with a list of conditions, to be honest I just play with whatever I have to play with.

I'm going to be at home for like a month with some important on-line matches like NGL ONE for example. After that it's one of the most important tournaments of the year for me, Blizzard's tournament and its qualifier in Cologne starting at 26th of June.

FoV & Fly are my next NGL ONE opponents - both strong opponents, especially Fly whom I lost 0/2 to recently.

O yea I just won ZOTAC in another cool final against FoCuS (3-2 just like last time). Whether you usually like Orc vs Orc or not, I think the whole series is a recommendation (if you like to see me win, haha).

So that's it for now,

greets,
Grubby

First round fixing for WC3L Playoff 25-27 May

2009-05-22T02:07:00.002+02:00

That's right, EG vs Wicked. Representing EG will be Happy & Grubby, going up against FoCuS & Shy in first round.

Maps are:

1on1: Twisted Meadows,
		:
1on1: Secret Valley,
		:
1on1: Turtle Rock,
		:
1on1: Echo Isles,
		:
2on2: Gnoll Wood,
		:

Not so good 2v2 map for us at all, but the solo maps are quite good. We should win this, probably placing ourselves against nGize in the WB finals. That's my predictions. nGize & Mouz are the two strongest teams at the finals, I think, so either one would be a terribly difficult opponent. Still, only first place is really worth it for us, so that must be our goal. Yet, it would be somewhat of an upset too.

Well I'll be leaving home soon, still gotta clean up, pack my stuff, sleep, shower, ETC... :D As usual won't be getting much sleep, but I should get some in the airplane, and hopefully a good rest in the Hotel as well.

EG fighting!!^^

Happy's Blog @ EG & WC3L previews

2009-05-20T20:52:00.002+02:00

Have a look on the EG homepage in the blogs section, Happy's written a few paragraphs previewing WC3L. I'll be doing an interview tomorrow regarding the same thing, you should be able to find the link to that probably here or on myEG.net as well.

Today I had a necessary win against TeD in NGL ONE. There is definitely room for improvement on my side - if Orc is as imba as some people say it is, I should never lose a map again. (ohh sarcasm, my dear friend)

I meant that part about improvement though=)

We'll also be going somewhat earlier to China, Beijing, to get settled in, rested and definitely some LAN experience practice once again before starting, hopefully.

Netherlands vs Norway

2009-05-19T21:15:00.005+02:00

Will update later here when I got time. But u can discuss here.

WTV failed @ g1 creo/me. We'll try to get it in g2.

Was TR, AI is next.

Here's match link:

http://www.esl.eu/eu/enc/2009/wc3/clanwar/qr3/match/13278344

Aw man that's really bad haha ;D I wanted to play too showy, that I end up giving away g2 easily and losing on g3 at a macro strat (his micro wasnt so good at g1, but his mind is really good as always ofc). Well I just felt weird playing against Creo, should've played 100% at all games but this is how it went.

Felt like I didn't have much to win playing against an Inactive player (even one so good as creo), but if I knew I might lose I would have just played grunt/raid/walker at g2 -.-

At least Rdam won his match against Targa.. =X

End of Birthday Party ...and Shootout results!

2009-05-18T18:20:00.005+02:00

Thanks to everyone who visited yesterday. It turned out to be a really special day for me, and I hope for everyone. I had no idea how it would turn out exactly. I knew about ~25 people would be attending who are in some way related to me through gaming - friends, acquaintances, and some interesting strangers. That's apart from the family that visited.

I'd like to thank everyone again for the great presents I received! I got about 15 books I think (that'll take me until the end of the year 2009?), I got a couple of movies which otherwise I may have never found out about, and flowers. Some special beers (I'm not a big drinker but I like trying a few special flavours from other parts in the world - Belgian and German beers) and even a neat bag of M&M's to go with one of the movies.

A visitor from the east of Germany brought a guitar (he says he brings it everywhere he goes), and while he started with a modest birth day song (which was the first song I got for my birth day this year), later on the guitar took a life if its own. He was playing on it and people were singing along. It's not as lame as it may sound to you - you'd have to be there, but while I was playing the Warcraft 1v1 Shootout tourney, I was utterly enjoying the live music on the background. My mother was singing along, and guys as well.

One guy even has singing/guitar skills by himself, and he was singing some cool rock song - he was really quite good! (ikbencool)

Well, it started at 1 PM but one guy was too early... I had Boomz0r pretend he didn't formally come in yet. I was considering whether I shall leave him to wait outside for the smallest of moments. What? I didn't actually tell him that :D although he did ask "are you going to make me wait outside?". I quickly opened the door further and let him in - social faux-pas avoided.

It went on till 1 AM actually! After I had played about 10 matches, a group of people had to go so we proceeded to awarding some prizes. When I mentioned I was going to send the first prize to someone, a lot of people echoed my private thoughts by yelling out that eea)ReaL. should win the prize! I agreed with them, and a loud applause and cheering ensued. He got his pick of a mouse pad and I think he was very happy with it. Congratulations to eea)ReaL. for being the closest to defeat me, using a DH+Mass hunt + AP rush strategy!

Second prize went to Tadpole for doing the most efficient execution of strategy with the least mistakes (apart from losing, of course). He went home around midnight in order to catch the last train.

Third prize was awarded to jmt, who, although he didn't play, won the lucky draw of the evening and took home the 3rd mouse pad.

to all the winners!

Thanks to all the other participants of the tournament as well: Kiezel, Zerter, morflinQue, WDG.Kevin, FunFunAll, Mista_Masta, Ins0mnia, Syophan, Infantrist and ikbencool.

Special mention to Ins0mnia who, although admittedly playing practically the worst of all, was the only one to score a hero kill on me. The crowd erupted in mad cheers - he was all suave coolness as he wore his sunglasses (inside the house. at night.) and laughed while losing footmen to green creepcamps and killing my hero subsequently.

Cassandra and me had so much fun, we'd definitely like to do this again next year. Even though she had to spend a lot of time cooking for more than a score of hungry youngsters :D It was ideal for me. Great sushi, great time, meeting great new people and even playing some WC3! xD

In the Middle of the Shoot out at my Birth day party

2009-05-17T20:53:00.003+02:00

We started the shoot-out now, and after discussing with everyone at the party we decided to do it the classical way; 2 pc's and a new challenger every map.

We carried down Cassandra's and my PC and stationed them on the living room table and we've got a default gear (for the people that didn't bring their own stuff - a few people did ;).

So far I've played 5 people, Zerter (NL), Kiezel (NL), morflinQue (DE), WDG.Kevin (NL), FunFunAll (DE). At the end I've gotta judge who performed the best ( or, if I lost, I guess there could be no doubt) and they'll walk away with the prizes. We've got 3 hardwares to give away, namely professional gaming mouse pads.

It's turning out to be really fun. I don't know everyone who turned up (although now of course I do), but such an interesting assortment of people showed up. We've got a father of 2 girls, people from East and West of Germany, and the coolest Dutch people that exist.

IkBenCool is playing on the guitar now (which a German brought) and I'm about to play my 6th opponent now - Mista_Masta. There's about 20 people signed up for the tournament so I won't be done any time soon yet =D but it's really fun.

Greets and more later,
Grubby

What do you do for a living?

2009-05-16T16:05:00.008+02:00

When I'm asked that question in the Netherlands, it always gives me pause. Either I give a vague answer or I answer truthfully. If I answer vaguely, I can usually dodge the question because it's not polite to dig when someone is being vague. At the same time, I try to remain polite and not throwing up a "verbal wall" where someone is like "whoops, did I just stir a trauma patient?"

A mixture of respect, skepticism and disbelief

The other choice is saying that I'm an independent entrepeneur; a professional gamer; an esports athlete."So you play computer gameS?" is often the retort. It's a question mingled with a mixture of respect, disdain, disbelief all at the same time. People usually cannot hide their first reaction very well, when they are surprised by something like that. Invariably, the stereotype makes its entrance in my conversation partner's mind. They take another good look at my physique; perhaps my eyes are a bit squarish, and perhaps those pants are more baggy than they looked like at first sight.

My dear readers, this blog continues at:

http://myeg.net/blogs/user_blog.php?blog_id=350

A party invitation to all Dutch Warcraft III Gamers

2009-05-14T16:37:00.007+02:00

Hey Dutch Warcraft III Gamers!

You are all invited to Grubby's birthday party this coming Sunday. Any Dutch Warcraft III gamers or even any gamers living near to The Netherlands(eg, Cologne) are welcome to the party to socialize with the other Dutch gamers.

Here's where and when the party is happening:

Venue : Grubby's home in Nieuwegein in the province of Utrecht, The Netherlands. Email cassandrappg@gmail.com for the address if you are interested to join us for the party.
Date: Sunday, 17th May 2009
Time: opens from 1pm
Snacks: Help yourself to lots of home-made Japanese Sushi (Egg roll sushi, Salmon sushi, Tuna sushi, Prawn sushi and Salad Prawn Sushi..)
Drinks: soft drinks, beer, cocktails..

