These introductions are becoming harder and harder to write each week. As usual, I must first apologize for being late, but if you've been following the Brood War forum, you might have noticed that our coverage is expanding. We have a separate write-up of the endlessly entertaining Torenhire Starleague, as well as individual coverage of the very exciting Sonic Starleague. The downside of these separate write-ups is that it leaves our poor little ABC looking rather slim today. Not only has there been a lack of new content in the last couple of weeks, but also due to some unforeseen circumstances, we don't have a community interview either today.

Don't despair though, I do have some exciting news that will be announced very soon. A lot of good stuff is on the way for our niche community. Even though all of this takes a lot of our free time, I have to say it's very rewarding to spend it on Brood War. It's an amazing time to be a Brood War fan, because it seems like we are finally starting to see rays of sunshine after a very long night.

We'll talk more about the awesome Sonic Starleague and other big things in their respective news posts. To avoid overlapping of information, ABC will remain as the coverage of all the events that have no separate write-ups. But please don't think that makes them any less special, because even the smallest events help keep our wonderful scene alive.

So without further ado, dRaW is bringing us an update on Gambit Cup. Read what happened in the last week, before we enter the playoffs of the tournament that is providing us with the highest level of play outside of Korea. After that, you can read a recap of the D Rank Team League by Birdie. He is going to explain to you everything that has happened so far in this season, right up until the finals. If you continue reading, you can see what happened in the Rest of the Scene in the last couple of weeks, as detailed by TheEmulator. Lastly, you can relax and watch some of the Recommended VODs, featuring all kinds of entertaining games.



Going into week 7, the contenders for the final play-off spots were LRM and CN. CN dug themselves into a hole, due to their devastating loss against SJ, with a score of 0-4. In order to advance, CN must beat iFU, hope that LRM lose to sas and beat LRM. The other matches of that week were of lesser importance, so let's jump right into the action!

















In the second season of the D Ranks Team League, a team of new-comers entered under the name Team Courage. Their philosophy was simple: all you need to win is courage. They then proceeded to only drop one match the entire season before reaching the playoffs, where they continued their winning streak all the way into the championship match, taking home the ultimate D Ranks victory. They had walked something of a royal road, the entire team.

In the third season of the D Ranks Team League, a team of new-comers entered under the name Team Stealth Bunnies. Their philosophy was simple: look like innocent rabbits while mauling their opponents like a team of Rabbits of Caerbannog. They then proceeded to only drop one match the entire season before reaching the playoffs, where they continued their winning streak all the way into the championship match, to discover Team Courage waiting for them.

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The season has been something of an erratic, wildly moving, but highly entertaining horse, prancing around and strutting its stuff at times, and then suddenly rolling in the mud. The initial teams were Team All Kill Kings, Team DeSPA, Team Courage, Team Airforce ACE of Spades, Team 2, SK Telecom Team 3, Team Victorious Secret, and Team Stealth Bunnies, and for a while everything went along swimmingly. There were a few road bumps along the way with people like TAKK's Tyrant getting banned from Teamliquid and removed from his team because of his attitude and behaviour in the thread, and the tournament organiser, Nikon, being somewhat inactive at updating the original post, but as a whole the league was doing great. The first major problem was when SKT3 announced that they were no longer able to play due to a lack of players. SKT3 was the team picked to be the most strong in the league, so this was quite an upset to see the favourites disappearing from the league.

However, after that pothole the league continued and some great matches were played. Most of the players seemed to be improving quickly, a fair amount of the matches were streamed and commentated on, and there was no major drama for a while. It quickly became apparent that four of the teams were very strong contenders, with all of them having solid lineups and jostling for position on the table. Courage, Stealth Bunnies, DeSPA, and TAKK had some very good matches, with Stealth Bunnies beating the other three, Courage taking out DeSPA and TAKK, TAKK taking out DeSPA, and all of them doing well. Team ACE took down Team Stealth Bunnies early on in the competition too and had some strong play early on in the tournament, but seemed to die off later on, or perhaps simply didn't improve as fast as some of the other teams. Team 2 won plenty of matches but lost a lot of sets in the matches they did lose, and because of the table system used that cost them a position in the playoffs, eventually.

The next drama was Babo of Team Victorious Secret announcing that the rest of the team had vanished or were too busy to play. Although Babo is an excellent player, even he couldn't happily continue to be an entire team by himself, so Victorious Secret was removed from the league. And then there were 6. At this stage though it was quite late in the season and it wasn't a hugely significant problem, although it was certainly unfortunate. There was a bit of bad manner in the DeSPA vs Stealth Bunnies match between sB.TheMarine and aeghrur but TheMarine apologized and it was settled fairly civilly, and finally the playoffs were here!

