Week 1 Session: Getting started

The first session of the semester — bring a match you already know the result of, and leave with this course's first written answer to why.

22 February 2027

Before the session#

Have one complete match ready — yours or one you watched, doesn’t matter which. Watch it again if you need to; you won’t get another chance to pick a different one for Week 1’s assessment thread later in the semester.

Write down an answer, in whatever language you currently have, to “why did the winning team actually win?” "They got more kills" or "their late game was stronger" count. What matters is that it’s specific to your match, not a general theory of the game.

In the session#

Short introductions, then Week 1’s lecture: why the Nexus is the one objective nobody can aim at directly, and the chain — resources, advantages, control, objectives — that the rest of the semester fills in. The last twenty minutes are yours: in pairs, read each other’s “why did they win” answer and ask one question about it — not to correct it, just to find the moment underneath the summary.

Afterwards#

Nothing is marked this week. Keep your written answer — Week 12 asks you to answer the same question about the same match again, and the distance between the two answers is most of what this course is trying to teach.