[STPL] Shinhan Tank Proleague Retrospective

The Shinhan Tank Proleague began just over 6 years ago. I had an idea for a tournament and while I had no idea if I could actually make it work, I wanted to give it a try. The vision for the STPL would be a tournament where people played anonymously, by hiding under the aliases of their favourite progamers and playing for their favourite proleague era teams.

Signups were low, but we still for all intents and purposes ended up having a great first tournament. The grand finals took place between KT and SKT with the final score ending up 3-2 in favour of SKT with the player playing as BoxeR taking down the player playing as Stats on Destination in a TvP. I tried subsequently to host the tournament again hoping for more signups, but as I had learned in the previous season while the anonymity was cool; it essentially just made the organisation of the tournament for myself and also the players taking part a pain. We couldn’t get the signups we needed to start the tournament again.

I decided to take a break from Broodwar at that time and it wasn’t until 2017 that I would make my return into the tournament hosting scene. I came back with a solo weekly cup called the Clash for Char and ended up running 16 entries. I thoughoughly enjoyed hosting these, but with the return of the TL Open and Have At You running bi-weekly as well I realised that there wasn’t necessarily a need for the scene to have the Clash for Char.

It was at that point I realised I wanted to bring back the STPL. I knew I had to change the format somewhat, but I realised while there was BWCL at the time there was room in the scene for another teamleague. I set out to revive the STPL and with the help of the amazing team captains who have taken part that realisation became a reality.

2018 saw the revival of the Shinhan Tank Proleague with our official Season 1. We saw 19 teams fight for victory across the 14 month long season and while we had a few teams disband throughout the tournament overall most of the teams stayed. Those teams still form the foundation of the STPL as it stands now. To name them we have ash, dM, iRk, NaS, NetWars, pSi, Red, ReV and SouL. Season 1 really was a large test of endurance not only for the players, but also for myself. I was casting week in week out for almost a year. I enjoyed it, but I realised moving forward this wasn’t the way to run a tournament. Subsequently Season 2, 3 and 4 have been around 12-15 weeks from beginning to completion and that’s worked out much better.

We’ve had a lot of games featuring on a huge variety of maps with an even bigger variety of players. I’d like to use this thread to highlight some of those in an below show you some of the stats as of today.



























Season 5 is on the way and the announcement thread should be coming up in the next week or so. Hopefully you guys enjoy the tournament and have enjoyed a look at some of the stats from this thread