This is it, qualifiers are over. 24 players have fought to earn their place in the TeamLiquid Legacy Starleague, and now they must saddle up and prepare for battle. With the last of the qualifiers finishing last week, the full list has caramelized, between the 12 players who earned spots directly from making the finals and the final 12 who earned it through consistent performance across all tournaments.

Our final pair of events saw old favorites G5 and Pro7ect come out on top, with Dewalt and Ramms fresh on their heals to snag the remaining spots. Now it's time to sit back and reflect on who will be in, study their games and prepare for what is to come. We take a look at each qualifier, and see who performed best and how they did it. We talk to the winners, and listen to their goals and aspirations for this lofty event going forward. We even take a special look at Ramms vs Zepish to see how players fare when facing adversity.

And now we wait. Later in the week we will reveal the full groups as well as who will play in the first broadcast, which will start this Saturday. The TLS is nearly upon, gear up and get ready.












The last four TLS qualifiers saw a total of six Zerg players, one Protoss and one Terran player qualified. As Elegant said, so far it has been “all about the Zerg,” but there were some strong players in Qualifier Five who were looking to change that.

Zerg players Naugrim and Pike continued to do well, while 'Gym-Bag' Jim-Raynor also made another strong run, beating fellow Zerg player Flip on his way to the round of sixteen. He was beaten there by fan favorite old-school player Liquid`Drone, who collected more points.

There were some upsets as Terran/Protoss powerhouse Ramms was stopped by Zepish in the round of 32, while the mighty Terran Pro7ect was defeated early by Arcneon. Strong player LRM)Dragon once again failed to make significant progress, and Voddy was unable to continue his point-accruing spree, losing early on in a ZvP.

Despite the fact that a number of strong Zergs had been knocked out or had already qualified, the Zerg race in the foreigner scene has strength in depth. Napoleon and Zergboy both made it to the semifinals, where they would meet Protosses G5 and Dewalt. Would the reign of Zerg finally be over?



The first semi-final saw Zergboy meet old-timer G5. G5 was a top-level foreigner player between 2005-2010. He represented the USA three times at WCG, where he was able to take a win against none other than the Emperor himself. It’s no wonder that so many people were curious to see what level of play he would be able to produce.



In the first game on Jade, the players opened with a twelve hatch vs forge fast expand. G5 made his probe annoying in Zergboy's natural, blocking the hatchery with a pylon and forcing Zergboy to wait for zerglings before he could expand. This forced Zergboy to take his third base, and G5 reacted by placing cannons behind the minerals. Unfortunately the cannons finished seconds before the hatchery, so that it could be cancelled without much loss.

Without a third base, Zergboy decided to go for an all-in three-hatch hatch bust. This was well anticipated by G5, who made two extra cannons and looked set to deflect it. At this point, G5 decided to make more gateways instead of playing safe, planning to overwhelm the hydralisks with speed zealots.

This was to prove a crucial misjudgement as the hydralisks busted into his natural before there were any extra zealots. G5 was able to defend with a round of zealots, but lost a large number of probes. This bought him a little time, but he was sufficiently weakened that waves of hydralisks soon drowned him, and he was forced to ggg(with an extra g for luck).



The second game was a nine pool from the Zerg versus a forge fast expand. Unusually, G5 chose to send out an early probe to mine out the minerals outside Zergboy's temples, suggesting that he wanted to use this as an alternative route into the Zerg main later on. He then launched an early zealot/archon attack, which attempted to break through the temples using the archon splash damage, but was held off by mass hydralisks.

G5 looked like he was in trouble, as Zergboy counter attacked while taking a fourth base. The hydralisks were able to push right into the natural, but despite not yet having storm G5 chose the perfect moment to rush out and crush the attack.

This victory was decisive, as his forces were then able to batter their way through the Zerg natural with some devastating storms to take even the series at 1-1.



Game three started with an aggressive nine pool speed against a two gate. G5 pushed out with three zealots to block Zerg's ramp, while Zergboy took advantage of their absence to run into the main with his six lings. This led to an intense period of micro in the Protoss base, during which the lings killed several probes. However, to break through to his own natural Zergboy was forced to build a swell of zerglings, which left him in a weak economic position. G5's next push with zealots and dragoons came before Zergboy's burrow research could finish. G5 did not hesitate to move into the Zerg main and kept rallying speed-zealots across the map to win the series 2-1.




After standard openings, Dewalt went for an impeccably-timed dragoon-reaver push towards the Zerg third base. This was moderately successful at first, but a constant stream of hydralisks overwhelmed it and Dewalt lost the majority of his expensive army. Dewalt clung tenaciously onto his third base, but his repeated attempts to attack were deflected, while Napoleon took a huge number of bases. Dewalt was unable to establish any lasting map control and was eventually forced to gg by Napoleon's massive numbers of ultralisks, zerglings, and defilers.


