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![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/hoaqHme.png) Team Liquid Map Contest #15 powered by Shopify is already well underway and that means it is time for a tournament! I am SO excited for this because I truly though I had run my last TLMC event and that we wouldn’t see the return of this staple event in the map making scene, which has such a large effect on the StarCraft 2 ladder and tournaments that we all love to watch day in and day out. Every TLMC comes with a tournament so we can see the finalists in action before putting our votes in to help determine the winner. This will be the seventh $4,000 WardiTV Team Liquid Map Contest Tournament and we are aiming to make it better than before! Our aim is to get each map played as much as possible across a range of match ups and over the years we have had a few different formats to achieve this. This time around we will be running a similar format to our last event, just with one less player in the Korean region and one less round in the gauntlet style playoffs due to some time constraints (there is SO MUCH StarCraft 2 happening all the time). We still expect to see over 100 games of SC2 during the tournament, so plenty of time to see these beautiful new maps! This format allows for less players to play more games, meaning it is more worthwhile for the players involved to learn the maps ahead of time and its likely they will see some maps multiple times in game. Sadly, due to scheduling the only cross server play (EU vs KR) in this tournament will be in the grand finals. Special thanks again to Shopify for helping to bring this Team Liquid Map Contest and hence tournament to us! Check out the maps and the tournament info on Liquipedia!
Format & DatesGroup stage will be Round Robin BO3, with 7 players in the EU group and 6 players in the KR group. Top 4 of each group will advance to the Playoffs, played in a gauntlet style: 4th vs 3rd, winner plays 2nd, winner plays 1st (this is separate for EU and KR.) The winners of the final match in each region will advance to play each other in the grand final. Some matches during groups may be played simultaneously and replays cast at the end of the show to help with scheduling – full information will be set up once we have a proper match schedule in place.EU Group Day 1- Tuesday, Jul 06 4:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00) – 8 BO3s KR Group Day 1- Wednesday, Jul 07 11:00am GMT (GMT+00:00) – 8 BO3s EU Group Day 2- Thursday, Jul 08 3:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00) – 10 BO3s KR Group Day 2- Friday, Jul 09 11:00am GMT (GMT+00:00) – 7 BO3s EU Group Day 3 & Playoffs - Sunday, Jul 11 4:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00) – 3 BO3 & 3 BO5 (please note that this start time might change depending on WTL playoffs!! KR Playoffs & Grand Finals - Monday, Jul 12 11:00am GMT (GMT+00:00) – 3 BO5 & BO7 Finals
Prize MoneyEvery BO3 victory in the group stage will be worth $30, for a total of $1,080 to be won in the group stages. On top of this prize money is giving out to your finishing position : 1st - $1000 2nd - $500 3rd/4th - $250 5th-6th - $175 7th-8th - $125 9-10th - $85 11-13th - $50 For a total of $2,920, plus the $1,080 in the group stages to total $4,000.
Streams  WardiTVPlease contact Wardi for alternative language casting. Our usual partners are invited to join us but please ask for graphics which may be required.
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Yeah!!! This announcement has been waited on. It is great to finally have the information. Very excited to see the maps and matches.
Maybe now that ESL is part of the map selection process they could shout out this happening next week. Something like "New maps for future seasons are being voted and played on next week. So remember check them out.".
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As we say in the map cave, :WardiBless:
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:WardiBless:
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/2iAAPuJ.png)
I like the format, hope a lot of people come to check out the new maps.
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Blessed. New maps cant come soon enough for me. I am really excited for this! Thank you Shopify, thank you Wardi!
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So excited to see the new maps, the games, and everything. THank you Wardi, Shopify, ESL, whoever else!!
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So cool that we get these. No better environment to test out the maps than a real tournament. Thanks Wardi! (and that TLO to Shopify transfer just keeps paying off)
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The player list is looking amazing :o
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Awesome, but where is the list of maps that will be tested?
