Best 2v2 Foreign Zergs

We all know that Brood War is dead, it is gone and it will never come back. There was WarCraft III, which was the final death sentence for an outdated game. A few years later, World of WarCraft came along, which was for sure the end of the Real Time Strategy genre. Not to forget that Korea's isolation policy and ignorance of the foreign world caused Brood War's (and of course ESPORTS) death in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and all the other years. StarCraft II Beta killed it again. Now we're finally there, the point at which you have to quote George Martin.

Well, there is no need to. The past three years have been hard, many of you probably have no idea what was going on outside of Korea. Against all odds, we were able to maintain a healthy scene; Teamliquid Legacy Starleague showed that there is still demand for the game. However, we have new faces, new arenas and new events. Some of them were covered by the ABC Crew, others by users, but still - there's something missing. Russia. The big country, home of the ICCup, the legendary ASUS LANs and some of the best players in foreign history contributed so much to Brood War, and yet nobody in the foreign world knew. Our scene is so small that we can't possibly ignore them any longer.

Over fifty big tournaments, more than five thousand games, four LANs and a number of high quality showmatches just scream to be reviewed and advertised. New stories needs to be told, VODs waiting for views, replays want to be downloaded.

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Russian Brood War!





In December 2010, a relatively unknown young Russian started to write some sort of fan page for Brood War as a hobby. The page had nothing but a few forums, an option to watch streams, a quite minimal news script, and a tournament section. Obviously, I'm referring to yoda and defiler.ru, one of the greatest things ever to be released in the world of Brood War.



Usually, people are very picky about looks. There are good ways to present your page. There is YouTube and there is the yoda approach to design, if you can call it design at all. In December 2010, the page could be compared to a Picasso, everything was there certainly, but well, not where it should be. Horribly complicated, very crude colours and patterns, giant buttons, banners with flashy tits on them, the only thing somewhat missing were blinking text elements in neon pink. The complete package was so obscene that it could only be considered as art.

As gross as it was, something inside me was touched. Something that wanted such a page badly. Years have passed by since I last laid eyes upon such a construct. These were usually badly-made clan pages, but all of them had the passion built in every single byte. So did this page.

But wait, there was more. On every other 'major' community page you would find the same discussions. People brainstorming how to survive the plague that was SC2, how to compensate for the losses, desperate plans and group meetings about whether or not trying to promote the game we all love so much was worth it. There were groups that discussed other group's findings on what the neighbour of someone's dog said would be a good idea to pump life into the scene. There were suggestions about how and when to organize an event with a bunch of players we might or might not know from past 'major' events in order to finally stop the whole downward spiral.

The Russians, though, were more like "hey let's play some games." This, surprisingly, worked without a flowchart which told you how to find a fitting server with a more modern environment that would actually support the needs of the new eSports generation. Weird, isn't it?

These people usually gathered on reps.ru, probably the biggest and oldest StarCraft: Brood War fan page in Russia. After the Beta it was mostly the die-hards, like on any other page, who still commented on different topics, usually real life or poker stuff. Some of them decided to just use yoda's new portal for fun tournaments. Easy as that, no strings attached. They would hop onto ICCup and play for a while, every Sunday, at the same time. The Defiler.ru Tournaments were born.




The first five tournaments of the series were rather uninteresting for the foreigners, because we didn't know anything about them. However, the Russians did and a couple of well-known players signed up. That, again, doesn't mean there were great games already. The first tours were won by gargoyle a quite oldschool and strong Terran from Kazhakstan. He still plays, rarely though, and still takes down high class foreigners.



Yoda and the reps.ru community were able to raise some money and the sixth edition started with a $70 prize pool.
With the money and word-of-mouth advertising more and more outsiders learned about the new portal, which, now at least, supported English for the tournament section. In the Defiler Tour 8 in February, three non-Russians took gold, silver, and bronze for the first time. These were the first snowflakes that would start a snow-slide. From now on every new tournament would have at least sixty players signed up, participating either for fun, for the money or to get the chance to get roflstomped by B ranked players in a best of three. The second you'd got eliminated, you had the opportunity to tune into yoda's twitch stream, which again, usually was online for at least seven hours. On every Sunday.



Having an actual series of events, like the old BW4Ever Tournaments, was more important than many might think. In retrospect, there has been some sort of gap between the old, experienced and already established players likekolll, Sziky or Heme and the new faces like Bakuryu, Dewalt and eonzerg in terms of skill. Aside from ICCup Clan League or even big-time events like the first ISL, there wasn't really anything to compete in regularly. Not perspective for the players, no fame to gain - the ordinary users, forum lurkers and replay fans had no source, no story that was told. Most coverage still focused on Korea, while the foreigners where somewhat left alone. Defiler at least gave all of that knew about them a Sunday full of Brood War.







