2023/24 ESL Pro Tour

TL.net Awards

By: Wax

With a new EPT Season nowhere in sight, it's time to take a moment to look backward instead of forward.

The 2023/24 ESL Pro Tour was the longest season of professional StarCraft II since Blizzard codified seasons into existence in 2012, spanning over sixteen months from April of 2023 to August of 2024. While somewhat belated, it's as good a time as any to look back on this lengthy chapter in StarCraft II history, and celebrate the great StarCraft, not-so-great StarCraft, and the memorable events that occurred throughout.

Award eligibility period: April 12, 2023 (ESL Open Cups start giving EPT points) to August 18, 2024 (conclusion of the EPT World Championship/Esports World Cup).

Best Ceremony: ByuN bows to his GOAT

Tragically, ceremonies have gone out of fashion in the StarCraft II scene, with stoic professionalism replacing the youthful showmanship of the past. That's why it's a relief we still have ByuN, who can be counted on to give us a chuckle with his pre-match handshake antics.

At EPT Atlanta/Winter 2023, ByuN seemed to run out of rock-paper-scissors gags and went in an entirely different direction before his match versus Serral. Already on the record for calling Serral the GOAT of StarCraft II, ByuN made his opinion even more clear by bowing down to the Finnish Zerg. It was the kind of over-exaggerated, silly-but-delightful gesture that harkened back to the Proleague days, when progamers seemed just as excited to perform a ceremony as they were to play in their match. Hopefully, ByuN will get more chances to entertain fans in the future, both inside and outside the game.

Honorable mention: World Team League players

I have to give props to the World Team League players who tried their best to win SCBOY's weekly 'best ceremony' bounty with whatever performance they could pull off within the limited frame of their webcam (compilation 1, 2, 3).

Most Agreeable Map: Oceanborn by Marras

Since I'm presently currying favor with map-makers for TLMC 20, giving out a controversial 'best map' award seems ill-advised. However, I can give out an award for something slightly different: the most agreeable map of the season.

StarCraft II players are notoriously contentious when it comes to matters of balance, with each side convinced the deck is stacked against them. Of course, that includes whatever the map pool is at the time, which is obviously part of the grand conspiracy to put down Terran/Protoss/Zerg. Yet, amidst all the rancor, the three sides always manage to come together and unofficially decide on a neutral ground, where each side feels like they have a (relatively) fair shot.

Following in the footsteps of maps like 2000 Atmospheres and Gresvan, the 2023/24 EPT Season counted on Marras' Oceanborn as its least controversial battleground. It was by far the most played map during the season, with Liquipedia tallying 3635* official matches hosted on its watery vistas. That's around 30% more than the second most played map of Alcyone (by volumin), which hosted 2576* games during its tenure.

The balance numbers showed why high-level players found the map generally unobjectionable, with TvZ at 49.2%, PvZ at 52.7%, and PvT at 50.2%—that's as close to perfect as you're going to realistically get. Yet, I have to think it wasn't just balance that made this map so universally loved. In WTL, a tournament where the loser gets to pick the second map in the series, Oceanborn was constantly picked over theoretically 'imbalanced' maps that would favor the chooser. Oceanborn was simply the ultimate safety blanket for many pro-players, who just wanted to play some 'proper' goddamn StarCraft.

*This number includes some games that technically occurred after the 2023/24 season ended following the Esports World Cup.

Most Influential Strategy: Anything with a Cyclone

The defining strategic shift of the season came with the 5.0.12 balance patch in the autumn of 2023, which included the single most aggressive change of the post-Blizzard/balance council era.

The Cyclone—a unit that had already been reworked several times by Blizzard—was reborn in its fourth incarnation. This time, it took on the form of a cheap, low-tech unit intended to make mech more viable. And, while it did succeed at that goal to some degree, it had the much bigger unintended consequence of giving Terran an incredibly powerful early-game unit with nearly no weaknesses inside the first four minutes. The TvP and TvT early-games ended up being completely defined by the Cyclone and how to counter it, with a quick death guaranteed to anyone who did not play around its firepower and versatility.

