GGA Cup #3 Highlights
Modern ZvP stories are not like that. Sure, they are often long and mothership is often involved but how often do they go to the 50th minute with few to none head-to-head confrontations? Some may call that "boring" but I'd rather refer to that as "perfection". In those long minutes on Cloud Kingdom, Mentalist was nearly flawless: he moved with a cat-like gracefulness, smartly avoiding the unnecessary macho PvZ army trades. After all, he knows that this is StarCraft 2 and the female audience is thin to say the least, making public displays of raw strength quite irrelevant.
The game began with Golden swiftly infesting lots of bases and spining up the whole central high-ground, building up a static and reliable defense for his third and fourth. To Mentalist's luck, Cloud Kingodm is a map of many roundabout pathways and when a mothership hits the field at the 17th minute mark, the protoss makes an advancement towards Golden's fifth. He takes it down but as he loses his mothership to a corruptor snipe and as Golden moves half his spine crawlers to completely shut down the central position, his army gets trapped behind enemy lines. Fortunately for him, Golden has no intention of hunting it down and instead makes a move towards the protoss fourth, which opens enough room for Mentalist to act. While the zerg is busy cleaning up in the centre, blink stalkers run around and erase two of Golden's bases, his hive tech included. More blink attacks are launched. The powerful but slow brood lord/infestor army cannot keep up and Golden loses another base and also his vertebrae of static defenses in the middle.
The zerg holds to dear life but another uncalculated attack from him springs another blink stalker trap and he is forced to relocate once again. By that time, Mentalist has also mined his share of the map but gateway units are easy to resupply. Brood Lords aren't. With no economy, Golden has to tap out after 47 minutes of being juggled around like skittles.
Although not as grand as the one above, this second game got picked if only for the contrast it creates put next to its semi-final cousin. Seeing how Mentalist took the passive robo/expansion opening and geared for that 15-minute mothership and then being razed to the ground in seconds with a perfectly timed out baneling carpetting made me sincerely laugh in delight.
Don't judge me, please!
NA Qualifier Cycle Completes
Will TSL ever stop winning GGA Cup events? That is a well placed question. In one month time, three Team SCV Life players ravaged through their grand final opponents, finishing with an aggregate score of 8-1 in GF series. Hard to believe that this was a team that in the beginning of the year was left with hardly any ace players and was in the middle of a major restructuring that was not going all too well.
The first GGA Cup victor that was crowned was Revival. The zerg grabbed the gold with a 3-0 over his team-mate Inori in a series quite mercilessly. With Revival now among the grand final players and out of the qualifier process, on April 19th, the GGA Cup #1 runner-up Inori caught up with a 3-1 against Bischu in a tournament that was a genuine pleasure to watch and a pantheon of old and dusty but cool strats. And finally, GGA Cup #3 put the end of the NA Qualifier stage and completed TSL's flawless hattrick as Hyun prevailed over Mentalist.
Although on June 6th the GGA Cup transfers over to the European server and there will surely be a fresh change of sign-ups, there are still a few stories that might not have yet seen their end.
We begin by going back to the start of this clause and TSL's dominant utopia. So far, we've seen only Inori, Revival and Hyun unleashed and they were amazing but TSL still has their heavy hitters Polt and Symbol. Was that NA hattrick but a prelude to a further invasion of theirs? The European server is considered a much more difficult than the North American one and if TSL want to keep winning grand final spots, they will surely have to call for the players that have made names of themselves on the grandest of stages. Just take a look at the GGA Grand Final line-up and imagine it with Polt or Symbol (or better yet both) in it. If Symbol versus Heart is one MLG revenge match I would die to see, how about Polt against Thorzain?
Yes, we are all more or less obligated to cheer for TSL to send more players this way!
If Symbol versus Heart is one MLG revenge match I would die to see, how about Polt against Thorzain?
Second, we have the most unfortunate ZeNEXMentalist who was eliminated by TSL players in both GGA Cup #1 and GGA Cup #2. Relatively unknown to the wide public, this talented Korean protoss has always given his best in GGA games and especially in the last tournament where he easily stole the attention away from the eventual champion by playing that 50-minute game against Golden we talked about earlier. I'd certainly want to see more of Mentalist in the EU qualifiers, optimally pitted agains the European elite.
And last but not least, going over to the EU servers meaning the European crowd finally seeing the faces they know and love. The North American ladder has always been somewhat of an uncharted territory but we all are all familiar about who rules the European one. Many of the familiar names such as Thorzain, Mana, Dimaga and WhiteRa are already invited but heavy hitters such as Kas, Happy, Nerchio, Feast, BlinG and Stephano (just a small part of the top 25 of EU Grand Master) are still out in the open. Up to them is to disrupt the Korean homogeny of the GGA Qualifiers.
Having GGA tournaments on the European server should be a great news for the bigger part of our community! The four EU Qualifiers will span over a month and a half, starting on June 6th with GGA Cup #4. The tournaments will begin at 19:00 CET, meaning that if you sign up you'll be able to come home from school or work, play some games, get a shot at meeting the best in the business and still finish in time to catch the Heart of the Swarm weekend in Anaheim!
Don't let the Koreans take all the glory!
![[Op-Ed] Women in competitive gaming – why are there so few?](https://static.gosugamers.net/8f/c9/2c/df69cf93db41c27a46978529e01614f38e0bfb80888132ac95fd3f89fb.jpg?w=1600)