No need to bring any presents, but if you really want to, Grubby likes English science fiction and fantasy books, doesn't matter if it's first-hand or second-hand.

Warcraft Shootout Tournament
A Warcraft III 1on1 shoot-out tournament will be held at the party in the evening (We'll arrange two computers). We are giving away some equipments as prizes. Do bring your own equipment if you want the best conditions for your play!

See you there!!

Greets,
Manuel and Cassandra

EG, SteelSeries, GomTV

2009-05-13T15:36:00.009+02:00

Hi everyone,

It's been less than a month since I've been in team Evil Geniuses. And I already feel snugly at home. I think a lot of people are wondering how it looks like to be on a team from the inside. I hope one day you will find out, but at least I can say that there's almost always more to know than you can see from the outside!

Inside EG
So how does it look like in EG? Well, as you may know I've been talking to EG since before we actually joined on April 16th. Since then I've been sending in feedback for their website development team. It seems my Warcraft 3 expertise can be applied in other areas too, like sniffing down bugs on HTTP's. Hoping they'll fix them soon, although I think the website is already serviceable and pleasant to use! But when they fix 'em we should be able to stay logged in and so forth.

Travels
Even though we had only been in EG for a short while, they already quickly took care of our travel expenses for ESWC Korea. That was quite worrying before, when we weren't sure whether Frontspawn was going to survive or not (and especially when we knew they weren't). If we had no team, we'd have to pay our own travels if we wanted to go to ESWC Korea. I've done so a lot in the past when I was in 4Kings, but it costed me a lot (the prize money I won was more than enough to earn it back, but 'twas still a big drain... if you consider how often I went to Asia & America and so on).

Redeeming myself
For my team I and for myself I felt bit bad that I finished poorly in ESWC, but shit happens sometimes. Looking at the bright side, I met a bunch of EG peeps and we did some promo vids (in which they said I did really well, so luckily I had a redeeming quality there in Korea). What I really want is to perform well under EG's flag though so I can make them proud.

Tested out this new SS product..
Being in a team can mean more than just playing, giving interviews, getting paid and going to tournaments. There's a certain excitement involved in being allowed to test new products before anyone else gets a chance to do so. Getting free stuff is one of the best parts of being a pro-gamer. Eventually I'd like to work very closely with peripheral companies to give them my feedback on how the products could be better. Recently I had a chance to test a new product that SteelSeries is developing. I can't say much about it yet because it's classified, but I'm looking very much forward to doing more playing time with it. It seems great... It should be very exciting for people who like gaming equipment. Well, I guess we might find out soon what it is =P

GomTV
Oh guys have you heard about GomTV? They'll be holding an invitational league soon, here's part of their announcement:
"GOM has planed GOMtv World Invitational for WARCRAFT 3!! ( hereinafter to as the ‘GWI’ )
GWI will be an on-line warcraft 3 frozen throne league. GOM staffs make the best line-up like Sky, Lyn, Grubby, Moon, etc."

Another new tournament for Warcraft 3! And who said we're dying out? =D

13 May - The News

2009-05-13T07:36:00.002+02:00

What have I been doing recently? Well of course I've had my birthday, and although I didn't officially hold a party, nearly all my close family came to visit (most of it in surprise). It turned out to be very fun.

New practice structure
I've also been trying to create a new practice structure; I can't reveal exactly how, but it's safe to say that there's more to practice than just "playing a lot of games" and "watching replays". The "how" matters just as much. I'm practicing every day to achieve targets that I've set for myself. If I don't reply as much to queries, don't stream at the moment or if I'm not on-line on MSN as much - it's because I'm trying to get into the zone for WC3L Finals and what's beyond.

For the rest, I haven't read news the whole day yesterday and took a quick look to get a summary.

The news

I just read that 4Kings is acquiring a new team for CounterStrike:Source. It strikes me as odd that they are hiring new teams (whether for some, low or no salary - it doesn't matter. Even sponsorship for travel means expenses)... when they still have so much debts to the old 4Kings.wc3 team. And it's not like they paid off even one single euro since we left the team.

EPS Germany coming to a close - SoKoL and dArk doing well for themselves, currently residing at 2nd/3rd place. XlorD dominant as usual, with a flawless season comprised of only victories. Say what you want about the level of EPS.DE, but I think it's definitely not low. And even then, getting straight wins every season implies a consistency of gameplay and level that's admirable nonetheless. HLA at unexpected 4th place (I thought he was half-inactive?) and HasuObs sharing that 4th place with him.

ReiGn playing Orc against Top Undeads FoV & TeD (both of whom I will play in the next playday), winning 3 out of 5 maps. He was always good with Orc against Undead ever since many years ago, as UD's would help each other practice by playing Orc against the other (especially on LT). That's how FoV developed some of his special strategies back in the day, because Undeads have more patience with each other than an Orc and Undead have with each other (don't ask me why).

Team Giants - a new WC3 contestant for Team Leagues. Interesting constellation of players and obviously I wish SocceR the best of luck in this new team. They have the potential to break into WC3L if they can stick together and play to the best of their abilities. Suggested 2v2 team; SocceR & Elfi.

A day from NGL ONE to ZOTAC

2009-05-09T16:28:00.002+02:00

So I took it quite easy while at the same time preparing timings which I felt would work. Without pressurizing myself too much. I picked up a 2-0 win against LiiLD.C. in NGL ONE as a result. That puts me back to shared rank #2 (instead of shared rank #3), with only Lyn leading at #1.

I went right on to play ZOTAC, whose admins had a fair understanding that it'd be running a little late, luckily I'm usually seeded so that means I get freewin first round.

Then I saw that they put Road to Stratholme in the map pool, well I can only imagine that they did this to give some disadvantage to Orc cuz this map is really bad for Orc =D maybe they want more non-Orc ZOTAC winners. Anyway, it's only in R2 so it doesn't matter for the Single Elim Bo1 bracket, but I can imagine that it's probably in the map pool now, so other races can pick it in Quarters/Semis/Finals.

Haven't really looked at who else is playing yet, so I'll just take it 1 game by 1 game! Gonna have some lunch now, be back later here to discuss my games =)

Greets
Grubby

Coming home to Netherlands

2009-05-09T02:10:00.003+02:00

I got home on May 7th, somewhat in the early afternoon. I was able to stay awake until 6 PM, and then I went to sleep. Woke up at 2 AM, decided that that's just too weird, and slept until 5 AM ^^ Since then I've been awake, had to do groceries (our fridge was really empty) had 2 breakfasts, lunch, and watched the replays of WC3L Mouz vs WE. Watched some catch-up replays as well.

Then something funny happened. I went to lie down on the floor in my PC room and I just fell asleep. Slept for like 6 hours ^^ from 5 to 11 PM. So strange... guess it's jet lag or something. Then I woke up, started playing a lot of games (luckily there were still people awake) until they all went to sleep now (2:40 AM).

So my thoughts about being at home: I really miss Seoul's opening times: 24/7 for most important things like food, internet café and metro etc. It's just so strange to come home and realize all stores close at 6 PM except supermarkets which close at 8 or 9 PM usually. Also had a lot of fun with XlorD and Eric strolling the streets of Seoul, playing games and talking trash.

I've also eaten really nice food in Seoul, luckily we were able to find a perfect restaurant when we were with Eric and XlorD so that I could really show them how good a BBQ meal can be with beef Galbi =)

Well in about 12 hours I'll be playing LiiLD.C. for NGL. Currently I'm ranked at #3, shared with ReiGn, with 7-3 score. Above me are Soccer (8-3) and Lyn (8-2) so if I win this one I could at least advance to shared 2nd place. Well there are plenty of matches to go for me (13) so there's margin for error and I shouldn't pressurize myself too much. Just going to have fun and go for the win.

About WE/Mouz: I'm surprised that WE lost even with map choices. Seems like a huge advantage to be able to choose your starting maps especially with the new WC3L system. In hindsight I guess you could say WE had a really bad season, perhaps adjustments to the new system. That means the 4 attending teams will be:

Evil Geniuses
nGize
Mousesports
Wicked

The play-offs grid can be found here: http://www.esl.eu/eu/wc3l/season15_playoffs/rankings/

That's all for now, good morning/good night :P

Upcoming Schedule & Meeting EG CEO

2009-05-05T23:22:00.002+02:00

Next events on my schedule:

WC3L Season 15 Play-offs: 25-27 May
Battle.net Season 7 Europe Regional Finals: date not announced yet
Maybe eStars Seoul? Depends on vote/admin's decision :x
NGL On-line season of course as usual
(next matches: LiiLD.C @ 9 May and LucifroN 16 May)

What I'll be working on: becoming a more perfect player in every sense of the meaning. Even though I don't think my result at ESWC properly reflects my shape at all, I will find an even better formula for performing at top level every time when it matters.

Meeting the CEO
It was great to meet the CEO, the head of website and the CS team from Evil Geniuses. We did a lot of video footage together and I got to know them just a bit better. I also got my EG Team Wear Shirts from them. I'll feel proud about wearing those at the next events I'll be attending :)

By the way, here was my last blog on EG about my stay in Seoul:

http://myeg.net/blogs/user_blog.php?blog_id=307

You can find Happy's blog there as well. Obviously he wouldn't be too happy with 4th place but I think he did great personally.

