WCS America is great, and if these awards teach you anything, let it be this: we fucking love Chinese players. It's not that they're unique and bring fresh styles to the table (they do), but that they seem to make so little sense that when they end up winning (they do quite often), we're left with hilarity to look back on. What do I mean by that? I mean Top vs viOLet. No, I'm not talking about games like this one. There is no game like this one. Maybe somewhere in platinum league but certainly not at the professional level. And most certainly not in the deciding game 5 of WCS America Challenger League.

The score tied at 2-2, Top did what everyone predicted: gateway expand into 4gate pressure. Rotterdam knew it, Mr.Bitter knew it, viOLet knew it, the observer knew it. Perhaps that's why all of them missed where the chaos of this game truly started. As his extra three gates were going up, Top accidentally cancelled his natural expansion and nobody, neither casters nor the observer, noticed—only viOLet. The game is nothing but madness from here on out as viOLet tried his best to recover from making the right choice and Top's accidental nexus cancel let him execute a 2 base all-in that lasted for an eternity, all to the late night entertainment program of Mr.Bitter desperately trying to navigate between urges to laugh, cry and rant his heart out, while his brother-from-another-race, Rotterdam, mostly laughed.

Once upon a time, true Protoss mentor Teoita in a fit of wisdom spoke the words that to this day depict a protoss lifestyle: "Protoss all-ins are like a wok—you can throw whatever you want in there and it will turn out alright". Top proved himself a real wok-race warrior by producing seemingly random units at random times. There was an oracle whose mission was to single-handedly kill viOLet's third base, a few phoenixes that helped some queens escape from zealots, I guess...unupgraded zealots. Since Top had a stargate (don't ask me why), he naturally made void rays like any self-respecting protoss would. To top it all off, he transitioned everything into the one true build—the Soul Train. I didn't learn much from this game (in fact I think I unlearned a lot), but one thing's for certain: third bases don't exist in China.

Rarely ever do we get a complete look into a player's mind during a game. Sometimes they will explain their thought process in an interview before or after a series, but we can only follow their thoughts so far while they're operating. This game is a rare example of the opposite. TRUE takes us on an entertaining tour through MyuNgSiK's brain and shows us how to best smash it to pieces. Now we've all seen proxy hatchery shenanigans before, TRUE inciting that trend himself. But never again will you see them melt down an opponent as fast as you will in this game. Not only did MyuNgSiK fail to get his natural nexus down after the first block, he then got it blocked again and had to abandon his own block of TRUE's natural and let TRUE's drone escape. He proceeded to completely forgot about his opponent's drone in his base. Only when MyuNgSiK noticed the creep in his main base did he realize how screwed he was. Probes rallied to other probes, unnecessary probes losses, a random stargate that was never utilized and two robotics bays were the least of his worries at that point. TRUE was on five bases with complete drone saturation and about 100 zerglings on the map by the time Myungsik tried to take his third.

I recommend watching this game immediately after TOP vs viOLet, especially if you're Zerg and you need something to pick yourself up.

Because of the insane playstyles and aggressive moves he's done over the years, I've often compared TRUE to different players from both BW and SC2. His style often seems like an amalgamation of traits from players like Kwanro, Nestea, JulyZerg, Suhosin, Kyrix, Shine and Hyvaa, alternating between them depending on the situation. But it was this game that truly showed made what TRUE was.

TRUE was the anger, resentment and hatred of every Zerg player given flesh. A player whose sole purpose was to aggravate Protoss players and get revenge for the countless all-ins, cannon rushes and hatch blocks zerg players have suffered over the years.

In this game, Stork is the victim. TRUE spent the first 5 minutes blocking Stork's nexus with a proxy hatch, then a proxy evo, then juked into the main only to come back and proxy hatch again, run around the probes and proxy hatch a 3rd time, cancel that into another evo, pretend to leave, then proxy hatch a 4th time to proxy another evo, then ending his run by stealing a gas.

It made sOs shed a tear.

There are competitors that entertain with excellent, high quality games and other players that entice laughs through awkward, hilarious, or weird builds. Bomber frequently finds himself in both categories, as his perfectly solid play is occasionally punctuated by blunders and strange plays. Although missteps usually don’t lose players games on their own, Bomber's errors sometimes cause a nearly unfathomable level of damage to himself.

