We all know the French are batshit insane, the fact that they made a rap music video for MarineLorD’s return to HomeStory Cup just proves the point further. Also, pretty sure they were drunk while filming this, am I right, le crew de baguette? The French are heavy drinkers, but where other people become more annoying and unbearable when drunk, it’s actually the other way around with the French. They become more tolerable, and they also progressively get better at StarCraft. Their national StarCraft hero is a drunkard who was arrested by the police while attending a tournament. So for MarineLorD, who only recently returned to professional StarCraft 2 play, who’s not really back into groove just yet, getting drunk is actually the best possible strategy he can come up with. What could possibly go wrong? We just need to make sure he doesn't accidentally switch to Overwatch again.

souL is a European Terran. That's why he drinks. But unlike uThermal, who looks like he couldn't take a single vodka shot and will likely be too preoccupied tweeting about Protoss anyway, souL seems like a guy who can drink. He infamously proxy rax'd Stats out of IEM Katowice, and if he continues to play that way he could go very far at HomeStory Cup. After all, proxy 2rax is exactly what I do when I get wasted with friends and offrace as Terran, and that has always worked. By the way, has anyone ever inquired about the success rate of proxy 2rax? It must be really high. I never see that strategy lose.

You know what year it is. Every last one of you knows, but that's because you're living your boring, boxed in, 9-to-5 lives. It's 2018 in your universe, but not in Harstem's. Flaming Lips, as the Dutchman is nicknamed in China, has his crew living the dream. The captain has taken his trusted followers out to sea where time stands still—so much so that the concept of calendars has been abandoned entirely and another measurement of time has been introduced in its stead—the year of Harstem. The only thing to do at sea is, of course, drink and play StarCraft II on high speed internet. Sources (his first mate Elazer, but really mostly his stream) have also informed us that Harstem has been practicing the new patch extensively and may thus have an advantage over the other drunkards players. But most importantly, only very few players are better equipped to handle an event full of drunk people wearing hats than a pirate captain.

Drink up me nerdies, yo ho! o7

In his quest to find a new, more stable playstyle to replace his usual aggression, Elazer has tried a lot of different things. Only recently, he tried to pose as a depressed author opening up to the world, sharing his feelings and giving a detailed look into his hard journey. Given his lack of success so far, he seems to be on the wrong path, so HomeStory Cup is the perfect opportunity for him to experiment a bit, try this and that, and maybe find something that works. The Polish people are no strangers to the struggle against irrelevance and have developed their fair share of excellent vodka to help cope with their collective fate, so maybe Elazer should start with that. Who knows, maybe Elazer can finally into title space? On the other hand, playing StarCraft drunk probably resembles his old, successful playstyle a lot more than playing it sober… well. Go on, lad.

Europe has the best beer in the world, and Germany supposedly has the best beer in Europe. Logically, we can assume Germans are clearly the superior drinkers on this planet, having genetically adapted to mass-consuming this golden nectar of the gods. Since ShoWTimE is from the south of Germany (from the second most superior state, to be precise), this is even more pronounced: His handsomeness stems from not only a lineage of beer drinkers, but also from his daily exercise stemming dozens of Maßkrüge, as pictured here. Not only would this make him instantly win a wet t-shirt contest with Zest, it also makes him an excellent drunk StarCraft 2 player. Besides, even if someone can get ShoWTimE drunk, it wouldn’t matter. Die Mauer doesn’t need to be conscious while playing. Die Mauer just builds his shield batteries, canons and places some defensive units, takes a nap and wakes up to the victory screen and some “thank you Mr. Sieber” tweets.

MaNa ranks fifth in our Drunk Rank, and if by now you're asking yourself "TLnet, are you just putting Eastern Europeans in this list?" we congratulate you on solving our complex formula. MaNa beats out his Polish compatriots by virtue of being on a team founded entirely for the purpose of alcohol consumption, Team Liquid. What does a horse have to do with Liquid? We don't know, but we're sure it makes more sense under the influence.