With Heme leaving the scene the tours in between April 2011 and May 2012 were dominated by the Hungarian and the Korean. Still, it didn't get boring at all, most times the two of them still played quite entertaining games. Also, everytime a Russian Terran goes away, another Russian Terran takes over. Much like Heme the new guy wasn't that new, you only never heard of him because he was a Russian Terran, and Russia has too much talented Terrans, a fact I'm probably going to repeat a hundred times during this article. It's like they have them frozen somewhere in a basement in Siberia...



Pro7ect already entered a bunch of high class offline tournaments in 2006 and 2007, much like Heme. In the ASUS LAN 2007 Pro7ect finished on the 5th/6th place, defeated - watch out Pomi - just a few rounds before and - more coincidences - lost to NotForU. The only thing surprising about Pro7ect is that we have no half-naked pics of him with beer bottles in his hand. Other than Heme Pro7ect is able to speak Korean fluently, mostly because he has a Korean background.

In between 2007 and 2011 there's not much to find about that talented player. In Fall 2011 however he came back making a run for the crown. He didn't appear too often in the big and major Defiler Tournaments, but when he did he could beat the very best. In Defiler Tour 30 he quite easily took out the ICCup Ladder #1 - the Korean TopStar. That the Pro7ect won "only" two gold medals in the overall series doesn't mean anything, he had a win ratio of 70%. This number again means only little, you have to remember that he came back from inactivity and made it to the top of the foreign scene in only a few weeks.
Pro7ect was overall a very nice guy and he didn't only stop by to play. No, he also supported the scene with his own money. He did organize, stream, sponsor and play in parts of the Defiler Mini Series.

One of the new faces was Michael from the United States. The Zerg was, compared to the rest, too good to be considered average in the Defiler Tournaments. And the skill has been quite high, usually no player with a rank lower than B made it to the Quarter Finals or onwards. The downside of the Russian Tours were the time zones, especially North American players had a hard time staying up very late to compete with the best the Europeans and Russians had to offer. This underlines how good Michael actually is. Additionally, the American used to mix things up, when he chose to play one of his off races, which are usually good enough to stomp any player, regardless of rank and reputation.

The two of them seemed to get another duell going. Most of their clashes however happened outside of the Defiler series, like in the Gosu Cup hosted by GosuGamers. In the Defiler Mini Tour organized and sponsored by Pro7ect both of them met in the Round of Eight ². The match was tied 1-1, with Pro7ect streaming his FPView. The third set was one of the better games of fall 2011!



There were more names making their way up aside from Michael and the Terran. The time of domination seemed over, as good as Pro7ect and Michael were, both of them couldn't kill all their competitors in the fashion the trio did before, nor could Sziky or Scan stomp too easy through their opponents anymore. The gap between the skilled new comers and the old elite seemed to close. One of the guys that improved most was Bakuryu.

The German Zerg participated in almost all of the Defiler Tours and usually ended among the first eight. This level of consistency was rare, even (especially) for Defiler. With every new edition he learned a bit more, worked on his shape constantly. To be fair, he was already very good, one of the players that could qualify for WCG Germany 2010, but nowhere near the level of a Sziky. However, the training paid off, he became one of if not the strongest Zerg of Western Europe. He was one of the few to win more than one medal before Winter 2011.



Furthermore, players like Napoleon showed up and scored well. Although more than 50% of the participants were from Russia, an increasing number of international players jumped on the band wagon. Another very notable player to join the elite of the Defiler circle was the Peruvian Terran Terror. As American he had the in-built timezone disadvantage, but didn't seem to mind playing tired too much. In Defiler Tour 31, 33 and 34 he won three medals out of three tournaments he signed up for - with him even taking the gold in the 33rd edition; Sziky and Scan both went missing at this sunday though.

Thanks to yoda's frequent casts we could learn more and more about the players. The faces in the later rounds were familiar, not always the same, but there wasn't too much of variation either - just what we needed. Finally some sort of who-is-who established. Make no mistake, the overall level increased with every sunday. While the average rank of Round of 16 players was around a C+ish rank in January 2011, the skill of a Round of 16 player in October 2011 was already as high as a solid B rank.




Defiler.ru went for a break in between January and May 2012, but was back with full force after spring. At first it looked like the domination would continue, with both Sziky and Scan winning one of the two new editions each.

Remember when I said that the Russians can go without drama? Well that isn't entirely correct, they do have some sort of dispute. The good thing is, it really only is a discussion of some sorts, like English gentlemen drinking tea and discussing the matters of invading France. This is quite odd once you got to know what it was all about.

