Two months ago, TeamLiquid had an ambition of bringing the Korean StarLeague experience to the rest of the world. The various members of our staff brought a unique blend of talent and motivation which has created a buzz unlike anything that has come before. The only thing missing was a company who was willing to sponsor a vision rather than look at data. A company that was willing to support an unproven product based on reputation, not revenue streams. A company that understood "community".
Until now. We at TeamLiquid are delighted to announce that our baby has a name, and that name is the Razer TSL. After extensive negotiations we have come to an agreement in which Razer will not only sponsor the entire prize pool of the TSL, but also the substantial cost of streaming the games live to you, the fans. We are delighted to be working with them, and hope that the upcoming league surpasses all expectations.
In an industry notoriously lacking in willing sponsors, Razer has been at the forefront of supporting eSports in all it's manifestations. They are currently supporting twenty-one teams, the top WCIII progamers, as well as numerous LAN events. The Razer TSL, however, represents a step into uncharted territory. We are thankful for their trust, and will do our best to prove that TL is a worthy investment.
In the coming days, TL will be launching a new page dedicated completely to the Razer TSL. In addition, Razer will be more than a silent partner. They will be taking an active interest in the tournament, hosting their own TSL page with a "Guess the TSL Champion" contest.
For more information on Razer and how they support eSports, check out their eSports page at:
There is a good mix of players who competed to get out of this group. There were representatives from each of the three races. Some veteran and accomplished players were back for more action and they were joined by some newer blood, looking for a first shot at glory. With such a blend of players, anyone had a reasonable shot at getting out of this group.
Though the game appears to begin fairly standard, Lucifer decided to add a pair of gateways as a proxy not too far from Nada’s main. The gateways begin warping out in the field as Lucifer techs directly to templar archives within his main.
Nada manages to get a turret near his ramp just as the first pair of dark templar arrives. But dragoons lay waste to the detector allowing the templar to be sneaky and take out a couple tanks before they can pull back into the relative safety of the main while Nada’s expansion attempt seems hopeless as reinforcements arrive.
Dark templar soon pour into the base and remove the remaining tanks in quick fashion. The rest of the game is a formality as Nada does not have enough combat units left to defend against the invasion.
This was not a particularly impressive game by either player. As Goodfriend was taking down Shark’s second expansion, the Zerg forces decide it’s a good time to launch an assault on the Terran natural, where they run into two bunkers and change, which is enough of a defense to make them turn back.
As Goodfriend runs parts of his army around, looking to squish rising expansions, Shark pushes eight lurkers along with the mutalisks he didn’t clumsily lose into the Terran natural, just before the arrival of science vessels. Lurkers press forward into the main, scattering about and proving themselves to be more than Goodfriend can handle.
Zerglings rush in, buildings lift off… and we all know how it generally goes from there.
Lucifer keeps Shark from getting into his base with any sort of offensive. Shark goes on to show the audience how hydralisks lose to a bunch of cannons and psionic storms. Lucifer just lets Shark overextend in his attacks. He then inches forward and destroys the next Zerg legion as Shark runs into a bunch more storms.
Nada as the Yellow Terran and Goodfriend as the Red Terran.
An early metal scuffle leads back toward Nada’s expansion, where he is able to fend off the attackers. Goodfriend makes use of mines to remove defending enemy siege tanks, but after several attempts is not able to deal enough damage to push in.
Nada gets several dropships out before Goodfriend even has an operational starport. The air mobility helps him defend an expansion with few losses to his own armada. Soon with five to none dropship superiority, Nada has complete command of the battlefield. He takes hold of his lead and runs with it to victory.
Nada kept up pressure on Shark throughout the game and keeping the harassment off of himself. And when it came time for the Terran hero to defend, he did so successfully, putting Shark further to the disadvantage.
The Coliseum is where the heroes rise and everyone else turns to dust. It is only appropriate that one of the greatest heroes of Brood War emerged victorious from this battle in a convincing win.
Advancing from this group are both the youngest and oldest players. Both the least and most experienced. None of the games were particularly exciting, the players who brought better game walked away with the win in each case. Whether you enjoy seeing the greats of the game continue to do well or you enjoy seeing potential champions on their rise to glory, the results from this group deliver for future excitement in this season’s MSL.