Week 1 of the playoffs had Team DeSPA play against Team Stealth Bunnies for the second time. The Stealth Bunnies had defeated them before and did so again, moving into the finals. And Team Courage squared off against Team All Kill Kings, who did take a couple of sets of Courage but didn't manage the allkill that they would have hoped for. This left DeSPA and TAKK in the third place match for the second playoffs week, and Courage against Stealth Bunnies.

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The problem with sparks is they flare brightly and then quickly burn down. Team Courage had shown that they were a strong bonfire by first taking the championship in the second season and making it to the championship in the third. But even bonfires can burn out. Team Stealth Bunnies, on the other hand, had not yet proven that they were anything more than a spark floating on the wind that would soon burn out. Their chance to show that they, too, were a strongly burning fire, was in this final match. If they could take down Team Courage, they could show that there might just be some substance behind their light. Of course, even if they failed, the next season would be the true test of the strength of their team, but this was the royal road they were walking, and they didn't plan on fading just yet.



Team Courage proved once again that all you need is courage to win. Perhaps the other teams need to change their philosophy if they want to achieve two golds in the team leagues. Or perhaps they are all sparks waiting to catch alight and burn past everyone else.

Thank you everyone who participated in the DRTL season 3 and made it what it was. I certainly enjoyed myself, and I look forward to the next one. In the interim, chrisolo is running a D Ranks All Kill Team League, and many of your favourite teams and players will be showing up once again to battle for another D Ranks crown. If you want to see the VODs of the DRTL3 finals, you can see them here: http://www.twitch.tv/aeghrur/b/335255288 and http://www.twitch.tv/aeghrur/b/335258939
The third place match hasn't been cast yet; aeghrur and myself may end up doing it, or L_Master, or any combination of the above.






The fourth edition of the D Ranks Individual Tournament is entering its final stage right now with the
Finals set to be sometime this week. This tournament has had some great matches, showing the talents of all the D ranked players out there. This season we saw some of the old faces, along with a few new faces, but in the end only L3gendary and NalZeck have prevailed as we will see them face off in the D Ranks Individual Tournament Finals.

If you have missed any games of this amazing competition, you can catch up on it by watching the full VODs.

Reference: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=366904




The NoisE Amateur Starleague continues on with the finals around the corner. So far in the playoff bracket we have seen some rather easy matches for our finalists. The first finalist, Wands, has gone 3-0 in the quarters and 3-1 in the semis. The next finalist, NoisE, went 3-1 in both. But with that being said it is obvious the two most talented will meet in the finals and it will be a great show.

You can check out the current brackets at http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Noise_Amateur_Starleague_2/Bracket. You can also watch the amazing hype video, made by Stratos, right here:



Reference: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=375617




The http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Yellow_Starleague is entering its final stages as well with the recent conclusion of the quarterfinals and semifinals. The semis had some great games, but in the end we had YSL.JungEunji and YSL.Breach prevail. They will face off on October 14th in the finals, and we will also have drshrinker vs youRun play for the 3rd place match. Like always these matches will be casted by the great Pucca and BMW duo.

For the final we will be seeing a PvP, which is a great matchup for JungEunji by the looks of his recent semifinal PvP performance. The 3rd place match will be a PvZ which I am sure will be as interesting and fun as the final match. GL to everyone and have fun.

Reference: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=369604




The D ranks Game of Thrones tournaments lives on with its current Terran King Obelisco. Since his reign started, Obelisco has gone 4-0 against the latest lineup of plebians who have tried to dethrone him. In the weeks to come you can expect him to continue to fight, but somewhere in the shadows someone may lurk, waiting for their chance to take over the throne.

If you seek the fame, glory and power of the D rank throne, simply leave your name, race and match-ups in the D Ranks GoT thread and begin your preparations.

To watch the VODs of these great battles of kings, head on to its VOD thread.

Reference: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=367530




Last week the first of four tournaments organized by the NetWars community took place. Their goal is to be a series of long-term tournaments to showcase the Polish BW players. With a $100 prize pool there were huge stakes on the line for these players as fought their way through the tournament. In the end we had TrutaCz vs Radek in the finals. Unfortunately for Radek, TrutaCz was on top form this tournament only losing one game throughout. The finals ended up going 3-0 in favour of TrutaCz.

You can find the full brackets at http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Netwars_Cup_1.

Reference: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=370676