New StarCraft II Character Profiles
Blizzard are happy to announce that the Cast of Characters section of the official Starcraft II guide is finally complete. If you have ever wanted to learn more about your favourite characters and their sometimes pretty colorful past, this one is for you.
The latest additions include Horace Warfield, Milo Kachinsky and Graven Hill, you can find all of those below!
New StarCraft II Character Profiles – Starcraft II Official Site
Diorama Contest Honorable Mentions
The StarCraft 2 Alienware Diorama contest that was announced back in October has come to an end. While it will apparently take a few more days for the winners to be decided, 20 honourable mentions have been revealed. In a couple of days Blizzard will be revealing the 5 winners, all of whom will be receiving a voucher for $3000 worth of Alienware products. You can find all 20 the honorable mentions below, all of which are incredibly impressive. Enjoy!
Diorama Contest Honorable Mentions – Blizzard Entertainment
Tastosis and BoxeR Fan Art
I just had to post these two, semi-GSL-themed, pieces of fan art. The first being of Tasteless and Artosis and the second of BoxeR (aka FoxeR) the new marine madman that made the finals of the second season of the GSL. they are pretty amazing and you are definitely missing out if you don’t check them out!
FAN ART: Tasteless and Artosis Finally Merged – GosuGamers
Tournament News
Let us have a look at the tournament news for these past few days! I thought I would just point out quickly that you can find a nice list of upcoming events over at Blizzard’s official Starcraft II Upcoming Events post. You can find that below, enjoy!
eSports: Upcoming Tournaments 12/11 – Starcraft II EU
EmpireLESTER Wins Craft Cup Lite #13
EmpireLESTER has won the 13th Craft Cup Lite. The zerg player took down the terran player nbs in the finals with a score of 2 to 1.
Craft Cup Lite #13 Results – Craft Cup
SjoW Wins Craft Cup #18
The terran player SjoW has managed to win yet another Craft Cup. In the finals of Craft Cup #18 he took down the zerg playing Skutt with a rather impressive score of 3 to 0.
Craft Cup #18 Results – Craft Cup
Kas Wins Go4SC2 Cup #54
The terran playing Kas took last Wednesday’s Go4SC2 Cup #54 by defeating fellow terran player Tarson in the finals with a score of 3 to 2.
Go4SC2 #54: Monthly Lead and Wednesday Victory for Kas – GosuGamers
AhhBoxxah Wins Battle Dex TL SC2 Open
The BattleDex TeamLiquid Open that was sponsored by, well Battle Dex and hosted by TeamLiquid concluded this past weekend. The terran player SixJax.AhhBoxxah took the first place and managed to battle his way through quite a few rather daunting opponents. You can find the full results from the event along with replays and VODs below, thanks TeamLiquid!
[Over] Battle Dex TL SC2 Open – TeamLiquid
IEM Europe Preview
GosuGamers have taken a look at the groups of players participating in the IEM Europe Season 5 aswell as the games already played. There are a ton of big names taking part, as expected, and the playoffs will no doubt be amazing to watch, as always! There are 6 groups of four players and quite a few matches yet to be played. More matches will be played in the next few weeks, so be sure to check back here or over at GosuGamers to see the results.
Intel Extreme Masters European Championship Preview – GosuGamers
Champions Trophy Preview
Yet another tournament preview. The SK Champions Trophy is set to be pretty exciting. Yes, I can say that now, now that 16 of the 32 entrants are already known. To mention a few of the bigger names participating – Naama, SarenS, MaNa, Tarson, NightEnd, Lucifron, MaDFroG and Strelok, and these are only the first 16!
The tournament is set to kick off next Saturday, the 20th of November and I will no doubt be trying to keep track of and watch as many games as I can. Read the full preview, including a lot more details below!
Champions Trophy – The First 16 – SK Gaming
Steelseies – Europe vs America Challenge
The SteelSeries: Europe vs America Challenge will pit two teams of eleven players against each other in a to-the-death battle of 1v1 games in Starcraft II. The winning team will be taking home a nice 500$. It is unclear as to how the event will be played but judging from the first few players participating, White-Ra, DIMAGA qxc, HuK and Machine, the rest are still to be revealed, I have no doubt that it will be a good one. The event will be stretched over the first two weekends of December with the dates being 4th, 5th, 11th and 12th. More information about live-streams and precise times will be announced closer to the time, check back here soon.
Europe to face America in an epic series – GosuGamers
GSL2 Concluded
The second season of the Global Starcraft II League is over. The zerg playing NesTea faced off against the terran BoxeR, or FoxeR has he has come to be known, and took him down in a nail biting best of 7 series with a score of 4 to 3. Yes, that means NesTea walks away with over $80, 000. The games were amazing and the players proved that they were definitely the most deserving to be battling it out in the finals. You can find a full recap of the finals, an interview with the winner, links to the VODs and much, much more concerning the now completed GSL2.