Hard beds, Lunch, Dinner with mayor

2009-05-02T05:20:00.002+02:00

The bed is hard, the towel is small and there is no shampoo. I guess you should always be prepared when you travel, even to very well off countries like Korea. You never know if you're gonna miss something, and I guess we forgot our shampoo :) at least we got free wi-fi internet (the best, because both me and my manager got our laptop on this trip - so we don't have to share a PC and I can watch replays/read news any time as well).

It's funny when you travel really a lot every year, there's something you may forget, maybe not every time, but every other time. In a way, that's also the charm of it.

The worst part I guess is the bed, I'm quite used to softer beds and in China and Korea the bed can be quite hard sometimes. That's ok if you're used to sleeping on your back (maybe better, even) but I usually sleep on my side and then it doesn't support your skeleton very well, like your spine and neck and so on. And since I'm quite a lean guy, I don't have much meat to cushion myself :P

As a result, my neck hurts a lot and I can hardly turn it sideways... LUCKILY, the screen is always in front of me so I got no problem.

As for the schedule, I heard there are some changes. I never fully trust what I hear about schedules because there may be changes. So I'm like water in that regard as well, just go with the flow. Now I heard we'll already be playing on May 3rd (not 4th), in the evening, after the Korean Qualifiers finish. And the Korean Qualifiers got extended to encompass 2 days (starting today, in like 1 hour.. which is 6:30 AM Dutch Time) and finishing tomorrow morning/afternoon.

Groups will be announced later today I heard, which means evening probably. Which means afternoon Dutch Time (CEST).

--------------------------------------------------

Now we're going to have some lunch and at 15:30 KST we'll be gathering up for a bus. About half of all players will attend the opening ceremony with Korean pop star performances, and about half of the players will attend a privileged banquet with the Mayor of Cheonan. Nicker, Happy, Cassandra and me will be going to the Mayor's dinner party because we arrived yesterday (that's how they separated it).

So long, until next time!

greets,
Grubby

Arriving in Incheon - Arriving in Cheonan

2009-05-01T18:23:00.002+02:00

Hey everyone,

There was a minor delay on my first flight today, so I was worried I wouldn't be making it in time for my connection. Luckily it was only half an hour so it was no problem to make it, and I also think that they inform the connections of such delays.

I brought 3 books on this trip, and already quite quickly wondered if that's been a mistake; I nearly finished the first one. Well, I guess I'll be doing most reading on the airplanes back and forth. That's also the main reason why, to the surprise of many non-gaming friends/family, I usually don't mind long travels at all :-) althoug I must say today's travel was extremely exhausting; no whining just the truth. It's fine really and i dont mind much, because I've slept some on the way.

The book I'm reading now, I think, is so funny and rich in imagination. It's called Mothership, author John Brosnan.

I've brought 140 mb of replays to study when I've got any time. Now it's 1:32 AM Korean Time; and I'll be hitting the sack soon. I've been told that tomorrow there will be the opening ceremony, and they've also decided to move the Korean Qualifier forward. So around afternoon in Europe, and in the morning in USA already, we should know who will be the last 2 extra Korean players to join ESWC Cheonan. Any time I got I'll be looking at replays, hehe.

There was not much to eat around here when we arrived (23.30), only one eating bar/café with fried chicken, so I went for it. It fills the stomach pretty ok. Hope to find some Korean food tomorrow! &_&

Good night all and talk to you later,
Grubby

ESWC Korea

2009-04-30T05:35:00.004+02:00

Hey everybody. Been busy with getting myself ready for ESWC Korea. Haven't traveled for a while now (not sure if I still know how to do so). Wrote a little blog on the details of ESWC Korea which will be happening from May 2 to May 5. Well, I'll be playing May 4 & 5, but there's opening ceremony and so on.

EG.Happy will be going as well! Hopefully we're not in the same group ;)

My blog on ESWC Korea:

http://myeg.net/blogs/user_blog.php?blog_id=282

Alright now it's off to pack some more, and squeeze in some replay study, and possibly some sleep ;) (although the flight might be good for sleep too)

WC3L rankings analysis - Season almost over

2009-04-28T03:21:00.003+02:00

I was just taking a look at the WC3L rankings (WC3L Rankings) and took to analysing the current situation.

If you're interested, read my blog on EG !! http://myeg.net/blogs/user_blog.php?blog_id=264

Grubby vs Remind in NGL ONE

2009-04-27T14:47:00.003+02:00

ReMinD 17:00 CET
NGL ONE

Remind's had a very strong run recently, winning 8 out of his last 10 matches.
He's a player with strong micro and precise play style. I'll have to bring my best game to beat him.
GL HF!

Unfortunately I lost 0/2. In game 1 I had a bit too few grunts because of setting different priorities, and losing 1 grunt. I was completely geared towards fending off harassment, but all he did was creeping. It gave him better hero levels than me which is fatal.

In game 2 my peon didn't scout his base properly so I was misjudging his position for a bit. I was also left behind creeping-wise since he picked up the Rock Golem 6 @ merc camp before I arrived. It's just really stupid by me... Ironic that when I thought my micro is very good, that I make errors in decision making and scouting. Never really entered a fair fight because I was too fair behind, so nothing much micro could do =(

/QRY GRUBBY @ ESL TV starting 19:00 (now!)

2009-04-26T18:57:00.003+02:00

http://tv.esl.eu/de/program/view/38944/

For those who missed the LIVE stream, here's the VOD:
(This free VOD is in low quality, if you would like to watch it in high quality, you will need to sign up for ESL's premium service.)
http://tv.esl.eu/de/vod/view/21260

Greets,
Grubby

Shy in NGL

2009-04-26T04:22:00.007+02:00

I'll be facing Shy in NGL a few hours before Happy will be playing Fly in NGL. I play at 16:00 CET on 26th of April.

Shy is a player with a pretty good standard. I lost to him in KODE5 LAN finals, beat him in Warcraft 3 WorldWar and probably some online results. In WC3L, Shy just lost 0/2 to LucifroN. But in NGL Shy's beaten Lyn 2/1 and Fly 2/0. It's my intent to be the first Orc that beats him in NGL!

Doing some last-minute practicing now and then I'll have a sleep and get up fresh, warm up and hopefully play according to my best shape.

For my post-game analysis, read my blog on EG!

http://myeg.net/blogs/user_blog.php?blog_id=243

Ciara's blog: Season 7 and EPS.SCA

2009-04-25T03:28:00.003+02:00

Hello Peps!

So around 3-4 PM today i gave up on season 7 ladder after getting sniped 3 time by the same orc player, (who i suspect to be lucifron).
Really kind of disappointed by the way people are playing season ladder, specially thoes helping out teammates to make it to lan over someone more qualified to do so, seeing as he could do it on his OWN AND DIDNT NEED HELP, not saying i could make it lan alone, but was rank 4 or so with only like 2 days to go.
but after getting sniped a few times i totally gave up. guess i should explain what sniping means ( when a high level player get hold of a low level account and use it to take experience from other top level players, practually the high level guy got nothing to win, and everything to lose when facing a lower level)

not to sure who got into the top 6 yet, but pretty sure grubby and demuslim did, thoes two (.....)

Continue reading Ciara's blog at http://myeg.net/

Replay Analysis - Complete

2009-04-24T23:50:00.001+02:00

Tired from streaming and talking nonstop :)

I'm going to read all those comments for sure! Maybe not answer them all...? (200+). Haha. Good night guys.

Get on www.mogulus.com/followgrubby !

2009-04-24T21:17:00.002+02:00

It might take me an hour more or so to get everything set up, but I'm going to do that streaming replay thing soon! And celebrate ^_^

I wanna give everyone the chance to tune in, especially those users who sent in their replays. So I'll wait until 22:00

at 22:00 I start streaming replays and discussing !

Season 7 Concludes in 48 minutes - placings all but cemented?

