_H20 greatest moments in tournaments?

[NekoBerk]

Hi guys, I'm preparing a mini life story of _H20 to show new players in the Spanish-speaking community who the greatest player of all time is, as well as his great influence and efforts in keeping this community alive back then (and maybe even now as well).

I'd like to compile videos of his best plays! So if you guys could help me with some YouTube links, I'd be grateful :)

By the way, @_H2O , thanks for giving me that answer 8 years ago. It’s so inspiring in moments like this when everybody is saying the game is dead. Thanks to ESOC, the game’s life has been significantly extended. I’m sure this game can’t die as long as the community stays together.


The Hispanic community has gained a lot of new players who don’t know you, but I’ll make sure they hear your story!

[look]

As a long-time player, I miss many moments in history, that memorable final between BSOP and H2O was over 10 years ago, that's simply a lifetime.
sometimes I keep thinking about everything.

[Vinyanyérë]

The "Howdah Bout That" build in Game 1 of the Autumn 2016 semifinals was very entertaining to watch

[dicktator_]

Look for vill pull or vill defense moments. I remember game 9 of H2O vs BSOP was insane because BSOP pretty much had it locked but H2O kept barely holding on with vill pulls and huss batches. Also not a tournament but there was some showmatch H2O played against Kaiserklein where he defended his vills against a Lakota raid by jamming his vills into a corner.

[alistairpeter]

https://www.twitch.tv/ryanmankle/videos ... &sort=time

If you watch all of these +100 elo
My favorite on here was the consistent holding of Spain all ins with Japan vill pops max greed, I also liked that he would shoot heavy cav with falcs a lot.

The coaching videos of Callen and Interjection had useful information of realistic paces to keep, and urgent things that could be overlooked.





The H20 explains series is my favorite, lots of insightful commentary in this series. My favorite was the Aztec mirror on Siberia between H20 and Lordraphael, but there was also a great game vs Snowws Brits where he preemptively defended almost every raid coming from every angle on Kamchatka. The way he described coming in from a certain angle to scout a mine in the aztec mirror stuck out to me, I never really heard any other players look at the game the same way.



He also was a great caster, lots of great casting from the 2019 LAN. He was a frequent caster in many of the tournaments as well, sometimes even the ones he participated in, just not over his own games usually.


I used to love the Saturday smackdown this series vs Mitoe was quite good


This was a good BO9 showmatch between H20 and Garja casted by Veni


ABO5 with Kaiserklein, hard to hear caster for this one though

[ocemilky]

I just have a small story from back in the day, I think around 2010 - 2011

I think it was _PI that convinced H20 to come play some TR40 just to see how long it would take for him to hold his own against the top players of the day. I think it took him maybe 4 games, and that was purely to get the BO of Spain right, so he was predictably a monster from the get-go. One core memory I have is he claimed that Spain didn't need to waste their resources on upgrading their artillery units to imperial as Unction gave them better stats anyway lol.

Around this time the young bucks of Lukas_L and Dicktator were surging their way to the top of TR40. I think H20 has to take some credit for getting them into supremacy in one way or another, even if it was only a conversation post-game. He pretty much poached me from TR at that time and I started spending 90% of my game time playing sup with plenty of coaching from him, so cheers for that mate.

[callentournies]

The "Howdah Bout That" build in Game 1 of the Autumn 2016 semifinals was very entertaining to watch

this was going to be my posht too.

brilliant & high skill novelty busted out in tournament play. you simply didn't see India going mahouts, ever, let alone pure & with surgeons. Completely shirked standard china. It's one of those games that reminds me of the famous chess games of the best masters where they just completely steam roll also another good master.

[callentournies]

@Mitoe for contributions

[callentournies]

just a lobby game -- but he did this every game. another example of his vill ponch. he fights 10 huss with only vills and mm for 1 minute straight, and his vill count goes up (9:28 in video)

[callentournies]

here h2O deals with azzy rush with only vills for forever. what I like a lot is how you can see he consciously arranges vills from his TC to body block his age up skirms, before they pop, and times perfectly with mm. BSOP didn't go in at that moment -- but he was ready.

[Squamiger]

just a lobby game -- but he did this every game. another example of his vill ponch. he fights 10 huss with only vills and mm for 1 minute straight, and his vill count goes up (9:28 in video)

Right after the ruyters pop he moves and deletes 3 llamas and puts vills on them in the middle of microing the ruyters to chase down the remaining huss and it’s one of the hardest apm flexes I’ve ever seen

[Mitoe]

I think H2O himself would probably list WCG 2008 as his greatest moment. All the way up until he stopped playing he would tell me that he still thought iamgrunt was the best player he ever had to play against and so beating him was quite an achievement. You can find recs here: viewtopic.php?f=19&t=16363&p=345183#p345183

Zutazuta had done a cast/analysis of this series before, but they seem to have been taken down / made unavailable on the official Age of Empires YouTube channel now that Microsoft has revived the franchise.