[GSL] Season 2 Finals – TeamLiquid
GSL2 Grand Final Battle Report – GosuGamers
GSL2 Final Champion Crowned – SK Gaming
[Interview] GSL Season 2 CHAMPION – TeamLiquid
VODs of GSL2 – GOMtv
GSL Season 3
As I mentioned before the GSL3 is set to start-up its qualifications soon too, you can read more about that below.
GSL3 – Foreigners Participating
There are a bunch of non-Korean players heading to Korea to participate in the third season of the Global Starcraft II League. I suppose it is a bit silly to label these players as Foreigners or treat their participation any differently, but hey, we just can’t help ourselves. The following are confirmed to be participating:
iNcontroL
Huk
Kiwikaki
MYM.Artosis
IdrA
Sen
Ret
Haypro
Jinro
Tasteless
TorcH
SeleCT
Loner
I really can’t wait for the qualifications to be over so we can jump back into the fun of watching the games from the Round of 64 live. Keep checking back here in the days to come for more on the GSL3!
Blizzard At Brasil Game Show
Blizzard Entertainment is hosting its first-ever Latin American StarCraft II Invitational Tournament. Eight of the best players from the region will compete for fame, glory, and a total prize pool of $10,000. They have a lot of cool and interesting events and activities planned for the game show and it will no doubt be a blast for anyone attending. So if you live in the area or just want to read more about the event you can find all the information you’d ever need below.
Blizzard Entertainment at the Brasil Game Show – Starcraft II Official Site
GameGune Starcraft II Open – Mexico City
GameGune will be hosting an open StarCraft 2 tournament for everyone attending the Aldea Digital exhibition in Mexico City at December 9 – 11. The event will boast a $18,750 prize pool so it is sure to attract many players from all over the world, or at least the US, as they are closest. The player cap is set to 64 and they are running with double elimination and best-of-three. Players that want to register can do so over at http://www.aldeadigital.com/.
The tournament looks pretty interesting and it is good to see Starcraft II being spread all over the world, absolutely everywhere! You can read more about the event at GameGune.
More Dreamhack Invites Sent Out
A couple more invitees have been revealed for the Dreamhack Starcraft II Tournament. BRAT_OK, Fenix, Socke, SjoW and IdrA are the next five that DreamHack have invited to the SteelSeries LAN tournament on November 25. This is only the beginning, though, as five more invitations will be handed out to players registering. Nine will be based on the upcoming DreamHack On Tour qualifiers, and the last eight through a BOYC-qualifier on site. Now I really wish I could attend DreamHack! : (
Read more about the event over at the Official Dreamhack site.
Starcraft II Black Dragon League
Freaks4U the company behind NGL and GameSports announced a new league. The Black Dragon League will be a European StarCraft 2 1on1 competition.
BDL, for short, will feature 16 of Europeans top players and 6000$ in price-money. Nine gamers have already been invited, three of each race. The rest of the competitors will be determined during a qualification process that started on the 13th of November. Good luck to everyone trying out and those that aren’t can read more about those that are below!
Black Dragon League Official Site
Player And Clan News
There is, as usual, quite a bit of player and clan news going around. A few smaller pieces include Fury joining the team PlayZone as their first Starcraft II player. Big name protoss player NightEnd has also left his long-time home mTw to join the ranks of Preatoriani.
Warcraft III legend FuRy becomes Playzones first Starcraft II player – Playzone
NightEnd leaves mTw and joins Praetoriani – MyM
Coach Won Of STARTALE Interview
Fomos.kr have a really interesting interview up with Coach Won. He has apparently been working in ‘other fields’ for the last 32 months since leaving WeMade Fox in 2008, but has now returned, as many knew he would. He is now the coach of team STARTALE and shares the team with popular players such as HopeTorture(IntoTheRainbow) and JulyZerg. STARTALE has promised us big things and this interview can give you a little taste of what’s to come, and a bit of insight into the life of a Korean Starcraft II Team Coach. Read the full thing below!
[Interview] Coach Won of STARTALE – TeamLiquid
BoxeR Set To Create SlayerS – sls
I recently spoke about BoxeR’s personal sponsorship from none other than Intel and the funds he was given to form a new Starcraft II team. BoxeR has posted on his twitter account that he is making his own clan named SlayerS, or sls for short. Apparently, and I am not sure I get this, the requirement is anyone over 1800 rating in Diamond league to join, although this requirement may change as ratings fluctuate. BoxeR did also note that he is not going to take in anyone who already belongs to a clan or a team.
So that is pretty interesting. I assume the low requirement to join is so that he can scout up and coming talent out via this team, try pick up the new big thing in Korea? Who knows. I really do hope to hear more about this soon, keep checking back here!
BoxeR to make SlayerS clan (sls) – TeamLiquid
WeMadeFox.Moon Interview
FNATIC.com has an interesting interview up with big name, or huge name rather, Warcraft III Pro-Gamer Moon. In the interview they discuss all manner of things but, as expected, as I am talking about it here, it does lean heavily to the Starcraft II side of things. He talks about his participation in the GSL and how serious he plans on taking Starcraft II in the future. Enjoy!
WeMadeFox.Moon Interview – FNATIC.com