Grudgematches are an in integral part of StarCraft since its inception. Primarily a game played as one versus one it naturally pits each competitor against the world, often on their own. A harsh competitive world enables conflict to spark and passions to flare, where rivals are naturally occurring and those championing their own causes must take to the stage to prove their worth. Tomorrow we will celebrate this fact with a series of grudgematch showmatches as each pairing will best their opponent in the most humiliating fashion possible. Trashtalk is not required, but strongly encouraged.

Let's take a look at what is in store.

Snute vs Firecake

Swarmhost Supremacy

A truly amusing match. While they don’t have any significant competitive matches against each other except at HSC XII where Firecake reverse swept Snute 3-2, their personalities represent the extremes that a competitor's attitude can take. Snute is a calm, mild mannered Zerg on the perennially nice Liquid team while Firecake has become the embodiment of negative French stereotypes, seemingly on purpose. Once known for egregiously long Swarm Host games including the longest WCS game to date against MaNa, he has been known to openly insult David Kim (once during an official match) and play strategies meant more to prove a point than to win. Needless to say when these two meet on the ladder—a somewhat regular occurrence given practice schedules—there is not only no love lost but a fierce need to prove one world view to another.

It's only a shame we couldn't do it in an era when Swarm Hosts are the soupe du jour.

Nerchio vs Mana

Pole Position

The two best Polish players since the beginning of SC2's history are two of its best foreigners as well. They have had a long rivalry where Nerchio has gotten the upper hand over MaNa for the most part and, in a strange way, their careers have paralleled one another. Both were fairly successful in 2011, both hit their peaks during 2012, and both fell down after HotS came out. The biggest difference is MaNa made a comeback at the very end of HotS with his WCS runner-up run in 2015.

This makes this grudgematch all the more interesting since in every other way they contrast. Nerchio has spent most of his career as a student-professional. He’d always split his time between study and play, while MaNa had gone full time into the pro world and had stints in Korea to practice. Both of them can’t seem to stand each other in anything beyond Nation Wars. While Nerchio has the upper hand in the head to head, there is always a bit of something extra when these two play each other.

Huk vs Scarlett

The King and Queen of Canada

The two best Canadian SC2 players all time. Unfortunately by both time and circumstance, they never got to play each other in any meaningful match. By the time Scarlett’s star had risen, HuK’s had fallen. And while they both did moderately well in WCS NA from 2013-2014, they never collided for ultimate region supremacy. Instead they kept playing in the Red Bull qualifiers and live tournaments where HuK won the qualifiers, while Scarlett won on LAN. This is always a fun pairing, especially now that both seem to have revitalized a little in LotV.

TLO vs Lilbow

Money Where Your Mouth Is

In one of the most infamous moments of 2015, Lilbow bombed out of Blizzcon by losing to Life 0-3 in record time. The loss itself wasn’t what made it notable, but what Lilbow came out to say afterward: that Blizzcon didn’t matter, he had spent his time practicing for LotV instead. For the future.

TLO called him out saying that this the completely wrong attitude. His stated issue wasn’t the honor or pride of the foreigners, but the simple undeniable fact that those at the top have no guarantee of staying there. There is no guarantee that you will stay at the top of the scene forever, so if you want to win, if you want to be the best, you have to try your hardest at the biggest event of the year, you have to focus on the now instead of some future that may never come to pass.

Lilbow then came out with this statement on facebook:



He blames Life for cheesing him, but says if he had prepared he would have beaten Life maybe. He then says it’s impossible to beat Innovation in the next round as it was impossible to get practice on HotS in Europe.

TLO called him out twice. Once saying he could have gone to Korea and the other saying that people offered him practice.



Lilbow called him a caster.



We then move to Legacy of the Void where Lilbow plays GPL, the tournament he said he was practicing for and gets knocked out by IAsonu, who was practicing for Lilbow. Afterwards Lilbow went to DH where he got into an elimination match with TLO and lost.

While this is 'just' a showmatch, you can’t help but imagine that there will be just that little bit of extra heat coming from this kitchen.