In June 2012 Heme was back and with him there was a new sponsor. Defiler already had a sponsor, at least for a short while - Plantronics. The new investor with the money wasn't a headphone seller though, it was none other than Sergey Mavrodi and his, errrr, for the want of a better word, "project" MMM-2011 ³. To sum it up, and to avoid links that might get you in temptation, Mavrodi is a scammer. He scammed money in the past with the help of a financial system that was basically designed to get as much money out of you as possible; he made a shit ton of money, billions even. It was more money than the average Brood War player would make if he'd sell Yu-Gi-Oh cards to elderly for the rest of his life. Hence, most of the Russians were quite "worried" about a tour wearing this name. At first I thought that it was just fun, the Russians are a bit weird, but it wasn't. Well, I think Nina phrased it better in her topic about the Mavrodi issue (recommended read).



Back to Brood War: the reign of terror was over. Sziky disappeared from the player list and Scan couldn't get away with sloppy off racing anymore. The players finally closed the gap and the outcome of a tournament wasn't 50% Hungary vs. 50% Korea anymore. Also, no more ZvZ or TvZ finals - which was a huge pro in terms of diversification.

However, with the increased prize pool of the MMM sponsorship more no-name Koreans with a high rank on FISH joined to win easy money. Namely Anfod, Orz and prizekiller went through most A-ranked players like a knife through butter. This just added to the bad reputation of MMM-Tours among the Russians. As a result a Russian-only and a NO KR Tour was hosted by PlumBum to make up for the roflstomps.

In between summer and winter 2012 a whole new generation of players made their break through. Bakuryu's form spiked when he killed Sziky in a very impressive ZvZ. There was no way to tell that the German plays with under 200 APM, not in this match - Sziky basically had no chance. Sadly, the German fell behind after September and only made a come back in the last days of December; this however is a story not connected to Defiler or Russian events.

A guy that snuck his way to the top of the Defiler list and one who certainly nobody saw coming was the Spanish eOnzErG. In between MMM Tour 1 and the very last volume, Defiler Tour 48, you could see the Zerg improving with every game he played. The Spaniard used to play very aggressive, using a ton of over committing build orders and hence lost relatively early in 2011. Not so in the second half of 2012 - he basically never left the tour if he wasn't in the Top Eight already. In winter 2012 only the very best could stop the talent from winning tournament after tournament.



The second of three players to catch up was the young Russian Protoss Dewalt. Living at the end of the world he also had some sort of a time disadvantage. Then again while the rest of Europe was still hung over in bed, he was already eating lunch. Still, Dewalt participated in almost all tournaments, events and leagues there were - and also trained a lot on the ladders and with his team mates in reps.ru fun gaming, home of the best remaining Russian players. In late 2010 Dewalt wasn't really someone you would expect to win big, in Fall 2012 he won two Defiler Tournaments in a row, taking down the likes of Bakuryu or TechnicS; his Protoss vs. Zerg was key to his success.

The third player to make his way to the elite was the Polish trutaCz. Theoretically not an unknown name, he already joined the famous National Team as 2on2 player - but 2on2 doesn't make you top in 1on1. The Zerg wasn't a nobody in the ICCup ladder either, he could qualify two times for the ISLs, even with a top ten spot in both. In tournaments however, he lost relatively early and showed nerves. With the last few volumes of Defiler trutaCz could gain confidence; he finished as runner-up in the 48th volume, but well, there's only so much you can do against a monster like iOps]Sense - who was the latest Korean from FISH to stop by and win easy money.

And again, not only the newcomers shone, a couple of oldschool players returned to once again mess with the best. If you say Kazakhstan and "known Brood War player" everyone possibly only comes up with a big question mark. But really, there's a Terran you should keep an eye on: gargoyle. It's funny, nobody knows that kid with the aka. FR.Dima, even though having four gold medals on his record. He didn't win small tours either, the MMM1 was as big as it gets for Defiler. To be fair, he only beat Scan with the help of a walk over, but he also walzed over another oldschool Toss - Arcneon - a new talented player - DRaW - and beat the uprising eOnzErG on his way to the finale.

Speaking of Protoss, Russia has also plenty of those. In the 47th volume we could see Tama coming back from the dead. A player you rarely get to watch, yet one to be scared of. He knocked out Dewalt, Bonyth (another oldschool Toss returning), some random Korean and crushed TechnicS in the finale.

All in all, the past half year was really interesting. A very good mix of new faces, players you never heard of (hajjuk, Biggus) and of course players like Clawson, Bonyth or gargoyle showing up on occasion, all making up for some really entertaining games, especially when yoda freaks out over the awesomeness he is able to cast.

There also seems to be another duo that has the potential to become the new Sziky vs. Scan - eOnzErG and WCG 2006 finalist TechnicS from Bulgaria. Both of them faced each other more than ten times already in the first half of December. Again, both are high class players, good with their races and in TechnicS' case, even good with other races as well. Both don't really like each other, there's always an acceptable level of trash talk included, which only adds to the tension. For now it's not sure how this will eventually end, but knowing Defiler, it will probably give us amazing games to talk about.






