It's still a bit unreal to me how well the Torenhire Starleague turned out. I remember at some point chatting with Luckyfool and CaucasianAsian about the Brood War LANs we used to host in the DC area way back when, and how we should put together another one for old time's sake. They and some other local TL users got together at a LAN Cafe to play some Brood War but I wasn't able to make it, and somehow that caused me to start sending out some PMs. At that point in time, there was no real "plans" for the league - I had no care for skill levels, racial balance, "perfection" of map pool, or anything along those lines. The Torenhire Starleague was basically a tournament full of maps I liked, players and/or forum-goers I liked, and they were going to play Brood War for my entertainment.

For those who managed to miss out, the Torenhire Starleague was a 32-man invitational tournament, starting off with eight four-man groups. The tournament began back in June, featuring TeamLiquid notables such as Rekrul, Chill, Liquid`Drone, Hot_Bid, Trozz, as well as some lesser known forum veterans like 538, Cambium, and skindzer. After months of casts and hard-fought wins, we made it to the round of 16 and finally came to a conclusion recently in October; Liquid`Drone triumphed over Chill to take home the championship, and Jonoman took third place over Cambium.

One of the biggest challenges in running a tournament is the initial setup, such as getting players, putting together a map pool, and figuring out how will it be shown to the public. This can be something that is a little intimidating for someone who isn't used to running an online tournament. SirJolt and I talked on Skype for quite some time, bouncing around ideas for the tournament - how it should be run, how to set it up, how to organize it. He really deserves a lot of credit for the league, as without SirJolt brainstorming with me at the conception of the league, it likely would have never happened.

Kiante and Hawaiianpig rounded out the team with the "post-organization" side of things. I had put together a schedule for guest casters but it ended up not working out for whatever reason, and Kiante picked up a lot of slack there. Hawaiianpig took care of all the post formatting, VODs, and the other media involved in the tournament. Big thanks to those three, as without them, the tournament wouldn't have turned out as well as it did. Enough of my ramblings, however, as the ThSL coverage team has put together some tournament recaps, a fight club piece by the ever-so-wonderful SirJolt, and an interview from our winner, Liquid`Drone.




One might have thought the third place match would be a gentlemen's duel, but not with Manifesto7 himself casting. What player would not give his best performance knowing that the booming baritones of the Man from Japan would be watching. Cambium and Jonoman even assured a great show by playing RvR instead of PvP, as PvP is well known to be the worst mirror matchup.

Cambium must have been cursing his luck in the opening game. He drew Terran while Jonoman ended up as Protoss. Cambium opened up nice and safe with a siege expand and held off the early zealot harass nicely. He even showed decent mechanics and that he understood the basic flow for the matchup. However, he lacked vultures and didn't wall off his third. This was a fatal mistake against a Protoss like Jonoman who used all hotkeys on gateways. Cambium left the game soon after being flooded by endless units.

The next game would be on the map nobody ever liked to play on, Monty Hall. Cambium endured some early game hardships and suddenly turned the game into his favor by making enough hydras that forced Jonoman to tap out.

Nothing went right for Jonoman in the third game. His BBS was scouted and to make matters worse, Cambium was Protoss and went for a forward 2gate. Cambium decided to follow up his free win by cannoning Jonoman's main. Jonoman's followup to BBS left him unable to deal with Cambium's zealot/cannon strategy, and his building placement didn't turn out to be ideal in defending the cannons.

Jonoman's luck would continue to get worse as they went into game four. He was playing PvZ on a map that is very hard to 1base on. Luckily for him, Cambium never abused those issues and Jonoman followed up his corsair with an offbeat speedzealot timing into expand. This didn't really do much of anything and left Cambium in a nice position. However, Cambium squandered any lead he might have had when he tried to drop the main and natural. Jonoman easily cleaned it up and Cambium was stuck at 3base 2gas vs a Protoss who was already taking minonly and free to take his own third gas. Cambium wanted to drop again but Jonoman was already nearing Cambium's own min only and Cambium shortly taps out after.

