Band of Brothers MLG Hype!

"We Few, We Happy Few, We Band of Champions"

Only a small handful of people can call themselves MLG Champions, and these four very special individuals all share a significant quality, the stamina and will to achieve the very best. Love or hate them, or in the case of Jinro; just love him, there is no doubt that it takes something special to stand above the rest at one of the four Major League Gaming events that have occurred so far.

Huk is George Luz
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“ Are those dusty jump wings? How do you expect to slay the Huns with dust on your jump wings?”
“tahts halo dont worry”

It’s been nearly 9 months since a young hooded man that went by the handle Millenium Huk stomped his way through MGL Raleigh, his mass gaming throughout the beta and early release had given him an incredibly important edge over a lot of his opponents, experience. Some will deny this is what gave him the victory, claiming that pillows and hoodies are overpowered, while this may be true, I believe Huk was strong enough to win without them at that August weekend.

Like Luz Huk is the joker of the pack, quick to joke and with plethora nice celebrations he could very easily be the poster boy of North American e-sports had he not ventured out to Korea to pursue GSL dreams after signing with Liquid. Before that though, Huk went on to come third in the next MLG, however his last major tournament win (excluding Liquid`Wrestling) was in the EG Masters Cup last September.

Currently Huk will be taking his second shot at the GSL title when the next regular GSL season begins, but before then we will hopefully see him do well in the upcoming Super Tournament. Huk has already proven he is not just a flash in the pan player but he’s never been truly dominant, however as the first winner and currently the only foreigner in code S he is definitely something special.

IdrA is Ronald Speirs
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“Zigaretten?”
“Speirs: You wanna know if they're true or not, the stories about me? Did you ever notice with stories like that, everyone says they heard it from someone who was there. Then when you ask that person, they say they heard it from someone who was there. It's nothing new, really. I bet if you went back two thousand years, you'd hear a couple centurions standing around yakkin' about how Tertius lopped off the heads of some Carthaginian prisoners.
Lipton: Well, maybe they kept talking about it because they never heard Tertius deny it.
Speirs: Maybe that's because Tertius knew there was some value to the men thinking he was the meanest, toughest son of a bitch in the whole Roman Legion.“
“Fuck off”

Did you hear about when Speirs killed twenty Prisoners of War? Did you hear about when IdrA had a BM war with Combat-Ex? Did you see that one VOD when IdrA raged? Sometimes very smart men embrace their legend, Speirs knew what it meant to the men if they believed he was one bad motherfucker, IdrA knows what it means to be known for his attitude. People often complain about IdrA’s recent performance before winning the first IPL, however he is damned good and deserves a lot of the respect he commands.

He is the Gracken, and he was the Great White Hope in Korea for so long, however he is far more known for his attitude than his tournament results. Did anyone ever see Speirs kill those prisoners? All we saw was him giving out some smokes and all we heard was a few gunshots amongst a battlefield. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t stick. We all know IdrA won at D.C. however we did forget the huge Zerg buffs that happened just before MLG started. The patch hit, and hit hard. IdrA took full advantage of this, suddenly Terrans had so many ¬options denied to them and roaches were suddenly so much better en masse. Even if he didn’t take advantage of the roach buff, the threat of it was enough.

However what the doubters fail to remember is, if Zerg suddenly had all these advantages, why wasn’t the tournament dominated by the swarm? IdrA may not have been the best player at the tournament but it certainly seemed that way. He has a polarising effect more so than any other player at the moment, and I feel that it’s in some ways good for the scene. However very few people can deny that he needs to shape up in some regards to his behaviour.

IdrA has returned to the US and at the last MLG he placed 7th most notably being knocked down into the losers bracked by Huk using hallucinated Void Rays, something he quickly put behind him as he beat Huk in dominating fashion in an extended series the next day. Since then IdrA has won the IPL, started commentating some, had an argument with Day9 about balance and been banned for 92 days by the TL mods. But whatever happens around him, you’re sure to hear about it the next day, people might not love IdrA, but like Speirs they sure love talking about him.

