Volume 3 of our exhaustive coverage of foreign BW scene is here! Hopefully the wait wasn't too long, but you can relax now and take your time while catching up on the events that happened in our small little community over the past couple of weeks.

Once more I'd like to remind you that everyone who is willing to contribute to our Amateur Brood War Coverage don't hesitate to send me a PM. Just to make things more clear, I'm in desperate need of people who are willing to spend couple of hours a week on gathering results, writing and in general being involved with the organizational side of our coverage. With the business side of things out of the way, let's talk a bit what happened in our scene since Volume 2.

In this write-up we had to cover three weeks of Gambit Cup, which was done by a very thorough dRAW. He even conducted a series of short interviews with some of the top foreign players and you can see how each of them responds differently to the same questions. More of dRAW's statistics on Gambit Cup can be found at his blog.

Following the lengthy Gambit Cup write-up, we have an update on D Ranks Team League brought to you by Birdie. It's tough times for D rank players, so show them your support! After all, we need fresh blood if we wish to maintain our community decently active. After following the adventures of D rank players, you can continue to read the mash-up of articles providing updates on pretty much everything else that is happening in the foreign BW scene.

After finally catching up on all the results, you can sit back and relax by watching the five games we chose for your very own entertainment. This week we had our resident interviewer, Pholon, sitting down with Bakuryu, the mustache zerg, asking him some interesting questions in an interview you don't want to miss. To close our write-up, we give you a little preview of things to come. Keep in mind that some of the tournaments in this section will have already been played at the time you read this news, but hopefully it doesn't diminish your experience reading about it.


Due to the unfortunate timing of the last edition of our coverage, we've missed out on three weeks of Gambit Cup Season 3. So prepare yourself to catch up on the most prestigious team league in foreign BW scene while we give you the full results of what happened in last three weeks. After you see all the results, you can see the current standings of teams so far up to Week 4. Keep in mind that LRM and CN team postponed their game in Week 4, so they have one less match than the rest of the teams. The competition is getting heated and players are desperately trying to prove themselves and represent their team the best. After catching up with all the statistics, you can meet some of the players in the series of short interviews where they answer some interesting questions.



First up, we saw an underdog Fox team going against the giant LRM. After Week 1's close match between iFu and LRM, this time LRM decided to send Bakuryu first and seal the deal with an all-kill! Unfortunate for Fox, they were unable to repeat the magic from the SJ series. In what must be a considerable upset, especially since CN beat reps the previous week, SiR beats CN with the help of Specter's all-kill. Some may call this cheese, all-ins, or whatever, but the man did his job and for some reason CN failed to communicate between themselves to establish a coherent counter to the 9-9gateway play of Specter. I would call this more of a CN blunder, but congrats to SiR for their dominating display!

To close the Week 2 matches we had a fairly close CW between iFU and reps, trading wins until the very end, when reps manages to close out the final two sets thanks to their anchor Plumbum! Below you can see the full results of Week 2.









Sas continuing its Week 1 success with another 4-2 victory over reps. Sas sent out Cute of clan [PaiN] to clean up 3 wins, but was then taken out in a ZvZ by Plumbum who affirms himself as the reps anchor once again. Though he couldn't go all the way and do a reverse all-kill, as the Hungarian zerg Sziky was too big of an challenge. In second match of the Week 3, LRM followed the pattern of their previous CW, where they sent out Bakuryu first, who once again mopped the floor with his opponents by doing a yet another all-kill. The new quote on the American bill has now been changed to, "In GodBakuryu we trust". Later we saw iFU going winless after 3 weeks as SJ crushes them in this week's CW. SJ only needed two players, TerrOr and Napoleon, who both played terran, to get the job done. In last match of Week 3, Fox recaptures fans with their newest addition and probably the strongest terran around at the moment, Bibiane, who convincingly all-kills team CN. This is CN's second time in a row getting all-killed, but hopefully we'll see some Chinese dominance in the weeks to come.











Fourth week of this popular league started underwhelming as the much expected game, LRM vs CN, was postponed. But regardless of that, we saw some exciting games from the remaining teams. iFU was really struggling, going winless in three weeks, and when all hope seemed to be lost, they finally managed to grab their first win thanks to AlfiO, who all-killed. With a strong addition to the iFU line-up they may be able to climb the rankings a few spots to redeem their slow start. I know SiR diminished to the bottom of the standings with this loss, so you can try to demerit iFU's win, but iFU did what they had to, and in great fashion. Congrats iFu!