Against Polt at Redbull Washington Bomber attempted to play a perfectly normal style of TvT, mirroring his opponent's marine/tank composition. Despite playing perfectly well on the whole, Bomber was at a disadvantage after being outmaneuvered, even losing a medivac full of units to stationary marines. However, this was just a precursor to what would soon happen. After finally dealing a blow to Polt by killing his third base, Bomber picked up all of his units and boosted away, not remembering that his entire army was in transit as Polt hunted the medivacs down. The result was the most one-sided battle in history. Bomber lost 50 army supply in the blink of an eye, and tossed out the GG five seconds afterwards.

This spectacle could be attributed to a simple oversight on Bomber’s part if it wasn't for their WCS America rematch less than a month later. In the middle of a tense high-level series Bomber decided that he wouldn't fail horribly again. True to his determination, Bomber avoided the flaws of his past tactic by randomly dropping all of his units in Polt’s main base. Everyone knew what would happen next. The casters knew, the spectators were eagerly anticipating it, and based on Bomber’s reaction afterwards, the players realized it too. But the transparency of the situation did not detract from the sheer carnage of what followed. Bomber found himself completely surrounded by turrets, vikings, marines, and the map wall; he once again sacrificed his entire army without unloading a single unit.

The most effective neutralization of Bomber ships we’ve ever seen.

One afternoon in the land of GSL, Classic and soO were preparing to enjoy a lovely picnic in the middle of a sunny yet frosty setting. There was a wonderfully large blanket, covered in baskets filled with delectable treats: immortal surprise, roach stew, and sentry sandwiches prepared by a professional Aiur chef. soO, having attended many picnics in the land of the GSL before, licked his lips in anticipation and prepared to sample some of the enticing fare. Although both had a basket of food all to themselves, soO usually spread himself to one or two others before beginning to eat. However, as he reached for a basket full of drone donuts he found himself hesitating, as Classic had already crawled to his side of the blanket and had a hand moving around in the very same basket. soO was surprised by this strange act from his friend.

soO mumbled under his breath. Classic stopped rummaging around in the picnic basket, looked at soO, and nodded expressionlessly. Upon removing his hand from the basket, Classic showed soO that there were two pylons preventing soO from taking any food from the picnic basket, and a cannon was being warped in out of reach. The bewildered soO picked up the basket, but could not reach the cannon before it was due to finish. Giving up, he looked around to see what else he might enjoy instead, but Classic had found himself a seat right in front of him and was preparing a sort of battle stance with his arms at strange angles, as if he was preparing to grab soO. soO looked closer, seeing that Classic was clutching a pylon in each hand, and stared Classic in the face with utter horror while his companion remained completely emotionless.

soO hesitated, perhaps wondering what had gotten into his friend. Classic ruthlessly chewed at a probe pastry. After a lengthy and extremely tense standoff, soO attempted to seize the closest picnic basket and use his body to cover it up. However, when he looked the basket, soO discovered that Classic had somehow already snuck a pylon under some of the healthier treats in the basket, a process which had ruined the tastiness of the fine cuisine. Classic watched as his “friend” searched the inside of the basket for a way to rid himself of the pylon. With increasing frustration, soO tried to sneak some of the snacks from a fourth basket. Confidently and emotionless, Classic walked over to him and placed a pylon right on top of all of the basket’s contents.

soO looked like a ruined man, as he felt undermined by his long-time friend. He shouted towards Classic. “I thought we played fairly! I thought we were friends, I thought we enjoyed food together. Classic, I was sure that you are a nice person! You embody the sweetness of the Protoss dishes you feast on when we have picnics in the land of GSL!”

"What happened?"

Despite this outburst, Classic continued to stare at soO, like someone who wins championships his face a tabula rasa, before looking around to make sure soO wasn’t raiding picnic baskets at other corners of the blanket. soO observed this strange behavior with growing curiosity. He soon thought to himself, “Perhaps Classic is merely selfish. He simply prevents me from eating anywhere else so that I will eat with him.” With wonder, soO attempted to take from one more basket, one rather close to the two that Classic was slowly dining on. Although he didn’t notice initially, Classic soon realized that soO was trying to steal from his basket and remorselessly grabbed another pylon, slamming it onto a nearby section of the blanket. Upon realizing his former friend’s treachery, soO grabbed a bowl of roach stew and threw it at Classic before storming off into the distance.