Jinro is Richard Winters
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“ These men have been through the toughest training the Army has to offer, under the worst possible circumstances, and they volunteered for it.”
“SO IMPRESSIVE! SO IMPRESSIVEEEE SO IMPRESSIVE! GORILLA MAN!”

The leader of the pack, the neo great white hope, the gracken slayer, like Winters he is an ordinary man doing extraordinary things and getting properly acknowledged for his achievements. Jinro took us all by suprise, all of us perhaps, with the exception of Day9 and Easy Company (Team Liquid). He spent years climbing Currahee, and he knows what it means to stand alone together, those who stuck with Brood War do. A forum stalwart people looked up to FrozenArbiter and those who remember the early beta and release dailies will know that Jinro was more referenced than anyone. “Jinro said this” “I spoke with my friend Jinro today”.

“Guarnere: I like Winters he's a good man, but when the bullets start flyin, I don't know if I want a Quaker to do my fightin for me.”

People didn’t believe in Jinro until his MLG win, much like there was distrust in Winters until he could prove himself on the battlefield. And the comparison continues, once Winters did prove himself in Normandy he continued to do incredible things. Jinro made it to the Semi-Finals in GSL twice after his MLG win and became our shining beacon in an ever darkening South Korean e-sports scene. He received a heroes’ welcome when at long last he returned to Sweden for an unsuccessful Dreamhack invitational run. And his bad luck has continued recently being demoted to Code A. Hopefully he can make a triumphant return to Code S on the back of another strong MLG performance sometime in the future, he certainly has the skill for it.

Artosis was amazed in GSL three when Jinro discovered that the b+c combination could be used more than once and was a pretty effective thing to do. Jinro plays the way he wants to play and that makes him seem either really good when he wins or sometimes pretty silly when he loses. But we can hope for a greater refinement in the way he plays coming into the future. As always the gorilla terran will rise again. Team Liquid like Easy spend their time on the front line in plain view, losing a match to many gets blown out of proportion as if they were losing the war, but I’m not worried... CURRAHEE!

Naniwa is Lewis Nixon
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“Oh, I have every confidence in my scrounging abilities, and I have a case of Vat '69 hidden in your footlocker. “
“ ...to be honest I really want to become the first bonjwa after some consideration”

Naniwa is known to have had his problems just like Nixon’s drinking, his team history was almost as long as his BoX win streak and in his early career he was known for bad manner, abuse colossus builds and being kicked out of ESL Pro Series Germany, akin to Lew’s demotion. But to be honest, who cares? Naniwa is a beast, perhaps he is THE beast. What seems to be a common trend for Swedish players that win MLG titles is that they receive a huge boost to their confidence and their tournament results reflect this. In a few days Naniwa will play in the finals of arguably the most prestigious Starcraft 2 tournament of all time, the TSL3. And whether he wins or loses he has already made history. I for one believe he will continue the tradition of Protoss winning the TSL and no one will bat an eyelid if he wins, he is certainly not the underdog.

However he was the underdog when he travelled with ease through the MLG Open bracket, not losing a single game until the final where he managed to lose a whole 2 to two time silver medallist and 2-4 MLG loser Kiwikaki. Naniwa may not have won the road to Korea tournament losing his first boX series in a long time (he won 35 in a row to be exact) to Sase in the final, but there is no doubt that he will be trying at some point in the future. At the moment Naniwa is the only MLG champion not to have competed in the GSL Code S tournament, an interesting distinction.

Naniwa has broken many records, but if you want more hype just check out Plexa's Hype Thread

So with MLG Columbus looming who will be the next to join these happy few?

My prediction is on Private Albert Blithe (Haypro) the shy retiring one that history forgets, even though his achievements are nothing to scoff at (read into that if you will). However there is also the untested pattern of wins going Protoss, Zerg, Terran, Protoss so that would support my prediction.

We’re less than a month away now from the next MLG and even if the stream breaks horribly we’ll keep watching, even if we’re just watching Eagles

Band of Brothers MLG Hype!

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