BWCL Legacy Series - Part I - Duel of the Fates

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"history is who we are and why we are the way we are"

Broodwar.de's history goes back more than twenty years. Starting out with only a handful of users the page grew to dimensions nobody would've thought was possible. With names like BWCL, BW4Ever and the German National Team bw.de contributed significantly to the international community. Now it's time to preserve our legacy before it disappears in the fog of time.

The BWCL Legacy Series is our way to pass on the story of legends. We hope you'll not only enjoy the contet, but keep on following the game we love!

The first edition features probably the two best known German players and their clans. It describes their path to glory and fame, features several milestones and hopefully provides a good amount of nostalgia. Welcome to the "Duel of the Fates!".

  1. A Trip Down Memory Lane
  2. The New Titan
  3. The other Team
  4. Sell Outs and Die Hards
  5. The first Arena: BWCL
  6. The Duel starts: Dissy vs. Fish
  7. SEC 2005 Qualifiers - Battle for Glory
    1. Intro & Set 1
    2. Set 2
    3. Set 3 & 4
    4. Set 5 to 7
  8. One Last Attempt
  9. The Aftermath

Follow BWCL: On Twitter - On Discord

Sources:
BWCL - broodwar.de -BW4Ever -StarCraftGamers - World Gaming Tour - gosus.com -SCLegacy - TL.net / Liquipedia - archive.org
 
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1. A Trip Down Memory Lane

The year is 1998 and Brood War is only a few months old and Google wasn't even founded. The internet wasn't a technology readily available for the public and most of the German house holds were fortunate to dial into the world wide web via 56k modems. Video games were an exotic hobby at best, something often portrayed very negatively in the eyes of the masses. Yet, the first players, especially in the bigger cities, discovered the fascination that is Brood War.

Older students in high school and universities started to play regularly and some teams started forming. The initial teams were mere circles of friends testing each others skill somewhat regularly, or the same faces meeting in internet cafes. Meanwhile, tech savvy fans developed the first fan pages, mostly to exchange strategies and find opponents. Mind you, there were precurosry "versions" of replays in the making by modders mostly, but it would still take three years for Patch 1.08 to really enable the masses to record games in an easy way. Therefore, written battle reports were the most interesting resource to learn from, if you had the chance to stumble upon them. Additionally, it was quite hard to judge the skill of players, the only option was to browse public Battle.net's ladder system. Or rely on rumors spread informally through the old chat channels and trusting the comments in forums.

In this rather anonymous mass the early ancestor of broodwar.de could also be found. Quite soon its forums were the place to be if you wanted to know where and who to play. Back then, there was no way around forums and news posts if you wanted to have any idea about the game and the German national scene. Another core function of the page, a thing that is so basic it seems anyone takes it for granted, was more or less developed here as well: A filebase for maps. In the old times there was no fixed map pool to speak of and no way of knowing what you're playing on. There was no preview in B-net and editors had to be downloaded first.


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A Screen from bw.de's Website in 1999 via Archive.org. It could very well be shown this way with broken images in 1999, thanks to 56k Modem power.
The News headlines: "Brood War considered as one of the ten most brutal video games", "Star-Clan has a new Home Page", "Blizzard Map of the Week"
Note: "Vote for bw.de" to get have it linked on as many pages as possible (Google was still very new and worked not as well as it did today!)

Thanks to its functions bw.de became soon the place to be for Germans. Here you could not only find teams, but also events in or near your area, maps and discussions about the community as a whole. The first leagues and friendly wars were organized on its forums. Naturally, some of bw.de's users became famous rather quickly, either for their contributions to strategic discussions or their results in competitive events. Among them three names are important, especially in the context of the upcoming article: Kalaschni, Kosh and KoRn.


Kalaschni, for instance, was connected to the term 'Sauron Zerg', as he was successful using macro heavy strategies. In a time cannon rushes and other quirky things like hidden bases were legit, his approch was entirely different, especially when high latency prohibited the most fancy micromanagement tricks we use nowadays.
Kosh was one of the German players winning real money by playing. He was also the person having strong connections abroad, as he joined several American teams.
KoRn, to this day, will mostly remembered for other endeavours unrelated to Brood War - he became a big name in the online poker communtiy. He was also one of the driving forces for an ambitious plan: creating a professional team of the best players. Thus [DEF] - Dark Elite Forces was born in December 1998. Its roster was scary to say the least, yet the orginazation as a whole, wasn't perfect. Yet. The clan underwent some changes in the upcoming years and recruited big names from all around the world. Their name became iDEF ( around 2001), the i underlining the international character of the project. But that wasn't fancy enough, another name change had to happen to really give the project a brand.

And thus the reign of terror started: pro Gaming was born. The year is now 2002 and a new era of competition dawned on international Brood War.
 
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2. The New Titan

Some things never change in the Brood War community. Among the most popular topics are discussions of "who's best", which makes a lot of sense for fans of a competitive RTS game. Naturally, fans and players find systems to determine the strength of their favourite teams or players and then proceed to theorycraft scenarios day in and day out to bring their system of choice home. Yet, obviously, the best way to prove yourself is to win big. As big as you could.

In the early years of Brood War the German scene therefore featured tons and tons of tournaments, many of them hosted offline in internet cafes or in LANs. Aside from the competitive nature of the 1n1 tournaments those events were great to bond over a beer and observing a player in real time - which wasn't so easy to do online. A consequence of the focus on offline and small events in the German scene was an isolated perspective, it was just fun and games.

pro Gaming didn't do that at all, especially when you had good connections to the international community via the predecessor of TL, SCLegacy, WGTour, via Game-i Server or StarcraftGamers, netwars and reps.ru. The roster reached for the stars and thus recruited only the big names. Its German roster was good enough to dominate the rest of the German "fun" clans already, but their international roster was a class of its own.





Even back in 2002 it was clear that the best of the best played and competed in South Korea. Consequently the community often discussed who would have a chance against the professionals of the KeSPA regime. Some tried, the most known players being Canadian Protoss and OSL winner Grrrr and the French Terran Elky.

However, it seemed the gap between an ordinary KeSPA professional and a good foreigner was close and could be overcome. The player numbers of public Battle.net provided ample room for training games. Also, servers like Gamei and ladders like WGTour helped to put the skill of its playerbase in perspective. Futhermore, replays changed everything, now you could download them and watch them offline if your internet provider was too expensive.