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Hopefully the great shout-out by Wardi on season finals gives this and maps more attention and more votes so that we get the best maps to ladder.
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On July 02 2021 23:15 Callynn wrote:
Awesome, but where is the list of maps that will be tested?
It’s coming
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I'd love to see some variation on the players invited.
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I've missed out on some of the previous map tourneys, excellent work as always Wardi.
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On July 02 2021 22:36 Wardi wrote:
The player list is looking amazing :o
So now we have the maps
What about the invites?
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Welcome to our players!
Europe :
 Clem, uThermal,  MaNa, MaxPax, ShoWTimE,  Elazer, Lambo
Korea :
ByuN, Cure, INnoVation, herO, Zest, Rogue
Sorry for only 1 Zerg in Korea, it was difficult because a lot of players are still in GSL and there is a potential clash.
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Wardi, now thats Ragnarok is out of the GSL, can you try to ask him to join ? Adding another KR Zerg player would be nice  .
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On July 05 2021 20:53 Wardi wrote:Welcome to our players! Europe : Clem, uThermal, MaNa, MaxPax, ShoWTimE, Elazer, LamboKorea : ByuN, Cure, INnoVation, herO, Zest, RogueSorry for only 1 Zerg in Korea, it was difficult because a lot of players are still in GSL and there is a potential clash.
I am glad that Rogue also join this tournament. How about Armani ?
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Amazing list of Players
Let s hope I can watch at least some of it live as well...
E.: just realised 4out of the 6 Koreans are from DPG lol, its almost a DPG map contest then 
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Dang no Reynor or Serral? T___T
Big thanks though Wardii I'm always on that Youtube channel <3
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On July 06 2021 01:39 tigera6 wrote:Wardi, now thats Ragnarok is out of the GSL, can you try to ask him to join ? Adding another KR Zerg player would be nice .
The schedule / prize money isn’t set up for 7 players in Korea.
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Lambo vs uThermal on The Curious minds was nice game. Starting good.
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This first day of games just really reinforced the existing feeling that the TLMC judges did a terrible job with the multi-spawn maps (and we didn't even see much of them).
All four of their picks are 4p rotational symmetry maps with all the associated scouting, rotational spawn imbalance and size issues.
- They could have picked 4p reflective symmetry maps (like Frost) which don't have the rotational spawn issues.
- They could have picked 3p maps which are smaller and have less of a scouting issue.
- They could have picked 2-in-1 maps (like Foxtrot Labs LE) which don't have the scouting issue at all.
- They could have picked horizontal or cross only reflective symmetry maps (like Shakuras Plateau) which don't have the rotational spawn imbalances, are smaller, and only have a slight scouting delay.
The conspiracy theory that the judges are doing this to intentionally sabotage 4p maps is getting more attractive every day.
Apart from that a lot of short games today--hopefully we'll get some longer ones in the coming days. A good day of games from MaNa and a disappointing one from Clem.
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What really pisses me off is that they took up finalists spots that could have been occupied by at least great 2 spawn maps if not just much better 4 spawn maps, which there were plenty of options to choose from.
On another note, which map was the best looking of the first day?
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Hard to say after just a day of games (with many of them being short games that could have happened on any map). I thought the games on Berlingrad were promising--they weren't anything too special, but they felt like the type of games you'd like to see on an aggressive standard map--it gives me some hope that it could end up as a fairly balanced rush map (given that most rush maps that reach ladder are quite poorly balanced). I hope we get a PvZ on it.
Bulwark I think had the worst start, where in cross-spawns a Terran push just got jumped on by Protoss in the middle of the map and instantly lost the game. This is precisely the type of game that everyone is afraid of seeing on giant four player maps (we've seen similar stuff on say Obsidian in GSL) and it happened right off the bat. Unlike the other maps which had very short games (e.g Pride of Altaris) the game on Bulwark felt connected to the problems of the map itself (even if Clem's build was quite unsuited to the map).
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EPT
