Meet the man at the top of the NA Ladder

GosuGamers sits down with InflowMini. Hear what the man at the top of the North American Ladder has to say about his approach to rising in the ranks, how he's repeatedly gotten away with 1-Gate Expand against high profile Terrans, and why Colossi are overrated.

Well, I am 20 years old. My name is Chad. About my Starcraft experience, to be honest I have none. I didn't even play the Starcraft 2 Beta.Nope I did not play Broodwar either. Starcraft 2 was a completely new game for me, other than the occasional custom game of Broodwar such as Golem Wars, or Lurker Defense.Yes, I get matched up quite frequently with known players such as TTone, ROOTcatz, ROOTdrewbie, ROOTqxc, and many many more. I started off in gold league off my placement matches, and slowly got better the more I played, eventually making it to where I am now. ROOTcatz is what you could say is my zerg arch nemesis, he's quite a talented zerg, and it's always a good game when I play him.Well as you can probably tell from my games played, I tend to binge play my ladder games.Well that's kind of tricky, you need to have some sort of "carefree" attitude for each game to be fun and entertaining, but if you are wanting to get better, it can't all be carefree. You need to learn something from each game to get better, such as reviewing the replay for what exactly went wrong.I tend to lean towards the learning side, I am too compedative by nature for it to be too "carefree" but I definately want to enjoy each game, as well as play to win.Yes, I absolutely love the fast expand. Protoss has such an advantage early game unit wise, if they use the chrono boost on their warpgates. You can actually outproduce a terran who is going for a 2 rax, until the nexus is up. From there you just throw down the extra warpgates, and you will be able to easily defend. If I lose a game to a terran, it's because I failed macro wise, rather than in the first 10 minutes. I think high templar are going to be the future in PVT, mass gateways and high templar until late game, where you can mix in some colossi. I normally skip the tech completely until late game. High templar as so much more mobile, and so much more deadly in the right hands. Spot a drop coming? Warp in a high templar with a few stalkers and you can completely negate the attack. You will have so many gateways with the right pylon placements across the map you can actually be more mobile than the terran even with medivacs.Yes.Well, it is a very micro intensive build, and you will get into quite a few "close spots". You need to know your timings and know them well. I definitely would not suggest this build to less experienced players. [However] I [do] have a lot of metagame with some of the top players, they go into the game KNOWING I will 1 gate expand, and they still can't punish it. They've tried 3 raxing me, 2 port banashee, and many other timing attacks, once they figured out they couldn't break it, they tend to just 1 rax or 2 rax FE themselves. If you know what you are doing, it is a very safe build, probably the safest.Correct, If I lose a game PVT, you can bet on it that I lost in the later stages of the game, but it had nothing to do with the 1 gate FE.I feel as if there is a timing window every PVT where the terran will have a uncomfortable amount of vikings, and can just one shot each colossi, while stalling with the rest of their army. By the time you get a head on attack with them, half your colossi are dead, and his marauders will just plummel through the rest.With the build I use there is really no timing push they can use on me. As long as I scout accordingly, I can get templar out and ready to storm, before they can get to my base with their medivacs and MM ball. The timings on my build work out quite nicely in that aspect. Skipping colossi for me makes no difference.Well, since it is a pretty new team, there is not too much to tell. We just got accepted into the CEVO pro league, and are in the SGL. We have a semi big team, around 13 players. We are trying to make a name for ourselves since we are quite new. Hopefully you will see more of us as time goes on.I have not, I have just recently started take take Starcraft 2 "semi" seriously. Hopefully you will see my name pop up in many upcoming tournaments.Correct. I think I have the potential too, as long as I keep practicing and improving my play, to where I can compete with the top players, and hopefully make a name for myself.