Who were/are the best foreign sc1 players? - Page 11

On November 14 2017 21:35 sicklucker wrote:
the majority of players are way better mechanically now tho. The avg apm has almost doubled. you can thank tools like justin tv and twitch for that. Everyone sees eonzerg spamming 500 apm daily and try to emulate you didnt have that way back I remember 200 apm was considered alot or decent.

I actually think players are way better now

On December 17 2010 13:31 Guybrush wrote:
*Best = Regarded one of the best nonkoreans those years

My list for Top30 Alltime nonkoreans
1. Grrrr(P,R) - OSL(Hanaro), Blizzard world championship, WCG03 3rd, Best 99,00,01,02,03
2. Elky(T) - OSL(Sky2002) 4th, WCG01 2nd, ECG04, Best 01,02,03,04
3. Slayer(R) - KBK00, Best 99,00,01,02
4. Sven(T,R) - Best 99,00,01,02
5. Maynard(T,R) - Best 98,99,00, Nickname "God" among the best players
6. SaFT(P,R) - WGT season2(old french WGT), Best 01,02
7. Blackman(Z) - WCG02 3rd, Best 02,03,04,05
8. PJ(P,R) - WCG07 2nd, MYM tour, Best 03,04,05,06,07,08,09, Chinese tournaments
9. Androide(T) - WCG05 2nd, Best 03,04,05,06,07
10. Mondragon(Z) - WCG07 3rd, WGT season9, ECG05, GGL2, EuroCup, TLT1 2nd, TSL2 2nd, Best 03,04,05,06,07,08,09
11. Lx(P) - PGL08, Best 05,06,07,08,09
12. Draco(P) - PGL07, TANL3, Best 03,04,05,06,07,08
13. Sen(Z) - Best 05,06,07,09, ToT Tour
14. Advokate(T) - TLT2, SomE tour, Best 04,05,06,07,08,09
15. ret(Z,T) - TANL1, WGT season3, Best 03,05,08,09
16. Fisheye(P) - WCG03 2nd, Best 02,03,04,05,06
17. Smuft(P) - TLT1, Best 01,02,03
18. Yosh(T) - Best 01,02,05,07,09
19. Asmodey(R,P) - PGC2, OSL participant(Sky2001), Best 00,01,02
20. Testie(R) - Best(hacked before 03) 03,04,05,06, PlayIT, Ace
21. Super(T) - Best 05,06,08,09, Chinese tournaments
22. F91(Z) - Best 05,06,07,08,09, Chinese tournaments
23. Iefnaij(P) - Stamina, TSL1, Best 07,08,09
24. Nazgul(P) - PGC3 , OCL participant, Best 01,02,03
25. Legionnaire(P) - PL-Allkill, Courage, WCG05 3rd, Best 03,04,05
26. White-ra(P) - Best 06,07,08,09
27. Froz(T) - Best 01,02,03,04
28. Assem(T) - GGL1, Best 03,04,05
29. NTT(T) - WCG00 3rd Best 99,00,01
30. NonY(P) - Spirit, TSL2 Best 07,08,09
31. IdrA(T) - Valor, ESWC Best 09

I've followed the scene pretty much from the start and this is more or less the 31 of the best players in their respective primes. I've included some of their achievements that I remember. I didnt really think about taking Idra since his reign was so short, but he was very dominant in the end.

Top 5 are oldschool players who were among the best in the world in their prime - not just the best foreigners. With the exception of Elky they also excelled with every race and were randoming in several tournaments. Grrrr and Elkys achievements in progaming speak for themselves(1st and 4th in OSLs respectively). Slayers KBK victory also stands out, but Maynard and Sven do not have the same accomplishments and because of this I'll enlighten you abit about these great players.

Maynard was considered the best player before Grrrr started dominating and went by the nickname "God" among the best players on the Kali server (the alternative to playing on B.net back then with better latency). In terms of achievements Maynard didnt do too much but he introduced a gameplay with strong focus on economy and overwhelming the opponent with sheer numbers rather than trying to outcontrol him.

For example the term "Maynarding" is still used today as a synonym for worker transfer. The textbook example of this was done in the battlereport (there werent replays back then) between Maynard and Grrrr in the USA vs Canada tournament back in summer 1999 covered by gamegurus.net. Maynard(6) was playing zerg against Grrrrs(9) protoss on Lost Temple. Maynard opened conservatively with a 12 hatch in his main (zealot rushes were extremely popular back then) and teched to 2 hatch hydra, harassing Grrrrs expand constantly with hydradancing using only small guerilla groups rather than his whole army to negate storm-efficiency. While he was doing this Maynard consumed the map with a low saturation of workers on every expand, continously transfering most of them to new expands as soon as he expanded to them. He did this because the efficiency of the workers are higher the lower saturation you have. Of course this means you need more expands than you would normally have to get the same income, but your army would be bigger because you would need less workers (than with a normal high worker saturation) to maintain an equal economy. He won the game after about 25-30 minutes with pure hydras, and because his saturation was so low I remember his 3rd expand going dry before his natural. He strongly influenced Grrrr and Grrrr himself has in several interviews said that he considered Maynard better than him even after going to Korea. Maynard was also living as a progamer in Korea for a short time.

