By BroOd and heyoka
The Roundup is back and ready to serve you another piping hot bowl of Starcraft II goodness. We’re still experimenting with the format, and we’d love to hear your feedback about what interests you and what doesn’t. Want more tournament coverage? More Blizzard focus? Let us know! For now though, pop that red pill and dive on in.
This week, Patch 13 lumbered in after a long night of drinking and had its way with more than a few tournaments. For a more complete look at the tournament scene, check out the Liquipedia Portal. Here’s some of the goings-on in the calamitous world that is Starcraft II Beta this week. (Be warned! Spoilers follow)
HDH Invitational
This massive bad boy of a tournament reached its climax this week with IdrA and White-Ra dueling it out for first place.
All right Mr. De Mille, I’m ready for my close-up
Establishing undeniable “beast” status, Aleksey "White-Ra" Krupnyk emerged the victor this weekend with a 4-2 victory over the formidable IdrA, bringing home a cool $2,000. IdrA didn’t leave empty handed though, as he earned $1,000 for his efforts. Check out the HDH Thread and say thanks to Husky and HDH for a great event. They’ll be getting the VODs of the finals and third place match between NonY and TLO up as soon as possible.
178 Asia vs Europe Starleague
Another rough week for the Europeans this time, with TLO pulling out the only win against a struggling Loner, 3-0. Zpux and Naniwa lost 1-3 to Dayfly and Ericpanda, respectively, while Haypro fell zvz to Gerrard, 0-3. TLO and Sen would then face off in what was shaping up to be an impressive set of games, only to have the third set game crash three consecutive times, at which point the match was postponed. The VODs, casted by the excellent Day[9] and Gretorp, are available on Day[9]’s Blip.tv page
Asia is riding roughshod over Europe
SC2CL Beta Clan Tournament
Due to Battle.net 2.0’s instability issues, this weekend’s playdates were postponed.
17173.com World Cup
After an intense round of qualifiers, we got some great quarterfinal action from the players in this international tournament this week. Dimaga managed to pull a 3-1 win over xiaOt, Check won out against KSJ 3-1, cool[fou] laid a 3-0 beating on upstart fan favorite NewLife and Maka brought home another 3-1 victory against F91. Dimaga will play Check, and cool will play Maka in the upcoming semi-final matches this weekend. To read about the tournament, check out the thread here or visit this thread to read up on some of the awesome Asian gamers in this tournament.
Kaspersky Cup
World-beater TLO has grabbed the spotlight again with an impressive 4-0 victory over Freedom, and his opponent from the other side of the aisle comes in the form of Sen, who took a 4-2 victory of the terran DeMuslim. If the Asia vs Europe Starleague games between these two heavyweights are any indication, the finals here will be some spectacular displays, so definitely don’t miss out on this. Check out the thread to get all the information, and be sure to tune in at 7:30 EDT on May 30th to see who takes home the $1500 prize.
You are nex
Check out the DC/NoVA LAN thread see some videos and read about the awesome LAN that went down last weekend. It’s enough to get anyone excited about the upcoming MSL finals LANs, like the ones in SoCal, Edminton and Waterloo!
Help out the TLPD by adding tournament results. There are still plenty of tournaments needed, so get clicking.
Take a page out of NonY’s handbook by exhaustively testing your build-orders by grabbing qxc’s build-order tester or isbunk’s updated Desert Oasis version.
Speaking of cool maps, you should also swing by the Map Design thread where you can vote and preview new maps, as well as the SC:BW to SCII Map Porting thread to check out some of your old favorites getting ready for play in SCII.
Looking for someone to practice with? The Practice Partner v5.0 thread is the one-stop-shop for gamers of all skill levels to find opponents, so check it out and add yourself to the ever-growing list.
The Patch 13 grenade exploded in our bunker this week. There were immediate problems everywhere, with games crashing or freezing, Battle.net experiencing extreme instability, and some users found themselves unable to play at all. Blizzard has created a thread listing their known issues, but it’s unclear how soon there will be a fix in place. Please be mindful of this before creating new threads about current problems you are experiencing. On the plus side, 3v3 and 4v4 gaming has been enabled, so grab a friend and try out some different gameplay on the new multiplayer maps!
There are threads and debates currently running in the Starcraft II Forum regarding everything from divisions to BNet 2.0 (and here and here) to censorship. Be sure to check out this controversial interview with Frank Pierce regarding the direction of Battle.net 2.0.
That concludes this issue of the Round-Up, thanks for reading! If you’ve got a tournament, stream, contest or other content you feel maybe of value to the Round-up, feel free pass it along. Until next week, Good Luck and Have Fun