What also makes MaNa stand out is his ability to stay focused on his target no matter the circumstances. While others choose to practice in Korea, MaNa has stayed in Poland and we have it on good account that Poland is big on alcohol. That's really all we've got.

Bly was always going to make this ranking. Not only is he also Eastern European, the only way to explain Bly's play is that he's drunk whenever he plays StarCraft II. Thus, as everyone else's level drops with every drop of the good stuff, Bly will play exactly the same as before. The fact that this doesn't immediately put him at #1 shows just how strong the competition is this year around. But Bly is a firm contender for the top 4 of HomeStory Cup from day one, and we imagine his play will only stand out more and more as the tournament progresses and players around him begin to realize that a bar is literally the centerpiece of TakeTV's studio and make apt use of it.

If you're one of the three people watching every Go4SC2 Cup or following the vast number of bizarre EU online tournaments (best regards, Proxy Tempest EU Open!), you may have seen Rail's name before. If you're old you may remember him as Verdi (that's him). Now, you may ask yourself just why he has made the ranking. Rail not only won the first Road to Moscow tournament, he also won the second edition just recently, as well as the Russian WESG qualifier. You're probably beginning to figure out where this is going. Rail is Russian. And he's not just Russian, he's the Russian. Winning a tournament called "Road to Moscow" is, in fact, 100% impossible without a powerful liver—we had our Russian correspondent double check this and it is true. In fact, rumors have emerged that sLivko's biceps was declined entry for showing up sober. Beating the equally inebriated and aptly named Strange in the finals of that tournament (Editor's Note: Apparently Protoss is the perfect race to play when drunk. Who would have thought?), Rail proved that alcohol can't stop him, and nothing else really matters at HomeStory Cup.

Would it surprise anyone at this point if soO had become a heavy drinker to wash away the bitter taste of frustration and defeat haunting him again and again? Probably not. If he were, though, he’d be pretty good at coping with the effects while playing, giving him a decisive advantage over his competition. However, soO really has a much more powerful ally on his side, so the question whether he’s an alcoholic or not is purely academic anyways: Gravity. Now, gravity is normally the enemy of any drunk person. This pesky universal force always pulls them towards the ground, takes their phones away and smashes their front screens in, it’s really annoying! Not for soO though, oh no! You see, regular people are being pulled towards the ground by gravity, but soO is special. He’s being pulled towards second place. No matter how drunk he may get, the silver will call to him and he will ultimately find it, because the laws of the Kong line demand it. That probably also saves his phone, so that’s a plus! Well, it depends on where TaKe places the silver medal, anyways.

The best player in the history of StarCraft II is back. TaeJa is comfortably the favorite for HomeStory Cup, having won three previous iterations. That alone proves his sublime play suffers in no way from the man's inebriation. He is another Team Liquid player, after all. Perhaps the secret to his immunity lies in the effect of the substance. When other players drink, their brain forgets what they practiced and they begin making stupid decisions. Not TaeJa, because TaeJa doesn't practice in the first place. Instead you will find him complaining about how easy League of Legends is, casually shake his head when asked if he prepared for a tournament, then go on to win it anyway (Editor's Note: League of Legends was a game that used to tempt especially Korean StarCraft II pros away from their practice regimen, but it was killed by Richard Lewis' Riot-critical posts on the League subreddit and has been replaced by Overwatch as the new game that ruins StarCraft II careers. We are sure that is what happened.). This has appeared especially effective at HomeStory Cup. TaeJa is arguably the best player in the world right now. BlizzCon champion Serral (he's only that because TaeJa returned to StarCraft II too late to qualify for the end of the year spectacle) will have his work cut out for him at HomeStory Cup, especially as he has not even made the ranking this time around.

We fully expect TaeJa to win HomeStory Cup, and when he does you'll have to think twice before ever calling us biased again.