We're back and bigger than ever!
The $2600 SHOUTcraft 2-day Invitational
We can rebuild it, we have the technology
The SHOUTcraft Invitational series is the biggest, self-funded tournament series that Starcraft 2 has ever seen. Thus far we've done everything with no corporate sponsorship and intend to keep doing that. This tournament is a community-fueled, high-stakes, electrifying live event with some of the best players SC2 has to offer, battling it out in the SHOUTcraft Single-elimination format.
Format -As with last time, this will be a single-elimination 8-man tournament in a Best of 5 format. Every series until the finals will be best of 5, the finals will be best of 7. The tournament will feature a best of 5 bronze match before the grand finals.
When? - Saturday, Jul 23 4:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00) and Sunday, Jul 24 4:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00)
Wait, 2 days? - Correct. In response to feedback from the players and community, we have decided to split the event up into 2 days in order to prevent player and viewer fatigue. The RO8 will occur on the 23rd and the RO4 onwards on the 24th.
Is this live? - The entire event will be streamed live, no replays will be used and broadcast delay will prevent ghosting.
Prize distribution - This time, everyone is getting paid.
First Place - $1000
Second Place - $600
Third Place - $400
Fourth Place - $200
Knocked out in RO8 - $100
The philosophy of the SHOUTcraft Invitational is let's be honest, dirty stinking communist. It's about the redistribution of wealth. I take the streaming money from my gold league nonsense and redistribute it to players that don't suck. In keeping with that philosophy, I believe every pro should get paid for their time and as with the previous tournament, they will be paid promptly, not 6 months later.
Casters Yes I did say Casters. - TotalBiscuit and d.Apollo. This is in response to feedback that indicated a solo cast was not optimal for a tournament of this level. As a result I have selected a co-caster that I have a great deal of experience with. He will be instudio casting alongside me, we will not be using Skype. d.Apollo should be familiar to almost all of you, having co-cast Dreamhack Winter/Summer with Day[9], the Dreamhack Invitational with DeMuslim and the IPL2, UGC, TLOpen, Gadget Show Live and i40 events with me. d.Apollo will add his extensive knowledge of both the game and it's players to the cast and probably prevent TotalBiscuit mistaking a forge fast-expand for proxy 2-gate via a liberal application of slapping him around the head.
Players - Since we are in the business of addressing concerns with the previous tournament, the first tournament was criticised for being an all-European event. We have invited some American players to this event. There will not be any Koreans in this event due to the difficult nature of scheduling a live broadcast with people across a bazillion timezones. We are looking into ways and means of making this happen in future. All of these players are top-class western competitors and you may find a dark horse along the way to make things interesting.
Stream - As always the event will be streamed on http://www.justin.tv/totalbiscuit
WILL ROBOT ANNOUNCER BE ATTENDING?!?? - Robot announcer will be back, though he has been instructed to only take part in the start of every series this time, not every single match.
VoDs? - Will be available on my Youtube channel after the fact as well as in raw uncut form on Justin.tv. We are aware that there has been some delay in getting the cut VoDs from SCI #1 up on the channel. They will all be available before SCI #2 begins.
Any other improvements? - We are aiming to minimise the downtime between matchs as much as possible, though you will still be entertained by some of the best VGM TotalBiscuit's collection has to offer, classic videogame tunes will blare throughout the breaks. In order to minimise downtime, we will be employing an experienced tournament admin to keep the proceedings running smoothly and prevent any map mistakes.
So who is playing? - We like to tease, so we're going to be doing what we did last time by revealing one player a day in this thread. However, to start things off, we'll reveal two, starting with the grand champion of SHOUTcraft Invitational #1. But wait....
A CHALLENGER APPEARS!
- Nerchio player intro
- SeleCT player intro
- SaSe player intro
- Socke player intro
- Sheth player intro
- BlinG player intro
- DDE player intro
- MorroW player intro