Defiler Tournaments are not the only thing that was organized by the Russians. There was much more stuff going on, most things equally inspiring and entertaining. These ranged from ordinary tours with a slightly smaller prize pool (Defi Mini Series) up to really sick events with curious qualifiers and, not to forget, a couple of LANs. Right, a Brood War LAN outside of Korea.




The Nostalgia League was the first event that really opened my eyes. While ICCup Clan League, BWCL and Gambit Cup had problems finding clans to play, or in the case of Eywa, willing to pay money, the Russians again did "the impossible". Sadly, due to the lack of coverage, I have little to no information or recommendations for this event.

In spring 2011 yoda and the defiler/reps.ru users crowd funded a $600 prize pool for a clan league, which was only open for the Russian teams. The newly formed reps.ru fun gaming pro team signed up, along with the later winner international Federation of Untouchables (with the only foreigner playing this event, eOnzErG) in addition to really traditional teams like Super Russia or 7x. They had sixteen teams, a lot of casts and fun. Sadly, we missed it and only learned about it when most of the league was already over. The only thing I can add are some VODs, casted by Tesla & gu-val in English.






Everyone that followed Gem League knows that Brood War doesn't really need official KeSPA maps to be fun to play. You can do with a bunch of decently skilled players, even newbs, and get an amazing result if you only slightly alter the game mode. Many people on ICCup don't really get that concept, mostly because they never tried and/or focus to much on the ladder, but the Russians did embrace it. While other people whine about Lost Temple being featured on TheAbyss, the Russian smile and make the best out of an aged and outdated map.

Around ten so-called Perversion Tournaments were hosted by Lisyonok and a few other guys like reps)Anophele. All these tours had something for the winner, somewhere in between $10 to $60, depending on the gravity and who was interested to see it happen. And no tour really used a standard map or game mode. Some of these had really odd maps, the Defiler Perversion maps, or standard non-standard maps like Blood Bath. Others were re-designed maps you would see in official map packs like Fighting Spirit. The trick on these was, that you would spawn on the middle expansions. Plumbum streamed these kind of maps for weeks, usually going up against other players of defiler.



But there was more - two events were quite memorable. One due to it's weird qualifier: Lisyonok, the guy behind the defiler.ru chat, apparently coded some whack-a-mole-Brood War game, that is pretty bad, but fun to play for an hour or two. Only four people with the highest record in that game would be able to qualify for the actual tour.

The other one featured maps with special triggers. A bunch of Russians organized a tour casted by reps)Anophele with the game mode Fastest*2 - that also caused a lot of rethinking. Most players found it rather entertaining, either to play or to watch. Definitely an interesting experiment. Sadly most of the casts are gone, but there's still some pre-coverage material online.




Defiler.ru is all about show matches, at all days you can find people that stream their FPView and have fun games to settle an argument or just to train with other community users. Sometimes with commentary, sometimes without. However, there were more serious show matches as well - we're going to focus on those organized by Defi.

In December 2011 he invited a couple of known foreigners to fight over a small prize pool, usually around $10. These games were quite awesome, a mix of new faces, more or less inactive big names and obviously also the top of the Defiler Tournament participants. One player was a bit too skilled to be featured here - Sziky. The Hungarian used to eat the competitors alive. His arch-enemy and equal, Scan, wasn't invited either, mostly because he either declined, was not interested or simply didn't match the Defi's fair play motto. So Defi had to look elsewhere to see high class games featuring the top level Zerg from Hungary.

With ex. ICCup.Dayfly aka. Hyeon he found a guy that was willing and able to talk to some of Afreeca's famous BJs, who we all know from the SOSPA events. That's when the shit got real. Sziky first faced a relatively unknown but high class Terran named iOps]..Han, got destroyed and almost didn't agree to play more. Luckily, he changed his mind and agreed to face an even stronger Protoss - the KeSPA ex-Pro and OSL Bronze medalist PuSan! This series has been one of the best games post beta - and again can be tied to the Russian scene.





Russia is a big country, even the ordinary US American could find it on a map without checking google first. Surprisingly, this country could actually host a lot of LANs and has a tradition of doing big time offline events. The best covered events for outsiders were obviously the ASUS LANs with people like White-Ra, Advokate, Pomi and other legends participating. Additionally, all of them had quite large prize pools, compared to the rest of the foreign scene.



Apparently the two big Russian players, Moscow and St. Petersburg, had some sort of friendly rivalry going on over the years in offline competitions, these two cities were the place to be for LANs (which doesn't mean other cities didn't host them as well). And it didn't stop only because StarCraft II got in the way. There was still demand on reps.ru/defiler.ru to have some event to meet and additionally an overall spirit to keep the tradition alive. Compared to other countries like Germany, Russia really cared for LANs. In the past three years, four (that I know of) LANs with 1on1 tournaments were hosted and even partially streamed for those that couldn't come.