2009-04-24T20:07:00.001+02:00

Seed A vs Seed 6
Seed B vs Seed 5
Seed 1 vs Seed 4
Seed 2 vs Seed 3

A = Happy (1)
B = SaSe (2)
1 = LucifroN (3)
2 = Grubby (4)
3 = DeMusliM (5)
4 = NightEnd (6)
5 = ThomasG (7)
6 = Vortix (8)

That would mean Round 1 of Blizzard Europe Regional Play-offs (unless something changes):
Upper half WB:
Happy vs Vortix
Grubby vs DeMusliM

Lower half WB:
LucifroN vs NightEnd
SaSe vs ThomasG

Season 7 Ladder Ends in 54 minutes

2009-04-24T19:11:00.007+02:00

http://myeg.net/blogs/user_blog.php?blog_id=229

That's a blog I wrote in relation to this ranking:

#1 LucifroN Exp: 14,875
#2 Grubby Exp: 14,737
#3 NightEnd Exp: 14,553
#4 Vortix Exp: 14,548
#5 ThomasG Exp: 14,552
#6 DeMusliM Exp: 14,478
#7 Nicker59 Exp: 14,441

Updated 19:20:
#1 LucifroN Exp: 14,875
#2 Grubby Exp: 14,737
#3 NightEnd Exp: 14,553
#4 ThomasG Exp: 14,552
#5 Vortix Exp: 14,548
#6 DeMusliM Exp: 14,510(+32)
#7 Nicker59 Exp: 14,473(+32)

Updated 19:44:
#1-5 No change
#6 DeMusliM Exp: 14,545(+35)
#7 Nicker59 Exp: 14,426(-47)

Updated 20:06:
#1 LucifroN Exp: 14,875
#2 Grubby Exp: 14,737
#3 DeMusliM Exp: 14,561 (+51)
#4 NightEnd Exp: 14,553
#5 ThomasG Exp: 14,552
#6 Vortix Exp: 14,548
#7 Nicker59 Exp: 14,343 (- a LOT)

Seems like the battle has been done..?

It seems I am out of the woods! Just a race between last 2-3 guys!

Good luck in the army, JLS!

2009-04-24T18:14:00.002+02:00

Hey everyone,

JustLittleStar is a long-time fan of 4Kings and its players, and fan of wherever they went. And now I consider him a friend. He will be going into the army tomorrow. (Read his comment in my blog of "Evil Geniuses 5-0 against Colorful"). The conscription law in the Netherlands was abolished about 15 years ago, if memory serves correctly. It made it so none of my brothers and me had to go into the army unless we wanted to. I have very little to say about it, because I have no idea about what it's like. So I'll keep it short and say that I hope I will be seeing more of you.

And I'd just like to wish you (JustLittleStar) the best of times, and luck, and so forth. :)

Greets,
Grubby

Evil Geniuses 5-0 against Colorful

2009-04-23T20:10:00.003+02:00

Relieved
I'm so glad that we reached our goal of 5-0 :D I felt myself to be in a shape where I could beat anybody, and Happy seemed calm and sure of what we must do as well. So I was literally like: any host, any time, I can wait as long as you want, I can feel hungry/tired/bored, it doesn't matter. I just played every time the game was ready and I must say that it's good to get that 5-0.

2v2 was hard
Overall I would say the hardest Bo3 series of the 5 was the 2v2. (...)

To read the rest of my blog (tee hee ;), please visit http://myEG.net

Happy's second blog

2009-04-23T06:25:00.003+02:00

Happy wrote his second blog - which is quite a long blog by the way - about getting visa for South Korea and also about his games from the clanwar against Wicked.

Happy:
Hello everyone, this is my second blog, and it will be much longer than the previous one! In this blog i will tell what just happend in previous few days and what is gonna happen in next two weeks!

So, week began from me with sleepless night because i had to leave home early to visit Korean Embassy (i prefer to not sleep whole night than go sleep early and wake up early so wasnt any difficult for me). I left at 7 AM or something like this and gladly, i passed the usual crowd in the Moscow Underground (in the morning its crowded to hell, that u hardly can go into the train, because everyone is going to center of Moscow). I arrived like half of hour before the embassy opened so i just walked around to breathe some fresh air :D. Well, when it opened i was first one to give my application, but unfortunately they said since im not employed or studying officially (i doubt writing my job as a PRO-GAMER would make it look good :P) so they asked me to bring some paper showing if i was ever employed/studying anywhere. That made me kinda angry because i usually never got told anything like this. Since the embassy was opened for accepting applications only from 9 to 12 AM, i needed to go home and come back, but though the road from home to embassy without being rushed was little bit more than one hour. Considering that i wasnt feeling myself filled with power (i actually was about to fall asleep :D) It was pretty hard sprint running for me, however everything went fine and my application was accepted. After i paid them the fee for visa (30$) i left for home, when i came here feeling good i fell asleep till 8 PM or something like this. Same day ive got my new devices from SteelSeries - ive tried it.....

To read the rest of Happy's blog, click HERE

Level 34.

2009-04-23T01:22:00.000+02:00

Level 34.

One month anniversary

2009-04-22T18:30:00.004+02:00

Happy anniversary to everyone who's been coming here. Today's the day that it was exactly 1 month ago when Followgrubby.Blogspot.com was launched. We've got close to 70,000 page views which I think is a fantastic showing. Let's celebrate ... yay ! xD

So much has happened in one month! Namely:

I've started streaming on XFire
I've started streaming on Mogulus
I started up MyBrute (but my char sucks... TT)
Bootcamp with Leon
Played and won NGL, WC3L, ZOTAC matches
Playing the Season 7 pro ladder
We joined Team Evil Geniuses!!!

And the coming month is looking to be no less eventful... :)

Evil Geniuses 5-0 against WickeD

2009-04-21T20:58:00.004+02:00

Great news guys. We won 5-0!! What..? Oh? you already knew? Well it's still great! :D

I'm glad we won our first match under EG tag! That should make Intel, SteelSeries, Peregrine, Kingston, Nuclear Fallout Servers, Divo Networks (ventrilo.net) happy! And reason for EG to not kick us right away... xD

And now, as usual, I missed my lunch, so I'm pretty hungry - off to the kitchen to find some grilled chicken/potato which Cassandra left for me. And afterwards.. probably play some Season 7 and answer queries of users here. It's taking increasingly much time to read everyone's comment, reply to everyone and so on, but it's really fun so I'll try. Don't shoot me if I missed your comment =) I pretty much tend to read everything of course.

To read the rest of my blog, please visit
http://myeg.net/blogs/user_blog.php?blog_id=183

(P.s. you can subscribe to the blog @ EG, if you want to followgrubby @ EG :)

Cheers,
Grubby

Level 33, chaps! Arthas, it's about time!

2009-04-21T05:14:00.005+02:00

Keep in mind, you can look at older topics of my blog on the right in the navigation bar. The most recent items are listed by title, or you can dig through the archives of the respective month (March or April). I'm amazed by the massive interest in this blog; we started out on March 22, so the day after tomorrow (or tomorrow, technically) it will be 1 month. And we've already got over 65,000 page views! Really amazing :)

I can see in the analytics that there's always a good amount of first-time visitors, so in case you missed any of my previous blogs, don't miss the one right below this one, so you can vote for your favourite players/teams! (Hopefully Grubby, Happy and EG.CS :)

As for now I can go to bed slightly late after doing a fairly good stint of Season 7 Laddering. I used to think that 40 games per day exhausts me a lot, but today I feel fairly good and unimpressed by the amount! Yesterday I had 32 games, of which I lost 3 or 4.. and today I lost 3 games early in the day, and then no more. I did have one disconnect though, so totals to about 4. Still, won the other 36 games and I went up in ranking steadily!

My goal was to increase my level by 1 1/2 , and I did exactly that! I went from 31,5 to 33. I'm now sitting pretty on rank #3 - above me are DeMusliM and LucifroN. LucifroN's got a fair lead, but DeMusliM ain't too far off. I'm really happy that I made it, and also well ahead of schedule. This means I can put more concentration and time into preparation for the clan war of tomorrow first and foremost... Evil Geniuses (god, feels good to say that, compared to HGC, or exMYM) against WickeD! Anticipating this match with a great enthusiasm; hopefully we can get maximum points!

What a simply super day! Oh, gosh, yes!

Salad Days

Best.

eStars Seoul - The community decides

2009-04-20T22:51:00.002+02:00

This blog gonna be a real quickie, as I've got to make up for time in Ladder Season 7. Namely because I just disconnected a game (luckily my first and only so far) in Season 7. How annoying it is to lose all that effort. Not to mention the game was 100% over =p

But I should consider myself lucky it was just the one game... anyway..

VOTE NOW!

Community decides, guys. eStars always lets the fans vote so that everyone's favourite teams can be seen in action at this great event. And teams / players will try to influence the way the fans vote... by telling them who to vote for. I'm not like that... but I'm going to leave a faint suggestion in the trend of: it would be very nice if Happy and Grubby could both attend eStars!!!

Moreover while you're taking a vote, why not throw EG.USA a bone? See how their new Hybrid American/ European (Lurppis) is going to do at their first event. =)

As for now, it's back to the Net where all we do is Battle: Battle.Net!

Greets,
Grubby

92%+ win rate

2009-04-19T23:59:00.003+02:00

Ok, thank you to all the users who sent in replays. The more, the better, so I can make the most suitable choice :) I will take my pick and stream the game(s) with some commentary; that way, even when my stream could be laggy, it will be worth it no matter what. I haven't set a date for it yet.

I can't promise exactly when I will do my next stream (sorry to all the people who message me on BNet begging for the stream to start!!), because I'm quite worried about not making it for the S7 and as I've said before it takes more time to play with Streaming. It's also more fun, but sometimes I gotta choose for qualifying to a tournament instead, hehe.