This game is something special. Not because the players played particularly well or because of any outside circumstances of the game, but because it was a game displaced in time. In a final ode to 2011 Bomber decided to go for bio/tank, a composition so old I felt I was watching a dodo walk across the street to pick a fight with a zombie hoard. Said zombie hoard, led by TooDming, was enraged by that insult. TooDming decided to hurl 6 bases worth of muta ling/bane at Bomber for 13 minutes before running out of steam and dying. I still don't understand why he did it, but damned if I wasn't laughing the entire time.

What list of funny shit would be complete without the spirit of InCa making an appearance? Here was Avenge, a player that has been grinding games since 2011 and only just made Code S in his last run before dropping to the military. On the other hand Solar was a relative newcomer who came into the game after HotS' release. Knowing this, Avenge decided to give him some nice 2011 hospitality: he faked a 1 base 4 gate mass zealot push while teching to DTs, killing Solar in the name of the Unseen God

Though he now goes on to the military, Avenge will forever be remembered as the last son of InCa.

This countdown ended on December 17. Now, I don't know what made it worse—the fact that the story was heating up and getting really interesting, or the fact that we actually let our guard down and believed Seeker that after Chapter 12 we'd be getting chapters more often. When G.R.R. Martin doesn't release a new book for years, that's fine. He's old. You expect him to be slow. But last time we checked, Seeker was still a young man. Even the new chapter 13, hastily released upon discovering this award, did not sway us. There are simply no excuses for this sort of behavior and we expect full compensation soon, best served in the form of multiple chapters at once.

After winning IEM Toronto in grand fashion, Flash fans were on top of the world. His victory was proclaimed as the return of the Ultimate Weapon. He would finally achieve the prophecy of becoming the greatest player in SC2 by winning IEM, then GSL, then Blizzcon. The train was filled to max capacity as it rumbled onwards towards Blizzcon 2014.

Then reality stepped in and slapped the upward swell of positive emotions off the rails. 6 days later, soO and DRG eliminated Flash and sent the train crashing to the depths of the salt mine.

Sometimes I think the strongest human emotion in existence isn't love, hate, greed or ambition. It is spite. It is the drive to do something for the sole sake of saying, "IN YOUR FACE!" afterwards. In 2013, no other players in the world had done this as often as Revival and Oz. After they both get dropped from EG, they went on to have the best year of their careers.

This year it goes to Gumiho. Gumiho spent half of 2014 on CJ Entus, barely seeing any play time despite beating Zest after a booth dropped on top of him. To make matters worse, when CJ Entus made it to the Proleague finals, they decided not to field one of the strongest team league players of all time. Fed up with this disrespect, Gumiho left the team. He went on to win 12 Leifeng Online Cups, reached his first high profile quarterfinals in over an year, and qualified for both SSL and GSL at the same time. For his extreme success after leaving CJ Entus, I award Gumiho the award for most spiteful player.

In the 35 premier tournaments held in 2014, only 8 were won by Zerg players. And yet despite that, Zerg players have been almost completely silent on the issue of balance. While this was going on, Rain called Terran the new BL/infestor at the beginning of the year: Protoss then went on to win 10/12 tournaments during the blink era, before blink, the mothership core, and the collective map pool were nerfed. This left Terran in a much stronger state than before, leaving Protoss players to rage about the "death" of HT/Chargelot, the myriad openings of Terran now that they weren't forced to go bio or die, or the SCV train (which I find strange since it's basically a Communist Soul Train). When they weren't complaining about Terran, they complained about swarmhosts or muta base trades. It all ended with ZParcraft 2 (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/460550-welcome-to-zparcraft-ii) and Protoss is sorry, Not! (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/444089-protoss-were-sorry-parody-of-south-parks-bp).

For their unending patience in not demanding nerfs to every other race, Zerg has been given the Manliest Race. Their award? More Terran buffs.

For making sure soO never got to sit upon his throne after soO took him out of GSL with Bl/infestor.