Among pro Gaming's roster there were multiple players that were seen as worthy contenders for the title of "international king". One of their best players, back then, was Polish Zerg Blackman. To his name there was a myth attached: As he couldn't afford internet, or had hard times to connect to the world wide web, he was forced to train against custom programmed AIs. How much there is to the rumor remains unclear. Still, it is a fact that Blackman was definitely doing well in many tournaments. He was one of the players most fans thought being able to eliminate Koreans in huge tournaments.

In 2002 finally an arena put an end to such thought experiments: The World Cyber Games. Only the best players of each country could enter after long and highly competitive qualifiers. Blackman managed to enter rather easily, despite having to face strong opponents in his own country. Now it was his time to face a true master of the craft in the semi finals - BoxeR himself, the Lord of the Rines.



The game of Blackman underlined how crazy skilled the Korean emperor was. Now the discussion shifted slightly, a good foreigner probably needed access to Korea. Consequently only Elky, Grrrr or a person like Assem might do it.

Meanwhile, in Germany, a young boy made his first steps in the national scene. Fredrik "Fisheye" Keitel joined the strongest teams and quickly joined the national roster of pro Gaming. As one of his former team colleagues put it: "The new German elite smells like Fish". The Protoss was seen as strong contender before WCG 2002, but the tournament itself changed a lot. He was not only to survive his group, but also managed to overcome Grrrr in the Round of 16. This in itself was a huge message.

In the following year FiSheYe won and won and won basically everything he wanted to win. He was the star of the German National team. In nation wars he was the sure player getting a win for his nation, holding a win ratio of about 90% and more. The national qualifiers weren't a huge thing for the 18 year old from Berlin. There was no stopping him - at all. He wasn't "an addon" to the team anymore, he was one of the leading guard.

In 2003's edition of the World Cyber Games FiSheYe switched on his dominating mode: He came out top of his group, defeating the Korean Control convincingly in the process. Not only that, he destroyed Elky in the Quarter Finals, a seasoned KeSPA pro. Next up: Grrr in the semi finals. He also overcame him. The discussions across all fan pages went overboard at this stage, as Fish seemed to be THE guy to have a real shot at taking a World Cyber Games. The reason being his opponent was an Korean amateur himself - the Zerg ogogo.

Here is what happened next:


 

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3. The Other Team

In 1998 one of the other teams was founded by rather unknown players. Their focus wasn't on dominating the scene, but to simply have fun. Therefore the new team focussed mostly on team games on (Big Game) Hunters. Interestingly enough, this so-called "Mucho" scene seemed to be the drug of choice for some players who'd later become the strongest of them all. It didn't take long and this new clan - the Templars of Twilight - starting to explore the 'ordinary' maps as well. With this transition, more notable members joined.

At first the Templars were considered to be "decently skilled", meaning, a lot better than most other German teams. In their roster a couple of German National Team players could be found. Compared with the roster of pro Gaming the Templars seemed dwarfish at best. However, the original intention of the Templars was entirely different - it was a fun team, of mostly students and teenagers simply enjoying themselves.

Around the early 2000s a young Zerg from Bavaria, just 13 years old, signed up to the team, switching between team games and 1n1s, not picking any race at first. His name: Christoph "Mondragon" Semke.


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ToT)Mondragon(, early days
Mondragon was a very curious scholar and learned the trade very, very fast. He soon competed with the German elite and seemed to focus on the style that would later make him the most famed player of them all: Sauron. This term, Sauron Zerg, is now dropped the second time and for a good reason. Mondragon was not only inspired by Kalaschni (who named Mondragon as the 'funniest person of the scene' in his who-is-who interview on this page), but took the general idea and made it work. Really work.
The Zerg seemed to understand the match up against Protoss better than anyone, even though he still lacked the mechanics and experience to back up his strategy. But even back when you could see clear signs that Mr. Semke was a master of judging the situation, the map, the opponent and react with deadly precision.
Not only his understanding of the deeper meta-shifts of the match ups made Mondragon a class of its own, he was also one of Germanies all-time greats when it came to 2n2. By the end of 2003 his statistics in BWCL and the German teams were impressive and only equal to those of FiSheYe: 90% against the common opponent in 1n1 and 2n2.


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the statistics do not lie

In contrast to the Protoss of pro Gaming, Mondragon was only competing against mostly Germans at this point of time. In the international scene Mondragon was seen on ladders and clan leagues, but the major break through in international individual tournaments wasn't there. This 'Wunderkind' needed to deliver proof of his skill, as the German scene was still a somewhat isolated one - a big fish in a small pond so to speak.
 

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4. Sell-Outs and Die-Hards

pro Gaming and the Templars could not have been more different in their way of organizing a team. By the end of 2002 it was pretty clear that the German wing of pG and the entirety of ToT were on eye-level - more or less. And thusly any war between those two monsters of the scene was reason enough to discuss things outside of the game. Fans tend to cheer for the team they like, and that's usually where things get complicated, especially when there's not much in common.

The Templars were the clan every active player knew, it was organized just like anyone would organize a fun team. The goal wasn't to cash as much as possible, it wasn't much about hype, it was about being competitive in a fun world. For recruitment skill was a requirement, sure, but not the only cirteria.
On the other side was pro Gaming, with the self-declared goal to dominate. Its organization was semi-professional and reminds the ordinary reader at football teams like Bayern München or Red Bull Leipzig. If there's talent, make sure to acquire them when they're still available. Steal them from other teams if need be.

Their "stars", FiSheYe and Mondragon respectively, couldn't have been more different. FiSheYe played exhibition games on the international scene, went to LANs abroad and competed in the World Cyber Games. He was feared, he was covered, he gave interviews. Mondragon, the 14 year old high school student, played some Hunters with friends and casually improved behind the scenes.
pro Gaming did not really have a fixed rosters if there was no money. They participated in BWCL, but only with the German wing. The Templars entered everything, it didn't matter if there was money to be won or not.

Regardless of where you went, people not only discussed which team was better, without a question pro Gaming, at least the international roster, was unbeatable and a true giant. The Templars however were portrayed as the underdog, but the underdog you desperatly wanted to cheer for, as they were more likable.​


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And for a long while it seemed there was no stopping for the Templars. In 2001 they became champions of the BWCL for the first time, winning the 4th season with 48 out 54 possible points. Towards the end of 2002 ToT won a total of five out of eleven seasons. By the end of 2003, as you can see in the screen shot, the Templars also had about 50% of players of the German A Roster in Nation Wars. They were definitely a force to be reckoned with.

This sets up the perfect narrative and was pure gold to editors: The duel of the Fates: Could ToT now beat pG? Which philosophy would win? Those of the alleged "Sell Outs" or the "Die Hards"?