Meanwhile I will still be writing blogs with interestings things going on and so forth, so there's no need to get bored. For now my schedule is looking like this:

Tuesday 21 April 2009
WC3L against WickeD (Playday 9)
16:30 CET
Statement and match link: http://www.esl.eu/eu/wc3l/season15/match/12512125/

Thursday 23 April 2009
WC3L against Colorful (Playday 11)
16:00 CET
Match link: http://www.esl.eu/eu/wc3l/season15/match/12512177/

On April 24,25 Happy's got his NGL matches (he won his first official game under EG tag, let's hope he'll get 3 out of 3! :)
On April 26,27 I've got my two NGL matches (against who? Too far off to worry about! :P)

The Pro Ladder is closing up on 24th of April at 21:00 CET, so I've got like 4 1/2 days to make it to Top 6. And on two of those days, we've got a WC3L war (which takes up practice time + match time !!)

I'm sleeping good time, and eating my 3 meals a day properly, taking care of myself so I don't get a burn-out. But at the same time, I've got to pretty much play all day - and maintain at least like 92% win rate to keep going up in the experience points steadily!!!

Grubby signing out

Grubby's interview at myLGN.com

2009-04-19T19:54:00.002+02:00

myLGN.com: After MYM dropped their Wc3 squad, and SC squad, what was your initial reaction?
Grubby: I was shocked that MYM could make such a big mistake to drop the WC3 team without further negotiations, and after investing so heavily into it for years. Or in my case - for a year. Generally I don't think a team should pick me up and keep me for only a year, just when we're trying to build up something together. But things don't always turn out as planned.
I felt that ESNation dropping Starcraft showed that they have no interest in the future of eSports and continuing in it. Having a Starcraft team right now probably implies that you are prepping a team for Starcraft II. Outside of Korea Starcraft isn't that big anymore, so it's usually for that reason I guess. I felt bad for the MYM SC guys that I met, though, because I like them a lot.

myLGN.com: Are you interested in becoming the next Fatal1ty? Making yourself into a Brand, with Grubby mice, headsets, keyboards, etc?
Grubby: If I have the opportunity, I would love to do that. It's always been my dream to do so. I respect Fatal1ty a lot and what he's accomplished, so definitely.

myLGN.com: Have you tried to approach companies like Steel Series or Intel about doing that?
Grubby: I believe when the time is right, it will happen.

myLGN.com: Aside from the WC3L season, what do you have planned for the immediate future?
Grubby: ESWC Korea is confirmed for me. Additionally I'm playing the NGL Season 6 which would have me go to the LAN Finals hopefully. Moreover I hope very much that there's a chance I go to eStars and Blizzcon through Season7 ladder.

myLGN.com: With all the conflict with teams dropping players, what is your opinion on Moon' new contract with WMF for 16K euro per month?
Grubby: Moon is an internationally acclaimed top eSports player. His worth is as high as someone is willing to pay for it. We cannot look inside Moon's or WMF's pockets or heads. Actually I'd sooner congratulate Moon on such a great deal than begrudge him for it =)
Having said that, it's a very high salary and if it's true then I think he doesn't have to win much tournaments to make a living. But is he capable of it? I should think so, yeah. If he finds the proper motivation, he can be very good again.

To read the rest (or the larger part) of the interview, Click HERE.

Even a pro-gamer can take a rest, right? :)

2009-04-18T22:06:00.002+02:00

Hey everyone,

No live streaming today, and a bit of a late (but necessary late) start on my pro laddering for today ;) Next thing I'll do for streaming is analyse a user-submitted replay in a difficult match-up, for example Orc vs Ne when he's playing Druids of the Talon. Find a place to submit the replay, post the link here and I'll choose one to analyse. It's fun to point out mistakes even when the Orc wins, but for the purpose of this 'lesson', I suppose it would be best if you (or your orc friend) loses!

greets,
Grubby

EG has such a scary Logo, don't you think?

2009-04-18T05:22:00.005+02:00

I spoke to my mother on the phone yesterday, to guide her through some PC problems. She's been becoming increasingly independent and knowledgeable (I used to think mothers are hopeless) and sometimes she surprises me positively. For example: it was my mother that told me, "if you don't like SK's new formatting, why don't you just change it back to white?" And I'm like, taking a deep sigh, and saying, "no, mom, they changed it to black. I know it sucks for reading stuff, but you can't just change it back." And my mom was like "Yes you can, you just press the black A on white background at the top of the page." And I'm like, "......" What the hell! I never taught her that! :D

So while we were talking through some things, she mentioned that she thinks the EG logo is rather scary. (...)

If you want to read more, please visit www.myEG.net :)

Grubby and Alex answers a few questions on Fragster.de

2009-04-17T17:29:00.007+02:00

fragster: What made you think that Team EG is the right organization for you and your team mates?

Manuel Schenkhuizen: Let's be simplistic. I've talked many times with Alex Garfield, the CEO, and I think he's a very competent manager. We've got a great website. I'm able to come with my whole team (I'm loyal to my team, man!), and we've got the backing of great sponsors, namely Intel, SteelSeries, Peregrine, Kingston HyperX, NuclearFallout Servers, Ventrilo.net. Ever since first talking to Alex, I've had a really good feeling about this possibility. And now that the possibility has come to truth, I couldn't be more happy.

Alex, lots of people saw eSports getting in trouble with teams and clans breaking down. How come that you are able to get such top tier players?

Alex Garfield: Well, I think that EG is first of all very fortunate because of having partners in Intel, SteelSeries, Peregrine, and Kingston that are both loyal and dedicated to our organization. We all feel very blessed. At the same time, I think that we've also been able to retain these partners because we think of execute, creative, innovative ways to provide them with marketing value. They wouldn't be supporting us if it weren't worth the expense, so I believe that is to our credit.

At the end of the day, I think that in eSports you must show your partners that the return on investment offered to them via sponsorship is better, and more cost-effective than traditional marketing methods. You don't want to be viewed as experimental marketing by your partners, because if that happens, you'll be the first item on the list cut if there's a budget crunch. I think that we've been able to establish EG as a brand that offers really valuable return on investment for its sponsors.

To read the rest of the interview, Click HERE

Added new video's to www.mogulus.com/followgrubby !

2009-04-17T14:37:00.004+02:00

Hi everyone! I've added some new videos to the mix on my mogulus stream. I think I should take the ones you've probably seen the most often down by now, particularly the Game 1, Game 2, Game 3 of WCG against Moon - since they're quite long also. I can put them up again later if you guys think they should be in.

So I'm taking WCG 1,2,3 and the WCG tribute movie out of the cycle for now.

For now I'd like say that I've uploaded the movie "Destiny of the World" - created by Vietnamese Gamers from clan INF. Specifically, the creator is called "SleepingMoon". It's definitely a very good movie and I got goosebumps at some moments (when the music really coincided very well with what was going on in the screenplay).

I hope they don't mind me uploading it, but I think it was a public video.
It's 12 minutes and 36 seconds long.

The other video I've recently added is Grubby vs FuRy @ OnGameNet Studio, from winter 2004. Cool to look back at those times with 4K - definitely some of the best in my career. It's 13 minutes 59 seconds long. Thanks to Roman for sending it to me!

Ciara - Happy - Grubby - Blogs at EG

2009-04-17T02:16:00.004+02:00

Just thought you might like to know, it's probably Happy's first blog ever, I don't know about Ciara, could be his first as well :)

Everyone wrote whatever they were doing or thinking of at that point, you can read the blogs on http://www.myEG.net

Ciara
Happy
Grubby

We're now part of team Evil Geniuses!

2009-04-17T01:55:00.006+02:00

I am still listening to the Live-on-3 (DjWheat's show, http://www.djwheat.tv/live/ ), so I've got to be brief!

But I've got some really, really, really great news! Happy, Ciara and me, with WC3 team manager Cassandra, will be joining team Evil Geniuses.

You can find their website on http://www.myEG.net.

I want to really thank EG and their sponsors, namely:
--Intel
--SteelSeries
--Peregrine
--Kingston HyperX
--NuclearFallout Servers
--Ventrilo.net

For making this possible.

Greets,
Grubby

p.s.:
http://myeg.net/article/article_detail.php?article_id=35

the EG.Wc3 announcement is up! :)

Featured Question of the Day ^^

2009-04-17T01:06:00.000+02:00

Featured question of today:

nice games...but i have a question, why you do not stream early in ur carear your ladder games? i think its a good idea to obtain a bigger fanbase

sry for my english :D
HR.Kelzork | 04.16.09 - 4:05 pm | #

Dear HR.Kelzork,

Earlier in my career, I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it as much as I do now. I've also been afraid to reveal too much of my strategies. But now, strategies don't change too much anymore anyway. That's still a slight concern but it's too fun anyway not to do it.

Lastly, I never really found the correct tools, programs and websites to stream before ^^ I only recently learned of such nice programs as Xfire, Mogulus, Camtasia+Adobe Encoder, and Pro Caster (which is what I used today^^)

greets,
Grubby

Today's stream at an end (16 apr)

2009-04-16T21:57:00.000+02:00

Today's streaming at an end.

Thanks everyone for watching! As usual, I'm deadly hungry :) So I'm going to grab a bite to eat. (we gotta cook it first)

Good night to all, or for American viewers, good day.

