Thoughts on my time in TESL and thank yous to the community

I've known this day was coming for a long time now but past a certain point it started to seem like TESL could survive anything and even if it would remain small, it'd still keep kicking around.



I'd hoped that one day I'd be able to say a bunch of thank yous after winning masters or some other large event, but that's not going to happen, at least in TESL, so I'll do it now.



First and foremost thank you Merakon. The game that you created captivated me from my first moments with it, and now, 2000 in-game hours later, I can honestly say that I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to take refuge in and learn so much from your creation. To everyone else who has worked on TESL over the years, thank you. Its pretty surreal that so many all stars in the ccg design and play space had their hands on this game. To Josh, your dedication to this game means the world to its players, TESL has continued to have one of the most well balanced card pools I have ever seen in a ccg and I know that your presence over the game's history is largely responsible for this feat.



To all the tournament admins and organizers over the years, thank you so much for doing what you do. For me and those like me bo3/bo5 lhs/conquest is what TESL is. The more I developed as a competitor the harder it was for me to slog through bo1 ladder. You gave me the opportunity to play the game that I love and gave me something to focus on when lots of other things in my life were falling apart. There are too many people to list but to Automaton, Jstarr, Shunara, Ian, ... thank you.



Again there are too many people to list but a huge thank you to everyone in my TRS family for supporting me over these past few years. Of course a special shout out goes to Zach who has worked way harder for way more hours than many people likely know for giving me a chance to be a part of this organization, for putting support behind content and tournaments for TESL when hope for the game was bleak, and for putting up with me being an absolute PR pepega. I have had the honor and pleasure of being on a team with the best players in the game and know that we were better prepared than anyone else for Masters Qualifiers this year and honestly it wasn't close. I'm sorry that I wasn't able to capitalize on that preparation better. To everyone who has been on TRS's TESL Tournament Team (chronologically): Paulo, Chris, Al, Tom, Will, Bernardo, Joe, Matty, Rajan, and Austin, thank you so much for everything, I look forward to working with you all in other games.



To everyone who has consumed the content I've put out, it means more to me than you know. I've struggled with and frequently been debilitated by major depressive disorder over the past few years and its prevented me from being able to pursue content creation in the way that I would've liked. Despite that I'd still get plenty of feedback, page views, etc whenever I'd post an article, fire up a stream, etc. The fact that there have been people out there who value my skill set and care what I have to say at a time in my life where I wasn't getting positive feedback from much of anywhere else has been incredibly important to me. To everyone who has read my articles, watched my streams, followed my tournament performances, signed up to be coached for a session or ten, etc thank you so much for your continued support. I of course will be focusing on other games for now but I won't be going anywhere and as things in my personal life continue to improve my ability to produce content for you all will as well.

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