The question was on everyone's mind and the theorycrafting reached new heights. The only problem was: ToT competed in a lot of unpaid events, while pG, especially their pro-Roster around Fisheye, was focussing on 'serious' venues that were partially restricted access to the players of the Templars. For most things you had to qualify first or needed a standing invitation. In this regard pG had a monumental advantage due to their network.

Hence, the chances of finding out were limited to a few venues. First off, there were 1n1 tournaments, in which members from both teams participated. Yet, those didn't have the atmosphere of a classic derby to them, and the feeling of "pG vs ToT" wasn't attached to them. Then, at least in Germany, a look at the German Team Qualification system was a "nice to have" - at least here some parts of the pG vs ToT roster happened. This also wasn't fulfilling the ring the term derby has to it.

Was a fight set up only in the minds of fans, a fight that would never really happen anyway?

 

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5. The first Arena: BWCL

Since pro Gaming expanded aggressively and had German roots, they did enter the BWCL, despite there not being monetary gains at first. BWCL was always an important measure for the German National Team to judge if an invite to a player would be a smart idea or a qualifier would be needed first. From this perspective the BWCL at least had some potential for pG to it.

However, the clash was bound to happen between the German wing of pro Gaming and thus would probably feature quite good players, but not the elite of the team. Eventually it did not matter, as the Germans were looking forward to any kind of match between the two so different teams. Whenever a clan war was set up, the replay download numbers sky rocketed over night. For a good reason, the games reached a quality not seen in regular matches.

There are no audio comments left of what happened in the early 2002 years, so we sadly can't provide an ordinary video. But still, this article is meant to be nostalgic, consequently a Battle Report is due. This is how we rolled back then anyway!

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Socke[pG], Protoss vs ToT)Mondragon(, Protoss

2004: pro Gaming finally faces the Templars in the BWCL. Socke, despite his young age, is already one of the strongest players of the German scene, being a member of the A-National-Roster, as well as having qualified for the WCG 2002. Mondragon on the other hand is seen as "one of the best / second best" player in Germany. On this map, Hall of Valhalla, Mondragon race picked Protoss to dodge the allegedly imalanced PvZ on semi-island maps. #1 Slot vs #1 Slot, the best of both teams go up against each other. Replay available at www.bwreplays.com .



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6. The Duel starts: Dissy vs. Fish

Towards the end of 2003 the first generation of Brood War players seemed to fade, as KoRn, Kalaschni and Kosh became more and more inactive. This left room for young people to fill their ranks. It seemed it was now FiSheYe's era, nobody could touch him, at least in the German area.

However, the Battle Report showed that Mondragon was just sitting there and waiting for his break through. Socke was by no means a weak opponent, more like a Top 10 or even Top 5 player. So the question changed from: is ToT the better team to is Mondragon the player to take the throne?

The situation was slightly odd. FiSheYe's last serious appearance was the WCG 2003 finals, in which he was defeated in such a tight match by a South Korean. The Protoss took a slight detour around 2003/2004, needed to focus on school and tested out his skill in WarCraft 3, the new up- and coming RTS. But still, FiSh was a strange player, at least seen from nowaday's standard. He had a lot of arguments on his side.
First and foremost: He had experience and the best training network you could dream of as European not living in South Korea. He went on to the big stages in both off- and online events. And experience counts in so many regards. Psychology starts to matter, the higher you climb the ratings and the tournament stages, the more pressure is on your shoulders. In this area Fisheye was top of his class, ice cold and seasoned despite his young age.
Also, experience showed in just knowing what to expect. Today players must have very strong mechancis, as every opening in the book aims to macro a lot straight from the start, the maps are quite similar to each other and not many strategic variance is to be expected. Back in Fisheye's era this was different. More players picked random, semi- or full air maps were used and the map pool rotated heavily without being thorughly tested first. Not all micro tricks were discovered, nobody - just to give an example - knew how to stack mutalisks. Futhermore, there's a huge difference between 2004 Battle.net latency and offline latency. Some things work online, some things work only offline. Switching back and forth isn't easy.



FiSheYe vs. Trek, WCG 2004, showing FiSh adapting to the situation at hand


FiSheYe could cope with all the complicated strategies, knew the maps and could train against someone like Eriador[pG] aka. LiquidDrone - a guy who "invented" the Pylon Prison. The Protoss had a relatively low APM, even for old day standards, around 150 to 180 in total. But that was more than enough, he could adapt to strange situations very, very fast and in return knew what to do to win the game strategically. You could never be 100% sure what to expect from the Protoss. His key was versatility.

Mondragon on the other hand also had stuff to show for. He also gathered a lot of experience and his "mucho background" enable him to think outside of the box. His allies were no push overs either and some of them were also quite creative. It wasn't for a lack of training, even offline tournaments were a standard thing for the Templars.
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Mondragon Cheerful by RUS_Brain



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Mondragon's strategy analysed - By Völkerballtier


What spoke most for Mondragon, as time showed, was his ability to re-think the dimension of certain match ups, most importantly the match up against Protoss. This was a huge bonus for the Bavarian Zerg, as he was so efficient to steer a game in his direction from the get go. What later became a meme, the "Dissy Lings", would enable him to have runs of 47 wins against only 2 losses in the TSL 2008 ladder stage. But in 2004, Mondragon's capability were still in the making and limited.


The inevitable clash between the two monsters happened in Summer 2004, as FiSheYe finally came back from his six month absence and trained for the GIGA Grandslam. GIGA TV is the predeccesor of ESL TV, which still covers eSports. The broadcasting station tried to cover video gaming on national television.
As most projects of the "eSports world", GIGA started out chaotically to phrase it nicely. Their station was hard to receive if you weren't living in a larger city. Their casters probably had no professional training, but compensated their lack of knowledge about the game with sheer passion. As a consequence "community guests" were invited to commentate and create a narrative. The consequence was a hilarious talk between the experts and the GIGA crew, where both parties tried way too hard to make something happen. As bas as this sounds, the atmosphere was still a very innocent and fun one. As a matter of fact most of the old guard still have very fond memories of those streams.

Since Brood War was already seven years old when the GIGA Grandslam was announced, the broadcasting station wasn’t sure whether or not enough people would tune in to watch a seemingly outdated game of an outdated genre with a more recent title being popular (WarCraft III). As passionate as GIGA was, they still had to make ends meet. Therefore "polls" were held, in which the public could vote which video game would be sponsored by GIGA - the more votes, the more money.
This was quite silly again, in a time where the internet was new, this seem like a legit way to test the waters. So, the thing happened what everyone but GIGA knew would happen: The German BW scene went to TL, SCLegacy, WGTour and StarcraftGamers to rig the shit out of the polls. This is just a sidenote, though.