Fittingly enough, the match point for the series was a PvP. Both players had similar robo builds that mildly diverged as the game went on. It turns into a relatively nice macro PvP where one wonders if it was Jonoman playing or Much. He was trying to harass so hard with his reaver but killed minimal probes despite ample opportunities to do so. Cambium looked on the verge of an upset with some nice zealot reinforcements, however, Jonoman kept his cool and started to amass a much better unit composition compared to Cambium. Indeed, Jonoman's huge ball with archon support easily crushed Cambium's primarily zealot/goon army and Jonoman was finally able to close out the series.





With Chill appearing as his main race Zerg and Drone picking Protoss, game one of the final begun in a fashion not entirely familiar to regular viewers of the Torrenhire Starleague, feauting relatively standard openers from both players. Drone’s initial zealot harassment did little direct damage but succeeded in knocking Chill off his stride and forcing a big round of zerglings which hampered the Zerg player’s economy going into the midgame. Drone soon chose to move out again with a slightly larger group of zealots, this time with leg speed, and managed to delay mining at Chill’s newly taken fourth at 12 o’clock. Chill was able to stabilise on his four bases but Drone had meanwhile taken his third and prepared a large mid-game army. Drone’s army eventually arrived at Chill’s natural and was sufficiently delayed until it was rebuffed by swarm. Drone, perhaps thinking Chill would not have enough left to defend after the initial attack, split his forces to attack Chill’s fourth while maintaining a semi-contain at the natural.

Unfortunately for Drone, Chill was well prepared to defend and easily managed to clean up the remaining Zerg units while continuing to spread out across the map, taking the bottom right natural and main. With little in the way of units left from his attack and outmatched in terms of economy, Drone attempted to take his fourth at the top left natural. By now, the force of Chill’s macro was simply too great for Drone to deal with and he was forced to GG as he was overrun by a huge lategame Zerg army.

Game two on Tau Cross opened in much the same fashion, with Drone’s initial zealots harass again forcing Chill to retreat his drones and build zerglings to survive unharmed. Drone followed up with another speedlot push but was easily rebuffed by Chill, who had opted to build up a slightly larger standing army in this game. Having easily dealt with Drone’s attack, Chill counter-attacked towards Drone’s natural but was pushed back by a second group of exceptionally controlled speedlots. While this was going on, and unbeknownst to pro-tier observer Kiante, Drone had elevatored a group of DTs into Chill’s main, killing his lair and an countless other unknown units and buildings.

Drone then took his third base and slowly built up a strong mid-game army, while Chill took a fourth and continued to produce hydralisks from his now slightly diminished economy. After a brief pause to macro up, Drone chose to move out with his HT heavy composition and easily killed off Chill’s barely mined fourth. With some excellent storm usage Drone pulverised Chill’s hydra-centric army and was able to simply roll over his Zerg opponent who was helpless up against Drone's huge Protoss force.

With the series tied at 1-1, game three took place on Sin Peaks of Baekdu. Chill was immediately on the back foot; with his natural blocked by a probe and then a pylon, Chill chose to build a macro hatchery at the base of his ramp rather than wait for his lings. Chill then opted to stay on two base and started teching to lair in preparation for a spire. With Chill eventually choosing to take his third at the bottom right, Drone’s cannon and shield-battery deny attempt at the 8 o’clock soon transformed into one of the ballsiest hidden expansions of all time. Having made only token attempts at corsair usage in the first two games, Drone committed more heavily in this match and built up a large sair fleet in preparation for a two reaver drop. Chill had forgone any muta play from his 3 hatch spire opener and was well prepared to control the sair count of Drone, killing almost all of the Protoss player’s air fleet when the initial reaver drop came.



Drone, however, was not interested in changing strategies and simply added a second stargate to supplement his sair production while continuing to harass Chill’s main with excellent reaver control. Drone did eventually choose to transition from his sair/reaver harass strategy, but only into a full sair/reaver main army composition, adding a fleet beacon and beginning to research disruption web for his sairs. Chill at this point had barely left his base all game and found himself besieged by the slowest of all slow pushes, as four of Drone’s seemingly invincible reavers crawled their way towards his natural. Chill, in typical maverick style, decided that his natural wasn’t that important anyway and attempted to turtle up with sunkens and spores at the bottom right.