You may leave your comments here about today's stream.

More streaming tonight!

2009-04-16T14:45:00.000+02:00

No exact time yet... but I will stream with the new program. Should be in between 7 and 10 PM or so. I will be more specific after I play sting at 6 PM for NGL.

greets,
Grubby

Sting - New streaming program

2009-04-16T01:54:00.002+02:00

Sorry that I didn't blog or stream today, it's because I've been very busy with some things like making phone calls and answering e-mails. Also I got kinda shocked when I realised it's going to be very difficult to make top 6 this time; especially since I'm so far behind. I can't take it easy anymore - I've got to go TRUE ZADROT STYLE! (If you don't know what Zadrot means, ask JustLittleStar :P)

Tomorrow I've got a match against Sting for NGL which I think will be very difficult. He's very strong in Orc mirror and has beaten me in practice recently. Nonetheless, I need to take the point for there are probably even more difficult opponents awaiting me in NGL.

Epic news: I've also got a cool new program for streaming games, so next time the stream should be even better. More fluent, less lag for me and overall faster! :>

Greets,
Grubby

New video added - Mogulus Followgrubby

2009-04-15T03:28:00.003+02:00

*New video added to my Mogulus programming*

If you forgot the link:

http://www.mogulus.com/followgrubby

I've added a new video from my hard disk. It's called "AbuseYouDNA 4th" officially. Made by Fengge, a good friend of mine who's working for Chinese portal TaTaZu.com at the moment. He nicknamed himself "AbuseYouDNA" also, as that was one of my famous Ladder accounts.

I redubbed the file to "Grubby Yesterday", because of the topic and the chosen sound track. It's also meaningful because he's used Evercraft or some such program to view the old classical replays again - me against Insomnia, MaDFroG and suhO, also Moon from WEG Masters 2006 :)

I hope you enjoy watching this video at least half as much as I do! (length: 2 minutes, 9 seconds)

Mogulus Live Programming and Streaming

2009-04-14T21:13:00.006+02:00

First Mogulus Programming Playing NOW!

After working on it for so long, it's quite satisfying that I got it working eventually!
Again, loads of thanks to DeathWing (nl) for guiding me through it. Also thanks to RaGe from Team Liquid for writing the guide on how to do it: GUIDE and thanks to Jos de Kroon (Ret)

I've now got a solid program running of little more than 1 1/2 hours of constant shows!

Follow this link: http://www.mogulus.com/followgrubby

The program for now is:

GoodGame.ru tributary video for me when I attended KODE5 in Moscow (28 seconds)
Grubby vs Moon @ WCG 2008 Finals Game 1 (TR) (25 minutes 27 seconds)
Grubby vs Moon @ WCG 2008 Finals Game 2 (SV) (31 minutes 44 seconds)
Grubby vs Moon @ WCG 2008 Finals Game 3 (TM) (25 minutes 24 seconds)
Grubby fan video by TaTaZu.com from WCG 2008 (9 minutes 34 seconds)

As soon as I start running a Live Show, the standard looping programming will flow over into my First Person VOD. I'm planning to start it some time soon (I wanted to promise now, but I've got a bit more testing to do. Anyway, I always reserve the right to epic fails, and you won't get your money back :> )

So why don't you log-in already? The viewer cap for now is 50, but I've applied for verification and I hope they will grant it soon. I should have a cap of a 1000 viewers then.

I hope the quality is fine for everyone.

Greets
Grubby

Mogulus - flickering problem

2009-04-14T17:01:00.002+02:00

Just like DeathWing was helping me yesterday by updating my XFire and thus solving my problem of not being able to broadcast anymore (and suffering embarassment to everyone who was trying to watch ;) so did he help me today to set up my Mogulus with some streaming programs and encoders.

It has cost me the better part of 3 hours to finally set up everything and I think it's working properly now. I'm going to do some tests and see how it goes.

One thing what it said is that, excessive chat may cause lag for viewers. I expect that there could be quite a lot of chat and thus quite a lot of lag. I'd love to have chat included so I;m going to try that firstly, but if it doesn't work I'll have to disable chat and I'll please redirect you to communicate here on my blog instead :)

When am I going to stream next time? I haven't decided yet. But it could be pretty soon. Stay tuned for updates!

EDIT:

So I might need some help.

Everything works fine in windows. When I tab to fullscreen application Warcraft 3, it flickers continually, like a graphical bug.

When I run WC3 in windowed mode, it's fine (but I prefer not to, as this would impede my ability to play top notch).

Does anyone know whether it's possible at all to stream fullscreen applications correctly? A friend told me he has the same problem and found no solution.

Thanks for help!

Watch my NGL Replays on XFire with me

2009-04-13T19:06:00.004+02:00

Hi everyone! here a quick message:

For my NGL match against HoT I heard the WTV was down. If you want to see replay, why not watch it together with me? I'll be hosting it on XFire at 20:00 CET with live audio commentary. Don't miss your spot! :P

Greets,
Grubby

Xfire stream

p.s.: +5 minute delay

HoT in NGL tomorrow

2009-04-13T00:44:00.002+02:00

Wow... I got so many pupils, hahaha :)

So what am I doing these days? Several things. It's slow times because there hasn't been a LAN tournament for a while, so I'm taking rest as well as trying to learn new strategies for upcoming LAN tournaments. I'm not satisfied with just one strategy so I'm storing up a lot of information in my head. I look at who I will be facing in ESWC Korea, and see if what I'm doing in practice right now is good enough or not.

The practice with mTw.Leon helped a lot because we played many different strategies. I'm also playing ladder to practice against surprises. Meanwhile, On-line leagues trundle onwards. I'm not really doing good in NGL so far with only a 4-2 score, and there's loads of difficult opponents left waiting. Taking it one at a time is always best though, and even 4-2 isn't too bad. My next opponent will be HoT, tomorrow at 6 PM. After that, in the same playday, it will be Sting.

Both are from Wicked, and our next WC3L war also happens to be against Wicked. That means my Orc, Elf and Human match-up has to be infallible!

Whip and Bo5's

2009-04-10T20:50:00.005+02:00

Hi,

For the people who understand German, here's Leon's feature interview for his stay at Schenhkuizen residence :)

Leon's Interview

Best fight today:
Power of the Whip @ MyBrute

Rofl, when I was losing I was like "NO OOOOO GRUBTOR!! GET THE WHIP! YEAH BABY!"

Anyway! Like Leon said in the interview ( I hope it gets translated to readmore.eu later, but maybe not hehe), we're playing BO5's everyday. Like one in the morning, one in the afternoon, one in the evening. It's really much more fun and better than playing on-line because neither of us can make excuses "oh shit I gotta go to eat now" or "my mom troubling me" - this happens quite a lot in CG's usually because everyone's lives go on, hehe.

Moreover we get instant feedback from every game we play - funny situations, special games, being shocked when you get creepjacked. And we can discuss our thoughts after and before games.

What's different from these BO5's, and the usual practice, is that now we really want to win because we put our honour at stake. Normally you may play 10x the same strat to practice it (we do that too), but now we're trying to outsmart each other. It creates such entertaining games..

So far I still won all but Leon is doing better and taking maps off me now. Too bad he's going home tomorrow but I'm sure we can do this again some time =)

Greets
Grubby

An American Orc in Trouble

2009-04-10T14:00:00.002+02:00

grubby i ask you many questions but truth is i have little people to go to, i appreciate all your help. but another thing that replays arent answering for me today is bears.
in a 50 on 50 or 60 on 60
how do i micro this battle.
it seems i focus bears i will take much damage and heroes will finish me off by heroes i mean DH
and alot of my stuff will be weak.
so should i grunt raider attack ground walker sh focus fire and bm to there hero or what.
if anyone else can share there insight please do
thanks
vvv.pride | 04.10.09 - 4:29 am | #

That's the problem isn't it? 50 on 50 xD

Sometimes you should seek the most logical explanation... There are just two ways to explain how you get into 50 vs 50 fights.

1) Either you save up on 50 food too long (and this really is a very important point) which leads you to be lured into fights of equal food - that's never a good idea against bears (unless it's 80 vs 80). Generally if you don't have any fights during the start of the game, you should seek to go 60 pop rather quickly, consisting of 2 kodo's and a mix of the rest - preferably 1:1 upgrades. That's when spirit link really starts boosting your army to something good.

2) He harassed you so much or did you so much damage (maybe with kotg). Losing your first raider to KotG usually can be fatal as well.

I got Pupils

2009-04-10T03:33:00.006+02:00

Yes, my pupils! Train! Train so we can take over the world! Muahahahahahaha!

Keep training at MyBrute. But you'll never beat me. NEVER.

My Brute is the best!

2009-04-09T19:53:00.005+02:00

Challenge me in MyBrute... if you dare!

My list of victims is fairly endless - even though I'm only level 2, I'm completely unbeaten!
Here's my most recent victim which is mTwLeoN. I must say it was quite a one-sided fight and I left him pretty much no chance. And all this is going down IN BETWEEN our clanwar against aTTaX (I'm waiting for XlorD vs Happy to finish - prolly the most boring match-up to watch for me).