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Budi, a GIGA commentator, later MTV moderator and now YouTube personality



Each Grandslam opened with a ladder phase, for which every German could register. On Giga’s page a ‘fast challenge’ button (that’s why the ladder phase were called fast challenges) was installed, which told a player his next opponent. Everyone lost and won points this way. The leading player of the ranking qualified – every third day the leader was picked. It was a bit of gambling, but it worked out quite well, the German elite did qualify. Mondragon and FiSheYe started out in different groups. While the Zerg made it through as first, the Protoss finished second, showing unusal sloppy plays against weaker opponents like ToT)Rob(.


Again, a lot of pro-Gaming members made it through – Hexer, FiSheYe, Dashwriter and Breakdown, the most familiar faces of all. It was up to Mondragon to stop the horde, to show David has chances against Goliath. FiSheYe knocked out Dashwriter in a relatively close series 2-1 and Mondragon defeated Breakdown with the same score in a mirror match. Next Up: Semi Finals FiSheYe vs. Mondragon.


At this point of time the entire match was covered at the GIGA Studios and was broadcasted. Instead of providing replays, the best of three was streamed – but both VODs and replays are missing. Same for Battle Reports. I remember this match a bit, it wasn’t that good and did not live up to the expectations. Fish still suffered a bit from his inactivity and Mondragon basically outsmarted him entirely: 2-0, a white wash.


The finals were a bit better, Hexer was up against Mondragon, pretty much the best Protoss of this month against Europe’s strongest Zerg.


The next clash of 2004 between the two German legends was during the World Cyber Games Preliminaries in Leipzig. GIGA was responsible to cover this event as well. Now, a combination of semi-professional GIGA and World Cyber Games Germany could only end bad in terms of archiving. Guess what, sources are offline again. Long story short, Mondragon and FiSheYe started in opposite sides of the bracket and basically smashed the competition. They met in the winner bracket finale for the first time. This meant both already had a ticket for the main event. The prizes for first and second place were pretty much hardware only, so they didn’t give much incentive. As a result both played odd – picked random and so on and so forth. Fish lost 2-0, went down, defeated the German Gum (a Zerg) and lost another two sets to Mondragon in the Overall finales. It’s really horrible, to not show you games, they might’ve not been top notch, but still entertaining.
 

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7. SEC 2005 Qualifiers - Battle for Glory

In late 2005 the official World Cyber Games tried to expand a bit to the European market. They wanted to create regional tournaments, for example the Panamerican Championships, which Day[9] won. In Europe, the Samsung European Championship was hosted and featured a bunch of the best Europe had to offer – among them Androide. However, the fights between the Russian and Mondragon are a totally different story, so are the SEC.


Important was, that Germany only had one spot for the event. Theoretically, the best German in the WCG 2004 would get this spot. There was no ‘best German player’ in WCG 2004, both Mondragon and FiSheYe had to fight for it in a best of seven. Ironically, FiSheYe, Mondragon and Androide were considered as the favourites. Meaning, whoever would win in the German finals would also be most likely to face the Russian Terran in the overall finals. Since FiSheYe really did train for this event and Mondragon was still more than just active, it was on. More than just on. While fans only talked about such a derby before, now the fans got in huge fights, they cheered, they were thrilled and this time they were not disappointed – the best series between Germans was about to happen!

Set 1

The map for the first set was Dahlia of Jungle. This map is not quite common, as most maps used for the ECG qualification. Since ECG was a spin-off of the original World Cyber Games ‘the most recent’ maps had to be played, not all of which reflected the current meta game and made up for potential imbalances. However, this map could be considered at least somewhat ok-ish. It had four spawning positions, a middle with two briges between the main space and the corners, an in-base mineral only expansion and ramps. The mineral expansion could be attacked from the outside rather easily, all that was needed was some air unit or floating building to gain vision. Thirds weren’t that hard to take, as the bridges to the middle made contains possible.


In the first set of the best of seven Mondragon spawned on the 3 o’clock position, whereas FiSheYe started on the 12. Both opened with a more or less common build order.

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The brown Protoss went for a single gate, gas, a zealot and tried to expand early on in his mineral expansion. The orange Zerg on the other hand played pool first and expanded towards his corner expo in order to get a second gas, which is so helpful for his race. After a few more scouts and ling fake attacks the game speeded up a bit. Mondragon got rid of FiSh’s scouting probe and expanded a second time to his mineral only, while going for a lair. FiSheYe meanwhile added a single dragoon and and a star port. Furthermore, he was able to sneak out a single probe, which his opponent was unware of. After almost seven minutes of cold war the Protoss tried to feel how his opponent’s expansions would be like – a dragoon and four zealots faked an attack on Mondragon’s gas expansion, which was already well defended.

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FiSheYe’s characteristic game came through – he used his hidden probe to build a pylon and three cannons right behind Mondragon’s expansion. This was a rather useless move, he had no vision of the minerals, at least not yet. Mondragon did take map control with his initial lurkers, burrowed them right in front of his enemy’s ramp and thusly tried to stall any incoming attack. Meanwhile, he already prepared a few mutalisks, which proceeded to succesfully harass and kill FiSheYe’s undefended natural only. The Protoss reacted quickly, snuck out another probe with the help of a drop ship, flew over to Mondragon’s mineral only and dropped a three zealots. Result: both traded expansions. That wasn’t all, after all, the best two Europeans fought: FiSheYe expanded in his corner and was able to defend it against the incoming mutalisks!

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Obviously, Mondragon would not have been in the finals if he would be bad at scouting. He knew about FiSheYe’s expansion, had access and swiftly killed it. The brown Protoss now had to react and did so without thinking for too long: He simply ignored the four lurkers and run over them with a couple of Archons and Zealots, heading towards Mondragon’s gas expansion, to deal another heavy blow. But that wasn’t all, Mondragon took the 6 o’clock main base and its gas expansion in the bottom left corner – which FiSheYe tried to prevent with two dark templars. The Zerg, still busy to a) kill FiSheYe’s hidden expansion, b) watching the entire mini map and c) defending his own initial and most important bases, missed to fulfill all his tasks. He did well for a), the top right corner base was destroyed, his first gas expo was defended, but the 6 o’clock base died and moreover, FiSh was able to take the top left corner base – with another sneaky probe. This happened within another three or four minutes!