SJ is another team that had a slow start, even getting all-killed by Fox's Karate. However, the tides have changed as they are counting two back-to-back victories over iFU and reps, both with 4-1 win. With dOTY returning to the line-up and Napoleon's recent active force, SJ is looking to be a formidable team and could capture one of the top placements by the end of the season. On the other hand we have sas, and they're doing what they do best, crushing their competition. Not many would expect Fox to win this one as Sziky is near impossible to beat in a non-mirror matchup, and to no surprise he delivers an all-kill. This may seem harsh on Fox, who have over-achieved so far with the help of Karate and Bibiane's all-kills, but so far that is their only arsenal, their team is yet to provide another player who can attain a win. Good luck to FOX in future games, and congrats to sas on their domination so far.












LRM)Bakuryu


SiR.Specter


SJ.dOTY


iFu.eonzerg


reps)Defi


sas.Bizzy


Fox.Bibiane




The third season of the D Ranks Teamleague has been a roaring success for some of the teams, and a miserable failure for others. Relative newcomers, Team Stealth Bunnies, have been doing extremely well, currently placing third in the rankings and looking poised to take down the top two teams in the next two matches. However, their main threats, Team DeSPA and Team Courage, have also been doing extremely well. All three teams have been consistently showing up to their matches (a remarkable thing indeed in the DRTL) and have each got relatively deep rosters, with players being cycled well and a good variety of play being shown. And this shows in their results.

Currently Team DeSPA leads the table at four wins and two losses, with a total of 17 points. DeSPA has perhaps the strongest roster, with players such as msj[uRound] making it to the final of the D Ranks Individual Tournament, and AtomicArchon and Obelisco also placing highly in the same tournament.
Close behind them is Team Courage, the (largely) North American team, who have been consistently showing strong performances against skilled teams, including a 4-1 domination of the leaders, Team DeSPA. They have four wins and one loss, with a total of 16 points.
The newcomers of the league, Team Stealth Bunnies, have not yet played against the top two teams, but against the other teams they have demonstrated that being new to the scene doesn't mean they can't take matches. They have four wins and one loss, with a total of 15 points.

The middle of the pack is comprised of Team All Kill Kings, Team 2, Team Victorious Secret, and Team Airforce ACE of Spades. None of the teams are 'bad' per se, but inconsistency in showing up to their matches has played mayhem with their results.

Team All Kill Kings has been taking matches off top players, but unfortunately haven't been living up to their name, with only one 3-0 win without dropped matches against SKT3. However, they did go 4-1 against Team DeSPA and do have two match wins, with three match losses, putting them fourth in the overall rankings with 13 points. They are still far from being out of the runnings for first place, although they will need at least one all-kill to get in striking distance of the crown.
Team 2 has a deep roster but the players are generally not known for doing well in tournaments, with a few exceptions. This hasn't stopped them from winning three matches, and only losing two, one of which was against the leaders of the league, DeSPA, and the other of which was against the third placed team, Stealth Bunnies. They definitely have what it takes to place third or fourth, and it would be silly to entirely rule them out of a first or second place result, although their current ranking makes it a hard slog for them to achieve it, even if they managed two 5-0 wins. That's because, even with three match wins, they only have 11 points.
Victorious Secret in particular having difficulty getting enough players showing to the matches. However, they have recently had their ranks bolstered somewhat with new blood, and could potentially finish rather well if they manage to show up, as their players are quite skilled. They currently have two wins and three losses, with a total of 9 points.
Team Airforce ACE of Spades is unfortunately living up to their namesake's style of playing, which is based around placing badly on the tables. While several of the players compete in leagues and tournaments often, and the team is not a newcomer to the D Ranks Team League, they have unfortunately not got the results to show it, with two wins, two losses, and a total of 7 points.

And finally we have the sad tale of Team SK Telecom T3. SKT3 was hyped to be the most threatening team in the league, before the league started. They had a strong lineup, but the lack of depth ended up being their downfall. Five players are enough to play in each match, but all players need to show up, and by Week 6, only EssBee was showing up to matches. In the end the team was removed from the league, with all teams gaining a 3-0 win over SKT3, and EssBee transferring to Team 2. This influences the rankings somewhat, due to the bye system, although by the end of the season it will balance out.

You can find the current league standings at BWCL.de. The next match is Week 8, where TAKK will play ACE, and DeSPA will play sB. The rest of the teams have a bye, no longer exist (SKT3) or have a walkover win against SKT3 (Team Courage).