The first weekend of TSL video broadcasts will be: Saturday, May 10 - 16:30 EST / 22:30 CET Sunday, May 11 - 16:30 EST / 22:30 CET The stream link will be posted closer to the broadcast time. Casters include Artosis, Chill, Manifesto7 and Yannis.
Due to lag and player scheduling issues, games will be played immediately before the broadcast, and the broadcast will show the replays of the games right after the games finish. The casters will not know the results or how many games were played. The players will be forbidden to leak results until the end of broadcast. Thus, while it is not "truly live," it is the first time anyone will have seen the replays of the games. We have exhaustively tested all live broadcast possibilities and this semi-live solution is closest thing to a live experience that we can accomplish while being fair to both the viewers and players.
After the broadcasts are over, we will not be releasing replays but rather VODs of the games. TeamLiquid StarLeague Round of 16 Day 1 Saturday, May 10 - 16:30 EST / 22:30 CET
Tell your parents, tell your friends, tell everyone you know. Get some chips get some drinks and settle in, because the TSL is coming straight to your monitor in all its glory. The broadcast is going to blow you away!
In the meantime, feel free to check out all the TSL related stuff going on right now:
With top representatives of the three races, plus cannon fodder in the form of a cuddly cherub, this group shaped up to be one of the best in the current MSL. The hype / live report thread can be found here, with an excellent OP by Aesop.
Despite hardware issues, Jaedong presented a dominant exposition in the debut game for Arena MSL, leading from start to finish. His early zerglings forced Bisu to think defensively, his hydralisks fended off the feared dark templar, and the mutalisks came just in time to block Kim’s dragoon/high templar assault.
From then on, the push against Bisu’s third followed by the one-two combination against main and natural ended the brutal, one-sided farce of a match. Many audience members may have expected a longer, closer match akin to their previous Blue Storm meeting, but instead saw a vicious rape.
FrOzean likes his cheese; Hwasin, knowing this, made a slightly early barracks. That sums up the entire progression of the game, as FrOzean was never able to catch up and Hwasin dispatched him at leisure. Aside from some cute wraith moves by FrOzean, this was a rather dull and uninspired game.
What could have been a great set was spoiled by Jaedong’s incredibly horrid mouse. You could tell his control was off all game, as his mutalisks failed to demonstrate their usual vigor and his lurkers were no problem, being above the land.
All in all a stupid game. Jaedong should have switched mice. Hwasin played standard – nothing spectacular – but Jaedong’s absolutely atrocious control would probably have let FrOzean win as well.
Lacklustre performance by Bisu meets even worse by Frozean. Bisu’s PvT showed none of its GOM-2 form, but Frozean’s dawdling allowed Bisu to win a painfully drawn-out match.
Another ridiculous stompfest, as Jaedong’s zerg proves way too much for Bisu to handle. The scout lings, the muta-scourge control, the hydra sniping, everything was just perfectly done with Jaedong’s new Logitech Optical Mini. The only thing missing was a successful shuttle kill; if one more hit impacted then that would have been quite amazing.
As it is, Bisu is once again eliminated from his first group, and the defending MSL champ moves on to the ro16.
The better players advanced. All is right with the world. The only regret is Jaedong vs Hwasin; without mouse issues it could have been a great game. A TvZ master and ZvT master on a new gas-heavy strategic-oriented map – a recipe for great games. Hopefully we'll be treated to it later on in MSL.
Download the full replay pack of Ro32 Day 2 replays here (spoilers): TSL Ro32 Day 2 Replays
Day 2 is now over! Check below for detailed results and replays.
If you want to view the results without spoilers, you can either download the reps one by one or all at once. If there is no third game the replay will simply not be the correct one. Results and Replays
So we come to the twilight phase of Round 1 and glance back on what has already been a better tournament than Bacchus OSL. As strange as it may seem, we have come to the end of the first round of the OSL. Yes, that was very short! At the moment we have 12 players qualified for the OSL - and tonight we find the remaining 4 to join them. Regrettably, Manifesto7 was unable to save his report thanks to some computer troubles [read: power failure] so this post will be double length!
Group E was one of the better groups on show in the OSL. We had Sea/Deazang/Jangbi/Xellos all fighting for two spots - and what a show we were given. Breaking it down player by player how could you not be excited? Sea and Daezang are both similarly styled gamers and thus should create a really exciting game for us first up, while JangBi is on fire against a questionably formed Xellos. So let's see how everything went down in this group.