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This basically is a glimpse of how the entire game went: Mondragon controlled the key areas of the map, while FiSheYe did his best to sneak around the Zerg’s vision – either to expand (most times successfully), or because he wanted to take down morphing hatcheries. This went so-so for FiSh, his attacks never really slowed his opponent down, but he was able to re-take not only his own corner position, but also sneak into 3 o’clocks mineral only. As soon as the first pylon was done, FiSheYe usually also warped in tons of cannons. After 15 minutes of back and forth play, the situation was a bit weird – FiSh’s main was empty, so was his natural, Mondragon was constantly trying to get his economy really running; quite hard to do if you get a few Zeals here and there or a drop. However, Mondragon did have enough of it, moved in with his main army and tried to just kill FiSh’s main – and FiSh thought he’d use this seemingly advantage to take down three of Mondragon’s Expos (6 o’clock main + its natural + 5 o’clock corner base).

9ogdQyf.png


zASGlYq.png


The screens show it pretty well, FiSheYe could take down the six o’clock, but had no chances on the other two positions. Meanwhile his base was gone. To make it short, this was a deadly blow. Obviously, the Protoss from Berlin would not give up, Mondragon was about to run out of minerals in his main, did not have his natural only and was on low economy. However, he could re-inforce rather easily, while his opponent had no opportunity to invest in anything but cannons, pylons and gateways. FiSh could hang on and even get back on his feet thanks to brilliant multi tasking, but lost in the long run, as soon as Mondragon had enough Cracklings, Ultras and Defilers to end it.


This was a bit sad, as the first half of the game was way, way better than most could dare to dream, yet, the second half was basically Mondragon against 1a attacks of cheap zealots. It did take a while, but the key move was over, FiSh was out as soon as he gave up his main base.​

Mondragon 1 - 0 FiSheYe
 

GeckoVOD

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Set 2

Let’s stay on outdated maps, shall we. The second set used Gorky Park aka. Gorky Islands. I never found out if there was a difference in between these two versions and didn’t really bother to check Liquipedia, because it really doesn’t matter. It has four spawning positions, each located in the corners of the map. And it’s downward imbalanced for Zerg, most likely the reason why FiSheYe picked it in the first place – like any other semi-air map, it does favour strong Air Units, which means Protoss has an in-built advantage. All main bases are located on a plateau; a cliff is behind every starting positions, which allows Terran to expand quickyl with a CC, simply lift and you got it. The sourrounding area is either ice or a grassland tile set. On first you can’t built, on second you can.​

aEGqO8A.jpg


Now, since Zerg has a disadvantage Mondragon went for random – a wise move. FiSheYe did so too, simply to force Dissy to scout rather than to prepare a build order designed to kill of Protoss right away. Consequently both played with their off races – which both were good with either way (see Mondragon vs. Socke) – FiSheYe spawned as yellow Terran on bottom left, Mondragon as purple Protoss on bottom right. Like on any other given air map the game started off really, really slow. Both had to play blind, as both didn’t know what they were up against. FiSheYe played a lot more agressive and went for a CC right away to immediately expand to his cliff expansion, while Mondragon opened with the usual defensive tech. Then again, the Protoss (this time and for the rest of set 2 means Dissy) added the Star Portal rather than a robotics in order to scout fast. FiSh, the Terran (see last sentence, same true for Fish and Terran), had a serious advantage due to his early on expo. He went for Mech straight away, a good choice against any race, and prepared to drop and scout with his useless buildings – his barracks and his ebay. This went quite well, Mondragon could only drop with a huge delay, thanks to his corsair. However, FiSh’s drop ships were also quite late, the sacrifice for a early expansion. As a result the Protoss simply dropped four Dragoons on the Terran’s cliff – which denied mining for a long time.​

ft5U5ET.png


Afterwards Mondragon tried to expand to the low ground ressources on the 3 o’clock position only to get scanned right away. At this point the Terran wasn’t able to prevent this expo from going up, but again used all his dropships to sneak out a few SCVs and three vultures. The SCVs prepared an expansion on the cliff of top left, while the Vultures harassed Mondragon’s new base – not too successful. Meanwhile, Protoss dropped FiSh’s cliff again, this time without any result but exploding archons.​

dGqPpMw.png


Mondragon started to transfer his units to the low ground, he was probably expecting the first real threats against his newly done expansion. He also tried to take the top right cliff expansion, thinking he could defend that better. FiSheYe kept a good overview, used his scanners all the time and knew quite well where to attack – Dissy’s main was completely empty. Hence, a giant drop there killed a lot of mining probes, made it impossible for his opponent to react fast enough and killed a number of buildings. Meanwhile Dissy took revenge and killed FiSheYe’s top right expansions and took the cliff 11 o’clock himself; FiSheYe abused his knowledge and did the same to Mondragon’s 2 o’clock cliff, but also expanded on the 9 o’clock low ground spot.​

0Huc7RN.png


To round up the game – it wasn’t too exciting if you expected the same amount of multitasking the first set featured. FiSheYe abused his knowledge of the match up more than just well – he was always at least three steps ahead of Mondragon. The Protoss basically only survived because he was top notch when it came to mechancis and was able to trade his units excaptionally well against a superior army. Mondragon exchanged his cliff expansions against a better stance on the low ground – he took the 12 o’clock low ground expo – and had his main army roaming around the vast space under the plateaus. He also was able to build up to four carriers. With his army he could take down FiSh’s 9 o’clock low ground – at least for a bit. Still, the Terran had the upper left completely under his control and a superior economy.​

6Ksiaay.png


The last screen shot shows Mondragon’s biggest problem – he was running out of minerals. His 12 expo wasn’t up, the main and cliff expo were out of minerals entirely. FiSheYe launched a really, really huge attack after he lost his 9 o’clock. Mondragon was in serious problems now, he had less and less fighting units and was left with a handful of High Templars and Carriers. Again, thanks to his superior control he could destroy almost all of the push and furthermore deny the re-inforcements from dealing even more damage.​

j4Bt3E1.png


However, the end was inevitable. Mondragon had to make a move, FiSheYe was already too big. He went all-in and launched a bigger attack on the top left main expansion – and found himself in a nightmare of turrets, Goliaths and Siege Tanks. GG, it was over.

