For these donkaments...

Red Bull Battlegrounds this weekend:
Group A
Bomber vs. Golden
Scarlett vs. Parting (sick group!)

Group B
MC vs. Snute
sOs vs. Hyun

Top two in each group go into a 4 player bracket (bo5 semis, bo7 finals).

IEM Singapore next weekend:



Open bracket players include Nestea, Curious, Effort, Avenge, Dream, Oz, Squirtle, might actually wind up being decent.

DH Open Winter: weird bracket as usual (****ing Euros), there are four 5-player groups doing round-robin bo3s, top 2 advance to winners bracket in Ro16, next 2 advance to losers bracket in Ro16, 5th place is eliminated.



For WCG, looks like Soulkey replaced Innovation, so with the other two Korean representatives being Parting and Sora, might be a cool tournament once it gets to the semis and/or finals.

Lots of SC2 coming up!

lol stim is the sole reason i decided to play terran when i got the game! i actually hated terran at the time from watching sc2 long before i played it (back when they were sooo op)

sounds tough tho, gl with all that. besides nearly dying when i was like 8, ive run pretty good at all things health wise

re: 2014 WCS, I'm seeing some derping from foreigners about "oh no the Koreans will never leave AM". I think they're ignoring that this situation appears substantially better and higher-variance (which is a good thing for underdogs) for foreigners than the old Challenger League system. Idra wrote this article with his thoughts:

and quoted this tweet from Huk:

Well, let's look at some history. In the new system, challenger league means you play one bo5 and either you advance to premier or you're out of WCS entirely and have to re-qualify. Based on what we saw in AM Challenger League last season, that actually seems perfectly reasonable:

Season 1, round of 40
- Sage loses to Vibe
- Oz (who came from premier) loses to Jim
- Jaedong loses to theognis (2-0!)
- Heart (who came from premier) loses to Taeja
- HwangSin loses to Goswser

So, right away, if we pretend that these are instead the bo5 matches (yes, they were bo3, but whatever) of the current system - that's 5 Koreans who are not playing premier league and have to re-qualify next season, when a max of 2 Koreans can qualify to CL each season. 2 of those Koreans hypothetically dropping out came straight from premier league.

But, in the old system, with the group stage of challenger being a fallback for whoever got knocked out of the bracket stage - 4 of those 5 Koreans that would have dropped out in the new system qualified for premier league. HwangSin won his group 2-0, Jaedong finished 2nd in his group to Jim, Sage and Oz were in the same group and both qualified in the top two. Only Heart failed and dropped out.

Season 2, ro40
- Hyun loses to Puck
- Arthur loses to Huk
- Center loses to Apocalypse
- Select loses to Hero
- TheStc (from premier) loses to State

5 Koreans that would be knocked out in the new system (1 of whom was from Premier); instead, Hyun/Arthur/TheStc all qualified for premier in the group stage. Only Center and Select (both of whom were in an all-Korean group, lolz) did not finish top two to move on to premier.

Don't think it's too useful to look at S3 since very few people took challenger league that seriously. Point is, foreigners are like "wahhh Koreans are gonna beat on foreigners and never leave", but it looks like the new system will actually make it far more likely that Koreans will drop out of WCS AM entirely by losing their challenger match. The group stage of CL was such a massive variance reducer for them vs foreigners.

Not to mention that there will undoubtedly be several Korean vs Korean challenger matches this coming season and every season thereafter.

Tbh, I'm not really convinced that this system will "chase" anyone back to WCS KR. It just means that the ladder wildcard qualifier (the only one open to non-residents I think) will be stacked as ****. No matter how tough that tournament gets, WCS KR is tougher. But in the long run, it will mean fewer Koreans and that's fine. There really aren't too many currently in WCS NA that don't have a reasonable chance of derping off their spot at some point. If I had to bet on which Koreans would be left in WCS NA at the end of the year, I'd only bet on Jaedong, Hero, and Polt. And Polt lives here anyway.

me too! literally the worst 2 health issues in my life were tonsilitis in high school and breaking my nose in a non-serious way playing basketball in college. Been lucky.

