WHAT $4,000 Map Test Tournament (THIS WILL BE INVITE ONLY)
WHERE BaseTradeTV will be providing coverage, if any other langauges want to get involved please contact @Rif_Kingz (Or via skype)
WHEN May 23-29th
WHY A map contest focused on highlighting potential new maps
Prizing will work as follows: 1st $1,000* 2nd $800* 3rd 600 4th 500 5th - 8th $100 * = All maps will be played, each win however is worth another $50
Scheduling will be as follows (Times posted once we have confirmed all players, catering to timezones)
Day 1 Matches #1 & 2 Bo9 Day 2 Matches #3 & 4 Bo9 Day 3 Matches #5 & 6 Bo9 Day 4 Matches #7 & 8 Bo9 Day 5 Round of 8 Bo9 Day 6 SemiFinals #1 Bo11 Day 7 SemiFinals #1 Bo11 Day 8 Finals 15 Maps - All maps played
Wednesday, May 25 5:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00)Theo vs Lillekanin & MaSa vs Neeb *Note: should match 1 finish early, Neeb cannot begin to play until at least 2 hours after the designated start due to school
We feel that Beastyqt vs Lambo will be a good display of what TvZ looks like in general, as both players are quite capable of the late game as well as early aggression, combined with the fact that both are very intelligent at using map mechanics to their advantage.
Theo vs Lillekanin is a somewhat mystical match up that, during the beta, showed us the only use of battlecruiser vs carrier/tempests. The best part was how often these two would win over the other, very back and forth, using the same turtle strategies. This combined with their very unconventional games, and Lillekanins very unconventional play style, I think will give us a great stress test of the new maps.
Mana and Nerchio will clearly showcase some of the best that Poland has to offer, not to mention extremely great players for this particular match up. We've seen both succeed and fail in our various cups and tournaments, Nerchio being the king of the weekly cups and Mana showing up and kicking ass for the bigger ones. However the thing we're looking most forward to, is both players adapted really quickly to the map "DETOX" (by Avex) that we threw into our map pool, and were able to play it in unique ways. This is what we want to see when testing new maps!
Puck and Harstem will provide some great PvP, our only regret is that we'll have to bounce back and forth on servers to handle it. Puck's PVP is some of the best NA has to offer right now, and Harstem is a tier 1 player (*cough*). In all seriousness though, we've seen both players handle micro in intense situations, and unlike Gods such as Parting, we don't expect them to "ruin" a map test contest by only blink all-in on every single map.
It had to be obvious we'd grab Neeb for one of the various matches. Recently, we got to watch him play vs Masa for the Dreamhack qualifiers, and it was a really great series, and we can't wait to watch this rematch.
Snute and uThermal are both very interesting players, who constantly sway from Godlike to "just really good" status in Starcraft. uThermal often showing early game aggression (hellbat pushes anyone?) can be a really scary player to play against, whereas Snute, if he can get to the late game, almost can't be beat. Their clashing styles combined with these new maps should really stress test the way each map can be played, and that's what we really want to see in this tournament
The overall bracket will be represented by this order, but here are the dates & matches: (Since Bo9's can really vary in time, we make no estimates on when the second match begins. It will always be after a short break once the first series concludes)
Wednesday, May 25 5:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00)Theo vs Lillekanin & MaSa vs Neeb *Note: should match 1 finish early, Neeb cannot begin to play until at least 2 hours after the designated start due to school
The last two match ups are the mirror matches featuring Bunny vs Kelazhur & Scarlett (who hasn't confirmed, so we have TLO on standby) vs Bly
Bunny competed in, and even placed second in our TvT only tournament shortly after Legacy's launch. Lucky for us the meta of TvT has not changed drastically in the months since then, so we're hoping to see Bunny kick some ass once again. More recently, Kelazhur has been performing well overall, but his TvT has looked quite nice (Watching him knock polt down to loser's bracket in the first season of Ting). We're hoping to see them abuse every cliff, ledge, and drop area on the new maps :-)
Bly vs Scarlett, both have played more ZvZ's than we can count, and while Scarlett's ZvZ has bounced around quite a bit, we've seen Bly kick ass at this match up ever since the first beta tournament we ran for LOTV. We're hoping to see lots of early pools, nydus worms, and mutalisks on all the new maps!