Unfortunately for Chill, shuttles and corsairs can fly, and a combination of d-web and reaver scarabs made quick work of his third base. By this point, Drone had expanded to the top left and was beginning to supplement his sair/reaver force with some slightly more traditional units. Chill was unable to muster anything resembling a real army and the final minutes of the game involved Drone simply flying his units around the map in shuttles and killing off everything that Chill had left.

For game four on the unconventional Monty Hall, both players opted to play random; perhaps in tacit acknowledgement of Monty Hall’s complete disconnection from the realms of normal Starcraft strategy. With Drone ending up with Terran and Chill with Protoss, neither player seemed to have any particular plan in the early game, opening very safely before taking their natural expansions. Drone, having opened rax/fact/port, made the first offensive attempt of the game with a vulture drop at Chill’s natural which was deflected easily. Chill, having finally managed to make his way through the mineral wall on the left corridor, moved towards Drone’s natural with a group of ranged goons. Drone’s defense was slightly hampered by his delayed siege tech but he soon managed to stop the attack, killing most of Chill’s goons in the bargain.

Drone continued to harass with vulture and soon tank drops but Chill was always well positioned and little damage was done. After a brief lull, Drone moved out with his two base tank/vulture push towards Chill’s natural, resulting in another largely inconclusive army trade with little economic damage done. By this time, Chill was on four well established bases with Drone having just begun to make efforts towards a second expansion. Drone’s macro, however, was absolutely on point and he begun a second much larger tank/vulture push down the middle lane towards Chill’s third. Having opted to seek an economic lead after his first attack, Chill’s standing army and tech was insufficient to break Drone’s position at the third and he chose to counter-attack down the left lane into the Terran natural.

Using his reinforcing units and good positioning, Drone sufficiently delayed and diminished the Protoss push while simultaneously attacking with his main army through Chill’s third and towards the main. In time, Chill made it into the main of Drone and was able to disrupt his production for a brief period of time but at the expense of all of his own infrastructure and economy. With Chill’s counter-attack cleaned up and his main base wiped out, he sought to try and re-establish at the 3 o’clock, mining with what probes had escaped his previous bases and desperately building gateways in an attempt to re-establish production. Drone’s main army remained mostly intact and still much too large for Chill to deal with. With the 12 o’clock still mining for Drone and all of his production facilities intact, he eventually found Chill’s last refuge and forced him to GG.

Game five took place on Circuit Breakers and saw both players return to their originally selected races, Zerg and Protoss. Chill was again disrupted early on, with his natural blocked by Drone’s probe, and again chose to build his second hatchery at his natural choke. In a brief return to ThSL style and an attempt to end the tournament in the fashion it had begun, Drone opened with a forward 2gate in his natural. Chill scouted Drone’s gates in good time and was able to start building a sunken at his natural as soon as his second hatchery was complete. Unfortunately for Chill, this still allowed enough time for Drone to move across the map with his first four zealots. By way of good positioning and good control, Drone cleaned up Chill’s initial ling force and his natural sunken before moving up the ramp where he killed all the drones in Chill’s main.



To his credit, Chill stayed in the game and was eventually able to kill off the initial zealot force while continuing to mine with the handful of drones that survived at his natural. Drone looked confident that sufficient damage had been done and quickly mounted another attack with his second group of zealots. Chill simply has nothing left with which to defend and Drone clinches his victory in the inaugural Torrenhire Starleague with a classic PvZ strategy.




Following a short delay at the end of the finals to switch streams (since Kiante's old computer was failing), the broadcast returned on Torenhire's stream to bring us a real treat: ThSL champion Liquid`Drone against the famed MBC and now Liquid progamer, Yum Bo Sung.

Grobyc and Kiante were thrilled to watch Liquid`Sea play, although Kiante expressed disappointment that the match wasn't quite living up to its initial planned glory. Technical troubles, coupled with Drone's unfortunate time zone and fatigue, made it impossible to realize the original goal of live-translating Sea's comments through Skype.

Despite this setback, everyone waited in eager anticipation as the first match of their best of 3 began. Sea's TvZ had always been one of his stronger matchups, so Drone was unlikely to have much of a chance, but perhaps he could pull off some nice cheese!