Like i said in my preview post, when you get two players of similar style on a map that just begs for creativity and map abuse you're going to get a great game. Daezang opened up strong, but his lack of macro cost him in the long run. Sea played super agressive as well, true vintage Sea, which fully abused Daezang's slowing hands. That being said, this was an excellent game and a nice comeback win for sea.
This was a rather sad game for any Xellos fan. Jangbi really ran away with his reaver harass and well, put on an entertaining show for the viewers. Although Xellos was note happy - he did storm out of his booth looking unusually angry. Nevertheless Jangbi looked very solid
This really was the most likely combination to advance, so no real upsets here. JangBi showed here that he's actually rather flexible and opted for Dark Templar drops - which proved to be very effective indeed. On top of that he decided to prove a point to Sea and followed up his Dark Templar antics with a fearsome macro - quite impressive actually. And with that victory he goes 9-1 against Terran in recent times with a 70% all time winrate against Terran; quite scary.
Dark Templar seemed to be loved on this map - and i suppose for good reason. Daezang shows us his interpretation of DT on Andromeda again Xellos and once again find success with the little ninjas. From there he was firmly in control and built up a strong economy which in turn overran a badly underdeveloped Xellos. DT's seem to be coming back in fashion! On a random note, Daezang played with 300+ APM this game so he's not getting slower in his old age!
And so we see the two combatants from round one duke it out yet again - yay! On the sad side of things one of these truly great players needs to be eliminated... As noted in the previews, both players know how to exploit a map perfectly - and Daezang showed us this right at the start when he narrowed Sea's choke by killing his assimilators. And well, Daezang picked up from the strong start and followed into a strong and logical midgame. Then we entered the somewhat standard carrier vs expanding terran game which is always interesting to watch. And then Sea manages to macro up a ton of Goliaths and blasts his way to another comeback victory; moral of the day: if you dont' have the mechanics, you ain't going to qualify for a starleague
And now comes the group i just can't be excited about.. None of these players are going to win the OSL and will be knocked out with relative ease in the nest round. Nevertheless this was my assigned group and i will do my best to remain professional no matter how boring these games are. Obviously i have about 0% interest in this very anti-climatic end to Rnd 1. Oh well.
There was a mildly entertaining micro tussle at the start of the match, where upmagic got way behind when he lost way to many units early on. And then things just went down hill for upmagic.. His vulture tricks never really took off and Rock had his gameplan totally sorted - and he came away with the result. I can't blame him either - especially when your opponent plays so bad.
This game was an epic failure.. Yarnc tried to do some cute stuff like sac'ing his overlord to scout for tech and BestGod doing some Dark Templar antics - but at the end of the day Yarnc was less of a handicap and raped BestGod with pure mutalisks. At least i can't be disappointed because i didn't have any expectations xD
I was actually surprised with this game. Rock reverted back to the incredibly manly Goon/Reaver strategy and Yarnc countered it beautifully with pure Hydra with burrow. There were critical moments where Yarnc was able to snipe critical shuttles and ultimately out play Rock and take the win. This game, i guess, it redemption for that last game
God was clearly begging UpMagic to win this game, most notably when BestGod gifted his Shuttle into Up's turrets, and his reaver's scarabs glitching on a clump of ~10 SCVs but alas... Up was not listening. This was a very uninspired game and a rather boring drawn out slug fest - and ultimately BestGod (against all odds) dominated UpMagic..
This game was an epic failure by BestGod. Well done on Rock using Dark Templars to win the path to victory.. and well what a very anti-climatic ending to Round 1 haha.
So, to recap; Rock > UpMagic Yarnc > BestGod <-- Yarnc advances! Yarnc > Rock BestGod > UpMagic Rock > BestGod <-- Rock advances!
And well, one can't help but be underwhelmed by that lineup - and most nostably the lack of Jaedong and Savior.
So what happens next? Well it's highly likely that there will be a group drawing for the OSL groups sometime this week - which should be awesome as always. And from there, we should have games the following week. Awesome Both myself and Mani well be there bringing you premiere coverage of this prestigious league (and please don't forget about it in the hype of TSL ) and you may just see the return of a certain long lost TL feature...
Day 1 of the TSL Ro32 Qualifiers are now over. Due to a technical issue, half of Group C will be played on Tuesday, May 6.