I located the source of our internet problems, the ****ing cable jack was bent because my dumbass roommate pushed a bookshelf up against it too closely. So the connection is stabilized...and now my wireless card is turning off every 5 minutes on my laptop. ****ing hell!

Well, every CL match is premier player vs. challenger qualifier and there can be max 2 Korean challenger qualifiers. So, up to 2 depending on who the incoming Koreans get matched up against.

And you never know, it's possible the ladder wildcard qualifier winners won't be Korean.

Taeja, bro, Taeja.

Oh I didn't know that. Makes sense I guess lol.

i dont even know what it was that i had, but it was something in my throat. was in the hospital for 4 days; they taught my mom how to do an emergency tracheotomy after 2. fever was 106 for a while. fadeeeeeee

broke my nose twice, bball at recess in 2nd grade lolol, bled allllll over the place, and soccer in high school. told my mom, she said ok, well go look in the mirror and put it back where you think it belongs. broke my wrist very badly at 14 and the doctor did the resetting that time. worst pain of my life. countless fingers and toes, but whatever.

didnt know laptops still had wireless cards. my wifi was so **** til i put a pw back on it after buying my mom one that wasnt from the 90s last christmas. now i dont even bother with ethernet on this comp or my poker comp

That's why I asked if there was any lore explaining what exactly psy storm is. Infestors sneeze out sticky acidic goo that damages you over time. I get that. The goo still exists if it dies. That makes sense. Storm seems like some force lightning type ability that the caster would have to be concentrating to do.

Old-school VOD of the day: http://www.gomtv.net/2010gslopens2/vod/1222

San goes forge slow expand on a super wide open natural and a map with a terribly short rush distance, going forge + 3 cannons before nexus

Check goes 1 base roach

This is all apparently totally normal

LOL 2010

wireless adapter would be the term i was going for. whatever the hell that thing is called

Idra and Huk complaining about other people not being personable?

So, we all know Dreamhack plays the GOAT music in commercial breaks and is pretty good at putting on events. At DH Winter, it appears they will be taking this to the next level with...

you forgot to mention he blocked his own nexus with a cannon so has to kill it and make another cannon

Gonna watch with comments this evening.

Get better dude. You aren't building enough medivacs IRL.

That was also hilarious (I found the vod on San's liquipedia page, where it lists that series as "perhaps the worst professional SC2 games ever played") but the metagame at the time is what really stuck out to me. 1 base roach isn't even a good silver league build anymore.

If I recall correctly, 2 gate zealot expand was pretty popular for a while (especially on that one map that had the backdoor rocks into the main)

Wonder if you went back to literally first GSL, what standard of player could win if he got a time machine? Ie top master now, low master?

the thing was that the maps were so bad for macro play that you'd still need elite level micro

if you put everyone on whirlwind, then yeah probably about that

Yeah you could be right. But let's add a twist, the person knows they are going back in time and can practice on the exact map pool that was used on ladder thanks to Blizzard who do it for nostalgia purposes.

play zerg

maek infestor

win GSL?

Stephano roach max vs P? Could they stop it? Would require scouting for all in a lot obv (but that was mostly 4 gate then right?).

This is the stream I was referencing on my stream the other day. During commercial breaks, the casters play trolly songs and the chat goes nuts.

I don't think you could get away with any gasless 3 base stuff. But it doesn't really matter because a 2 base early speed build basically demolishes everything protoss did before FFE.

In general, most of the popular stuff from the early days (4gate, 1 base ling/bane in ZvZ or bane busts, 2rax) are pretty comfortable for any masters player, so I'd put the bar about there. There was an article on TL a while back about how Fruitdealer was so far ahead of the meta when he won. Any masters player today enjoys that same advantage.

lolllll awesome.

Needle do you get a bonus if you make a BCS bowl