There's a lot more tournaments and leagues going on in the scene than Gambit Cup and ThSL. I wish we could dedicate each of them a special article, but unfortunately that would take too much space. So this article will serve a purpose to get you up to speed with all the other competitions happening in our scene. I had a bit of trouble figuring out how to format this article so the information is presented to you in a visually pleasing way, so hopefully you won't get lost by reading it.




The third running of the D Ranks Individual Tournament ended with two dominating performances in the final and third place match. Hong Kong Zerg user and pride of the DRTL outfit Team Courage, Gao Xi, capped off an already impressive run with a swift 3-0 victory over Latvian Terran msj][uround] in the final. Meanwhile, Psyonic_Reaver finished up in style with a 3-0 PvP win against Irish player AtomicArchon.



Reference: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=353816




TheShimmy's Rush Week is into the Ro8 stage at the moment. We are now only a few rounds from crowning a Starcraft BW Collegiate World Champion. You can see the pride in so many of the players games, they truly want to win. It's been a while since we've had a player we could call a "College Champion", but we're almost there. So far the quarterfinals matchups have been excellent. Jumper vs dsyxelic was an exciting foreign ZvP, complete with four pool cheeses, and a match one that was extremely entertaining.

"Nuity"'s fan-favorite "C-nderella" story was stopped by the high-level play of Fold, but gives the C-Ranks players hope for future college events. Dmdkt has shown amazing play, and his matchup with Lyra should prove nothing less than entertaining. The semi-finals and Ro8 games to come will only prove to be more entertaining. Game VS Gwangtaek, a match dubbed "Finals in a Ro8", is a preview of what will be BW's college rivalry in the making. The winner could step up and potentially become college BW's Bonjwa. The casts will continue to come from Pucca, the voice of college BW.

Reference: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=354318




The final stages of the C-OSL concluded earlier this month with two high level PvZs played by the best that China has to offer. The third place match was a close run affair with Protoss user Zhàn Hún completing a reverse sweep of his opponent ZDY, clinching the series and an 800 yuan prize with his relentless zealot aggression on Icarus.

The final featured a player more familiar to most TeamLiquid users, as former WCG and PGL participant Fengzi faced off against Shén Jīng Bìng (aka. jmdjj). Fengzi is one of the few Chinese players still active outside of the VS ladder, having reached 1544 in the most recent season of Fish. Having been a strong favourite before the tournament, Fengzi showed all the skill one would expect of a player so experienced against Korean players, dispatching jmdjj 3-1 to win the inaugural season of the C-OSL. Here's to many more!






A very well hyped NoisE Amateur Starleague is officially underway by having its group stages played this last week. Divisions A, B and C have played their games in this amateur starleague with exciting games that can be watched here: VODs. Other three divisions, D, E and F, are yet to have their games casted, which most assuredly will provide great entertainment to its viewers.

Unfortunately, the qualifiers stage of this league is so complicated that I will gently just refer you to its home page where I'm sure you'll learn everything you need to know about it. Caution: If you're color blind, it's futile to even attempt.

Detailed results so far can be found at its very well updated Liquipedia page: Noise Amateur Starleague 2




With the ladder qualifier complete, the Yellow Starleague main tournament got under way with the Ro32 last week. Featuring many familiar names from C rank competitions past and present, the YSL has so far proven to be one of the best organized and most well presented lower rank tournaments. The first set of games featured a handful of interesting match-ups, including two team-kill series between members of Gambit's Cup team FoX and mca64's games against another potential Bibiane smurf, Seriosity. Full VODs for the Ro32 are now available, cast by BWalma and BMW in the traditional foreign Brood War style, a 10 hour marathon.

Reference: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=364214 (ro32)
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=366476 (ro16)




The peculiar Ro22 group stage of Pucca's Capture the Flag tournament took place last week and featured players from all levels of skill and notability in foreign Brood War. The current flag kills leader-board features a three way tie at the top between dOllar, WandS and 2Pacalypse-. Replays and VODs are available for the Ro22 games, again cast by foreign Brood War workhorse BWalma. With the Ro10 due to get underway soon, look out for more casts of this strange but intriguing tournament in the future.

Reference: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=359887




The next instalment of Eywa's ongoing show-match initiative saw ISL3 semi-finalist Fox.Bibiane face off against the man responsible for organizing every ISL to date, LRM)Game. Although Game is not as active in individual tournaments as Bibiane, the LRM captain's impressive showings in recent Gambit's Cup seasons as well as his performance for Team USA in Nation Wars left little doubt about his ability to compete with the best. Having first come to the prominence off the back of his run to the Ro8 of ISL2, Bibiane has become one of the best Terran users in the foreign scene. Since his third place finish in ISL3, Bibiane has continued to impress, most recently with an all-kill against Team China in Gambit's Cup. Although Game put up a good fight, Bibiane's good form and killer instinct won out, with the Canadian Terran sweeping the series 3-0.