HF falling victim to me!

here's the evidence:

Ok maybe I lost once... but it didn't count, because my knife dropped :(

Lucker...

Bootcamp with Leon

2009-04-09T01:02:00.003+02:00

I'm blue da ba dee da ba die! (Or is it: I'm blue, i'm in need of a guy!)

Once you hear it - you can never UNhear it :( GL hf enjoying this song now....

Anyway! The Leon - Grubby bootcamp! Well it's not so much a bootcamp really, as just us having fun. We're playing games and watching each other sometimes. He helped Happy and me practice 2v2 earlier today and at the same time we also played some 1v1's. You should be looking out for a comment from Leon on my blog soon. Whatever he's gonna say, it's 100% true (not figurative speech, really true).

Like I said in my statement, tomorrow is going to be make-it or break-it day for top 2 direct Play-offs I think. We Are Go passed us today by getting a superb 5-0 against Wicked, and ended up on first rank. With nGize doing so well consistently (both nGize and Go didn't lose a CW yet) - that means anyone else trying to get Top 2 (like us) will have an incredibly hard time. Looking forward to the match tomorrow with a sense of anticipation, pleasure and excitement. This is what I do for a living! It's fucking awesome no matter what!

My internet seems more stable... maybe I will soon start to play the Tournament ladder, as I'm far behind, and I would need to catch up. It doesn't look that hard, though, some ppl got insane stats.

Greets,
Grubby

Mystery Guest: Leon Magnus Helmut

2009-04-07T19:10:00.003+02:00

The mystery guest is mTw.Leon! Indeed it may be a surprise to some people but actually we're very friendly and we practice together very frequently. I invited him to come visit me and play together some a couple of times, and now that S7 started it also seemed like the perfect opportunity!

Soooo, I got up INHUMANLY early (9:52 AM to be exact) to pick up Leon from the train station in Utrecht Centraal. We missed each other for a bit and his phone didn't work, but eventually we ran into each other. We went to my house and I showed him his room, which was acceptable for him.

After that, we set up our laptop and 17" CRT screen for him. We had lunch (Cassandra cooked noodles soup) and then we went to the city of Gouda for the afternoon (famous from the "Gouda cheese", except the name is not copyrighted so any Gouda cheese you have is probably not really from Gouda). I had an appointment with an ear doctor to find out whether they knew what ailed me for a long time now... test result in a week, though.

After that, we got into a bit of a traffic jam on our way back, and we talked about Infi vs FoCuS (2:0) and so on, some other matches. When we got back, we were hungry again and I dished out the Dutch bread and we attacked our plates with a fervor. During this ("2nd lunch"), I got out my Sun Tzu's Art of War book and Leon and I discussed some ancient strategies coming into use in a modern digital warfare :P

We quickly headed up at 18:00 to get some warming-up for Leon's EPS game at 19:30 against TryDying. We played the maps he's likely going to be playing and we talked a bit about it. He is taking the match quite seriously. TryDying is a good player and they've been in the same team together, so they must be each other's match.

It's 19:17 now and he'll be playing soon while I will be watching or playing by myself.

Enjoy all the EPS games (that start in 11 minutes!)

My ISP and a Mystery Guest

2009-04-06T13:01:00.004+02:00

Well, my internet down time was most likely caused by my ISP and not due to a problem in my own house. The erratic nature of the downtimes and the fact that it got cured automatically, point in that direction. It's been fine since last night 10 PM until now, so that's a boon. :)

Normally my ISP is really good with nearly no down times and a pretty good ping, connection and download speed. It's also the most expensive one, but of course I need stability. Last nights made me sad but I hope they'll never do it again and I'll forgive them!

And tomorrow probably an international player is coming by to visit me! He'll be staying over for a while and we'll be practicing together and having fun. Either season 7 or cg's or whatever, just like what we normally do except he will have less distractions and more motivation.

The reason for this that in my house you have to play at least 4 hours to be able to use the bath room, 6 hours to be allowed some fresh air, 8 hours to get lunch and dinner, and 10 hours before you can use the bed. Fighting time!

Who is the player that will visit? Well, it would be one of the 10 invitees for eStars Seoul... you can find the list here:
Readmore's report on eStars Seoul

Of course it's all going to rely on voting so once again the power's to the people!

Greets,
Grubby

Failed Login at Internet Service Provider ...

2009-04-05T19:52:00.001+02:00

Hi everyone. I couldn't connect to the internet until 6 PM today. Shortly after I posted my blog, internet kept going down every minute or so until I eventually gave up and went to sleep ( no internet !!! ). Until 6 PM today, it didn't work , and then suddenly it did. Reminds me of that blog I wrote a week ago or so, appreciating the wonders of internet... =)

Played Zotac - happy that I won! :)

2009-04-04T20:28:00.006+02:00

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
14:38 PM

I turn on the PC and sign up for ZOTAC. I feel like today could be a winning day (I have more motivation than some of the time when I also ended up losing. Also I feel my shape is somewhat better, and a more balanced shape vs all 4 races).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8:28 PM

Soon gonna start semis against Kas , and then prolly finals vs ZOTAC! Didn't really have good opponents yet (Except multick but he played rdm). So these are gonna be the real test.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0:24 AM

Read the comments.. will try to get to them one by one :)

I'll put that at the bottom, OK?

Now, for my tournament run... I wish I could upload replays here, but I can't. So I can do battle reports.

r1 0-0 freewin
r2 1-0 crossy
r3 1-0 gmg-oxygenium
r4 1-0 slap]roll
r5 1-0 iact.n2l.foggy
r6 1-0 multick
r7 2-1 ig.daveron
r8 2-0 dmz.kas
r9 3-2 go)focus

Freewin was by far the easiest game I didn't play of the whole tournament today. I have to admit I was only watching the screen with half an eye during round 1. I don't even remember what race was being played if any at all. I don't think I lost a single unit.

Crossy was an undead I met on Ancient Isles. I did a standard strategy of Shadow Hunter rush with advance shop, following up with a quick Tier 3 tech with double Spirit Lodge. I started pumping out Shamans and gathered them up at the Tavern. Upon reaching Tier 3, I researched Master Shamans and simultaneously picked up a Goblin Tinker and a Pit Lord. Having those, I started my attack which comprised of Fortified Towers, a Rocketpack+Fire reign combination and healing wave to top it off. Demolishers slowly trundled in to rain doom on the UD base.

gmg-oxygenium was another Undead, whom I met on Secret Valley. I did an even more standard Tauren Chieftain first opening, starting off with 3 grunts to get some Stomp surrounds on his fiends. I saved up Headhunters in my base and added raiders, some kodo and T3 tech for all the upgrades that money can buy. He did TeD's strategy (though maybe not quite as good) with T2 towerrush. My TC hit level 5 and Mana pots bolstered his spirits. I drove him off and he called GG.

Roll is a common training partner for me, who also helped me a lot to train against Night Elf before WCG 2008 (ironically I met few Elves - I lost to SaSe twice, however inconsequential, but ended up beating country mate Nicker). So I was definitely cautious about this game. He did DH Huntress opening on Melting Valley while I opted for a rather unusual Blade+grunts opening, followed up by Shadowhunter. He got some bears and I ate some bear meat (kodos). When nothing was left I went to look on another map for more food.

In round 5 I nearly lost to beastmaster close position on Turtle Rock. I did a bad rush and paid the price - ending up with a hard-fought victory. Not proud of myself but it sure got the blood boiling!

Round 6 Multick went Random Orc... the game lasted less than 8 minutes.

Round 7 I met a decent Polish Undead player named Daveron on Echo Isles. The two games where I played fun strats (game 1 & 3) I won, while in game 2 I got punished for playing cookie cutter TC solo. For some reason, I could not end the game despite how much shock waves I cast in his base.

Round 8 I met trouble in the form of Kas - a Ukrainian Human Player who is not bad at all. He rushed me pretty strong on Snowdrop in the first map and I lost a lot. Luckily I followed up with a nailbiting Archmage kill and that equalised the match. We ended up doing a fight more epic than when Gandalf saved everyone in Helm's Deep. The second map on TR was no less intense and I enjoyed playing those games a lot.

Round 9 I met FoCuS... out of 10 good hosts for me normally, it seemed none was really good for me now. It reminds me of that joke:

A man goes to see a doctor. He complains to the doctor, "Doctor, if I press my leg here, it hurts a lot." The doctor inspects his leg and says, "Hmmmm." The man grimaces as he presses his temple, and yells out "Ouch, it hurts a lot when I press here!" The doctor inspects the side of the man's face thoroughly, and reserves his opinion. The man presses his left shoulder and nearly faints from the pain, as he says "it really hurts when I press here..."

The doctor looks at the man sternly and says, "I know what's the problem. Your index finger is broken."