One LAN was hosted in St. Petersburg, the other three in Moscow. One player that really performed way better than usual was Lancerx aka. iFU.Must. He was able to win three out of four LANs, one time over Largo, one time over Tama and the latest one over Djem5. Apparently the Russian Protoss players need to see their opponents face to face to show their very best; all LANs had at least two Protoss among the final four.

Dewalt, of whom we heard earlier, took the time to travel to Moscow in August 2011 (which is more than 4.000 miles from his home), only to show up and have a chat with his buddies. Sadly, this effort wasn't rewarded, he finished on the fourth place, losing to Defi in the small finals and being defeated by his mentor and friend Tama before. Speaking of whom - Tama, the older version of Dewalt, also had a quite good run in the LANs; he finished second and first in two of them.




More Pictures:

• 7x LAN
  
• Moscow, August 2011
  
• reps.ru - Moscow NY Lan 2012
  

The latest LAN, Moscow New Year 2012, was the LAN with the smallest amount of players visiting, yet the one with the most entertaining games. Four players, TTF, Biggus, pain[A2] (aka. trofl in the Defiler Tours) and pROSKID joined them via b-net. Especially the series between Biggus, a mysterious (because unknown) Terran, who made himself a name in the Winter Defiler Tours 2012, and Tama was more than "just good". The series was quite tense, Biggus showed what a true Russian Terran is made of, while Tama tried to stop this talented player. A Protoss vs. Terran series that is highly recommended. Sadly, most of the first two games were deleted by twitch again, but the deciding game is still there.



The rest of the tournament was entertaining as well, the organizers Largo and RUS_Brain did an amazing job, despite having so little players at the internet cafe. Thanks to Othello, a bunch of really, really intense, long lasting macro TvPs were played, with the online participant TTF leaving quite a few Protoss dead on the road behind. Surprisingly Djem5 and Lancerx made it to the finals, showing a performance we rarely saw of them in online tournaments. Both really did deserve to come so far; too bad for the talented Djem5 that Must seems to be on fire when it comes to the Protoss Mirror lately.



Remember show matches? They are another really important part of the Russian scene. In November last year Largo announced a new event, the Russian King of the Hill. Every Russian player was allowed to sign-up, but had to pay $10 entrance fee from which a prize pool was formed. In the following weeks the participants would have to undergo a series of best of sevens. The mode was quite easy - two players started, the winner stayed, the loser had to go home, but the next volume would feature a new contender for the throne.

The opener was played between Djem5 and TTF, two more or less unfamiliar faces and players you wouldn't know if you were only around foreign Brood War for the Teamliquid Starleagues. Well, both of them were at least decent and definitely above average before the beta. TTF was able to hit a green rank in previous ICCup seasons and is among the best Russian Terrans post-StarCraft II. Djem5 on the other hand was only above average, but surely nowhere close to the top. In December however he showed very good results and won silver in the aforementioned New Year LAN. He was well in shape and beat TTF with a clean 4-0 swipe.



Next however came Defi, one of the most mysterious players according to Hacklebeast. This just shows that even Hackle can be wrong, one of the few English casters that tried to at least cast a few highlights of Defiler Tournaments (big props for it btw). Defi was already a known name in the Russian scene way before the Beta. He was able to cause some upsets in ASUS LANs and smaller offline events in Piter. Funny thing about him, he often doesn't use too standard openings, but rather strategies designed to beat one special opponent on one special map in one special match up while also thinking about the opponent's weak spots and what the guy ate for lunch last. TL;DR: he plays all races, 2on2 and likes to mix things up. Definitely a guy you should be scared of and to take serious, but nobody that is "lucky" to win against the real big names. Underestimate him and gg right away. No wonder he walked over Djem5 with another 4-0.

The next to enter was gagTerran or gag for short. He is a regular streamer at defiler.ru and also way above average. Similar to TTF he can perform really, really strong, but for some reason gets eliminated early in most tournaments. In his sets against Defi he made a rather strong impression and gave his best. Which apparently wasn't enough, Defi outplayed him in the long run - 4-2 to the artist formerly known as Leningrad again. Most of the games are really recommended, so go and watch the VODs!



Since Defi had no more time or was getting bored ( :troll: ) two new players started the series over again: Lancerx vs Ramms. Must is argueably the Russian with the most sex appeal, as you can see in the galery of the LANs, and also plays a lot on ICCup. He never gives up and trains like there is no tomorrow. He often has more than 300 games on his main account per season and, unlike other players, doesn't reset his stats only because they don't look too good. Make no mistake, a 60%++ winratio against only the best is still impressing. Ramms on the other hand is no anon player either. The Terran already hit a green rank before the beta started and could keep up mechanically with most other players. He gave the likes of Scan and Michael (see Battle Report) a really hard time during the Defiler Tournaments. The Protoss however was way too good in December, the month of Russian Protoss, and took the series 4-1.