Reference: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=363742




The second TvT show-match in Eywa's show-match series featured Russian powerhouse Reps)Largo and recent Terran convert Fox.Karate. Although he is yet to make an impact on a major individual league, Largo has been ever-present for his team reps in recent seasons of Gambit's Cup and is a regular participant in Russian LAN and online tournaments. Karate, meanwhile, is best known in the foreign scene as a Zerg player, having only recently committed to Terran full time at the start of the current Gambit's Cup season. Karate came into the show-match in good form, having recently all-killed an SJ line-up featuring the likes of TerrOr, Mazur and Napoleon. The series proved to be as close and entertaining as anyone could have hoped for, with Karate edging it 3-2 and putting team Fox at the top of the overall show-match leader-board.

Reference: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=363912




Another gift from our friends in China, this showmatch saw two of the most famous active Chinese players face off in a best of five series. Fresh from his dominating performance in the C-OSL final, Fengzi was strong favourite for the match against Jaystar who failed to even reach the Ro16. However Jaystar's pedigree as a competitor makes it impossible to ever completely write him off and going into the series there was some hope that it would be close. In the end Fengzi continued his run of results, defeating Jaystar 3-0 with his trademark solid, macro play.

Reference: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=365676




Oh, hey Russia, what are you up to this week? Oh, you've edited all the maps so that everyone has a speed hack? That's cool. Yeah, I'd love to watch but I'm just going to take a few steps back and check it out from over here, OK?

What? Now you've made some where the starting positions are different? But none of these bases have a choke... What do you mean you don't need a ramp?

So, apparently Blizzard have finally completed the Cyrillic localization of the map editor and the guys over at Defiler.ru are starting to have some fun. The first tournament saw eight players, mostly from Russia, match up in a double elimination bracket with players able to choose from a small group of maps from the ICCup ladder pool, edited so that the game takes place at twice the normal speed. The eventual winner was B- Zerg player, reps)fo-fo who took out Zeliboba in the final 3-0.

Perversion Tournament #6 was marginally more normal, but no less Russian. Played on edited versions of Aztec, Fighting Spirit and Outlier, this tournament attracted a number of more well known players, all eager to test their ability to adapt and innovate on a set of familiar but somehow perverted maps. The final saw ABC coverage team favourite, LRM)Bakuryu, meet up with Russian Zerg and incredibly entertaining streamer reps)Plumbum. Although Bakuryu made a valiant effort, coming back through the losers bracket to reach the final, Plumbum's ZvZ proved too strong as he swept the series 3-0 to claim the 40 dollar prize pool for the motherland. Communism power!

Reference: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=363020
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=362505





LRM)Bakuryu is one of the most known players in the foreign BW scene where his skill in BW is only matched by his love of anime. He quickly gathered a plethora of fans after his interview for ISL1 where he revealed his glorious mustache. With lovable personality and skill to be admired, he remains as one of the most popular players in the foreign BW scene.















Defiler Tours are back! In our last write-up I wrote how they're facing some problems and we were unsure if we'll see another one in near future. Our fears are laid to rest now, as a new edition, number 42 for those keeping count, is about to start on September 16. You can see basic information and you could even register for it at this link. And for those unfamiliar with the Defiler Tours, I'll leave you with this awesome hype video by Gecko[Xp] for his new pet project:



Next up we have Ribbon's No Spire ZvZ Tour. Even though this tournament will probably be over at the time you read this, while I'm writing this it's still an upcoming tournament. I'm sure a lot of you find ZvZ match-up boring, due to its fast paced micro games of muta-ling fights, where games could be decided in mere seconds. That's why Ribbon thought it would be an interesting experiment to see how the ZvZ games would look like without spire units. I'm sure a lot of players will be ushering to read an awesome Hydra ZvZ by Chef.

Not much has changed in the Guess Who... All Smurf Event since we wrote about it in last news. Even though the tournament is already underway, we're still waiting for the cast of the tournament to cast. To fill a void of missing games, you can join a Guess Who... Smurf Event Game, where you try to guess the smurfs of the players based on their chosen IDs.

Lastly, we have an announcement of yet another season of popular D Ranks Individual Tournament. If the previous season is any indication, season 4 seems to be another successful tournament full of D rank players dying to prove themselves. If you're a D rank player who wants a taste of real BW competition, be sure to not miss out on this opportunity!