Lone Star Clash 2 update

Stephano once again proved why he is considered the best foreigner, as he reclaimed his title at the Lone Star Clash by beating Bomber in grand final.

Stephano didn't drop a single set in the tournament before the final against Bomber, and Stephano's ZvP especially looks absolutely godlike. In fact after watching his dominating wins against Axslav, CranK and BabyKnight we can't possibly imagine how a Protoss could beat him right now.

Speaking of our cute and well-mannered danish hope BabyKnight, he actually played very well at the event as he finished top6 in a very strong field of players.

Yesterday he started out by beating Sheth in a great comeback series.

BabyK lost the first set and in the second set he was pretty far behind, but by playing very patiently he slowly won engagement after engagement and even though Sheth did some nice run-bys he never found a way to deal with BabyK's army.

In the last set BabyK engaged absolutely beautifully with stalkers and colossi at the fourth of Sheth. He blinked beneath all the corrupters of Sheth, while positioning his colossi perfectly in the top out of harms way and they could thus safely tear apart Sheth's ground force. It looked a lot like BabyK needed to prove that he could engage a lot better against Zerg than he had done against Stephano the day before and he certainly did that.

BabyK vs. Sheth = 2 - 1


After BabyK took that series he had to face Polt who had beaten BabyK 2 - 0 one week earlier in the MLG.

In the first set against there were some fantastic defense from BabyK against Polt's massive drop play. At the same time BabyK was investing a lot in upgrades and partially because of this and some really good micro he was able to take out Polt's fourth base. From here BabyK slowly got more and more ahead, and while Polt though did manage to stay in the game for a long time, he eventually had to give up.

In the 2nd set BabyK did an aggressive blink stalker build from 1 base, and with that he forced Polt to lift his natural and retreat to his main. On top of that BabyK killed a lot of SCVs and from there he took his own natural and transitioned to Colossi while delaying Polt's natural for quite a while. A couple of minutes later when BabyK had 3 colossi with range, he attacked and Polt desperately tried getting vikings out, but it was too little to late and BabyK took the series.

BabyK vs. Polt = 2 - 0


From there BabyK had to face Violet and to be honest that series was pretty one-sided, but sadly not in BabyK's favor.

In the first set Violet did a very big and nasty overlord drop into BabyK's main and it did so much damage, practically removing most of BabyK's important structures. BabyK though did manage to stabilize somewhat and get up to a good max'd army with mothership. Unfortunately though his mothership was hovering for 2 seconds over the abyss in the middle of the map and Violet's corrupters took it out for free, and that was pretty much GG.

In the second set BabyK tried some early gateway aggression on Violet's third, but Violet defended well. From there BabyK tried taking his third, but left it a bit undefended and Violet forced a cancel on it. From here BabyK decided to go for an all-in and he did manage to take out Violets fourth, but could not push further and ended up losing most of his army. He then tried taking his third again, but Violet got up to 5 bases quickly and was far ahead in everything and eventually just rolled over BabyK.

Violet vs . BabyKnight = 2 - 0


All in all a really good tournament for BabyK who got a chance to show some really impressive PvT, and after winning 2-0 against both TheStC and Polt he is starting to prove that he is a Korean Terran slayer. We still think that it's his PvZ that sometimes looks the least impressive, but then again, he lost to Stephano and Violet and they are certainly two of the best zergs out there, so no shame in that.

We look forward to seeing him in the WCS finals in Shanghai in 5 days.

FXO.BabyKnight fighting!

Lone Star Clash 2 update

The Lone Star Clash 2 is underway and if you aren't watching you should.

16 of the best players in the world battling right now in Texas for their share of the 15.000 $ price pool.
You can watch it here:
http://www.twitch.tv/lonestarclash

BabyKnight just won the first match of the tournament against TheStC.

The first set was on Ohana and BabyKnight did a sneaky but risky quick three nexus play without TheStC being able to do anything about it and eventually BabyKnight's great economy allowed him to overwhelm TheStC.

In the second set it was TheStC that was playing a bit greedy taking his natural quickly and only throwing down 1 defensive bunker without more than a couple of units to support it. BabyKnight had also taken his natural, but at the same time gone for some 3-gate pressure that was in no way an all-in. TheStC though wasn't ready at all and with perfect forcefields and micro in general, BabyKnight was able to trample all the way in to TheStC's base and that was it.
BabyKnight moves on to round 2 of the winner's bracket.