In game one on Tau Cross, Drone opened an off-beat pool first against Sea, but Sea blocked the early lings quite easily after scouting it. Sea transitioned into bio pressure, which Drone's 2-hatch lurker held off--but amusingly, it was the bio forces who were containing the lurkers, thanks to Sea's far-superior macro. Drone broke the contain, but his follow-up lurker push was quite easily annihilated by just a handful of marines and medics. A few minutes later, Sea's bio army, complete with a large number of firebats (some of them d-matrixed) easily steamrolled Drone's defenses, eliciting a "ggg ."



In game two, Sea proxied a factory behind the back minerals on Peaks of Baekdu. While Drone's ling aggression net him a supply depot in front of Sea's wall, Sea floated his factory into Drone's base, made a couple vultures, and proceeded into... two port wraith! The vultures wrought havoc for a while, and as soon as the last vulture died, a wraith came in and snagged a few overlords. At this point, Drone's mutalisk build had to do damage; but his muta aggression was completely shut down by cloaked wraiths. Sea, keeping up his progamer wraith micro for a solid three minutes, dared to kill even some spore colonies before Drone tapped out with "haha, good control, gg."



The third set on Match Point saw Sea open vultures--no longer proxied--which scouted Drone's 3-hatch hydra strategy. Sea, however, cared not for any notion of "unit counters"; he simply went 5-factory goliaths. As +1 armor finished for Sea, his goliaths waltzed up to Drone's 3rd and mowed down Drone's somehow smaller number of +1 attack hydras. In desperation, Drone tried to hide a new expo at top left, but the all-seeing Sea (see?) put an end to any such hopes. Drone's planned hydra counter was stopped cold by the returning goliaths, who marched straight for the Zerg natural. Though Drone managed to focus down Sea's first and only tank, the leftover goliaths were more than enough to finish the job. Drone "ggg "d again, and with Sea's "gg !" response, the series was over.



A huge thank you to Sea for graciously playing for us in this event, to Drone for staying up so late to participate as well (and congratulations on your sticker!), to Kiante and SirJolt, et. al. (too many co-casters to list!) for providing endless assumptions and amusement, and of course to Torenhire for organizing this whole event.







Eriador:I've been around the BW scene basically since its inception. I started playing regular Starcraft in 1998, and was immediately drawn to the competitiveness of it. My presence has diminished since 2005 or whatever, where I basically stopped playing for a good while, what with becoming an adult and stuff like that. I joined Team Liquid a week after it was founded, in, I guess, 2000? I was also a member of [pG] for several years. I used to be a "close to top tier" nonkorean, with I guess my main claim to fame being captaining team Europe to victory against team America and team Asia in Blizzard's own tourneys in 2005 or so.

Eriador: TeamLiquid back then was more of a friendly gathering of people who liked each other. We also had several good players, like me, Nazgul, Daaman, Froz, Corbalt, and later on Satanik, but I'd say friendliness was much more important than skill. This is also signified by how Team Liquid didn't actually participate in clan wars or tournaments, and all the "best" teamliquid players were also playing for pG anyway.

Eriador:Well, ok... I first stopped playing for a couple years in 2005 or so. Then I started again in I think 2008, where I eventually joined )ToT( and became "good" again. Then, when Starcraft 2 was released, I jumped ship like most everyone else, but sadly, that game wasn't good enough to hold my interest. After dabbling around with various single player games and some occasional SC2/UMS, I recall just deciding to try BW again, and then during the first game I played, I made mutalisks, started microing them, and basically was like, wtf… this game is so good! And then I kept playing occasionally, so I didn’t make my return for ThSl specifically, rather, that tournament coincided with me already having started playing again, so I felt like participating.

Eriador:Winning the tournament was awesome. But frankly, I also expected it (you can see this in my chat against Skindzer in the Ro16). Kind of cool though, because during all my years participating in BW, and achieving relative success, I don't think I ever actually won a tournament with this much exposure. At least not internationally… And the cast was awesome – back in the day, people would follow tournaments through:
1. Live report threads on TL.
2. Battlereports.
3. Replays being released from the tournament.
There would never be a cast like we enjoyed in ThSL – thank you!