SMebPoF.png


Mondragon 1 - 1 FiSheYe
 

GeckoVOD

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Set 3

The third set was another really odd map, at least by today’s standards. Korhal of Ceres is a two player map, spawning positions are the 11 o’clock and the 5 o’clock positions in the corners. There’s no real middle ground here, just a long path between two main bases with large chokes on even maps, which makes wall-ins really hard. Wall-ins are quite useless, too, as each main base has a second entrance, a ramp, which leads down to a mineral only. Then, there’s still more silly stuff – a lot of paths leading around the entire map, narrow enough to make sure you want to kill dragoons for their stupidity, pathes that lead to some expansions, but not to the others, allow for a lot of hidden attacks. All in all, it does favour Zerg a lot, at least today’s play would make it impossible to win as Protoss.​


bnhM8DG.jpg


FiSheye started out as orange Protoss on the top position, Mondragon as purple Zerg on the bottom one. This time, FiSheYe went for a rather standard semi-Rush/semi-Tech opening. He added a single Gateway, a Forge and took his gas early on. Mondragon on the other hand took his backdoor mineral only first, massed some lings to be safe against a hardcore rush and only then took the gas expansion in the middle. After five minute of safe play FiSheYe started a first attack with five zealots, while sneaking out a single probe to scout for the less usual expansion spots. He must’ve known he’d run into problems, but he tried to fight on Mondragon’s gas expo – needless to say he lost all his Zealots right away. Mondragon’s sunken timing came perfectly.​

tvMblg8.png


In the following minutes nothing serious happened. Obviously, FiSheYe simply had to cannon ‘rush’ his opponent again. Means, he simply placed a plyon and a cannon on the ridge behind his opponent’s backdoor expansion. This was a futile effort, too easy and too late, it went down after killing a single drone. Meanwhile, the Protoss tried to take both – his backdoor and his middle expansion – and was denied by a handfull of lings on both. FiSheYe needed an expo, so he chose his backdoor, easier to defend, at least on a first glimpse. Mondragon already had Mutalisks and tried to harass the natural of Fish, but could only stall. However, this game for time was good for Zerg, he was able to take a third expansion on the spot right above his spawning position. In the following minutes a lot of Muta harass and Fake Ling attacks went down, while FiSheYe’s army, consisting out of a control group of Zeals and one Archon tried to find a weak spot. There was no weak spot, he could not reach Mondragon’s new base. His tactic was easy – threaten the Zerg and hope for to get a few more bases going. Futile effort again, Mondragon ruled with iron grip. After ten minutes of back and forth FiSheYe could find a weak spot – he splitted his army in two parts, one half suiciding and thusly engaging Mondragon’s army, while the other ‘half’ took down his opponent’s “safe” new third expansion​

GNKaN3t.jpg


Mondragon tried to counter, he saw that he would lose his base anyways. FiSheYe and defended with ease, he already knew that would be coming. This is the only reason this game wasn’t over, as the Zerg was already on a Hive tech, while FiSh only controlled a second gas for a minute by now. Also, his main gas was almost empty – not an ideal situation when your opponent is about to get a bunch of Cracklings. Turns out, the Cracklings weren’t the problem, the Greater Spire was. Mondragon did use Guardians as soon as he could build them and abused the cliffs to deny mining or kill probes. He also sent out a number of Cracklings to harass FiSh’s backdoor.​

U2mmnOv.png


Z8MOBWW.png


The next five minutes was the same happening again and again. FiSheYe used his High Templars to storm the Guardians or Cracklings, while Mondragon could take down the backdoor – but that wasn’t too bad, it was already about mined out. He however missed to deny FiSh’s expansion below his main base. The game dragged on, the Protoss got more and more useless Archons and a great number of Zealots. With them he tried to take down Mondragon’s fifth expansion – bottom left – and did quite well, as he lost only cheap zealots. At one point FiSh had to realize he would have no more chance if he didn’t do something. Hence, he went all-in and pushed towards Mondragon’s main with full force. At first, it seemed to work out well, he broke Mondragon’s middle base easily, but then, Ultralisks. Ultralisks end everything if they are supported by three running bases.

wjOFMsR.png


Mondragon 2 - 1 FiSheYe


Set 4

The fourth set was obviously FiSh’s pick again. Gorky Park. And both played random. Again. Both did not get their main races – again. A reptition. Almost – FiSheYe spawend as Zerg on the 2 o’clock main, Mondragon spawned as Terran on the direct opposite position.

OoSkVmI.jpg


This game started fairly standard and ended fairly standard. It’s probably the least exciting of all the series, so we keep it fairly short. Mondragon went straight for mech, but unlike FiSh he did not expand. FiSheYe went for Spire and Overlord Drop right away and also expanded twice – on his cliff and on the 12 o’clock. He started to harass Mondragon, denied early transfers and kept him in his base. Mech off of one gas doesn’t work, Mutalisks supported by three however does. That’s the story in short. No fancy hanky panky hit&run by FisheYe, no LanLatency. These kind of games were boring. It ended with FiSheYe having four bases and massing mutas, while Mondragon tried one really big go, which couldn’t do shit. FiSheYe’s creep was covered with dozens of sunkens. Once Mondragon left his main base, it was open for three control groups of mutas. GG. Also, mass fights never happened, FiSh simply outplayed Mondragon.​

KdSpiJA.png


Mondragon 2 - 2 FiSheYe
 

GeckoVOD

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Set 5

The map for the fifth set was Mondragon’s choice: Martian Cross. Or Chow Chow. Seriously, I do not get why the WCG Map Pool needs two names per map. At all, there honestly is no difference. Regardless. The map is – by nowaday’s standards – still quite imbalanced, but together with Dahlia of Jungle the more or less familiar thing. It is another four player map, again all starting positions are in the corners. Each position has a usual natural with gas and everything. The walking distances are really long though, the choke is on even ground, no ramps, which makes defense against masses of lings rather unpleasant. Anyhow, you should now the map – keep this in mind – FiSheYe’s game against TreK was linked already.​

estX914.jpg


Both players started with their main race for a change, FiSheYe being the yellow Protoss on 2 o’clock, Mondragon as red Zerg on bottom left. Mondragon’s standard opening on this map was a 9 Pool Speed, FiSheYe went for some sort of modern Fast Expansion (without any Sim City, it’s futile there): Two cannons, a Pylon one Forge. Both played rather safe, Mondragon added a lot of lings to prepare for a run-by into FiSh’s main, but also put down two more hatcheries, one of which was the standard expansion hatch. FiSh knew about the run-by danger and defended his main with a second pylon and a third cannon there. Mondragon didn’t know and tried. He got in with most of his lings, but couldn’t do anything. The situation was tied.​