Slayer and Sven are considered some of the most talented players to ever play the game and were practicing with many of the best progamers in their era - H.O.T, Yellow, V-Gundam, Oddysay, KimWanChul, IntoTheRain, Love30.D.O.M, TheMarine, Foru, and so forth. They were also practice partners with Garimto when he was preparing for his match against Boxer in the Sky2002 OSL (Garimto was a also a part of the GG# team). Sven was even telling him which strategy he should use, and indeed Garimto went ahead and used it. There are parallels to draw from the Maynard-Grrrr combo to Sven-Slayer. Like Maynard, Sven had warcraft2 experience and was a dominating player in the early stages of Starcraft. Furthermore, as Maynard influenced Grrrr, Sven formed Slayer from very early stages; sensing his potential, recruiting him to the aBs team (which consisted of the best norwegian players) and practicing with him in person exchanging thoughts and strategies - though Sven was most often the creative one. Like Grrrr won OSL - Slayer won KBK which is an incredible achievement. I'd actually consider KBK a bigger achievement because absolutely any player in the world could play in it and you would be flown to Korea to play in the playoffs - a 256 player single elimination tournament (BO3s in the semi and final). Just as Maynard, Sven didnt have any major achievements and also had short stints were he wasnt playing competitvely, but when he became strongly active again in 2001/2002 he was one of few players (and most likely the only terran) capable of beating SaFT in a BO5 (in the final of the scandinavian allstartour in 2002) and dominated several known korean progamers in online tournaments and practice games. Known for his deadly micro in BW he transitioned his skills into the newly released warcraft3 and played competitively on the highest level before losing interest after a few months.

Back to the rest of the top 10:
In terms of absolute skill Id put PJ, Lx, Sen, Draco, ret, Idra and Nony high, and in terms of longevity theres little doubt that PJ wins that. Mondragon, Advokate, Draco and Fisheye are also notable ones. In particular Yosh and also ret could have probably been close to them if they didnt take long breaks from playing.

Some of the rest of my choices for top 10 are certainly arguable and I will give some reasoning for picking SaFT, Blackman and Androide. PJ and Mondragon are there mostly for their longevity and I wont write about them - they're understandably quite known by everyone due to their recent activity.

My reason for having SaFT so high was that in his prime he would beat Boxer several times who was the best player in the world at that time. He also dominated the WGTour ladder with like 90-8 in stats. Dont believe me ? Check this link http://web.archive.org/web/20020405173616/sc.wgtour.com/ladder/profile_player.php?id=4904 (it takes a while before it loads). He was extremely consistent and quite possibly the best PvTer in the world in 2001/2002 including progamers. His PvP wasnt lagging far behind and his PvZ had 40 minute slugfests against the best zerg in korea then - ChoJJa.

Blackman is so high because his heavy macro oriented style pioneered Zerg in his prime. He was also one of few zerg players being fast enough to manage Zerg on island maps - where most other zergs would complain about imbalance. You would have tons of players copying him in 2003, and the wgtour ladder was flooded with zerg players after his 3rd place at WCG in 2002. Tomson (a quite famous polish player) switched from playing terran, copied Blackmans 1hatch,2hatch,3hatch8patrol9patrol0patrol hotkey system and became very successful in later years, reaching the final in the scandalous WDTour which progamer Oversky won with maphack. Blackman didnt qualify for the WCG again before in 2005 (Poland had an incredible amount of good players 2003-2005, only Sweden in 2001 is comparable) and still managed to show good play albeit not as dominant as before because his early game was average.

Androide is so high because his 2nd place at WCG in 2005 came at a point where progamers were rapidly surpassing foreigners skillwise, and when he knocked out Silent_Control in a dominanting style right after Control had beaten Xellos in a BO3 it looked very much like a foreigner could win WCG. Foru was very lucky to win that tournament losing to Slash and Blackman (who utterly crushed him) in the groups, and then barely squeezing out 2-1 vs Sen and then 2-1 vs Storm (chinese zerg). Unfortunatly his best matchup was PvT and he ended up beating Androide fairly easy in the final. Since that PJ was the only foreigner entering the final in WCG but very few had faith in him as he was up against Stork in Stork in what was Storks ace MU. Androide thus represented the last realistic hope that a foreigner could win WCG.

PJ and LX have killed most korean progamers in tournaments in modern times(post 2005, covered in my blog) but they've also played in more tournaments containing progamers.

Damn. Didnt intend for this post to become this big. Anyways that's my thoughts on this subject.