Eriador:If tournaments like ThSL and Gem League keep appearing, then I'd be delighted to keep participating. It's really the perfect blend of fun and competitiveness for me.

Eriador:With the player lineup, I feel like one of the favourites to win. The maps certainly add a degree of trickiness, with some of them no doubt being retardedly imbalanced, but considering the following; I played bw very actively back when Challenger was actually used frequently, I'm comfortable with one-base styles, and I used to play random exclusively…. I've actually dabbled with the thought of going pure Terran for the Gem League.

Eriador: Haha, Playing vs Sea was awesome, he's obviously a great player and a great sport. I was sad about not being able to come even remotely close in any of the games – I firmly believe that I could get a build order win on some maps, cause I really have some awesome ZvT trickery… but I had been up for 21 hours prior to the games though, and was dead tired – not that I need excuses to justify losing against Sea – but I could’ve done a better job As for him joining TeamLiquid, that goes to show just how far TeamLiquid has gotten, through managing to sign one of the best and most marketable BW progamers ever. I don't think there's any other korean player, with the exception of like, old old Boxer, that I'd be more pleased to share a tag with.

Eriador:Haha, hopefully they arrive before my wife comes back so I'll have some freedom with regard to where I put them. Otherwise I'm sure we can find some agreement that's not too offensive to her while being satisfactory to me.

Eriador:Shoutout to Kiante for both casting and being the closest to toppling me! Shoutout to chill for actually making me have to change stuff up in the finals – I kinda assumed I'd be able to just roll through with standard play, but I had to pull out my tricks. Anti-shoutout to Rekrul for failing to even make the faceoff. Shoutout to my wife for accepting that I'm doing this instead of hanging out. Shoutout to SirJolt and every other caster, and finally a shoutout to all my TeamLiquid buddies for doing a great job with SC2 and with teamliquid.net – super happy to be part of this awesome journey And the standard apology to anyone that is deserving but whom I forgot to mention. <3




Over the time ThSL has run, I think we've come to learn a lot. Not just the obvious, "Don't depend on one person/computer to handle every intricate detail of every broadcast," but other things, deeper and more philosophical.

If the OSL, MSL, and Proleague were to Brood War as officially licensed boxing matches are to the sport, then we can paint a picture of the current scene as one in which unlicensed amateur boxing has taken the main stage in Sonic's SSL. By contrast, the players in the ThSL might never have had the following of their SSL counterparts, nor the opportunities. Instead, they've brought more aggression and raw determination than we'd have thought possible.

Without the luxury of proximity to play via LAN, without the presence of a shoeshop in which to rally and sit for postgame interviews, every portion of the tournament has been served by the bare essentials. They're beating one another bloody for such minor prizes that it should by now be pretty clear that the stickers to be awarded aren't the real goal. The goal is triumph, that moment where someone stands over their limp body of an opponent and knows that he has bested him. If we are to continue our sporting analogy, it's the esports equivalent of Fight Club's basement-bound bouts of bareknuckle boxing.



Torenhire: SirJolt said he was at a ThSL in Newcastle last week.



Kiante: Newcastle? Did you start that one?



Torenhire: I thought you did?





It's still a competition in the strictest sense; there are matches, and there are winners, but that's not really what it's about. As the tournament plays out, we've watched the number of people watching slowly increase. All around the world, people are tuning in and finding something out; we were finding out more and more that we are not alone.

The first rule of Brood War is that you talk about Brood War.

The second rule of Brood War is that you talk about Brood War.

If someone GGs, disconnects, or ragequits, the game is over.

Games will go on as long as they have to.

And the final rule, if you're sitting at home reading this and thinking, "Yes, I like this," you have to play.


For those of you who have enjoyed this tournament, I'd highly recommend you check out Trozz's upcoming Gem League II. If ThSL has been Fight Club, then Gem League is something closer to Battle Royale. The maps are derranged, balance is questionable, and everyone's just desperate to make it out with their reputation intact.

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This THSL coverage has been brought to you by HawaiianPig, 2Pacalypse-, Sirjolt, Hyde, Falling, Harem, kjwcj, ]343[, TheEmulator, Torenhire and Kiante.