Along comes Dewalt. Well, Must is good, Dewalt is better; Must's mirror is awesome, Dewalt is Dewalt. Hey I am Dewalt, recently voted best Protoss and biggest talent in 2012 by ICCup users, and now go home, maybe? Poor Must, the first of many victims.



Largo, who claims that Terran is the race that matches the Russian spirit the most, and therefore plays it (big surprise), was next in line, waiting to get a shot to challenge Russia's arguably strongest player. Well, Dewalt 4 - 0 Largo, gg.

Djem5, another really good Protoss player was granted a second chance. He does a lot of meta gaming play. I'm not sure if I used the term correctly and lived up to Chill's standards, but Djem5 really takes everything into a game. He switches strategies, plays with the enemy's expectations, mixes things up. Much like Defi he plays the opponent more than the game itself. Largo described this as "battle of thoughts". This, for the first time in weeks, could get to the young Protoss from the end of the world. The score 4-3 really shows how close Djem5 came... the sets are highly recommended again!



The next two players were Ramms and yoda. Both got destroyed, no surprises there, Dewalt was on a killing spree. The tenth match was exciting and caused somewhat of an upset. Plumbum, recently coming back from a longer period of forced inactivity, was up next.



Plumbum again is one of the players that actually likes to experiment. The main race Zerg showed that he didn't forget a thing and that he wasn't scared of the young fella from somewhere above China or so. Another of these funny series that have everything. Recommended!



The second to last game of the series was Tama vs Dewalt, yet another Protoss mirror. Both of them are friends, like each other and met in real life. Tama used to be some kind of a mentor, trainer and coach to young Dewalt. It's the Russian version of Boxer vs Oov, for some weird reason not having Terran in it, even though it's Russian. Still, Tama, a Protoss that Canadian DRaW, self titled Russian expert, refers to as "complete Protoss" (that is a quote, I don't get it either, but it sounded positive and I have little quotes either way) stood no chance, too. A clean 4-0 again. The last series of the match was another 4-1 over TTF. $100 went to a part of Russia you have never heard of.



The six players to appear at least twice in the series were invited to duke it out in an overall final. For this everyone had to play everyone, with the best two getting to play a final best of three. This event lasted for about seven hours, more or less, and gave us again a series of entertaining games, some of them casted by Largo, some of them casted by various other Defiler users.



Eventually Dewalt, TTF and Djem5 were tied, Lancerx took the first spot, Ramms and Defi were out. Since TTF has a baby he needs to take care of, Djem5 and Dewalt had to play for the second place. Djem5 won and faced Lancerx, only a few weeks after they played in the New Year LAN. History repeated, Djem5 went up, outplaying Lancerx in a very convincing manner on Othello, but losing two times in the following games - silver and gold to the usual suspects.



If you read heyoka's blog about gaming you might realize what the upcoming text is going to be about: true passion.

After being around for a long time I dare say, that we are somewhat pragmatic. Our mindset is a bit different to the other online-people, we could do with tournaments and no artificial hype for a very long time, most of us don't really grasp the concept of eSport fully; I recently heard the term 'oldschool player' used by one of my neighbours. I have no idea (and no interest frankly) to find out what he means with it, probably something you brag with. Don't get me wrong, to each his own - everyone of the sane Brood War players won't insult any other game just for the lulz. However, there are some of us that never left the scene, that cared for the game. That spirit missed in the phase post beta a lot. Especially the big players like Teamliquid, GosuGamers and broodwar.de (I do mean the communities here) focused on Korean events, but somewhat forgot that there are still veterans out there that want to play "in the real world", on ICCup, Battle.net or LANs. The Russians never forgot it and just kept on doing what they always did.

The spirit is truly inspiring, Russia does have a number of newbs, regularly streaming on Defiler, but also a couple of really oldschool players like Ex keeping the game alive in tournaments. Yoda's quote in the timeline says it all - "I think it's a good game, there is nothing to support it, so I make something to promote the game I love". Defi spent hours on end to organize show matches with his own money, not because he wanted to see his name in the title and call himself "major organizer" or "CEO of eSports Russia", he wanted to just watch a few hours of good old Brood War. Largo spent days to organize LANs, post a few lines on almost every Brood War fansite, rally players and tried to connect mother Russia with the international scene. Huge thanks to you guys.