Download the full replay pack of 18 Day 2 replays here (spoilers): TSL Ro32 Day 1 Replays
Schedule The day's schedule of matches is as follows. + Show Spoiler +
Saturday, May 3, 2008 GROUP A 07:00 PST / 10:00 EST / 14:00 GMT / 16:00 CET @ Channel Op TSL_Admin #1 ToT)Mondragon( < Bo3 > #32 ToT)GOsia( #16 LRM)MIStrZZZLegenD < Bo3 > #17 (48) Legionnaire Winner < Bo3 > Winner Loser < Bo3 > Loser Winner < Bo3 > Loser
GROUP H 07:00 PST / 10:00 EST / 14:00 GMT / 16:00 CET @ Channel Op TSL_Kennigit #8 ToT)SquaLL( < Bo3 > #25 (40) RoX.Advokate #9 T.SQD)Kr < Bo3 > #24 MYM.Dreiven Winner < Bo3 > Winner Loser < Bo3 > Loser Winner < Bo3 > Loser
GROUP C 11:00 PST / 14:00 EST / 18:00 GMT / 20:00 CET @ Channel Op TSL_Admin #3 LRM)Yayba < Bo3 > #30 (35) HayprO #14 ret[Media] < Bo3 > #19 Excello.CaStrO Winner < Bo3 > Winner Loser < Bo3 > Loser Winner < Bo3 > Loser
GROUP E 11:00 PST / 14:00 EST / 18:00 GMT / 20:00 CET @ Channel Op TSL_Kennigit #5 ToT)XiaOzI( < Bo3 > #28 3D.Notforu #12 MYM.White-Ra < Bo3 > #21 (44) fuSion.Rondo Winner < Bo3 > Winner Loser < Bo3 > Loser Winner < Bo3 > Loser
Live Commentary We will be providing live commentary of select matches from each group. Barring any lag issues, Hotbid, Chill, Artosis, Vaul, PsyonicReaver and vGl-RaGe will be covering from each group: an opening match, the winner's final and the final game.
RADIO #1: http://hatchery.teamliquid.net:8101/
RADIO #2: http://hatchery.teamliquid.net:8102/
Copy and paste the stream link into a MEDIA PLAYER of your choice. Opening them in your web browser will not work! Recommended player is VLC, WinAmp should also work.
Note that there will be a 15 minute delay on all streams so as not to affect match results
8 of today's players will be advancing to the TSL which will have live video coverage and VODs so be sure to tune in!
If you want to view the results without spoilers, you can either download the reps one by one or all at once. If there is no third game the replay will simply not be the correct one.
Continue to check this thread throughout the day for updates
Winners: Yayba vs. Ret/Castro Game 1 Winners: Yayba vs. Ret/Castro Game 2 Winners: Yayba vs. Ret/Castro Game 3 Losers: Haypro vs. Ret/Castro Game 1 Losers: Haypro vs. Ret/Castro Game 2 Losers: Haypro vs. Ret/Castro Game 3
After years of reading the best, now you can look the best. We are proudly presenting the first edition of the TeamLiquid T-shirt.
We wanted to make a shirt that was:
A) Affordable, this one is only 10 bucks plus shipping. B) Original, JellyCat's logo has been the unofficial logo for TL since the Sandlot Tournament. It kicks ass. C) A magnet for the ladies, if you wear this, I promise some girl will come up and say "is that a guardian in the grass?"
You can order with either a credit card or paypal. The shirt will be shipped directly to your house. Only 100 are available in the first batch! Based on how well these go we can order more, but I'm sure you would rather have a first edition.
Two months ago, TeamLiquid had an ambition of bringing the Korean StarLeague experience to the rest of the world. The various members of our staff brought a unique blend of talent and motivation which has created a buzz unlike anything that has come before. The only thing missing was a company who was willing to sponsor a vision rather than look at data. A company that was willing to support an unproven product based on reputation, not revenue streams. A company that understood "community".
Manifesto7 and Yannis.
Excello.IefNaij vs. 
ToT)ClouD(
Retired_Draco vs. 
MYM.Strelok
T.SQD)Kr vs. 
Idra[Media]
RoX.BRAT_OK vs. 
HayprO
ret[Media] vs. 
MYM.DinOt vs. 
ToT)Mondragon( vs. 
Plexa
Legionnaire
ToT)SquaLL( < Bo3 > #25 (40) 
Excello.CaStrO