Nus2r7I.png


The passive style of both went on for a while. FiSheYe added the usual tech, skipped the Corsairs and tried to attack with his first five zealots. That was kind of useless, as they took ages to get down to the cross position, just to see Mondragon’s Hydra Den being done. However, FiSheYe went for a third, this time directly behind his natural expansion. Mondragon tried to take advantage of this spread-out bases with Mutalisks and a lot of speed lings. At first, it paid off, as he could take down almost all of FiSheYe’s cannons in the natural, but lost too many units to the close-by third base cannons.​

whUjl1l.png


Theoretically, this was really, really bad for Zerg. He was still on two bases against three, the Protoss was about to start to macro like a mad man. Consequently Mondragon took his own third and fourth in one go. Positions: The 9 o’clock and the 5 o’clock main base. FiSheYe was getting greedy and tried to take the 3 o’clock expansion. Mondragon punished him heavily with his first lurkers, abusing the fact that his opponent had no robotic facility yet – and supported this push with the little air units he had left.​

xv821IS.png


Now the tides turned within a minute. FiSheYe’s main was under siege, an observer was a long time away, he could do nothing to prevent Mondragon from raising his expansions. Futhermore, the Zerg put a Lurker behind FiSheYe’s third and denied mining there. However, at that time Mondragon should have focussed on Economy, his fourth and fifth hatch was still just up. He did not, he underestimated FiSheYe’s timing – observers were out two minutes later. Mondragon wanted to end it right there and tried to bust his opponent’s third with a lot of hydralisks he should’ve better used to contain. Meanwhile, FiSheYe took the 11 o’clock main and secured it with a lot of cannons.​

I6NFO9X.png


Mondragon spotted the expansions only seconds later and knew he was in trouble again. The base was already quite fortified with six cannons, so more than just a handful of Speedlings were needed. Consequently the Zerg moved the main part of his army to the top base, which was still not running. FiSheYe reacted and destroyed the 4 o’clock main with ease, while taking the 3 o’clock for good.​

1ZvMlYQ.png


Mondragon, now being on a hive but only on two and a half gas, was in real problem. He tried to attack FiSheYe’s third again, failed again, the game was over. The remains of his small army were simply crushed by FiSheYe’s maxed out army within seconds.

oGhJwaE.png


Mondragon 2 - 3 FiSheYe


Set 6

I now regret to have said the fourth set was a silly and one sided one, because the sixth set was also rather disappointing. For some reason FiSheYe picked Zerg or random on Dahlia of Jungle, while Mondragon spawned with his main race. I honestly have no idea what it is with FiSh and picking Terran vs. a beastly Zerg in deciding games, because he had a realistic shot to end it all. So, to save you some time, let’s just say the “Protoss” (Terran) opened with two Barrackes, followed by a Factory and two Starports – only to build a wraith, a dropship and a control group of M&M. His goal was probably to confuse the shit out of Mondragon and it worked well at first. Mondragon played really, really passive and went for map control and Hydra/Ling/Lurk. Then he saw FiSheYe’s build order was no order but build chaos and dropped him to death. Well, to be fair, FiSh did some good drops here and there, but that’s not what you do against Mondragon. Not really. He might be bad against Terran, but not that bad.​

7AMK6du.png


Mondragon 3 - 3 FiSheYe


Set 7 - The Decider

To no fault of his own Mondragon was forced to go into a decider. FiSheYe’s map pick was once again Martian Cross. Both played their main races. However, this time the starting positions were reversed.

jZ7C3Aj.jpg


This time the strategies used were almost the same as in the first set on Chow Chow. Mondragon with a 9 Pool Speed and FiSheYe with a Fast Expansion, playing it safe all the way. However, not really, he tried his tricks again. See for yourself, you know where it will lead.

sGjmse9.jpg


So, while the FiSheYe vs TreK game was still quite fun to watch, Mondragon vs FiSh with the same strategy wasn’t exactly. It was basically the same as the WCG VOD, but Mondragon knew how to react. He controlled FiSh’s natural expansion for hours, at least that’s what it seemed and killed off any expansion as soon as any Probe showed up. No chance for FiSh – GG, a close series 4-3! The old king is dead, all hail the new king!
 

GeckoVOD

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8. One last Attempt

The story wasn’t over. Since Androide was seen as one of the strongest foreigners in history, Mondragon was now seen as the champion. Well, the rivalry wasn’t over and again isn’t part of this article. FiSheYe still sat in Berlin, waiting. He, too, was back, his series showed it how close it was when both met – and other than Androide he was forced to take on Mondragon in his very best Match Up. A Match up Mondragon was soo good at, that he destroyed KeSPA Professional ZeuS in a show match. Well, for now, the three of them were tied, with the Russian participating in only few events. Germany had more events.


Next in line was the Giga Grandslam IV – again this was possible thanks to rigged polls. And again both met a few times, twice in Group stage and once in the overall finals.


Even though FiSheYe did lose again it wasn’t over for him. He fought his way back to the top and qualified for the overall finals. The first map was Parallel Lines – a true air map, which meant that the Protoss had an advantage. Mondragon tried to circumvent this by going for random, so FiSheYe couldn’t unfold his strategic genious right away. FiSheYe did the same, both picked random and the match started.


The Giga Grandslam final had settled it – FiSheYe was defeated and Mondragon now replaced him as best German and best European player. The games were close, closer than most thought, yet FiSheYe couldn’t help but die to Dissy’s incredible Zerg vs. Protoss. Most fans liked this new trend, as the young Protoss wasn’t that easy to cheer for at times. He was friendly, trustworthy, all that, but also said what he thought. Shortly before his WarCraft III switch he told the world he was somewhat fed up with the old game, which sounded a bit awkward. He also always stressed out, that he was confident in his play, that he saw himself as a clear favourite. Well, that is honest, you have to hand it to him, yet it also had a touch of arrogance to it.

 

GeckoVOD

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9. The Aftermath

Mondragon was always modest, he would always tell the world that he was the inferior player, praise his opponent’s strength and so on and so forth. While this sounded charming at first, it slowly got boring. If you read that before any clan war, minor tournament or nation war match, it sounded artificial. Yet, if he would have acted like FiSheYe, most people would have critized him either way.


All in all the Templars and Mondragon as their leading player were still everyone’s darling, while pro-Gaming and FiSheYe were still Goliath, an enemy you wanted to lose deep down in your heart. In July 2005 this changed. A lot. FiSheye and Breakdown announced that they left pro-Gaming, which seemed to be a hard blow. They were argueably the best Germans of pG’s roster and seen as two favourites for the upcoming World Cyber Games. Only four days later the next rumors spread: pro-Gaming was no more. At least all the international super stars were gone, FiSheYe and Breakdown’s departure was just the start of an exodus. That alone wasn’t the problem, a lot of eSports fans saw it coming, as the Counter Strike roster was always a source for trouble. At first the players weren’t paid, some of their members were caught hacking and so on and so forth – quite bad for the serious clan’s public relations.