Mercifully, this version of the Cyclone ended up being reverted after the season, leaving none to miss it but the least conscientious of Terrans. Still, the story of the 2023/24 season can't be told without it, making it the clear recipient of this dubious award.

Most Dramatic Drama: The GOAT Debate

How about a bit of self-congratulation?

Various versions of the 'who's better' debates have always raged in the SC2 scene, whether it's TL.net's old Power Ranks and Awards, casters yapping to fill some time during a break, or two Redditors going at it in an infinite reply chain in an unrelated thread. However, nothing served to truly crystallize this form of argument into its most vitriolic form than Mizenhauer's Greatest of All Time series in 2024.

Any form of GOAT list was bound to court controversy, but Mizenhauer poured rich Vespene gas on the fire by placing Maru at #1 above Serral. While I personally thought Serral, Maru, and Rogue were all defensible picks at the time of publishing, many fans felt that any choice outside of their preferred player was sacrilege. Fans gathered on TL.net for the greatest posting frenzy the site had seen in years, and the topic took over the larger SC2 community as well. It spawned numerous Reddit threads, YouTube videos, social media posts, and all sorts of other opinion-giving content outside of TL.net.

At the end of the day, I feel like few opinions were actually changed by the countless words spilled over the topic, but I hope everyone left more entertained than they were angry. I also hope people actually read the lengthy player profiles included in the GOAT series, which served as the best summary of SC2 history this side of Liquipedia (wow, more self-congratulating).

(Dis)honorable Mentions: The Zerg Cabal and Balance Council

Alas, both of these topics fell outside of the eligibility period, with the shadowy Zerg Cabal being a hot topic just before the start of the 2023/24 season, while the Balance Council controversy began with the 5.0.12 patch PTR period after the 2023/24 season ended. Though fans had some legitimate concerns regarding transparency and bias surrounding the player-led balance patches, these were ultimately blown up into nonsensical witch-hunting and conspiracy theorizing which didn't help anyone. Well, at least it was kind of funny!

The Elfi Memorial "Don't Forget Maru" Awards: Maru (not the cat) and Reynor

A long, long time ago, the cult hero and Finnish Protoss player Elfi coined "don't forget maru" as his catchphrase, referring to the Japanese YouTube cat sensation of the 2010's. The tale of exactly how this became a catchphrase/meme is kind of complicated to explain to anyone who wasn't watching StarCraft 2 in 2011, so it will suffice to say Elfi was just a really goofy, charming, memeable guy.

Anyway, those three words came surging back from the depths of my memory as I looked over the 2023/24 season. Yes, Serral and Clem ended up overshadowing everyone in the end, but quietly, Maru had a fantastic campaign of his own.

With three Code S championships, one Code S runner-up, and additional silver medals at IEM Katowice 2024 and EPT Spring/Dallas, you could make the case that Maru had the third best season of anyone who competed (more on that in a sec). In fact, you could even argue it was Maru's best WCS/EPT season since 2018, though your mileage may vary depending on how you weigh the contracted version of Code S.

Maru isn't the only player whose accomplishments deserve more celebration. Reynor actually won a world championship-class tournament at Gamers8, becoming the de facto best player in the world for a short period. Yet, somehow, it feels like his win is slowly sinking into the WESG-tier of relevancy.

Part of that is Reynor's fault, as his mediocre results during the rest of the season meant he couldn't build any kind of narrative around that dazzling centerpiece. But it also says something about marketing and branding that Gamers8 ended up feeling like the least of the three world championship-class events, though the difficulty level was arguably just as high.

Whatever order you put them in, Maru and Reynor were the clear #3 and 4 players of the EPT 2023/24 Season, and their accomplishments are worthy of being honored.