In the second game Napoleon went for quick lurkers to contain Dewalt while he took a third gas base. Dewalt was not thrown off by this, and patiently built up a strong army while performing some effective zealot harass. When he was ready, he pushed out with a powerful dragoon/high templar army with zealot support. He was able to take a great position in the crucial battle to crush the Zerg army and even up the series.


The final game started off with an aggressive one-gateway opening from Dewalt. This caused Napoleon some real difficulty by taking good positions behind the minerals and harassing his drones. Meanwhile, Dewalt expanded, giving himself a strong economic position. Napoleon had some trickery of his own, allowing Dewalt to see his second gas and then cancelling it, suggesting that he was planning mutalisks.

We then saw another protoss timing attack as Dewalt sent a force of speed-zealots to Napoleon's third base. However, he was equal to this and deflected the attack with zerglings and some nice drone drilling. Napoleon's counterattack forced a lot of extra cannons and killed a number of probes as Dewalt held on. Meanwhile, a shuttle dropped dark templar in the main so that, while the attention of the Zerg was elsewhere, thirteen drones were killed.

Dewalt's further attempts to harass were shut down, and Napoleon decided to be greedy and taking a fifth base. Dewalt's third base was extremely delayed, and he decided to rely on a strong dragoon/zealot/high templar attack. This force established a nice position outside the Zerg third and managed to obliterate the hydralisk-heavy army. After this setback, Napoleon had no answer to Dewalt's relentless pressure and, although he fought on for a little while longer, he had to surrender.

The final was therefore a PvP between Dewalt and G5. No Zergs!





In the first game, both players scouted across the map to check if an early zealot would be a good idea. However, due to G5's building placement Dewalt missed G5's base with his scout, while G5 found Dewalt in the cross-map position. Dewalt then went for a dark templar opening, while G5 chose to go for a three-gate dragoon attack.

Initially, it looked like G5's lack of detection would cost him the game, as a dark templar entered his base a long time before he would have an observer. However, Dewalt did not block the ramp into his main with a templar, and so G5's large dragoon force was able to enter Dewalt's base.

Eventually, observers arrived for G5, while a single DT was finally able to finish off the dragoons in Dewalt's main. When the dust had settled, we were left with nine supply against seventeen in favour of G5, although Dewalt had an expansion protected by a shield battery. G5 took a minute to build up a small force before charging Dewalt's natural. In a tense battle, the superior army count for G5 was too much to handle. GG.





In the second game, the players again spawned in cross-positions. Dewalt attempted to proxy gateways, but he appeared to be unfamiliar with the map and found himself unable to place them. Instead, he built four gateways in his main, which looked like it might be effective against G5's two-gate robo build. In a tense battle outside G5's natural, the first reaver exploded, but the second arrived just in time to force Dewalt to pull back.

Both players then expanded. As he had no reaver tech, Dewalt chose to tech straight for speed zealots and storm, while G5 built up a huge dragoon army backed by 4 reavers. G5 pushed across the map with his reavers before storm was available and forced an engagement close to Dewalt's natural. The reavers were well-microed and proved deadly against Dewalt's army.

G5 broke through to seize victory in Qualifier Five!



The story of qualifier #6 was undoubtedly Pro7ect. With his lackluster performance in the fifth qualifier he was forced into the position of making it to the finals, or being completely unable to qualify, and from the get go he didn't disappoint. He tore his way through the top of the bracket, taking out qualifier regulars like Jonoman92, BioboyAT and Cryoc with ease. He earned his semi-final berth with an exciting two zero victory over SJ.flip with some strong solid play mixed with fantastic positional and drop play to work his way out of a sticky situation.

Much in the same boat as Pro7ect, but with some initial points to give him leeway in terms of qualification, LRM)Infected had a somewhat easier path to the semi finals, even grabbing a walkover in what would have been a close matchup against Radley in the quarter finals. Nemu, the third semi finalist on the other side of the bracket found himself with on a rocky road, hitting Pass in the Ro128, as well as Dashwriter and Voddy in the later rounds. Finally Ramms rounded out the semi final group with a less intense path, but equally as convincing, to set up a refreshingly Terran heavy lineup.




The first Semi Final featured Pro7ect, who needed to win the series to qualify, against Infected, who was almost guaranteed a place based on his point score, but would benefit greatly from the increased seed he would gain if he was able to take Pro7ect out. The first game didn't disappoint, with Pro7ect coming out with a bit of a disadvantage and despite some incredible play he was unable to stop Infected, who slowly ground him down until Pro7ect was forced to get out of the game. Despite losing the audacity that Pro7ect showed holding on for as long as he did seemed to affect Infected in the coming games.