Here's the thing: stereotypes are bad. I am a bit embarrassed, but before I got to know the people from Defiler, Russians - all of them - were just a nuisance to me online (in before YOU GERMAN RACIST). In every flipping league I played thus far the East European "comrades" were lagging and more over, always, no exception here, flaming me and my allys in clan wars. These clan wars were horrible, nobody could communicate with the other side, except for sentences that had at least a swear word and "u lag" in it. This changed dramatically. Everyone I talked to in the past years - Rp, Defi, Plumbum, Yoda, Largo, gu-val, negrote, the-guy-with-the-ID-2707-on-defiler-chat-that-posts-nude-pics-a-lot, Dewalt, Djem5: All of them were extremely nice. More importantly though, almost all Russian clans insist on playing games fairly, walk overs are avoided at any cost, unlike what I was used to from BWCL or WGTCL.

Still, idling in op swarm for Defiler Tournaments, sitting in a channel for the Russian KOTH or reading the chat: Everyone seems to be BM. Ironically the Russians do embrace soft bad manners, they trash talk. "Gogo nubasek" before a game, "yodo pedek/pizdec" if yoda screws up something during his casts; but nobody actually means what he says. Trashtalk has a deep root in their community, trolling each other is common place. This way they blow of steam, there is nothing insulting about it. By doing so the true idiots, who really do mean what they say, who want to directly offend people, are singled out. No moderation necessary at all. There are very, very few cases when some sort of drama occurs, most times in the form of a player rage quitting. But these kind of drama queens are forgotten minutes after they leave and are welcomed back with a huge grin the next day. That's how it's supposed to work: Fair play, competition as spirit, blowing off steam if needed, everyone respects everyone. Everyone is truly equal, no double standards. Any dispute can be settled by a minor show match. Problems? Hell, no.

Next thing: Post beta, for no reason at all, a lot of us thought we need to step up our game, we thought we need big artificially hyped tournaments, with a vast set of rules to it, banners, trailers, casters and so on. There was much talk before anyone actually started to open Brood War. I admit, some hype is nice to have, that comes with a good event, but it's not really needed, it's not what made us fell in love with the game. The concept of professionally organized tournaments has nothing to do with the Russian approach. The Russian spirit and eSports probably meet somewhere, but both decided it would be better if they went separate ways. Which is good, because the charm the Russians have comes from their complete ignorance of the traditional European/North American organizational forms. It's new, it's refreshing.

Usually, referees sit in channels and have a hard time to settle a dispute between players. You'll be forced to give walk overs, because one player was afk for a second too long, you have to convince people that the rule "repeat the game" makes sense for disc cases and is fair to everyone. Not so much for the Russians, they have a completely different view of things. If you watched yoda organizing while playing, you'd probably had to laugh your ass off. A few weeks ago some Canadian posted a statement like 'I totally thought the event (E/N: ironically in Moscow) was being organized by the players.' - well that sounds stupid, but it's more or less what yoda does in case of walk overs. Just ignore the players until the one everyone is waiting for comes back to his keyboard. The games are being played and nobody ever complains, because all they'd hear would be "Ja ne ponimaju po-angliskii" from yoda. It's strange but it works, so why change it? It gets even better - the custom for an IP Conflict was yoda tossing a coin in front of his webcam. A strategy adopted by Plumbum in the NO KR Tour later. That worked, too. Fuck professional eSports when you can have amateur Brood War!

It's not the desire to make the game as popular as it possible can be, the need to rub Brood War in players from different communities that made me a long term part of the scene. Artificial advertisement doesn't last, true passion on the other hand can achieve amazing things.



People think that talking to Russians is a stressful task or hard to do. A common misconception. Our friends from the East do understand English very good (if you're an idiot some chose to pretend they don't though), sometimes it's hard for them to respond due to the language barrier, but for the most, it's doable. I highly encourage you to actually give it a try.




Cyrillic seems hard to read, when it really isn't. I suggest - if you really want - to look it up somewhere. Once you got the hang of it you can abuse google translator to transform the romanized sentences into cyrllic. It works so-so, but with a bit of training it's doable. Here are a few phrases to impress the Russians:

• привет - Hi
  
• здравствуй - Hello
  
• как дела - how are you
  
• хорошо - good
  
• бум бум сучка! - what an entertaining game!
  
• кто играть на (game/stream)-е - Who plays on (add the eat the end of the name)
  
• я не понимаю - I don't understand (po-russki - Russian)
  
• йода (or any nick) играет хорошо - yoda plays good
  
• спасиба / спс - thanks
  
• Это плохая стратегия, я не буду ее играть - I like this strategy very much, thank you
  
• сколько стоит пилон алдарис? - How much is the Pylon, Artanis?
  
• я буду играть в дефилер туре! - I will play in the next Defiler Tour!
  