My knowledge of the few years after that during the Age Sanctuary Fan Patch days is a bit lacking, but from what I understand he was less active but still quite strong when he played.

When he returned in 2013 for the PKClan tournament he made it to the semi-finals before withdrawing from the tournament due to a dispute with the tournament admin, but I believe he didn't lose a single game up until that point. Inactive for a couple years again until 2015 when Stanley_Winston (AKA Amhaye) decided to a host a tournament, which somehow evolved into a bunch of people collaborating to create ESOC, to which H2O was a big contributor for 3-4 years afterwards.

Some things I remember very clearly from 2015 was how every time he played a civilization for a few days the meta would completely adapt to the way he was playing it because it was obviously just so much better. Things like 2 rax crossbow/pike, 12 Sepoy into 4 Sowar rush, and Sioux full Bow Rider strategies were considered to be very strong, and basically became significantly less desirable once he showed that he was able to beat them consistently. I distinctly remember him playing a style of India where he would basically always build a defensive Agra Fort (very rare at the time, was always forward or Karni Mata alternative) and bide his time until he could start getting Zamburak upgrades in, then trade very heavily with Gurkha/Zamburak poking & kiting in a meta where virtually everyone just did Sepoy/Sowar or Sepoy/Gurkha. He went something like 50 wins and 2 losses on the ladder with this strategy in 2 weeks.

This also happened with China (Porcelain Tower FF), Spanish (ATP), Portuguese (ATP), and to a lesser extent with Germany/France/Dutch/British which mostly evolved their mirror matchup metas. There were more niche strategies as well, like the Elephant strategy he used against Mongo10 someone mentioned earlier in this thread.

He put a much heavier emphasis on micro than other players at the time. He taught me that situations that seem like 50/50s (e.g. 5 huss vs 5 huss) are actually opportunities to leverage your mechanics for an advantage, and I think this really showed in his gameplay. I remember watching him play games in situations that looked really close or even like he was behind and then he would win the fight so convincingly you'd be left wondering how it was possible.

I learned a lot from him, and credit much of my success in tournaments after 2016 to his coaching.

[ocemilky]

I think H2O himself would probably list WCG 2008 as his greatest moment. All the way up until he stopped playing he would tell me that he still thought iamgrunt was the best player he ever had to play against and so beating him was quite an achievement. You can find recs here: viewtopic.php?f=19&t=16363&p=345183#p345183

Zutazuta had done a cast/analysis of this series before, but they seem to have been taken down / made unavailable on the official Age of Empires YouTube channel now that Microsoft has revived the franchise.

My knowledge of the few years after that during the Age Sanctuary Fan Patch days is a bit lacking, but from what I understand he was less active but still quite strong when he played.

When he returned in 2013 for the PKClan tournament he made it to the semi-finals before withdrawing from the tournament due to a dispute with the tournament admin, but I believe he didn't lose a single game up until that point. Inactive for a couple years again until 2015 when Stanley_Winston (AKA Amhaye) decided to a host a tournament, which somehow evolved into a bunch of people collaborating to create ESOC, to which H2O was a big contributor for 3-4 years afterwards.

Some things I remember very clearly from 2015 was how every time he played a civilization for a few days the meta would completely adapt to the way he was playing it because it was obviously just so much better. Things like 2 rax crossbow/pike, 12 Sepoy into 4 Sowar rush, and Sioux full Bow Rider strategies were considered to be very strong, and basically became significantly less desirable once he showed that he was able to beat them consistently. I distinctly remember him playing a style of India where he would basically always build a defensive Agra Fort (very rare at the time, was always forward or Karni Mata alternative) and bide his time until he could start getting Zamburak upgrades in, then trade very heavily with Gurkha/Zamburak poking & kiting in a meta where virtually everyone just did Sepoy/Sowar or Sepoy/Gurkha. He went something like 50 wins and 2 losses on the ladder with this strategy in 2 weeks.

This also happened with China (Porcelain Tower FF), Spanish (ATP), Portuguese (ATP), and to a lesser extent with Germany/France/Dutch/British which mostly evolved their mirror matchup metas. There were more niche strategies as well, like the Elephant strategy he used against Mongo10 someone mentioned earlier in this thread.

He put a much heavier emphasis on micro than other players at the time. He taught me that situations that seem like 50/50s (e.g. 5 huss vs 5 huss) are actually opportunities to leverage your mechanics for an advantage, and I think this really showed in his gameplay. I remember watching him play games in situations that looked really close or even like he was behind and then he would win the fight so convincingly you'd be left wondering how it was possible.

I learned a lot from him, and credit much of my success in tournaments after 2016 to his coaching.

It's hilarious how we sound like we're giving an obituary for him lol.

Thanks for the great read Mitoe.

[Squamiger]

It's hilarious how we sound like we're giving an obituary for him lol.

until he comes back to streaming we can't be sure if he's still alive!