Best Games of the Month: August 2019 Edition

Compiled and written by Elentos et al.

August was an exciting month for competitive StarCraft II, featuring a slew of major, offline events with both WCS Circuit and WCS Korea players in action. In a rare turn, the TL.net best games crew has opted not to flex their 'we watch everything' muscles, actually featuring these live events instead of bragging about the shiny, Cure-shaped baubles we found in online cups. Just kidding, we included those, too.

However, we did break our streak including PvP matches into the monthly list. But before you celebrate, know that it will only cause us to redouble our efforts in September.

Anyway, as always, we hope you enjoy the games!

• Cure vs FanTaSy on Turbu Cruise '84
WardiTV Summer Championship Korea - Group B

Whatever you want to say about FanTaSy's recent performance in his marathon, five-hour-long GSL Ro16 group, you can't say he was boring. Weeks beforehand, FanTaSy had already given everyone a preview of his late-game prowess in the WardiTV Summer Championship. Cure, who has established himself as a formidable TvT player through his online performances, made for a truly fine sparring partner in this near 40-minute slugfest featuring a distinct clash of styles.

Late game TvT usually revolves around air dominance, which can cause a lot of staring contests without much actual action. But Cure and FanTaSy couldn't look each other in the eyes without someone throwing a punch. While FanTaSy went for a high-tech fleet with BattleCruisers, Cure tried to leverage his resource advantage and countered with more numerous and mobile units. As the game went on, this caused a units-lost difference of more than 20,000 resources, but the game was still somehow kind of even. As we've often seen, when the two players started to go broke, they finally entered the real endgame...

• Rogue vs GuMiho on Disco Bloodbath
WardiTV Summer Championship Korea - Finals

Given the reputations of these players, you wouldn't be surprised to hear that all the games in this series are quite worthwhile. But this particular game—it was just a stand-out performance. Befitting the name of the map it was played on, it was an absolute BLOODBATH. It's one of those games that makes you think SC2 might be suitable for Quake or Dota-style multi-kill announcers, screaming over the action when enough units are dismembered, melted, or otherwise blown to pieces.

Starting off with a BC rush into mech (as one would probably expect from GuMiho in this meta), the game actually began looking relatively standard. Fortunately for the viewers, the two players only focused on their economies for just long enough to start tearing each other down. What ensued was fights, fights and more fights, with no position or expansion safe for any period of time. Rogue and GuMiho threw just about everything at each other in this game, including the kitchen sink. ESPECIALLY the kitchen sink, in fact.

• Dark vs KeeN on King's Cove
2019 GSL Code S Season 3 - Ro16 Group A

A week before the return of Code S after a month-long hiatus, a balance update was released. The adjustments were mostly aimed at the late game, lowering the power of Infestors while strengthening Ghosts as direct counters. And while Dark is known to enjoy a good late game, he was also matched against 3 Terrans universally considered to be beneath his level. Most of the time in that situation, Dark just speedruns his group, collecting some style points along the way. A ravager/ling all-in a day keeps the scrubs away, as they say.

However, KeeN very strongly disagreed with all of our conventional fan-wisdom. Starting off strong, KeeN busted out mech on King's Cove (or KeeN's Cove for his apparent inability to lose on the map). Not stopping at mass Thor, KeeN immediately decided to show us what a difference Enhanced Shockwave upgraded Ghosts could make.

It served as a bit of a throwback: 'modern' Ghost-mech was first seen on the big stage in early 2018, notably used by TY against Dark in the Ro16. It was subsequently abandoned when Terrans realized they had a much more powerful late game with mass Raven, and mysteriously never caught on again after Ravens were nerfed. While it's hard to pin KeeN's success on solely Ghosts, other Terrans are sure to experiment with this rather spooky version of mech.

After the group concluded, KeeN announced this Code S tournament would be his last. It's a shame, as in this GSL he's shown by far his best play in the last eight years.