Honorable mentions: Dark, Solar, Cure

It was the kind of season where even Code S champions got overshadowed, including Dark who increased his trophy tally to three, and Solar who won his first. The two Zergs also delivered in world championship-tier events, with Dark placing top four at IEM Katowice while Solar matched that mark at Gamers8. As for Cure, he didn't manage to win a championship, but he was one of the most consistent top four finishers in major tournaments—highlighted with a runner-up finish at Gamers8 (sadly, any of these three players' resumes would have been in consideration for best Protoss).

Most Handsome Player (for giving the fans what they want): Reynor

For most of StarCraft II's existence, foreigners challenging Korea's best in the GSL Code S was one of the central points of interest in the competitive scene. Up until 2018, it was all about seeing how much blood the outmatched foreigners could draw from the invincible Koreans before being inevitably felled. After 2018, the narrative shifted to whether or not a foreigner might actually be able to steal the championship from the crumbling Korean juggernaut.

Unfortunately, that latter story ended up being rather underwhelming. The dissolution of the NoRegreT/Scarlett teamhouse made it impractical for many foreigners to play in Korea, while top Europeans Serral and Clem didn't seem to be at all interested at travelling in the first place (Clem did make a few excursions earlier in his career).

However, even as the Code S lost its luster, there was still one player who hung on to the dream of conquering StarCraft's adopted homeland: Reynor. Thus, in the spring of 2024, the Italian Zerg made his third attempt to summit the FreecUP studio… ..and for the third time, he fell short far below the peak.

Even so, Reynor deserves to be celebrated for even making the attempt. By making the leap, Reynor effectively gave up his chance at winning the EPT Europe regional that season, as he was forced to play with a severe latency disadvantage to the European server. I think StarCraft II is far more interesting when players are chasing glory and records instead of money and circuit points, and for a moment, Reynor made the stakes of Code S feel higher than they had been in a long time. Even if he didn't achieve his goal of winning Code S, Reynor earned our respect and admiration.

(Granted, there were other motivations for Reynor such as his fondness for the Korean lifestyle, but I'll pretend it was all for the LOVE OF THE GAME.)

Biggest Rivalry: Serral versus Clem

The long-standing rivalry between Serral and Clem was losing its allure headed into the 2023/24 season, but by the season's end, it had become firmly established as the defining conflict in all of StarCraft II.

For the first half of the season, this was a rivalry in name only as Serral won all of their meaningful clashes. It was a continuation of a trend that had gone since 2021—Clem could give Serral a tough fight, but just couldn't get back to his 2020 form where he had briefly dominated the Finnish Phenom.

However, the feud took a huge turn at December's EPT Atlanta/Winter 2023, where Clem scored a 3-1 semifinals victory over Serral in one of the most thrilling series we had ever seen. That victory reignited the rivalry back to maximum levels of hype, setting Serral up to win the rematch a few months later at IEM Katowice 2024 with an emphatic 3-0 sweep in the quarterfinals.

However, the season wouldn't end without one final clash to decide the ultimate victor, this time with the stakes raised to astronomical levels in a two-part rubber match at the Esports World Cup. With a record-setting $400,000 first place prize on the line, Clem played unprecedented StarCraft worthy of an unprecedented prize, crushing Serral 3-0 in the group stage before going on to rout him 5-0 in the grand finals.

Historically, there's been too much variance in StarCraft II for two of the best players in the world to clash in multiple consecutive events, let alone face off in the world finals. But for the second half of the 2023/24 season, Serral vs Clem played out as if someone was fantasy booking the EPT, giving the community a massive payoff for all their expectations and hype. Thus, Clem vs Reynor wasn't just the top rivalry of this past season, but it stands up there with some of the best rivalries of all time.

Most Terminally Online Rivalry: MaxPax vs Clem in EPT Weeklies

While the stakes weren't so lofty, Clem and MaxPax's commitment to fighting each other for $200 each week is definitely worth commemorating. During the season (cups #169-233), they faced each other in forty-one total cup series, with Clem winning the rivalry with 26 wins to 15. While I haven't confirmed the stat, I'm willing to bet that Clem and MaxPax played more head-to-head ESL Cup matches than any other pairing played in every tournament combined.

