The final American and Korean server qualifiers wrapped up the qualification process for TeamLiquid Starleague 5, finalizing the tournament's twenty-four player roster. A total of twenty players advanced over the course of eight qualifiers, and they will join invited players ShoWTimE, Serral, INnoVation, and Zest in the $30,000, double-elimination main event. The official tournament bracket and schedule will be announced in the near future.
Vanya, Future, TIME, TY advance from final qualifiers
Americas qualifier #3 was the last chance for most of the players in the 'foreign' scene, and there was a mad dash to grab the remaining two main event slots. In a surprising turn of events, two up-and-comers in the form of Russian Zerg Vanya and American Terran Future were able to clinch the qualifying spots. Vanya—a strong online player who only began competing at major events in 2019—went through WCS veterans Neeb, Namshar, and Denver to advance in first place. Future—whose most notable previous result was winning Cheeseadelphia 8, took down ShaDoWn, Neeb, Hellraiser, Namshar, and Denver to advance out of the lower bracket.
In the final Korean server qualifier, China's TIME proved that he would not be out of place in Code S by running through a gauntlet of players including RagnaroK, Armani, TY, and Patience to advance. TIME also produced some of the highlight moments of the qualifier, bringing his patented TvZ Ghost rush against Armani, and microing a single Reaper to victory against TY in a confounding low-econ game (VOD).
The lower bracket came down to a shootout between TY and Patience with the final main event spot—and perfect 8/8/8 faction symmetry—hanging in the balance. The vexing Patience played a solid macro game against TY to start the series (VOD), where it seemed like he was actually matching the mechanically gifted TY in multi-tasking. Unfortunately everything fell apart for Patience as the game dragged on, and he GG'd after eating a couple of Tactical Nukes directly to his Probe lines. TY then closed things out in game two with a proxy-Rax bunker rush, booking his ticket to the TSL5 main event.
Confounding indeed, I think TY got a bit flustered there. There was a good selection of units he could have produced to kill the reaper and win the game but he chose to instead make out of sync marines from his rax. Was a really hype game though.
On May 08 2020 04:32 winlessplayer wrote: Where is Maru? I know he plays GSL on 16, so does Inno. (Inno is a robot we know, but Maru is either a God or an angel, why would he need sleep?)
Maru was invited to TSL but turned down his spot same as Dark.
On May 08 2020 04:32 winlessplayer wrote: Where is Maru? I know he plays GSL on 16, so does Inno. (Inno is a robot we know, but Maru is either a God or an angel, why would he need sleep?)
Maru was invited to TSL but turned down his spot same as Dark.
On May 08 2020 04:32 winlessplayer wrote: Where is Maru? I know he plays GSL on 16, so does Inno. (Inno is a robot we know, but Maru is either a God or an angel, why would he need sleep?)
Invitations were sent out based on highest ESL points. Anyone you don't see from the top of the list declined their invitation