Once you mastered the puzzle you can register an account at defiler.ru. With this you can actively participate in the chat on the right hand side - which is way easier than it seems. I can only recommend you learn how to use the meme's, these are what makes the chat so awesome. Everyone talks in memes and so should you.



You'll see that at the bottom of the table there are a few options. Do not, and I can't stress this enough, open a picture if you can't watch NSFW content. Defiler is an adult community (except Dewalt), hence a lot of tits. Tits and Defiler go hand in hand.

Also, these things do work, too:



Gas on Defiler means some sort of currency. You get a few by registrating or can win some in some tournaments (Gaz Tournaments). Sometimes, if you contribute well, some Russians may gift you some. It's for no real use, just to make the bets on streams more interesting. Oh, you can theoretically use it to ban a user from the chat - the longer the ban (usually 5 to n+1 messages), the more gas is needed.




Unlike other pages, Defiler gives you the option to add your own stream to their site. Or any stream that isn't there already for that matter. Which makes the page the best thing if you really are only sticking around to watch some games while relaxing and chatting with some people.

To add your stream (or any twitch.tv stream) go to the gear-wheel icon on the right side of the stream list. In the drop-down menu select add stream. Now paste this in:

+ Show Spoiler +

Replace CHANNELNAME with the name of the twitch channel name. And you're done, the stream will now appear in your stream list, which you can find in the drop down menu under "My Streams". Click on the dark swarm symbol to activate your stream, and the burrow symbol to de-activate it. Not too hard!




Thee shall have fun. This is the most important rule. Ask, interact, do what you do, nobody will harm you, be angry or get you banned. Unless you act like a total douche, then you'll be ignored. Maybe you get a :northkorea: for it, not sure, never tried to really annoy anyone over at defiler or reps.ru. Also, you can be certain that you will discover a few gems while talking with them - they have an amazing sense of humor.

Usually a conversation starts like this - a completely normal scenario: Any user, in our example, Powert (a quite skilled Protoss), brags about a very good move he streamed live and links you to this:



Now just wait, you won't be disappointed. Some of Defiler's users seem to have a giant .txt file with the utmost embarrassing moves to counter such a video. It'll take a few minutes, then someone responds to Powert with this:



Or, if the users are a bit tired, wait for the casters to do some epic stuff. You don't need to understand, just sit back and watch. I recommend Terror[fOu] Plumbum, if you have the chance.



Then again, the master of chaos is still yoda. Sadly, he stopped showing his webcam. Usually, there are stuffed cats (or real cats) on his keyboard, with who he does some kind of a show. He traded his cat for his wife apparently, which occasionally comes along and just owns yoda in terms of awesomeness. Which happened in the Russian King of the Hill - Largo lost to Dewalt, it was 3-0 and Largo couldn't help but lose to Dewalt's drops. Then this happened:



Btw, this video is still haunting poor Largo. I feel with you buddy.



Speaking of which - Largo, I know you are going to kill me, but it's too good - the Terran is always the go-to guy for good stories. If you ask him for pics of players he finds sources for you. But, the troll that he is, never warns you before. He linked me to Heme's user uploads/pictures, but somehow forgot to add that Heme was nude in almost all of them. Thanks buddy.

Also, Largo posts blogs that would be automatically auto-Grand-Master'ed around here. The story is old to the Russians, but I still have to laugh when I think about it (no offense Largo <3). Apparently the Russian was jogging through a park on the route he always uses. He always would pass a small pond with ducks in, Chernobyl ducks, to be precise. Now, in June 2010 the ducks weren't that friendly and attacked poor Largo, who actually liked them. Reps.ru users responded. Great stuff.



Before we drift off too much - really do go over there, you'll have a lot of fun.





I realize that foreign Brood War was struggling and chaotic in the past three years, I also understand that Teamliquid's resources are limited. They can't cover everything. The Russians do have some problems with English, but are eager to share their stories, events and show matches. It's our (and your) term to help them, participate and give them the gratitude they deserve. This is my way to say thank you for what probably was the most important pillar of post-beta Brood War for the actively playing foreigners.

To end with, here's what defiler.ru users say:

References:

            ¹ Strelok's post about Heme at reps.ru
            ² Pro7ect Mini Tour
            ³ Sergey Mavrodi on Wikipedia

+ Show Spoiler +


Massive thanks, hugs and kisses, as well as a free beer (or a cookie, depends) if I ever get to meet one of you, goes to:

            itsjustatank (proof read & feedback)
            reps)Largo (player, tour, LAN & trivia info)
            reps)Ayumi (best photographer in foreign Brood War)
            reps)Defi (info & translations)
            reps)Plumbum (info & explaining Russian mentality)
            fr)yoda (information & video sources)
            2Pacalypse- (forum support & design stuff)
            salle (for saying he won't read it and thus reverse-psychological motivating me to do even more)