Weekly Cups (Dec 23-29): Xmas extragavanza

2024 Off-season Community Weekly Cups
Week of December 23-29

by Wax

Despite the Christmas holidays, StarCraft II competition barely slowed down over the past week. In fact, significantly more tournaments were held than usual, with a number of special events being held in addition to the regular weekly cups.

Dec 23: WardiTV Mondays #15 (partial bracket shown)

As usual, the week started with WardiTV Mondays, where Clem was conspicuously missing. While that often opens the way for MaxPax to take first place, this time around herO was able to best the Danish PvP master by a 3-1 score in the finals (VOD).

*****

Dec 23: PiGosaur Cup #12 (partial bracket shown)

The previous PiGosaur Cup had featured a rather unexpected Creator vs Trigger finals, and this trend of upsets continued in the latest competition.

Once again, Trigger was at the center of the chaos, 2-0’ing both Dark (a well-executed all-in from Trigger in game one + a failed Nydus all-in from Dark in game two) and herO (capitalizing on herO’s overaggression in game one + hitting with a 1-base all-in in game two) to reach the finals.

However, while Trigger went all the way in the previous week, this time around his run came to an anticlimactic end. SHIN—who had picked up an upset win of his own against MaxPax in the semis—manhandled Trigger in the finals and scored a 3-0 sweep (VOD).

*****

Dec 24: Olimoleague December Finals

Christmas Eve saw nine players try to do some late Christmas ‘shopping,’ vying for the ₩1,500,000 KRW on the line in the Olimoleague December finals.

The wave of underdog energy carried over from the PiGosaur Cup, with tournament favorite herO getting taken down early by SHIN, only for SHIN to get knocked out himself by Creator. Meanwhile, Trigger continued to show his fine form, knocking out Classic in the first round.

The ultimate beneficiary of all these upsets ended up being Oliveira, who took home the first place prize after going through the not-so-brutal gauntlet of Rogue (2-0), Trigger (3-0), and Creator (4-2, VOD). Amusingly enough, Oliveira didn’t bother to make a third Command Center in any of his PvT games, which I’m sure sparked a lot of constructive balance discussion in the Chzzk/Twitch chats.

*****

WardiTV Christmas Day Games

Wardi provided some pre-recorded entertainment for Christmas Day, inviting eight top players to compete for the week’s biggest prize pool of $2000 ($800 first place prize).

Le Grinch ended up spoiling everyone else’s Christmas, as Clem defeated Solar (3-1), herO (3-1), and Dark (4-2, VOD) to take first place. Dark actually went up 2-0 in the finals thanks to two successful all-in attacks, but Clem proved to be much too strong in conventional play as he staged a 4-2 comeback victory.

*****

BASILISK Big Brain Bouts: End of Year Special

The BASILISK Big Brain Bouts are usually a series of showmatches featuring lesser-known players in the scene, but team science decided to hold a full-size, double-elimination tournament as a special event to close out the year.

Due to the EU-heavy sign-up roster, the tournament ended up looking basically like ‘EPT Europe but without Serral, Clem, or Reynor’ (well, Reynor technically played, but he off-raced as Terran). As one might expect in such a setting, MaxPax took care of business and claimed the $400 first place prize. Still, the Danish Prince definitely had to work hard for his reward, as MaNa pushed him all the way to game five with hyper-aggressive play (VOD).

*****

Dec 28: Korean StarCraft League #66

Speaking of race-skewed tournaments, Saturday’s KSL also featured a two-color Liquipedia bracket as zero Terrans signed up. This was pretty atypical for KSL, as usually there’s at least one splash of blue between ByuN, GuMiho, Cure, Bunny, or a number of enterprising amateurs.

In any case, herO ended up being the one who rose to the top of the red-green Christmas tree bracket, felling Trigger (2-0), SHIN (2-1), and Rogue (3-1) along the way. The finals between Rogue vs herO was pretty one-sided overall, but it did feature an amusing game where Rogue defeated herO’s mass Carriers with the help of the buffed microbial shroud (VOD). Sure, Rogue probably still would have won with pre-buff Shroud given herO’s lack of splash damage, but it was still fun to see the new version used effectively in a real match.

*****

Dec 28: WardiTV 3v3 Series #4

We saw another team competition get mixed into the deluge of 1v1 events, this time with Wardi putting up $600 for anyone who wanted to try their hand at 3v3.

While 2v2 events are often one by the pairing of the best 1v1 players, this 3v3 tourney diverged from that trend as the unheralded trio of Shameless, GGMaChine, and Tiger took top honors over teams of more well-known pros.