Weekly Cups (Oct 26-Nov 2): Liquid, Clem, Solar win; LAN in Philly

Weekly Cups (Oct 26-Nov 2): Liquid, Clem, Solar win; LAN i…

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Weekly Cup Competitions
Week of October 27 - November 2

by Wax

The last week of October saw Clem reign supreme in weekly cup competition, as he claimed a double in WardiTV and Monday Night Weekly Cups. We also got a rare Zerg win in the cups, as Solar won the PiGosaur competition.

The busy week of StarCraft also featured several events that were larger than the usual cup fare, including Crank's Proleague-style event which was won by Team Liquid, and WardiTV's October monthly which also went to Solar.

Finally, we got a taste of live StarCraft as well, with the SC4ALL LAN competition in Philadelphia featuring StarCraft II, Brood War, and even StarCraft 64 events.

*Partial brackets may be shown.

October 27: WardiTV Mondays #57

Clem claimed the first win of the week in WardiTV Mondays, going through MrRobot, Percival, Creator, and MaxPax on his way to first place VOD).

Clem's 3-1 finals win over MaxPax did highlighted a growing trend—the Liquid ace looks absolutely deadly in late-game TvP. It's hard to say if this will be an overarching theme in the match-up beyond the uber-tier Terrans, but for now it seems that at least Clem has an ace up his sleeve.

*****

October 27: Monday Night Weeklies #28

Clem picked up his second win of the week shortly after, this time defeating Foxer, Shameless, Solar, and MaxPax (twice) in Monday Night Weeklies. While Clem eked out a close win against MaxPax in WardiTV Mondays, this time it was total domination as he took his two series against his rival by 2-0 and 3-0 scores. Once again, Clem's powerful late-game play was the key to victory, but he also reminded us of his early-game prowess by closing the finals with a sub-5-minute push (VOD).

*****

October 28: PiGosaur Cup #55

MaxPax got a reprieve in Tuesday's PiGosaur cup, taking advantage of the absence of the other cup titans to win the competition with just a single map loss.

Interestingly enough, finalist ByuN tried to play a slow, methodical style somewhat akin to Clem in two of the finals games, but MaxPax had no problems ending the games before ByuN could become too entrenched (VOD (2h22m start)).

*****

October 24-31: WardiTV October

(Check Liquipedia for qualifier and group stage results)

Wardi's $1,125 October event gave us a chance to see a handful of top-tier players who don't typically compete in the weeklies, though it was notably missing cup monsters such as Clem and MaxPax. All this set the table for another rare Zerg win in online play, with Solar rising above the rest of the field to take first place.

After taking impressive wins over herO and ByuN in the quarterfinals and semis, Solar was greeted with a surprise finals opponent in Gerald. The Polish Protoss earned his spot with a 2-1 over MaNa and 3-0 upset over GuMiho, but his hot streak ended in the finals with a 0-3 loss to Solar. Overwhelming mid-game offense was the foundation of Solar's finals victory, with Gerald unable to survive past the 11-minute mark in any of the three games (VOD playlist).

*****

October 26-31: Crank Gathers Season 2

(Check Liquipedia for qualifier and group stage results)

The most richly prized event of the week was Crank Gathers Season 2, awarding 10,000,000 KRW (~$7,000 USD) in a team competition. BASILISK, Shopify, Streamerzone, Team Falcons, Team Liquid, and Team Vitality competed in a Proleague-style event, which mixed both 1v1 and 2v2 competition.

Team Liquid's deep roster was crucial to their 7-4 win against BASILISK in the BO13 finals, where the rules restricted the number of games playable by a single player. Trigger's absence due to his travel to SC4ALL (more below) forced RotterdaM to take the field, and unsurprisingly, he lost to both Cure and Clem.

Currently, the finals VOD) is only available in Korean on the Chzzk platform (which has poor quality in certain non-Korean regions), but various English language content creators such as Wardi and Cranky Ducklings are gradually putting out replay casts on YouTube. It's definitely a tournament worth looking up the VODs for, featuring high-profile matches such as Serral vs Clem, the return of old-school greats in sOs and Scarlett, and the ridiculous upset of Streamerzone's 4-0 over Vitality (with Gerald beating Maru).

*****

November 1-2: SC4ALL

(Check Liquipedia for group stage results)

The week wrapped up with a return to live StarCraft action, as StarCraft Historian and N3rd Street Gamers hosted SC4ALL in Philadelphia (VOD (Day 2, also includes BW)). The SC2 event had a chance to be an unofficial NA championship due to the participation of both Astrea and Trigger, but Korean visitor Percival crashed the party by eliminating Astera in the RO8. In the end, Percival couldn't recreate Korea's HotS glory days where the 16th ranked Korean could wipe out an all-foreigner field, as Trigger successfully defended home turf in the finals with a 4-2 victory over the visitor (never mind that he's Canadian).

SC4ALL truly lived up to his name by also hosting a Brood War competition as well, which was won by another Canadian player in Gypsy. In fact, the tournament went all the way in on StarCraft, even holding a series of money matches in StarCraft 64 (yes, the Nintendo 64 game), where challengers could win prizes if they could defeat a group of SC64 enthusiasts.