omg pictionary... Gonna try this **** out

Replays from IEM Singapore, Sao Paolo and Cologne!
http://www.esl.eu/eu/news/237793/

ShoutCraft: Clan Wars

First match is going on now, EG vs IM. Currently in a 2v2 game of Lucky+Squirtle vs Suppy+Xenocider which is HILARIOUS.

i'm not sure there are two people that play worse than they normally do when together than goofy and i do

One of the best zerg players I've ever seen for real: http://www.twitch.tv/aspireaku

He's not like a huge name but every time I tune in to his stream he goes so unbelievably ham.

Liquid Added Mana and Bunny. Seems like very strange additions but I guess they had to add another of each race. I looked at their list of guys and noticed that their last addition lasted just over a month(Sea).

I don't get adding a foreign Terran though.

They are propably reasonable priced and will get results done in the EU scene. I rate them higher than TLO tbh.

Sea went back to BW. Mana is probably second best EU protoss after naniwa when he is actually on his game. Hasn't been for a while though. I think Liquid wanted to avoid more korean pick ups and hence they went for an up and coming EU terran and a top foreign P. And obv both are better than TLO.

I guess I'm underrating them some. Both are young(mana 20 and Bunny 21) so that seems good.

I'm having a hard time finding results for Mana. WCS has been a complete dud for him. Yeah I know the name well, I know he's casted events, and sc2earnings says the last time he cashed was August 2013(which is obviously off as he earned money in WCS Season 3). Actually just looked at others and it looks like SC2 earnings was last updated in August for a lot of guys I'm clicking on. But #2 EuroToss seems legit.

So I guess I'll just defer to you guys. Mana > TLO seems fairly easy considering Mana nearly 3x more earnings than TLO(you know, if sort by $$ is a real advanced metric )

And with that said I'm still extremely weary of all foreign Terran pickups. Has any foreign terran shown consistency over the last ~3 years? Lucifron seems like the best answer and that seems shoddy. I guess Bunny still has some potential in him though.

I suppose Babyknight is the only other contender I can think of. Or Grubby? But actually Mana>Grubby is pretty much objectively fact. Am I forgetting someone obvious? Sase maybe? Elfi lol?

Elfi was the first to come to my mind. Mana seems to be the best candidate to say the best after Naniwa.

Mechanics question: how many of you use 90%+ control groups, 90%+ mouse boxing w/o hotkeys, or a combination?

I'm like entirely on control groups, which feels like a leak, but I'm not sure how to mix in some mouse boxing action since it's hard to remove units from groups effectively.

Here's an example: ZvZ and I want to send a ling runby of ~20 lings out of my main army over to my opponent's satellite base. All my lings are on a control group. My options are...
- 1a my whole army over to that base, hold shift, click 20 lings in my control group (which would take forever, so this option sucks), hit ctrl+1 to rebind the group, now those 20 lings are on their own and will do the runby
- Don't bother rebinding, just box 20 lings and send them over, then if I get attacked somewhere else and need to 1a my units over in the opposite direction, my ling runby turns around
- Box 20 lings and send them over, then go back to where the rest of my units in group 1 are, box all of them, and ctrl+1 - but, I now risk losing any units that were part of group 1 but are rallying from a hatch and not on screen as being part of the group. Plus if I have a comp that's like, lings + ultras + some roaches or something, I have to add lings THEN add ultras THEN add roaches cause I don't want to just box and add units from other groups (banes, infestors, overlords, whatever) to my 1 group.

I'm not really sure how to deal with this problem, and am not even sure there's really a perfect solution for it. I remember a Scarlett game on Ohana that she lost because apparently she totally forgot about a large-ish group of lings chilling at her 4th that she never used as part of her army for a big part of the game, so it seems like even pros struggle with this stuff, though obviously their degree of focus on all parts of the map is much better than ours so they can deal with it more effectively.

Do whatever's easier. Mechanics is all about doing things efficiently and quickly.

In this case to get 20 lings to go attack by far the easiest thing is a modification of your last option. Box 20 lings and send them across the map, then select your control group, hold shift, box those same 20 lings again, (it deselects them), now rebind.

That way you don't lose your rallied units or whatever. If you instead want to send 2 lings to scout, deselecting them in your unit control box after A-moving whole control group is easier. With 20 easier to box.

If you watch Jaedong's stream you pick up stuff like this if you just watch his mouse cursor the whole game.

That works??? I could swear I've tried it (cause it makes total sense and seems natural) and it doesn't. Going to go test now...

I am almost certain. Now you have me doubting.

Yeah that isn't working for me. I booted up a game and did this:
- take starting 6 drones, ctrl+1
- move them all somewhere
- split into two groups of 3
- hit 1 (all six drones now selected)
- hold shift
- box one of the groups of 3 drones

...this is supposed to deselect them, right? Not happening, they're still selected.

Woah I was literally thinking the same thing this morning. Would be super cool if true.

Man I am going to test this **** right now. BRB.

Ok so if you shift click on them, it works, but you can't shift box them. If you shift box any additional units it does add them to the current selection.

Hmm that is so counter intuitive.

can you guys figure this out plz because it's a huge pain to have to individually click units

It's inconsistent, too. If you shift+box ONE selected unit, it will deselect (handy for sending individual lings off to towers/bases), but shift+boxing multiple units will always select all of them even if they're already all selected.

But yeah, that type of solution would fix all my problems...but it doesn't work. So I'm not sure what the 2nd best thing to do is.


Random tangent: I just wrote an AHK script, because why not, that will, with 1 button press, instantly shift+click the first unit in my selection group and return the mouse cursor to where it was before. Would you guys consider this cheating?

Yeah probably, aren't macros like that banned?

do you ever ctrl group the 20 lings and then grab the idle ones when needed? thats what i do with marines/drops. you'd lose rallied units on the hotkey, but as long as they are ~near the others, shouldnt they be pretty easy to grab?

i hate clicking around the minimap so i like grouping more often. esp easy to just hit 1, stim usually, micro with cursor as needed

Wasn't Snute their last addition?