The real surprise – and that’s a giant understatement – was the people who would replace pG.BW’s roster. Nobody than the Templars of Twilight joined, completely, and now claimed the [pG] tag for their own. Mondragon’s team, so loved for their traditional values, now seemed to go after the big money, contracts and artificial professionalism. This caused a major uproad: within hours after the initial news on GosuGamers dozens and dozens of people complained and argued and wondered how this could happen.


As bad as this news seemed to be at first, Mondragon’s crew did their best to promote their new team. They played against various Korean Amateurs or even entire guilds – and made a really good show out of it. However, it didn’t take long, in November 2005 the clan was back at their home, pG.BW was dying, with or without them, the scandals of the other squads were too much.

The real rivalry was over with this news – pG was dead, FiSheYe was found a new home: eSa Lehnitz, a German multi gaming clan, who also recruited Breakdown. All the other good German pro-Gaming members were scattered among several clans, some like Socke or Dashwriter were thinking about retirement, most found a temporary team elsewhere, before Meet Your Members was founded. That however is also a different story.

In the months after Mondragon’s and Fish’s clash in Giga Grandslam the fight also slowed down. The Zerg had to take his final exams, just like FiSheYe a few months before him, and hence wasn’t participating in WCG Germany 2005. The Preliminaries were won by Breakdown, FiSheYe came in as runner-up and made it to the main event a fifth time in a row. In the main event he advanced from group stage, only losing a single set against the dominating pro-gamer XelloS[yG]. He beat Testie, who was seen as the best foreigner after Mondragon, with a clear 2-0 in the Round of 16 and lost to the eventual winner ForU in the Quarters. His WCG History so far: 2nd, twice Quarter Finals, once Round of 16, once failed to advance from group stage. An impressing achievement, he was argueably the most successful foreigner when it came to the WCGs so far.

Back in Germany, in late 2005, FiSheYe qualified a third time for the Giga Grandslam. He had it easy, Mondragon was still MIA, nobody was there to stop him. He eventually took the second Giga gold, this time over the up and coming new talent Schnibl0r with a really clear 2-0. Nothing the youngster could do.

And this is where the story ends – FiSheYe’s last tournament and he went out with a blow. He gave a lot of statements in early January that he now – and for sure this time – was done with Brood War for good. He did try to qualify for WCG Germany 2006 again, succeeded, but lost to Mondragon and Schnibl0r in less good games. He was simply not interested anymore. He resigned, as he already said, once he missed his spot for WCG 2006. A hero left the scene, one of the legends you rarely see.

In retrospect, the rivarly was never present in news. Nobody really noticed how both players and the clans struggled, at least not back then. There was so much going on – the WCGs, the Giga Grandslams, multiple LANs, big leagues – the fight between these two always happened between the lines. Surely, both parties made it to the headlines, at least the scandal did, yet it is a good example of how exciting foreign Brood War used to be.

BWCL's part in the story wasn't a big one, but it was one of the arenas in which a storyline like this could be born.​
 

Celetuiw

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I might need to take an evening of everything else to read it! Amazing, thx!

Here's your cross-linked article on Tl.net
 
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Holy cow this is amazing, i almost have forgotten the story about about Blackman. As soon as i saw the starting positions of Blackman vs Boxer i remembered exactly how the game went its amazing how memory works.
(KoRn was the one who casted this in english, since u mentioned KoRn right before might be worth mentioning it)
I noticed some similarity between Blackman and Rain about the storys told about them not playing much themself but rather practicing/planing out their builds without real opponents.
I need to find more time to read the rest.

some small mistakes found in your second post
Koksh=Kosh
December 2018=1998?

i think u should publish the whole article to Teamliquid without linking it to further reads to broodwar.de, arent we way past the need to relinking anything now that we are free from ingame?
I am for advertising the BWCL and mentioning broodwar.net as a home for BWCL but dont force people to it.
 
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Celetuiw

StarCraft: Brood War
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Holy cow this is amazing, i almost have forgotten the story about about Blackman. As soon as i saw the starting positions of Blackman vs Boxer i remembered exactly how the game went its amazing how memory works.
(KoRn was the one who casted this in english, since u mentioned KoRn right before might be worth mentioning it)
I noticed some similarity between Blackman and Rain about the storys told about them not playing much themself but rather practicing/planing out their builds without real opponents.
I need to find more time to read the rest.

some small mistakes found in your second post
Koksh=Kosh
December 2018=1998?

i think u should publish the whole article to Teamliquid without linking it to further reads to broodwar.de, arent we way past the need to relinking anything now that we are free from ingame?
I am for advertising the BWCL and mentioning broodwar.net as a home for BWCL but dont force people to it.

It's our free choice to repost our full articles elsewhere yes. Technically that hasn't been a problem when we were still ingame.de too, as far as i know at least.

We chose to post this as link mainly in order to guide readers here, correct.
Secondly: it would've been real work to reformat the whole article on tl.net.
Thanks for your opinion on the matter!
 

GeckoVOD

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Holy cow this is amazing, i almost have forgotten the story about about Blackman. As soon as i saw the starting positions of Blackman vs Boxer i remembered exactly how the game went its amazing how memory works.
(KoRn was the one who casted this in english, since u mentioned KoRn right before might be worth mentioning it)
I noticed some similarity between Blackman and Rain about the storys told about them not playing much themself but rather practicing/planing out their builds without real opponents.
I need to find more time to read the rest.

some small mistakes found in your second post
Koksh=Kosh
December 2018=1998?

i think u should publish the whole article to Teamliquid without linking it to further reads to broodwar.de, arent we way past the need to relinking anything now that we are free from ingame?
I am for advertising the BWCL and mentioning broodwar.net as a home for BWCL but dont force people to it.
Thanks for the corrections and the feedback, gonna correct them soon-ish.

As for TL and other related 3rd party pages, there are several (good) reasons for our strategy of publishing so to speak:

- This is our side and we want to archive the history, because the main page (For now) doesn't exist anymore. Our heritage is here, not elsewhere.
- we can directly influence the presentation of the article here (starting with proof reading, ending in publishing), doing styles and other things on other pages is a ton more work that's not needed and in most cases not doable. futhermore, other pages have other restrictions for content presentation that we do not have here (e.g. pic limit per page or policy on using memes and whatnot)
- everyone can read without registration and everyone's privacy is kept
 
Oben