HAHAHAHAHAhahahaHAHA! :D:D

Well, it was like that: it was my own internet connection for some reason. I was getting a lot of spikes on many different hosts. Eventually I discussed with the admins whether we could have a bit fewers observers and they were very understanding. FoCuS also was very patient so I want to thank him for that. After the ZOTAC was over, my internet went down several times, completely, still don't know why. But I'm happy it didn't happen during the actual games.

The games against FoCuS, in some cases, were really one of a kind. FoCuS is a very strong mirror player. We both made some mistakes now and then but I think that really made the entire series very entertaining to watch. Especially in Game 3 on Echo Isles, I thought to myself: "Now there's a game that will never.. ever be repeated again."

I think you can see most games on WTV so HF.. for now, a satisfied feeling! Thanks for reading!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finals vs ZOTAC? you mean Focus most likely
Micro | 04.04.09 - 3:06 pm | #

Yeah, looks kinda similar :P oops (and I did write it very quickly!)

there was a close game in the beginning of the tounament vs an elf on tr...^^
Udaibe | 04.04.09 - 3:34 pm | #

Close? You mean when I had 25/20, no hero and he got level 2 beastmaster with 30+ pop?

Blind_Love, Martin, Jimm: enjoyed the "Dreadlord 2nd hero vs Orc" expose :D Great ideas always seem impossible to implement until someone proves you wrong (and more often than not it does happen!)

Grubby Please, I'd really like an answer to this one because it has been on my mind for so fucking long. At your first game vs Kas, you picked up 2 claws which together gave a total dmg boost of 21 dmg. Add the kodo effect and you had about 80 dmg as your maximum dmg. Taken into acount the BM's extreme attack rate and his crit chance you can quite easily tell that this is way too strong for being just one hero. And this happens nearly ever game (That the BM picks up claws or other dmg boosting items) and there got to be a stop to it. What I mean is: What other race can take as much use of these items as the Orcs can? The claws just favourize the Blade Master way too much and give him way too high dmg whenever he gets a crit. My proposal is either to remove claws from the map, or make them unstackable with the crit. What do you think about this? Please give me your most objective thought about this, cuz it's really bothering me and also a lot of other ppls (Mostly Undeads) as well I think.

Sincerly
Martin | 04.04.09 - 3:50 pm | #

Wow. I haven't answered an imbalance query for a long time. Not sure if I'm still good at it (I stopped thinking about it)! I prefer to be as brief as possible on this one, and I hope it can satisfy you.
You asked me to be objective, I'll try to be.
* Blademaster is extremely item dependent. This is his strength and his weakness.
* Orc's alternatives are inadequate. Farseer's wolves were increased to 30 XP gain for kills, because they were too good against Human in Reign of Chaos and Early TFT. They used to be 12 XP each. Because they got suicided on human peasants all the time. Needless to say, with arcane tower, the c hange back to 12 XP is way overdue :P This is why all races are death coiling, bolting, detonating wolves with a vengeance :) TC first and SH first are both unfeasible.
* Blademaster gets countered by Cyclone more properly than he should be, and by human's slow and bolt and breakers.
* Undead has to play smart and surprise. Sorry!

Moreover... critical strike has nothing to do with luck - it's just a skill. just like evasion and bash. Bash does 25 damage on each level per hit , and stuns for 1 second. It has 40% chance on level 3! that's almost 3x the chance that BM has for doing critical. Gloves of haste can boost an Mk's effectiveness; but Pendant of mana is even more destructive. The same item (pendant of mana) is almost useless on a blademaster. Moreover, on level 1 and 2, BM isn't that strong at all. High level heroes are stronger,yes a BM5 is strong. But do you know what a level 5 Panda can do?

Orc's heroes are maybe stronger than other race's heroes, but it doesnt mean that orc > other races. Every race has its own strengths and weakness. Orc's strength are the heroes.
ghg | 04.04.09 - 4:26 pm | #

Agree to this one (read above).

Hey Grubby,
maybe u wanna try sth like

http://www.mogulus.com/retje

with streaming your own games.. works really great!

Cheers
NoW | 04.04.09 - 5:06 pm | #

Thanks, I'll try it later!

First real spring day... and the first LAN event in sight!

2009-04-04T03:27:00.002+02:00

Today was a hot day! It came to like 24 degrees Celsius during the day. We actually spent our very first day since we lived here, in the garden! I invited my brother and his girlfriend and we all had a drink ( to celebrate the NGL wi-... the good weather). Afterwards we ate together and I had a meeting with my teammates to discuss our future.

We also made the line-up for our next clanwar which will be against aTTaX. Happy will be playing against Sting and LucifroN next in NGL - really tough for an UD to play online against Orcs, but I believe he can do it! He just needs to believe in himself again and then he could have a really strong match-up against Orc. I'm telling you, as soon as he'll win one game it'll be snowballing :) Break the cycle!

Ciara's looking to go to EPS.Scandinavia at 25th of April. He'll have a tough starting match in meeting LiiLD.C. in a Single Elimination Bo5 format. Historically he's had a strong match-up against Night Elf. But LiiLD.C. is really on the rise lately. I like both and both are good so it's hard to make a prediction, and I won't, but may the best win! If Ciara does win, I think he can win the whole event (other opponents aren't to be trifled with - Bringer and DowaQ,... but Ciara is more experienced!)

As far as LAN's go, Happy and me hopefully can go to ESWC Korea as we're on the invite list, but there's the question of travel costs... I've paid for my own travel before in situations where there was no one to reimburse it, such as in 4K when we had financial problems in the end. But it's not ideal, and it's a risk.

What we really all need is an organisation who sees value in us and is willing to support us. Hopefully we will find this - so that we may attend the events that we could have a shot at winning at.

And now for a meaningful quote to show that I have a deep personality, while at the same time displaying a shameful shallowness since I didn't actually make it up myself:

We cannot hold a torch to light another's path without brightening our own.

Amen to that!

Follow Grubby on his Pro-Gaming Adventures

3 Tournaments in a Row!

Two new blogs from Cassandra on myEG.net

Holiday at home, recent playing, EG.wc3 2010

Cassandra's blog - WEM and travel

Grubby Pro Event - SteelSeries - XFire

Reflecting on WEM victory

Winners of "Favourite Grubby Replays" Facebook contest

More give-aways added to "Favourite Grubby Replay" contest!

Autographed old 4Kings Jersey give-away!

EPS Benelux concluded

EPS Benelux

"When Orcs Clash" - Date modified: 20-8-2003, 12:48

WCG wc3 Groups Drawn

3on3 Battle Report

Warcraft Short-story written by myself

VOD of Grubby on Gamer01

Grubby will be on Dutch TV (Gamer01) tomorrow!

IEM Groups drawn!

IEM Drawings 17.30 today!

Vote for Grubby for IEST!

12 days left

Warcraft 3 Rollercoaster

BlizzCon Discussion Place

Unfair changes in NGL Scoreboard

Streaming concluded

Livestream to celebrate eStars victory

e-Stars 2009 - Article 1 - 23rd July

Read Cassandra's blog on myeg.net!

Pre eStars Blog

Satisfied feeling; yet new challenges are coming

EG posts

The Blog With No Name

Making good on quiet time

Bid for a Warcraft III lesson with Grubby, Happy or Ciara!

ENC: NETHERLANDS VS ROMANIA LIVE!

Sizzling Saturday and upcoming Mirror Weekend

The ENC dream of Netherlands!

more NGL ONE matches, 1 month "respite":) and S7

First round fixing for WC3L Playoff 25-27 May

Recent results & schedule for coming weeks

Happy's Blog @ EG & WC3L previews

Netherlands vs Norway

End of Birthday Party ...and Shootout results!

In the Middle of the Shoot out at my Birth day party

What do you do for a living?

A party invitation to all Dutch Warcraft III Gamers

EG, SteelSeries, GomTV

13 May - The News

A day from NGL ONE to ZOTAC

Coming home to Netherlands

Upcoming Schedule & Meeting EG CEO

Hard beds, Lunch, Dinner with mayor

Arriving in Incheon - Arriving in Cheonan

ESWC Korea

WC3L rankings analysis - Season almost over

Grubby vs Remind in NGL ONE

/QRY GRUBBY @ ESL TV starting 19:00 (now!)

Shy in NGL

Ciara's blog: Season 7 and EPS.SCA

Replay Analysis - Complete

Get on www.mogulus.com/followgrubby !

Season 7 Concludes in 48 minutes - placings all but cemented?

Season 7 Ladder Ends in 54 minutes

Good luck in the army, JLS!

Evil Geniuses 5-0 against Colorful

Happy's second blog

Level 34.

One month anniversary

Evil Geniuses 5-0 against WickeD

Level 33, chaps! Arthas, it's about time!

eStars Seoul - The community decides

92%+ win rate

Grubby's interview at myLGN.com

Even a pro-gamer can take a rest, right? :)

EG has such a scary Logo, don't you think?

Grubby and Alex answers a few questions on Fragster.de

Added new video's to www.mogulus.com/followgrubby !

Ciara - Happy - Grubby - Blogs at EG

We're now part of team Evil Geniuses!

New video added - Mogulus Followgrubby