Now, if only they would consummate this rivalry by finally facing each other offline…

Breakout or Comeback Player of the Season: Classic

In previous editions of the TL.net awards, we celebrated the best 'breakout' player as our version of rookie of the year (since it's hard to give that award with how the SC2 circuit works). However, given the realities of the scene and its playerbase, I've now combined it into the Breakout OR Comeback player award to include pros coming back from military service.

The clear winner for the 2023/24 EPT cycle was the venerable Classic. Honestly, it was quite unexpected. Classic completed his military service in 2021, but he had an exceptionally hard time recovering his old form. While players like ByuN and herO were back in top-tier form within months, Classic struggled to find his footing for almost a year and a half.

However, just as it was looking like he might have to hang up the mouse and keyboard for good, Classic made a huge breakthrough in 2023 where compiled the results of top 6 Code S Season 1, top 8 EPT Summer/Jonkoping, top 8 Gamers8, top 4 Code S Season 3, and top eight ESL Winter/Atlanta. During this great stretch of form, he even briefly surpassed herO as the best Protoss player in the world.

While Classic did cool off in 2024, his 2023 still stands out as one of the most memorable grizzled veteran runs we've seen from a military returnee.

Honorable mentions: Spirit and SKillous

It's awfully hard for a StarCraft II player to change their standing in the scene, especially after they've spent years stuck in the same tier. However, Spirit and SKillous showed there's still room for upward mobility in Europe during the 2023/24 Season.

The fearsome foursome of Serral-Clem-Reynor-MaxPax might be unassailable, but the battle for the #5 slot behind them has been fiercely contested for years. HeroMarine has most often inhabited that position, but it's also been held by ShoWTimE, Lambo, and Elazer at times. This season, it was was Spirit's turn to seize that spot, as he finished top four in EPT Europe Summer (2023) and third place in EPT Europe Spring (2024). No one can say Spirit didn't fully earn those results, as he scored BO5 wins against both Reynor and Clem during those two seasons.

SKillous was the other European player who leveled up in a big way, rising out of the EU middle class to become a legit "puncher's chance" player in the vein of Astrea or DRG. While he struggled with inconsistency throughout the season, he achieved some really nice peaks, finishing top four at both HomeStory Cup 24 and StarsWar 11.

Honorable honorable mentions: Krystianer, Lancer (aka Cyan), trigger, and NightMare

Random Shoutout Award: HomeStory Cup 23-25

Technically, Intel Extreme Masters is the longest running offline tournament series in StarCraft II, hosting its first event of IEM Cologne in August of 2010 and holding its most recent event of IEM Katowice in February of 2024.

However, TakeTV's HomeStory Cup is an awfully close second place. Their first event came just slightly later than IEM in September of 2010, and since then, they've held two or more events in every year since (excluding the COVID pandemic years). With HomeStory Cup 27 already scheduled for June of 2025, and SC2 at IEM Katowice 2025 looking to be in doubt, it won't be long until HSC takes the official record.

In any case, HomeStory Cup is probably already #1 in many fans' hearts. For 14+ years, the Krefeld tournament has been equal parts irreverent and intimate, giving fans an entirely different way to enjoy StarCraft II from ESL and Blizzard's professionalized esports scenes. While other tournaments might be more prestigious, it's hard to say any tournament series has been quite as fun as HSC. Unlike other events, HSC doesn't even bother to announce its prize pool anymore—fans and players alike show up because they know they're guaranteed to have a fantastic time.

Best Team: Vitality/ONSYDE Gaming - Maru, Solar, Ryung, Crank

Notable placements:
1st place - WTL Summer 2023
1st place - WTL Winter 2023
2nd place - WTL Summer 2024

Vitality/ONSYDE were the clear best squad in team competition, winning two out of three World Team League seasons held during EPT 2023/24*. They were spectacular during the regular season, clinching three pennants with remarkably consistent play. Then, when it came time for the playoffs, they got the job done in true team fashion, getting memorable clutch performances from the entire roster (Solar took down Serral in the Summer '23 playoffs, while Ryung stalled Clem in Winter '23).

