[Hype] TSL: A Best Of Compilation

In ThorZaIN's first match against GSL champion FruitDealer, he surprised us all when he was able to dispatch of him with relative ease. In his second round, he killed TSL2 winner Tyler, again as a bit of an underdog. His third match was against oGs.MC, recently coming off his second GSL win. Being the unknown against a well established opponent is kind of his thing.

Well by game 4 Thorzain found himself up 2-1, and the fight MC put up here is astounding. His back against the wall in the series, he opens with a nexus first build and the game goes into long-haul mode. By the 25 minute mark Thorzain has 3/3 on his bio units, against 0 armor for MC yet thanks to using 3 robos for immortals he is able to not only hang on but push Thorzain back repeatedly. Very long, very cool PvT.

Mondragon is the biggest wild card of any wild card in Starcraft history. Having not played in any notable tournaments before TSL, no one had seen him play. Is he good? Is he practicing? No one knows. No one ever knows. Chill summed it up best.



And Christmas was awesome. Bulgarian Protoss ZeeRaX made void rays, Mondragon made himself famous when he made roaches. Roaches and more roaches, forever enshrining his place in SC2 history.

Another GSL winner facing against someone who is mostly known for being good and European. The story of the early rounds. After beating Mvp with heavy gateway play in game 1 (his signature move), he opens game 2 on Metalopolis with a nexus before gateway build.

Mvp is unable to kill it right away, but does manage to take control of the game through much of the middle. Adel manages to hold on, only by the most narrow of margins time and time again to take Mvp to a late game with the advantage.

GoOdy make tanks. GoOdy smash.

While it seem all of Europe knows that, NesTea must not have received the memo because he seems surprised at the mech builds in this series. This is a series where many of us completely counted out the German's ability, after all he is a passive Terran against a previous GSL winner.

As became a trend in TSL, this was not wholly true. This game on Tal'Darim goes the distance, with GoOdy making mechanical units and NesTea trying to out flank him, when some mistakes in the Zerg's army positioning lead to a base trade scenario that goes down to the last units.

TSL3 will end with Sweden vs Sweden, but it also began with some dual-Swede action. Unlike a lot of the other games, there aren't any outside circumstances that made this especially exciting, aside from them both being very good players playing at the top of their game.

Jinro opens with a bunker and as MorroW defends it the game transforms into a sweet back and forth battle tha shows a lot of good jockeying for position.

Back when we thought the Korean players would dominate easily, Qxc was considered an underdog against the man who stomped through Blizzcon like it was nothing. Qxc showed we maybe underestimated him when he beat Genius' phoenix play in game 1, and what followed was one of the longest games in TSL history.

The game starts with an unorthodox reaper opening, the goes into what seems like a normal PvT midgame on Xel'Naga - players fighting for the center and eyeing to split the map. From there all hell breaks loose as Qxc uses mid-game reapers attacks, cloaked ghosts, and nukes.

The map becomes not only split but nearly mined out, with each player mining the very last of their resources as the game ends.

When Boxer beat Prae.NightEnd and made it to the Round of 16, people were ecstatic. The timing for his next match was amazing: he had just dropped out of Code S and there were questions about how good his TvZ really was. His opponent, fan favorite Sen, had just shown some incredible games in the GSL World Championship Showmatch and it looked like the Terran master might roll over and die without note.

When the series becomes tied at 2-2, Boxer shuts down fears about his current shape. As viewers we end up being pretty lucky, as we get to watch this incredible game 5, a tense and hilariously aggressive game on Crevasse with everything on the line. It was really hard to pick out a game from this series, they're all worth watching and at least until this weekend its still a strong contender for best overall series.

By the time this game was played, NaNiwa was well known as the champion of MLG Dallas, while GoOdy was still mostly shoehorned as "guy who makes tanks". The series msotly played out that way, with GoOdy making tanks and NaNiwa sometimes stopping them. In this game three, the series was tied at one game a piece and out of nowhere one of the most fun games of TSL happened.

Despite an old reputation for cheesy, aggressive play, NaNiwa has done a good job in the last months of showing he is capable of many styles. Not here, in this game he attempted to proxy 2 gates, and when that failed miserably he immediately built a nexus that was forced to be canceled. Adding the sweetest of cherries on top of unique build cake, he went from there into 1 base 4 gate. Waxangel was so moved by it he chronicled NaNiwa's journey in a blog that details the history of the two.

Thorzain said before this match that TvT was his weakest matchup, and Kas is well known for having one of the best TvTs in Europe. Thorzain an underdog again? Shocking!

Thorzain pulls a crazy defense here to give a super action packed TvT, using superior upgrades on his marines to "run circles around Kas" as Lovedrop puts it.

CrunCher, hot off his victory over IdrA got to show his skills in PvZ a second time. This game 4 had a series of earlier interesting games, Mondragon using his patented roach skills in one and CrunCher the same style on Shakuras that he defeated IdrA with.

This game was immediately following a cannon rush on Tal'Darim, making it that much more intense and exploding the live report. Mondraon tries an interesting opening involving a lot of mutas, and it seems to work but Cruncher masses up a typical Protoss late-game army and freely roams the map, very intense and tight game.

CrunCher came into this match known almost solely as "destroyer of IdrA and Mondragon", perhaps making him the most hated Protoss all year. NaNiwa was regarded largely as the favorite, as people tend to do when they go 24-0 at MLG.

CrunCher is rather hardy though, taking some games off NaNi and keeping the series close. While this is a PvP, its also a very weird PvP and has some entertaining play. Cruncher opens with phoenix while NaNi makes fast colossus, the players take some bases and have some real skirmishes. In PvP! That is just how amazing TSL is.

Champion of previous TSL, Tyler shows his stuff. Tal'Darim has proved itself to be an awesome PvT map overall, this one opens with Tyler doing a double forge build he was known for at the time.

He ends up behind at a point in the midgame but a miraculous zealot is able to pull him back in, good solid PvT play on a big map.