Photos by: PlayXP, ESL.eu, AcerEsport, WellPlayed
The process of completing the ASUS ROG Assembly Winter line-up is halfway through. Players like Polt, HerO, Stephano and Jinro are to join the first batch of invites in Helsinki end of February.
Five days ago, Assemby Winter found the first eight players that will fly to Finland on February 24-25 to compete for the $20,000 prize pool. The names of Moon, Select and Mana, among the other, drew a positive attention towards the ASUS ROG tournament. Unfortunately for all fans that were eager to see them play, Dutch Protoss Grubby and Liquid's Zerg Sheth have cancelled their spot at Assembly in order to test their strength at the MLG qualifiers.
To keep the tempo high, the guys at Assembly now reveal a portion of ten amazing contenders, including the Liqud trio of TLO, HerO and Jinro and each of them has something to prove. Within a short period of time last year, HerO was regarded as one of the best protosses in the world, coming out with amazing playstyle at DreamHack Winter and NASL 2, only to follow it with arguably disappointing results at BlizzardCup, HomeStory Cup 4 and IEM Kiev. For his foreign teammates it is up to the question if that beard can be shaved off and if the Swede can recover from this prolonged slump of his after being counted among the best terrans outside of Korea.
France is represented by two of its star children - Millenium's Stephano (ESWC and IPL 3 winner) and Fnatic's protoss and War3 legend ToD (WCG France champion). And while Stephano has already established himself as one of the best foreign players, ToD is still to approbate his ever-improving skills with a major gold.
Assembly Winter also welcomes a trio of Terran excellency in the faces of TSL's Polt (GSL Super Tournament champion), Kas (IEM Kiev bronze finalist) and Satiini (eSahara cup first place finisher). The list is completed with the young and rising protosses Seiplo and BlinG, the latter coming out of a recent top eight finish at WCG 2011, including a 6-0 run through a group that consisted of players like Cloud, KiwiKaki, Strelok and ToD.
| ASUS ROG Assembly Winter - The invites thus far | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 BlinG |  HerO |  Jinro |  TLO | |||||||||||||||||||||
 Kas | Polt |  Satiini | Seiplo | |||||||||||||||||||||
 Stephano | ToD | elfi | Select | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Strelok |  Mana |  NightEnd | Moon | |||||||||||||||||||||
To avoid further overlaps with the MLG tournament and thus another Grubby/Sheth incident, Assembly will save the last eight slots for after the qualifiers for the MLG Winter Arena (spanning January 31st - February 8th) are over.
Links
TeamLiquid.net - Source