• Stats vs Serral on New Repugnancy
Assembly Summer 2019 - Ro4

363 days, so almost exactly 1 year, lay between Stats' first confrontation with Serral and their most recent encounter. On August 5, 2018, Serral pierced the Shield of Aiur in front of Stats' home crowd in Seoul, walking away as the GSL vs The World champion. It seemed unlikely Stats would ever have the chance to return the favor, as large scale tournaments in Finland hadn't happened in a few years. And then, when ASUS ROG/Assembly Summer 2019 was abruptly announced, Stats didn't get invited, show-up in the qualifier brackets, or have any way of getting to the tournament. That is, until SpeCial decided to drop out.

As we certainly all remember, the legend of Replacement Man started in 2016, when uThermal replaced PiLiPiLi for IEM Shanghai. He went on to win the entire tournament, his only Premier championship and the first Premier tournament won by a non-Korean Terran since ThorZaIN. Those are some big boots to fill. And Stats certainly had a rough start, as the Splyce Protoss lost to ShoWTimE in the first group stage, then narrowly avoided defeat against HeRoMaRinE and Reynor in the 2nd.

After a relatively comfortable win over herO, Stats found himself down 0-2 against the WCS Global Champion Serral. Obviously, Serral would never throw away such a lead, especially not with the rare chance to play in front of a Finnish home crowd. And then suddenly the scores were at 2-2. Serral was fighting for victory in front of his countrymen, while Stats was fighting for revenge. And so they played a really nice game five to make us all happy.

• Dark vs Elazer on New Repugnancy
2019 GSL vs The World - Ro16

There was much talk surrounding Elazer going into GSL vs The World. Not just because Elazer called upon a 'non-endemic' influencer during the voting phase, subsequently receiving enough votes to win for the next three years. There was also some buzz about his opening match, as Gyuri drew Elazer to play against none other than the reigning GSL champion, the #1 WCS Korea player: Dark. Many people figured this would be a routine stomp for Dark, with Elazer's voters merely dooming him to death in the end. But there were also a lot of people who argued that a ZvZ against a Korean was the best possible scenario for the Polish Zerg.

Some European Zergs are very vocal about the fact that their ZvZ is the best in the world. There is actually real racial imbalance in the number of strong European Zerg players, compared to how many top-tier Zergs are active in Korea. The Korean meta is also generally considered more aggressive, with high-tech, late-game matches rarely occurring in the GSL. As the reigning GSL champion and as one of the most prolific foreigner-killers in the history of SC2, it fell upon Dark to prove all that silly European theorycrafting wrong. Unfortunately for Dark, this clash ended up being a lot more difficult than he expected...

The "Has Award" for games that are so Has-like you can't understand how Has isn't actually in it

• Solar vs Daydreamer on EphemeronChina Team Championship Season 2, Group B - Week 1

The phrase "base trade" is commonly used in situations where both players are attacking each other's bases at the same time. Very rarely is it used in a more literal sense, where both players have completely relocated and rebuilt their main bases at their opponent's starting position.

But this is exactly what Daydreamer and Solar manage to pull off, a bona fide, true base trade. Facing the infamous cannon-rush-into-proxy-robo-immortal-with-masses-of-shield-batteries from his Chinese challenger, Solar managed to survive for long enough to go for a desperate exit strategy: a Nydus Worm into the opposing main. Once that that happened, there was only one logical choice for both players to make.

Regardless of the result, this was a bizarre, unique, and ultimately fun match that allowed Daydreamer to leave a big impression on us. Because after a game like this, who could forget him any time soon? Here's to hoping he delivers onto us some more Has-esque goodness, whether in victory or defeat. As for the real Has, he's not actually part of this team league (shame! shame!). Listen, we're open to signing temp contracts with J-Team if it gives Has a way into the league. Just call us.

More recommended games from August

Cure vs herO on Triton - VOD
Cure vs TY on Thunderbird - VOD
Dark vs FanTaSY on Triton - VOD
FanTaSy vs SpeCial on Thunderbird - VOD
HeRoMaRinE vs Skillous on Acropolis - VOD
MCanning vs Future on King's Cove - VOD
MarineLorD vs Serral on New Repugnancy - VOD
Serral vs TIME - Full Series - VOD
Serral vs TY - Full Series - VOD
Trap vs Solar on Triton - VOD

Best Games of July 2019

Best Games of June 2019

Best Games of April and May 2019

Best Games of March 2019

Best Games of February 2019

Best Games of January 2019

The Best Games of 2018: Year End List

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