Pro7ect chose to use a mech based strategy in the second game on Electric circuit, which seemed to throw Infected off, and with a decisive push after his three base economy was up and running he was able to inflict a bit of damage that set Infected back in the game. Utilizing his advantage Pro7ect mustered up a second push with a much heavier tank count and after some exciting back and forth play the push finally broke through and took out Infected’s main. After a small delay with Infected trying to hold on he finally broke down and tapped out, evening up the series at one game all.

The final game of the series was played on Fighting Spirit, a map which doesn't favor a mech style as much as the previous map, and Pro7ect returned to a more conventional style, playing incredibly safe and managing to hold off Infected’s attempted muta/ling runby with ease. He was then able to counter attack and take out the third base of Infected. After suffering such a disadvantage in the early midgame Pro7ect wasn’t about to let Infected get his footing, and despite some attempted counter attacks, nothing Infected tried would work and finally Pro7ect was able to push into the Zerg main and take the series two to one.



The second semi final featured the race picker Nemu against the other Russian Terran in the Ro4, Ramms. The first game Nemu picked protoss and went ahead and dropped a Nexus on 12 supply. Ramms was able to scout the nexus as it was completing and decided to pull SCV’s and bunker rush even though it would be later than a normal timing against a 12 nex. He managed to kill a fair few probes in the attack and waste a lot of Nemu’s time but eventually was repelled, giving Nemu a slight advantage. Nemu scouted Ramms’ third base and decided to go in for an attack up the large ramp on Jade, which didn't do as much damage as he probably expected, leaving him on even bases with the Terran player and a fairly low probe count though he was able to delay Ramms’ third base further. Nemu then attempted to build up for a secondary attack which was delayed by some smart drops from Ramms’ and eventually failed, after which Ramms’ was able to finish off the game.

The second game, on Electric Circuit featured Nemu choosing to play zerg and he was put into a rough position early on, losing three of his first pack of mutalisks for free and building an excessive amount of sunken colonies. He attempted to harass in Ramms’ main and was completely denied and Ramms’ decided to just end the game with a quick attack before Nemu could morph lurkers, granting Ramms’ victory in the series two games to zero.



The grand final featured Pro7ect against Ramms, with Ramms picking Protoss to try and avoid TvT as is so common in foreigner Terran matchups. Regardless of the winner of the game the ro24 was guaranteed to be slightly less Zerg filled with two Terrans making it in. The first game featured Ramms attempting to do some early goon pressure but being denied by Pro7ect’s impeccable defense. Ramms then attempted to rush for Arbiters to try and defend Pro7ect’s incoming push but he was unable to get the arbiter out before Pro7ect’s metal ball of death encroached too close to his natural expansion and Ramms was forced to call gg.

The second game featured a single proxy gateway from Ramms in an attempt to get some early damage done with zealots, and despite killing a few marines and SCV’s Pro7ect was able to hold off the attack and stabilize, dropping two factories of his own while pretending to be safely expanding with a bunker in front of his natural. When the push came out Pro7ect’s forces were a little too much, with Ramms being a touch greedy and being punished for it. Pro7ect’s tanks were able to sit between Ramms’ natural and main uncontested and despite some useful emergency dark templar, Pro7ect was able to hold his position and force Ramms to gg, meaning that Pro7ect was the winner of the final TLS qualifier.




During Qualifier Five, the Russian Terran, Ramms, and the Canadian Protoss, Zepish, met in the round of 32 on Electric Circuit. Both players opted for fairly conservative openings. Zepish started his cybernetics core before getting his first zealot, because the zealot would be unable to deny scouting in the absence of a ramp between the main and natural, then followed it up with goon range and a nexus. Ramms, meanwhile, decided to take advantage of the map’s flatness by opening with a fake double. When his tank finished, the Terran moved out of his main, pushing through the small strike force Zepish had placed at his natural, and chasing the zealot and pair of dragoons back to the Protoss natural. There the reinforcing dragoons put a halt to Ramms’s offensive. Zepish killed the marines, but the reinforcing vultures with mines provided adequate protection for Ramms to save his tank and return to his natural.













































With this weekend heralding an end to the pure zerg dominance we observed in the first two qualifiers we took the time to sit down and have a chat to the lucky players who will be taking a slot in the TLS proper.

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That's all for now! Join us in a few days as we reveal the full Round of 24 grounds and preview the games that will be played next weekend. And as always a big thanks to our sponsors: