Weekly Cups (March 10-16): Solar's Resurgence

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4 Posts

March 17 2025 04:24 GMT

2024-25 Off-season Community Weekly Cups
Week of March 10 - 16

by Wax

It was awfully chilly in the second week of March, as hell froze over with Clem failing to win any of the week's cup competitions. While herO and MaxPax were two predictable beneficiaries in the wake of Clem's troubles, we also saw the slumping Solar return to prominence by winning Monday Night Weeklies.

*Partial brackets may be shown.

March 10: WardiTV Mondays #26

The week began with Clem's typically airtight PvT taking on some leaks, as ByuN knocked him out early in WardiTV Mondays. ByuN capitalized on beating the #1 weekly cup player by making it all the way to the finals, but ultimately had to surrender the title tothe #2 weekly cup player in (Wiki)

herO VOD).

*****

March 10: Monday Night Weeklies #8

Solar's off-season slump has been a big part of Zerg's poor performance in weekly cups, but the situation might be poised to change based on his latest showing in Monday Night Weeklies. The Korean Zerg went on a great run to win the cup, taking down fearsome competitors in ByuN, Clem, and herO (VOD).

Clem has been an especially difficult opponent for Solar in the recent past, but this time Solar passed the test on the back of impressive late-game play on Whispers of Gold, combined with a deadly Roach-Ravager timing on Erreholm.

ZvP has been an issue for Solar all throughout the 5.0.14 patch, especially against players the caliber of herO. However, Solar came to MNW with a markedly different approach, eschewing Hive tech for heavy aggression in the early-game and mid-game. This change of tactics just barely got the job done, with Solar going 5-4 in combined map score against his Protoss foe (2-1, 1-2, 2-1 over three series).

*****

March 10: PiGosaur Cup #22

Clem declined to play in the final Monday cup, which left herO and MaxPax to contend for the spoils. herO had actually defeated MaxPax 2-0 just hours ago in Monday Night Weeklies, continuing to slowly narrow the gap against the top PvP player in the world. MaxPax put herO back in his place, prevailing in a four game series filled with early-game hijinks (VOD).

*****

March 12: HupCup #7

The irregularly held HupCup returned for its first tournament of March, inviting the usual weekly cup sharks to compete for $800 in prize money. It seemed like this would be Clem's chance to get a belated weekly cup win, but instead his PvT proved to be a liability once more as HeroMarine knocked him down from the winners' bracket. Clem couldn't survive his BO1 loser's bracket deathmatch against MaxPax, opening the road for the Danish Protoss to 3-1 Solar and take his second win of the week (VOD).

*****

March 13: Kung Fu Cup 2025 #3 - SC Evo Complete Mod

To get people up to date on some news that has fallen through the cracks, SCBOY's Kung Fu Cup has returned for 2025… …as a cup series for the SC: Evolution Complete (SC2+Brood War) and SC2xWar3 mods. While they're not everyone's cup of tea (if you hate Disruptors, you'd be appalled by the war crimes regularly committed by War3 heroes), they can still be an entertaining change of pace from the 'standard' StarCraft II we've watched for over a decade.

With two War3 mod cups already having been held earlier this year, cup #3 shifted over to SC: Evo Complete for some StarCraft II vs Brood War action. Unfortunately, even a completely different form of StarCraft couldn't boost Zerg participation, so this tournament was dominated by Protosses and Terrans. ByuN came out the victor in the end, expertly wielding both BW mech and SC2 bio to topple MaNa in the finals (VOD).

*****

Feb 27 - Mar 16: PiG Sty Festival #5

The week closed out with the conclusion to the $10,000 PiG Sty Festival event, which had originally begun back in February. A separate recap for PiGSty Festival #5 is forthcoming, but for now, congratulations to Serral on winning the championship!

MrIronGolem27

United States255 Posts

March 17 2025 04:33 GMT

For what it's worth, I don't believe that the lack of Zergs in KFC had anything to do with the usual open cup Protoss woes.

Dark, the best SC Evo player in the world, seems to be preparing to head off to military, and top amateurs threepoint and Rumeith have day (or night?) jobs. Perhaps we can count on SHIN and Wayne to appear at the next edition

yubo56

690 Posts

March 17 2025 13:43 GMT

On March 17 2025 13:33 MrIronGolem27 wrote:
For what it's worth, I don't believe that the lack of Zergs in KFC had anything to do with the usual open cup Protoss woes.

Dark, the best SC Evo player in the world, seems to be preparing to head off to military, and top amateurs threepoint and Rumeith have day (or night?) jobs. Perhaps we can count on SHIN and Wayne to appear at the next edition

didn't realize dark was so good at SC evo, what makes him so dominant? Obviously his SC2 is world class, but what's BW playstyle like?

Waxangel

United States33668 Posts

March 17 2025 16:50 GMT

On March 17 2025 22:43 yubo56 wrote:

Show nested quote +

didn't realize dark was so good at SC evo, what makes him so dominant? Obviously his SC2 is world class, but what's BW playstyle like?

Baseline 1v1 skill/talent tends to win out in the various subsets of SC2, and Dark is prolly the best SC2 player who competes in Evo tourneys semi-regularly. It's like how whenever there's a serious 2v2 tourney, the pairing with the most aggregate 1v1 skill tends to win.

MrIronGolem27

United States255 Posts

March 17 2025 17:09 GMT

On March 18 2025 01:50 Waxangel wrote:

Show nested quote +

I should be quick to point out here that Dark tends to win these events in a much more dominant fashion than can be explained by the difference in his skills from his opponents in vanilla SC2. I've documented every LP-notable SC Evo event since last May, and Dark's series and map scores are [EDIT: ah shit I messed up the count], which is way better than what anybody else has.

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Weekly Cups (March 10-16): Solar's Resurgence

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