Mondragon
I'm creating this thread because so many players new to the Starcraft scene don't know about Mondragon because they came from another game, so I thought I'd create this post to let all the newer players get to know him before he blows up on the scene.
So if you played BW at all, you know about this guy, but I'm guessing that many reading this haven't so let me introduce you. Christoph "Mondragon" Semke was one of the greatest foreign BW players of all time. He was the lead/captain of the Clan Templars of Twilight, perhaps one of the greatest clans of the time boasting players you might have heard of, such as
Ret
Haypro
iNcontroL
SEn
Testie
just to name a few
The cool thing about mondragon is you never knew what you were going to get. He always seemed to say in his interviews that he was out of practice and he didn't know if he was going to do well in a tournement, then he'd go out and dominate the place. iNc and IdrA said it pretty well on a recent SotG...
IdrA: First time in the history of any game that Mondragon said he was going to practice
Tyler: Yeah, It's True
iNc: It's actually a momentous moment, because standard Mondragon procedure is like 'Well, I'm not in the best shape, I've have to do my studies, I find the game quite boring but I feel like through the help of my friends and my team I might not lose in the first round' then he's in the finals and is like 'surprise surprise'
Mondragon was/is so exciting in that way, he's always that Dark Horse of the tourney. Despite his practice regimen, he's so talented. Protoss players hated Mondragon in BW because he popularized an overpool speed zergling run by strategy to punish protoss forge FE's that were improperly placed going 47-1 on the TSL ladder v protoss, one of the hardest ladders in BW. He then went on to place second in probably the biggest foreign BW tournament, TSL 2 to NonY (LiquidTyler).
Check out this TL Attack! VOD featuring Mondragon where he wins convincingly over NonY in the smurf match.
There aren't a lot of replays out there of mondragon in SC2, but that shouldn't be a surprise. I believe we're going to see a surprising showing from Mondragon in this upcoming year, with Mondragon taking his place among IdrA, Nestea and Ret as the best zergs of Starcraft 2. So go out there and support your zerg champions Team Liquid denizens, here's to hoping for a good showing. Head over to the TSL3 forum and build some hype, tell a friend, Hide yo' Husbands, hide yo' kids, 'cause Mondragon's gonna be rapin' everybody in this upcoming year.
I'll leave you with a quote from Tasteless that encapsulates the spirit of Mondragon...
"He is a monster [...] I actually once saw this guy rip a nerd's heart out and eat it just for asking him what race he played. He's a complete animal"