In a way, BASILISK's struggles upon entering the league in 2023 served to highlight Vitality's brilliance. The Serral-Reynor duo were expected to dominate a league that favors superstar players, but their lack of a strong wild card player like Solar or Ryung held them back until they finally broke through in the final season of 2024.

While the WTL is now on an indefinite hiatus due to the unstable team situation in the SC2 scene, Vitality will go down as one of the best teams of the post-Proleague era.

*The starts and ends of WTL didn't perfectly align with EPT dates, but I'm counting the full seasons here.

Honorable Mention: Team Clem

While Team Liquid failed to clinch a WTL title, a review of the 2023/24 season wouldn't be complete without mentioning Clem's two ridiculous runs in the pseudo-all-kill style playoffs. In the Winter '23 season, Clem went 28-6 to carry TL to a second place finish, while in the following Summer '24 season, he went 20-3 to help lock in third place.

Game of the Year: Clem vs Serral
EPT Atlanta/Winter 2024, Semifinals Game 3 - Alcyone

TvZ's that go beyond 25 minutes often become complete snoozefests, but the best players in the world have a way of doing away with norms and conventions. At DreamHack Atlanta, Serral and Clem combined to create what was arguably the best late-game TvZ game of all-time, if not a candidate for greatest TvZ game ever. There was barely a pause in the action during this 36-minute bout, with the two most mechanically gifted players in the scene constantly maneuvering to find advantages.

If ToD had been around to see this game, it would have broken his brain. Looking at the supplies ceased to have meaning in this late-game masterpiece, with positioning, execution, and reaction speed deciding everything. In the end, Clem overcame a 166 to 73 supply disadvantage to earn a comeback victory—if we can even call it a comeback, because no one really knew for sure what the hell was going on in this wonder of a game.

Honorable mention: GuMiho vs Serral
EPT Summer/Jonkoping 2023, Finals Game 2 - Ancient Cistern

I think that GuMiho vs Serral from EPT Summer/Jonkoping might be the most compact great game of all-time, with the two players packing a ridiculous amount of action into a sub-16-minute game. Serral was just a shade off of perfect, finally cracking and making a single army positioning error after GuMiho battered him with multi-directional attacks for several minutes. GuMiho did not miss that tiny window of weakness, pouncing on Serral's Spawning Pool to complete a marvelous comeback.

Best Terran: Clem

Notable placements:
1st place - Esports World Cup 2024/EPT World Championship
1st place - EPT Winter/Atlanta 2023
Top 4 - Gamers 8 2023
1st place - EPT Spring Europe Regionals 2024

This award unquestionably goes to Clem, the World Champion of the entire EPT 2023/24 season.

Clem's 2023/24 campaign had a disappointing first half, where he continued to deliver disappointing results relative to his prodigious talent. However, the Team Liquid ace finally went on a breakthrough run at EPT Winter/Atlanta 2023, winning the first international major of his career.

While Clem failed to build on that momentum in the first half of 2024, he powered up massively for the Esports World Cup. At the season finale, Clem won the biggest StarCraft II competition in the game's history, claiming the staggering first place prize of $400,000 in dominant fashion with a 18-2 total map score.

Even though Clem was less consistent than Maru (see "don't forget Maru" award above) during the extra-long season, he was still the clear pick due to the oversize weight of the Esports World Cup. TL.net has favored consistency over peak performance in the past, but when you consider the diminished nature of Code S and the truly unmatched scale of the Esports World Cup, this one was a no-brainer.

While this didn't factor into the award, Clem deserves extra applause for winning tournaments in an aesthetically pleasing way. He pushed the limits of human dexterity with his micro and multitasking, and gave new meaning to Terran as the most mechanically difficult race to play.