BabyKnight vs. TheStC = 2 - 0

Group brackets for MLG Fall Championship released!

OMG!

Group Play Brackets for MLG Dallas 2012

At first glance Group C looks like the "group of death" with top korean killer nerds TaeJa and Life in it. TaeJa vs. Life isn't exactly a bad match to open the MLG Group Play up with either.

Our Danish hero BabyKnight has been placed in Groub B alongside NaNiWa, TheStC, Grubby, Hwangsin and 1 of 4 proleague players (Flash, Soo, Soulkey or Hyvaa).

These 5 players will be joined by 2 of the 8 players that makes it through Open Bracket.

Anyway, we can't wait to see BabyKnight in action in his first MLG.

His game against NaNiWa especially will be quite epic.

Recently we stalked NaNiWa on twitter and noticed him writing the following.

Even though it's just twitter and probably said in fun, it still seems pretty obvious that NaNiWa doesn't consider BabyKnight to be a Starcraft mastermind.

We sincerely hope that BabyK can prove NaNiWa otherwise and crush him in their PvP clash.

Dreamhack Valencia Quarterfinals Recap (Stephano vs. ForGG)

So all the quarterfinals turned out to be foreigner vs. korean series.

Of the four quarterfinals Stephano vs. ForGG was probably the one from which most people expected a foreigner to advance.

And in the first two quarterfinals there weren't really any surprises as they were both won by the korean.

TaeJa vs. SaSe = 2-0

TheStC vs. Vortix = 2-1

So it was all up to Stephano, but in the end his series against ForGG ended up being rather strange.

Stephano took the first set on Ohana in dominating fashion and at that point it looked like he would have no problems defeating ForGG.

The second set was on Metropolis.

Stephano went for a quick roach attack with around 7-8 roaches at the 7 minute mark and he managed to catch ForGG completely by surprise.
ForGG had gone for reactor'd helions and was building a banshee and when he finally took out Stephano last roach he only had about half the supply of Stephano.
Stephano also had 3 times as many workers as ForGG and the game should have probably been over at this point if Stephano just had played safe.

Stephano did not really play safe though and it actually looked like Stephano was just so certain that he had won the game that he had forgotten all about his usual perfect gamesense.
And when ForGG attacked with cloaked banshees and hellions Stephano defended miserably.

In the end it was almost surreal to watch how the hellions and banshees just kept killing more and more drones until in the end Stephano had nothing left and was forced to GG a game that he had actually already won 4 minutes earlier.

The third and deciding set wasn't quite as surreal but still weird in the sense that it never felt like Stephano was playing his usual confident play.
ForGG once again went for some hellion and cloaked banshee harass and although it didn't do devastating damage, it still felt like Stephano defended a bit carelessly.

Especially when ForGG attacked at Stephano's third around the 11 minute mark with both hellions and banshees. He took out far too many units and it did not look like a Stephano defense at all.

The game transitioned into a somewhat normal macro game after this, but it was always with Stephano playing from behind.
ForGG got the map control he wanted to get far ahead in bases and production.
For a while Stephano defended really well around the map with ultralisks and infestors and managed to win a lot of engagements.
But ForGG had the economy to constantly remax and eventually he got a good siege up at the ramp to Stephano's natural and when Stephano tried to break this he lost almost all he had left.
Shortly afterwards he was forced to GG and with that Stephano was out of the tournament.

So Stephano lost a series that he had practically had in his bag and whether you believe in EG curses or simply being punished for celebrating before the fat lady sings it was a pretty depressing series to watch. At least if you're a Stephano fan.
But you gotta hand it to ForGG. In that second game he just kept playing the game as if he didn't know he was behind and in the third game he actually really played well.

ForGG vs. Stephano = 2-1


Luckily for those people cheering for foreigners Targa managed to take a surprising win against Hero in the last quarterfinal. Hero won the first set but Targa showed some really cool nerve for a relatively new guy on the scene and pulled off an impressive comeback.

TargA vs. HerO = 2-1