The day of the NK

07:00 - Waking up
Waking up at 07:00 I started packing my bags and doing all the other things before my travels to Utrecht.
I was lucky enough that my dad would bring me to the train station, that would spare some time.
I was even more lucky when there was another train that was leaving earlier to the same location, and it safed me another 50 minutes.

In the train i was trying to read some of my notes I made for Warcraft. But it was to hard for me to concentrate since the train was loaded full of people, just like ants.

11:00 - Utrecht Centraal
I arrived at Utrecht Centraal at 11:00, and with the bus already standing there and was about to leave (I am getting sick of luck now).
Driving the the Stadion of FC Utrecht were the event was held, I was actually driving 1 station to far and had to walk back for about 2 minutes (No luck, woohoo). Actually it had nothing to do with luck, since this bus just said that the next station would be the stadion while we actually alread past it.

11:15 - Arriving at the Stadion of FC Utrecht
I arrived at the stadion. And had to search for the entry, cause i couldn't find it. I asked some people and they didn't know. I called my manager if he could find any contact phone number to call were the entry was. And funny enough while I was calling my manager the entry which was first closed, was opened with some people of the NK standing outside. My luck is turning since I was tired of it, maybe i shouldn't have said that.

12:00 - Meeting up with the scene
With still no sense of any other Warcraft players and with the hall getting filled of gamer fans and competitors in other games such as Halo 3, Fifa, PES, Trackmania and so on.


And just when I turned my face Lennart ´iG.Sushi´ and Kevin ´Rotterdam´ walked to me and came to say hello. After a couple of minutes all the Warcraft players meeted up and with Milan ´Sasuke´ and Niels ´Kiezel´ still in Tilburg telling us they would be coming half an hour to late.

Milan ´Sasuke´ told both me and Robert ´SnoDe´ to note it to the admin, but we actually forgot since we were having some relaxing conversations about football, warcraft, and other stuf and also getting interviewed by some girl who had to write a script for her education (The difference between social community websites and game communities).

I told the guys that I would check out if we could warm-up, but when I asked they still had to set up the network for the computers. So we waited for another 15 minutes till the network was setup and then we started to play some games and put in our Warcraft configs.

14:00 - Competition order
The tournament had still not started for Warcraft, but when I asked they told us that the league admin wasn´t there because he was sick, and so Kevin ´Rotterdam´ decided to make a fair  competition and made us choose whether we would like to play a groupphase or singe-elimination. That was quit easy for us to decide, since we all didn´t want to just play a single-game. So we decided to play grouphase.

Kevin ´Rotterdam´ made a fair competition. I was put in group C, together with: Infantrist, Arminvb and Mr.Perfect
A though group, but a fair one looking at the other groups. (I will update the other groups later).





15:15 My results
vs. Infantrist 0-2
My first match was versus Infantrist, and we didn´t really care about what map we would liked to play and so we decided to play Echo Isles and Secret Valley. My first match was going really bad, and the first game was over in a short amount of time. With me trying to get back in to the game in the second game but with not a lot of luck. It was over very soon and the first match ended up in a 0-2 lose.

vs. Arminvb
Some exciting games in my opinion. I didn´t play that bad for me personally, and both of the games took longer. The first game started of really good with me taking a quick hero kill, cause I was trying to do everything to get this hero kill. And it gaved me an advantage in the early-game. I think everyone was quit suprised about that. After some decent pushes but not good enough the game starting to take longer and longer, and with Arminvb getting back in the game. I couldn´t stand a chance in the late game since his experience in the late game was just way to good looking at mine, and he did what was needed. I think I have to scout better, and be more aggresive. But I am not feeling bad about this first game.

In the second game I started of playing Crypt Lord/Fiends. The reason I did that was because I didn´t want to play to standard, cause he would know what I would be trying to do. But it didn´t work out that fine. I holded long since I had 2 crypt and starting massing fiends next to the fact that my Crypt Lord was summoning Beetles. But with the same fact as in the first, the game took to long and he started killing my fiends one by one. With the Crypt Lord it is very important to finish the game off very fast, but it didn´t work out that fine for me.

vs. Mr Perfect
I started of creating around 5 ghouls so I could tech and expand really fast, and playing solo-DK. He was pushing my base with his Blademaster trying to kill some acolytes, but since my base had both the Nerubian Towers and 5 ghouls the Blademaster didn´t stand a chance. The fault he made that he was running away to fast, with only 1 acolyte killed, and with enough mana to kill more acolytes. But I think he didn´t want to take a risk.
I started making a couple of fiends. And was trying to level up. But he was pushing again. I was focussing the way I wanted and took of some of his units, which made him having a large disadvantage in the game. I made some obisdians and started pushing his base both offensive and defensive to not lose to many units and to do some good damage to his base. It worked out fine, and I won the first game.

The second game he started of as an Undead, which he thought he had more confidence with. I was fine with it, cause I just wanted to win this game.
I started of making 5 ghouls again, fast teching and trying to get wyrms as fast as fast as possible. While i was teching I pushed his base with solo DK, and started of killing his acolytes with ROD. I was able to kill 4 of his acolytes and even 1 ghoul. After that I got back to my base, while i already made 3 fiends, so I could creep the goldmine and to have a better defence. I quickly made the expand, which he didn´t scout. And that made the game turn into my favour. I made the wyrms, some obsidians and wagons for his spirit towers and finished the game. Oh and before I forgot: In the last fight i also bought the Alchemist for healing spray, since he was doing some hard damage with his towers and army, that made it easier for me to keep my army in a good condition.

I could write lots of lots and more about the other matches, and I know they´re quit interested, but I also have some examinations which I have to learn. So i wish to keep short. SnoDe finished of Sasuke in the grouphase. Bombi played some really good games against Sushi ending up in a 2/1 lose. Arminvb defeated Infantrist in the grouphase and Rotterdam and Sushi still have to play an on-line decider for the first place. Both Sushi and Rotterdam will be going to Korea together with 2 the winners of FIFA.

21:00
I was lucky enough that the ambassador of E-sportbond Netherlands/Organisator of NK was living in the same homeplace as me, and so I was capable of driving with him. While driving back we stopped for diner in Weesp to get some shoarma. We had some really good conversations about the future of E-sports in The Netherlands. He had some really great ideas, which are of course still secret for others, but to repeat: He has really got some great ideas.

Shoutcasts to: my supports, my manager Ruben ´CompleX´ Been, Jasper Schoo (Ambassador of E-sportbond NL), my sponsors and of course to my teammate Harstem which wasn´t able to attend because of examinations (to bad).