More Starcraft 2 tournaments outside of Korea! Patience is the key….Fighting for the good cause.


GSL, TSL, NASL, SL is in the name of the game.
With a bunch of new tournaments showing up everywhere around the world that offer a new level of competition for the E-sport community, Starcraft 2 is becoming a giant on the field. One of the most ambitious new tournaments thus far: NASL (North American Star League), has filled their brackets with most of the top players one can find around the world for SC2. I, as much as everyone, hope that the NASL will be a success, as it gives us non-Koreans another big league (next to the TSL, Pokerstrategy Team liquid Star League) that can rival the size of the Korean GSL tournament.

 Dan “Artosis” Stemkoski  & Nick “Tasteless” Plott commentating at the Korean GSL tournament.


Sadly there are some issues right now with the NASL that will really make it a hit or miss kind of thing. One of the big concerns right now is the fact that the top teams carrying all the best players, are only allowed up to 5 players of the team roster to apply and play in the NASL. While this gives smaller teams and even unknown teams a better chance of participating in this grand event, it also causes the player pool of the tournament to decrease in quality. The future will tell if this will be a success or if it falls short to the GSL. *(NASL has removed the 5 per team rule shortly after this article was released)*

Then there is another issue: NASL wants to have a story behind every battle. Obviously this will be a lot easier if players from the big teams, and even from the same team clash against each other to battle it out for the #1 spot. The way it looks with the current setup though, it seems they will have a hard time getting the stories right.

All in all, it is good to see more life being blazed into the E-sport world outside of Korea. With the TSL and the NASL, E-sports can get a real boost to popularity and acceptance and grant more options to the pro's.

 Main page of the North American Star League


Patience is the key...

With all these inspiring developments going on, I feel like I could not have picked a better time to try my hand at becoming a great player myself. After a few gosucoaching lessons, endless archive digging in the educational Day[9] files and podcasts, and a long and elaborate email response from none other than my hero Grubby, I feel ready!

Except, getting a chronic sinusitis makes playing 1v1 games a lot rougher then I had hoped for, yet not impossible. The antibiotics are finally kicking in after 2 weeks, allowing me to sneak a few games in already at the start of the new ladder season. Playing only at 50% of what I am capable of, I still managed to keep a positive record thus far, standing at the edge of promotion from top diamond league into the master league. Luckily the downtime of the infection brought more good things to the table then bad things.

Day[9] having one of his crazy moments during his live SC2 analysis stream

Despite a delay in my journey upwards, it has allowed me to carefully read all the notes from the conversations with the pro’s a dozen times. This and a nice dose of patience make sure that I can now train with the right methods and mindset, find mistakes way easier, and know exactly how to improve and handle defeat. I am currently starting to face the lower echelons of the master league, and it will only be a matter of time before I can cross that threshold and get closer to the goal of becoming a pro.


Fighting for the good cause.

As we all know, Japan has recently suffered many losses as result of a frightening earthquake, followed by a tsunami that made a lot of casualties, too many people lost someone they loved over there. To be of help, the biggest tournament organiser/broadcasting station of the Starcraft 2 E-sport scene, GOMtv, running the prestigious GSL, has decided to stream their tournaments for free for a while. In return, they would love the viewers to donate anything they can miss to a fund to help Japan to recover from their losses, and stabilize the situation.

This shows that E-sport doesn’t only allow for a different path to success and fulfilment in life, it also shows that the E-sport scene cares about all that goes on around us. Our hearts of course still go out to the Japanese families, and we all hope that things will get better soon.

~MasaYume signing off

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