We’re two months down then, with more to come in SHOUTcraft Kings for 2016. September’s showpiece event kicks off this Saturday. As last season’s reigning King, Neeb returns to defend his throne, and ahead of KeSPA Cup’s much hyped Korea vs the World storyline, SHOUTcraft will again be giving us a taster of the action to come.

To quote from our explanation of the format last time round—this is pure King of the Hill, Winner Stays On, in a Best of One showdown for supremacy. Players get $250 for each map win, summing to a total prize pool of $5,000 per event. None of the players are aware of the opponents they’ll be facing—each is chosen individually by TotalBiscuit during the event—lending an air of mystique to the event, and making this a test of pure gameplay with little preparation possible.

Join us for a recap of last month’s event, as well as a preview of some of the players TB has lined up. With the WCS Circuit concluded for the year, as well as the individual and team leagues in Korea, it promises to be the best event yet.

SHOUTcraft Kings August - Five Conclusions

One

INnoVation’s back end 7 game winning streak dominated the headlines in SHOUTcraft Kings July. However, in August, there were all too few players who proved themselves worthy of sitting on the throne. Challengers came up with the goods time and time again, as the newly crowned Kings found themselves usurped with barely enough time to enjoy their triumphs. No one managed more than 3 wins (INnoVation, Neeb, and Scarlett) as TB constantly stacked the decks against the incumbent King. INnoVation’s streak ended at 10 wins (counting his July streak as well) to the first Korean protoss he met (Hurricane)—proving once more that TvP remains his achilles heel in Legacy of the Void. It was a pretty intense match well worth a watch (VOD), swaying back and forth before Hurricane’s excellent control with his tempest / disruptor composition proved unbreakable.

Two

For their parts, Scarlett and Neeb proudly flew the flag as the outstanding foreigner representatives this time round. Wins over Stork and puCK were emphatic for Scarlett (if expected), but it was her sterling performance against ByuN that caught the eye (VOD). We saw some vintage Scarlett creep spread, taking over the whole map before rolling over ByuN with muta-ling-bane. Meanwhile, Neeb’s crazy hold against Patience was the must-watch game of the tournament (VOD)—a game which swung drastically in favour of both players during a tense micro battle that hearkened back to some of the classic endless one-base all-ins that we’ve seen in the past.

Three

That said, it was a generally underwhelming month for foreigner - KR matchups. Although the final KR-WCS score was tied at 5-5, several players on both sides benefitted from hilariously one-sided matchups (INnoVation vs SolO / PandaBearMe, for example), and hopefully we’ll see some more top tier players match up this time round. It’s one of the few flaws in the tournament design that players are assigned to certain blocks of times, although unfortunately unavoidable given the understandable inability to get all 21 players to commit to being on call for the full 7+ hour broadcast. Nerchio and PtitDrogo were playing in the WCA qualifiers earlier in the day, and thus all had to play in the final block against Neeb; hopefully this time we’ll see them matched against less familiar opposition.

Four

One thing that TotalBiscuit has stressed on multiple occasions is that this tournament isn’t fair. He stacks the decks as he pleases (such as feeding the Root Gaming zergs SolO and PandaBearMe to INnoVation), while maneuvering the pack to give us juicy rivalries. uThermal’s comments on TRUE last month (link) came days before SHOUTcraft, and thus it was with a maniacal cackle that TB casually chucked the two together for a BO1 showdown. The Dutch terran looked notably off-form, and cited ping issues due to hosting on the wrong server. Still, is a single online Bo1 any use in telling who the superior player is? Not really. Was it hilarious though, crafting a storyline that could stretch on for months? Of course.

Five

That loss was only one of two zerg wins against terran for the month (the other was Scarlett’s aforementioned win over ByuN), with the final standings at 6-2. Over the two months of competition we’ve had so far, the TvZ record stands at 13-4. Sure, INnoVation has pretty much singlehandedly wrecked the balance in those numbers, beating 7 zergs by himself, but it’s still ugly reading for fans of the swarm. They’d better hope that more zergs display the clinical play that Scarlett in particular showed this week (or alternatively that INnoVation doesn’t bother to show up).

SHOUTcraft Kings September - Preview

Neeb vs ByuN

Is there a single more tantalising foreigner vs Korean matchup possible at the moment than this? ByuN is, of course, the reigning GSL Champion, fresh off destroying Dear and sOs in the playoffs to take his debut individual offline title. He’s shown a level of TvP that’s beyond anything we’ve seen in Legacy of the Void, blending the same map presence and smart plays of TY with micro unmatched by any player in the world right now. The same heavy adept compositions used to such success by protosses for months now were made to look downright useless by ByuN’s transcendent control, kiting adepts with ease.

Then take his challenger; inarguably the finest player in North America, and a contender for top protoss in the non-Korean world. Of course, he’s been more than successful against foreign terrans—take his 3-0 over uThermal at Copa International just last week—but that’s not where it ends. His record over the past four months against Korean terrans online is staggering—a 27-9 record (75% winrate)—featuring wins over Reality, Ryung and GuMiho. In fact, ByuN’s been one of only two who’ve managed to beat him (Polt is the second), but even his 3-0 win in late August came after a 6-1 humbling in early June. We’ve seen Neeb crumble on the big stage so many times this year, but this is something completely different. Pressure won’t be a factor, and neither will ping—both are in Korea right now. Finally, for the first time this year, we’re about to see the best of the west go up against the might of Korea. It’s about damn time.

HyuN

The third (and last, as yet) player announced for this event is the old standard of Korean dominance. While HyuN’s failed to find any success in Korea at all following his breakout silver in GSL Season 5 2012, there’ve been few finer importers of foreign dollars to the motherland. For years, there was no more unsurprising monster to be found lurking in even the most obscure online events; no tournament small enough to escape his attention. From WCS America, to the Dreamhacks and IEMs, to random minor events that barely 1% of the community will have heard of, HyuN has played and won at them all.

Still, if you ask many people, they’ll point to his IPL Fight Club record as his crowning glory, which effectively turned into a weekly paycheck for him. HyuN dominated the King of the Hill tournament, winning fourteen (!) Best of 9s in a row. During the lifetime of the competition, no one even came close—Creator was in second place with four. Sure, HyuN has looked weak this year, but is it any coincidence that his fall started this year, when his entire raison d’être as a player’s been removed from him? Feed him foreigners, and we could see the monster rise again.