Best Protoss: herO

Notable placements:
Top 4 - Esports World Cup 2024/EPT World Championship
2nd place - Code S Season 1 2024
2nd place - Master's Coliseum #7
2nd place - StarsWar 11

During one of the darkest stretches for Protoss in SC2, herO was the brightest beacon of hope left to the warriors of Aiur. While he failed to win a major championship—no Protoss had done so since herO himself won DreamHack Atlanta 2022—he was the player who came closest to challenging for the crown in the biggest events.

Unfortunately for herO, top-tier Terrans thwarted him at the most crucial junctures, with god-mode Clem eliminating him in the semifinals of EWC, Maru taking him out in a Code S finals and EPT Seasonal playoffs, and Cure scoring an upset in the RO12 of IEM Katowice. Though herO had previously defeated all these players in big matches, the stars simply did not align for him during the 2023/24 season. It's hard to say herO would have broken the Protoss title drought if things went slightly more favorably—especially with the looming spectre of Serral in the later rounds—but I do think his final results are slightly unfair to the level of play he showed all season.

Honorable mention: MaxPax

If you interpreted "best" as strictly meaning "most skilled," then MaxPax would definitely have had a say in this award. However, since I'm also taking major tournament results into account, MaxPax wasn't in serious consideration for this award, despite his tremendous talent.

Best Zerg: Serral

Notable placements:
1st place - IEM Katowice 2024
2nd place - Esports World Cup 2024/EPT World Championship
1st place - EPT Summer/Jonkoping 2023
1st place - EPT Spring/Dallas 2024
1st place - EPT Europe Summer Regional 2023 & Spring 2024
1st place - Master's Coliseum 6 & 7
1st place - HomeStory Cup 24
1st place - AfreecaTV Champions Cup #2

It's been six years since Serral capped off a monumental 2018 WCS campaign with a championship at BlizzCon 2018, but like a fine wine that ages over time, the Finnish Phenom may have topped that season during EPT 2023/24. During his run, Serral won IEM Katowice 2024, eight other major/mid-major tournaments, and placed runner-up at the Esports World Cup. Not only that, but he did all this while having to serve six months of mandatory military service in the middle of 2024 (albeit, with much more accommodating practice conditions than the Korean military).

No other Zerg came close to matching Serral's accomplishments, with Reynor's Gamers8 win in 2023 giving him a distant honorable mention.

Anyway, I'll keep this section short, since I can keep elaborating in the final award section…

Best Player: Serral

The three race awards were uncontested picks, and personally, I think the overall award is just as obvious. Serral was the clear, definitive best player of the 2023/24 EPT Season.

The dilemma of seasonal/yearly awards has always been how to weigh big tournaments against BIG tournaments, whether it's Code S vs BlizzCon or DreamHack vs IEM Katowice. This time, the tricky topic was the Esports World Cup, the largest StarCraft II tournament of all time.

In all certainty, Clem was fantastic over the 2023/24 season. He went 716-129 in matches (84.73% win-rate), and may have played the highest peak-level StarCraft we've ever seen. However, until all the pieces came together for a couple of magical runs in Atlanta and Riyadh, he was a player who didn't always play up to his world champion potential.

Despite the unbelievable peak that Clem reached at the EWC, leading him to end the season as the clear world #1, Serral was still the better player for the vast majority of the season. He was nigh invincible throughout, recording a ludicrous 142-12 match record (92.21% win-rate) with a combined 351-87 map score (80.14% win-rate). In total, Serral won seven out of the ten Liquipedia premier-tier tournaments he competed in, which is one of the greatest stretches of dominance we've ever seen regardless of era. I've come to regret all the times I've used the word "historic" too flippantly, because there's no other way to describe Serral's accomplishments over the 2023/24 season.

Serral has been so good for so long that one could become jaded to his excellence. Don't! Instead, be like ByuN, and take a moment to appreciate the greatness in front of you.