With the main event of the Team Liquid Starleague 5 just around the corner, it’s about time we announce the talent that will be accompanying you through the event. We hope you’re as excited for them as we are!
Commentators
Kevin “RotterdaM” van der Kooi RotterdaM needs little introduction at this point. He has been around the StarCraft II scene since the beta days and began casting the game for ESL in 2010. Fast forward ten years and he’s now a full time caster, streamer for Team QLASH — and player. To be honest, we were not completely sure whether RotterdaM would even have the chance to cast as he’s quickly becoming the first success story in the long-anticipated experiment of turning casters into high level players, rather than the other way around, and participated in all European and North American qualifiers. While it would have been very exciting to see him qualify and compete, we’re also not too unhappy that he will be casting TSL5 instead.
Jessica "ZombieGrub" Chernega ZombieGrub, by comparison to ancient RotterdaM, almost seems a new face to big StarCraft II events, but she too should be counted among the veteran casters by now. Originally making her name co-casting for BaseTradeTV as early as 2013, ZG’s first appearance on a Premier Tournament panel came in 2017 at WCS Montreal, followed quickly by a gig at the biggest event of the year at the Global Finals. She has been a mainstay at Premier Tournaments ever since, but also regularly casts online tournaments — such as our qualifiers! We’re very happy to have ZombieGrub with us for the main event of TSL5 as well.
Jonathon "Wardi" Ward If you’ve followed the various competitions StarCraft II has to offer, you’re pretty much guaranteed to have run into Wardi’s stream. Listing the amount of online qualifiers and tournaments he both casts and organizes himself would have you staring at this page for multiple hours, so we’ll skip that part. Wardi cast every single one of the TSL5 qualifiers, resulting in full-day streaming sessions more than once. But, deservedly so, Wardi has recently made the step up to Premier Tournaments as well, jumping in as a replacement for Mr.Bitter at IEM Katowice and delivering a splendid performance. We hope this positive trend continues for Wardi and are glad to be part of it by welcoming him to our casting crew for TSL5!
Special Guest
Sean “Day[9]” Plott Yes, you read that right. The legendary Day[9] is returning to cast some matches of TSL5 as our guest caster. Before turning to game development and focusing on content across various games, Day[9] was one of the first names on the list of most big StarCraft II tournaments, and hosted the popular Day[9] Daily series that covered close to all aspects of StarCraft one could think of — from mechanics, to build orders, to simple messing around. Sean has been part of every single Team Liquid Starleague and we couldn’t be more excited to continue that legacy.
Day[9] will join us on the 17th of May, the second day of play on the first weekend. Get your calendars out, you don't want to miss this.
Holy shit, I couldn't have hoped for a better line-up. Three excellent and hard working casters, and Day9 the legend himself making a welcome appearance. Absolutely cannot wait!
On May 07 2020 09:19 Dracover wrote: Whish Day[9] would do more SC2. I'm sure he doesn't want to do the dailies, but maybe joing Artosis on Pylon show or something would be such a blast.
I do wonder what he makes his money from these days since Atlas closed.
On May 07 2020 05:08 SC-Shield wrote: No Tastosis?
Too expensive I guess. Tasteless has never done any "community" events for that reason afaik
Maybe get Artosis as a special caster and pay him with nostalgia coins
Hmm, guest appearance would be nice too. Maybe for finals?
Disagree heavily with that. The casters doing the entire event should have the Grand Finals as well, you don't bring in someone else for that moment who hasn't casted a game in the tournament before.
Day[9] - I member! Rotti - sometimes his accent gets on my nerves, otherwise the toppest of notches Zombiegrub - so very average all around Wardi - Now his accent I like very much sometimes, however, whenever he gets on my good sides he does stuff like he just did in game 2 of the winner bracket final of the final korean qualifier for TSL and just misses half the game's engagements, so rather than getting more mad at him I literal stop watching and write this...god I hope he doesn't do the observing alone, otherwise I watch TSL 5 on Liquipedia.
Glad to see Day[9] as a special guest, this has been a great event so far, Scarlett vs Creator was awesome to see after not watching SC2 in quite some time. TSL has been fun as hell so far.
On May 07 2020 05:08 SC-Shield wrote: No Tastosis?
Too expensive I guess. Tasteless has never done any "community" events for that reason afaik
Maybe get Artosis as a special caster and pay him with nostalgia coins
Hmm, guest appearance would be nice too. Maybe for finals?
Disagree heavily with that. The casters doing the entire event should have the Grand Finals as well, you don't bring in someone else for that moment who hasn't casted a game in the tournament before.
That makes sense, yes. It would be unfair to casters.
On May 07 2020 05:08 SC-Shield wrote: No Tastosis?
Too expensive I guess. Tasteless has never done any "community" events for that reason afaik
Maybe get Artosis as a special caster and pay him with nostalgia coins
Hmm, guest appearance would be nice too. Maybe for finals?
Disagree heavily with that. The casters doing the entire event should have the Grand Finals as well, you don't bring in someone else for that moment who hasn't casted a game in the tournament before.
For some discussion rounds between games, absolutely. For everything else I agree with the one above me
On May 07 2020 05:08 SC-Shield wrote: No Tastosis?
A relief, to be sure. I love all the casters listed and hope i dont get too flamed for this but isnt Rotti a bit overly ubiquitous and in nearly every event? would have loved even more to have someone that might better appreciate the chance like feardragon or maynarde or maybe someone a bit heavier on the comedic side like nathanias. just my dos centos
On May 09 2020 16:51 True_Spike wrote: Rotti is the best caster by far, because he actually knows what he's talking about. If it were up to me he'd be *forced* to cast every single event.
Same sentiment here, haha. He's also just a lovely personality, without any of the toxicity coming with certain other people.
On May 09 2020 16:54 StalkyBear wrote: but his accent.....lol XD
I never got the problem people have with Rotti's accent. He's perfectly understandable all the time, in my opinion.
On May 09 2020 16:51 True_Spike wrote: Rotti is the best caster by far, because he actually knows what he's talking about. If it were up to me he'd be *forced* to cast every single event.
Same sentiment here, haha. He's also just a lovely personality, without any of the toxicity coming with certain other people.
On May 09 2020 16:54 StalkyBear wrote: but his accent.....lol XD
I never got the problem people have with Rotti's accent. He's perfectly understandable all the time, in my opinion.
My problem with Rotti is not so much the accent itself but he kinda sounds like he's perpetually stuck in puberty with where his voice goes sometimes
Rotti is super knowledgeable of the game at a high level but he's obviously going to be much more up to date on the non-Korean (particularly EU) state of things. I don't think he follows the meta in Korea that much other than watching some GSL.
EPT
It's great to see Day9 talking sc2 again tho
Looking forward to the event!