Runner-up: "There are NA Players left to save?"- Taeja

Who knew that isolating a community from the international scene for nearly 3 years would end up making the entire scene go insane? With players like Jim, MacSed, Top, ToodMing, and Shana, China has created the strangest and most eclectic line-up of players ever fielded in any one country. You never quite know what a Chinese player will think of next. It could be Jim's 1 base 4 gate, MacSed's proxy robo soul train, Top's accidental nexus cancel into winning the game, ToodMing's 360 surround of Scalett's army, or Shana's never ending chargelot archon 2 base attack. The only thing you know for certain is when a Chinese player is involved, the chances of seeing some strange shit goes up exponentially.

Runner-up: Taiwan

They have Has.

When the Grand Chinese Emperor Lure aka the LightofHeaven aka the Arms of SunWuKong aka the molecules of Longinus aka the Wind of the East aka the Bunker Whisperer aka Billowy came into the booth, everyone expected him to be a lamb put up to slaughter. Just another pawn to be sacrificed to the glory of KT.

The lamb then went on to murder the champions of Proleague with a vengeance as he and Coach Swagger teamed up to Stalker out Stats, Zest, TY and Flash. This single performance was so utterly ridiculous that I'm almost certain that SKT picked him up so they could field him as a spiteful reminder of the day KT died.

Mathematically, Choya is almost certainly Satan. He eliminated his FXO teammates in qualifiers, took away half of Prime's team, disbanded MVP, and then revived the careers of Losira, MarineKing, Seed and Yonghwa. He then had DeParture kick out Zest from GSL, got Panic into Code S, and took a series off KT in PL. I still don't understand how he's done all of this, but I've come to accept that he's either the Fallen One or some cross hybrid of Lex Luthor and Ra's Al Ghul. He is now going to play in WCS NA qualifiers with the hope of spreading his evil empire abroad. Only Captain America can save us now.

Runner-up: Swagger aka SangHo aka BabyByeBye aka Killer

No matter the name, you can't help but respect what SwagHo did. He took a team made up of 1 Code S player (a middling one at that), 1 Code A player, and an entire bench of wacky oddballs and B-team bench warmers and ran them straight to the finals of Proleague Round 2. There has never been a run in SC2 Proleague that has done so much with so little.

Choya may be the spokesman for evil, but Has is the incarnation of evil. Imagine for a moment the macro -> cheese scale. On the left is Rain, a player renowned for straight up play who moderately includes some cheddar. On the right is sOs, a player famous for not giving a fuck about how he wins whether it be cannons, 2 gates, or carriers. And then there is Has. A player so far to the right of the cheese scale that he is on Rain;s left side. A player so cheesy that players like sOs, StarDust and MC become lactose-intolerant in his presence. Never has a player in the history of SC2 played so dirty and grimy as Has did during his 2014 year. Never has a player been so utterly shameless in his cheese.

http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/446884-where-in-the-world-is-byun
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/447597-byun-evades-capture-twice-more


Where is Byun? Part 3

On 4/8/14, Gerrard announced to the world that Prime had lost all contact with ByuN and that ByuN's corporal form was that of a shadow. KeSPA finally let go of their past grudges and pardoned ByuN for his crime of being a Terran, granting amnesty so long as he came back to Korea. On 11/10/14, ByuN streamed for the first time in months on his NA account; in one particular game, he patrolled his SCVs around a gas geyser as a sign of peace or the representation of his Schrödinger-like existence. He then announced on 11/12/14 that he would be playing for Prime in PL again on stream and that he would meet them there.

On December 15th, KeSPA finally sprung their trap. They had lulled ByuN into a false sense of security so that they could arrest him during the official PL roster announcements...or so they thought. ByuN had never had any intention of revealing himself and has avoided KeSPA authorities once again, disappearing into the vast wilderness. A KeSPA official announced, "We will not rest until this mad man has been brought to justice. How many times has he promised to show up in a qualifier or PL just to disappear again?" Choya seemed to be especially alarmed at the possibility of an unsupervised ByuN running around in the wild and urged Kespa to recruit experts such as Carmen Sandiego, Waldo and aLive in tracking him down. The Kespa official looked puzzled as he asked Choya, "Who is aLive?"

As always all citizens are reminded that ByuN is unarmed and mostly harmless.