Members Only Crew

MLG Providence, The Tournament of Champions

MLG Providence is nearly upon us and the talent coming in to participate is going to be of the highest caliber at any MLG event to date. Earning positions from seeds through performing well at previous MLG events are:
Protoss: HuK, NaNiwa, KiWiKaKi, and MC
Terran: MMA, Bomber, SjoW, SeleCT, BoxeR, PuMa, and Rain
Zerg: IdrA, SLush, Ret, DongRaeGu, HayprO

But none of these players have anything close to a free ride to the finals. As if this list of players wasn’t intimidating enough, there is an even wider list of talent that is just as great coming up through the open bracket. This list includes, but is certainly not limited to:
Protoss: HerO, Oz, and Puzzle
Terran: Mvp, GanZi, MarineKing, and sC
Zerg: LosirA, viOlet, NesTea, and Leenock

Tune in this weekend for the action.

New GSL, New Ways to Shine

The GSL is back for a new season and this time, it’s been changed up. Adopting a new way of shuffling players that will hopefully result in less static lineups in Code S and Code A, GOM hopes to make the GSL a true tournament of champions where only the best are able to stay alive. As players are eliminated in the Code S bracket now, they drop into Code A and immediately begin work in that bracket. Code A has been increased to 48 players at the start. We here at Members Only Crew anticipate much better games to come this season with the new format.

Already advancing to the round of 16 are MMA, MC, sC, NesTea, Mvp, aLive, GanZi, and Leenock.

Predicted to join them in the round of 16 are Bomber, DongRaeGu, NaDa, TaeJa, SuperNoVa, Virus, Clide, and July. 

Not yet the Bonjwa!

GSL October is over and a new champion has been crowned. Long live the new king, SlayerS_MMA! In an intense GSL bracket that saw relative newcomer GanZi making the top four, Clide finally getting past the round of 16, and some finals quality matches between Nestea and MVP, things eventually boiled down to two important TvTs. Each TvT of the semifinals was an IM vs SlayerS match. GanZi attempted to dethrone favorite MVP from IM, but only managed to take one game before falling. From SlayerS, MMA was able to dispatch IM.Happy with relative ease. Meeting in the finals for the first time, both players had a lot to prove. MVP wanted to show the world that he was the dominant player in Starcraft 2 and a strong candidate to becoming the first Bonjwa. MMA wanted to make up for his disappointing second place finish in the Super Tournament earlier in the year. While MVP was heavily favored in the match, MMA’s Anaheim play kicked in (I call it Anaheim play because he has a tendency to perform well in major tournaments located in that city) and MMA beat MVP 4-1 in some intense TvT games. In front of a crowd of over 20,000 people live and even more around the world, MMA was crowned the GSL October Code S chamption. Congratulations to Team SlayerS on their first GSL Code S win and congratulations to MMA for an impressive show of skill this month.

MLG Orlando Is Coming!

Hi everyone, RunInSquares here. I know that being a foreign event, MLG is usually LastRedCoat’s territory, but he is actually going to be out of the office this weekend in order to attend MLG Orlando! Pictured above are the signs he will be holding up while there. If you’re going to be at the event, feel free to say hi to him. Additionally, you can tweet him @LastRedCoat. You can also tweet me throughout the event (or at any time, especially if you are in Seoul and want to say hi to me at a GSL event by tweeting @RunInSquares).

And without further ado, here are the [updated] predictions for MLG Orlando from Members Only Crew! The predictions below are only based on the pools as they currently stand and as we have seen, are likely to be inaccurate when a particularly skilled player makes it through the open bracket.

Pool A:
1st- Player from Open Bracket
2nd- EG.IdrA
We’re going to go out on a limb to predict an open bracket player taking this group which seems relatively easy. Their biggest competition will be IdrA who has recently been coming back into form. Will he have enough to top his group? We will see. 

Pool B:
1st- Startale.Bomber
2nd- EG.Puma 
It doesn’t matter which open bracket player makes it into this group, having Puma and Bomber in the group essentially locks it down and makes it easy to call. Bomber has to be the favorite to win this tournament, and while it is almost a certainty he will take his group, it is entirely possible that he will not claim the first place prize so easily. 

Pool C:
1st- FnaticRain
2nd- HongUnPrime.WE
HongUn as well as his teammate MarineKing will both see large amounts of success in this tournament. The only player that has a chance against HongUn in his pool is Rain. 

Pool D:
1st- Col.MVP.DongRaeGu
2nd- oGsMC
I have to agree with LastRedCoat’s predictions last time. While July will be a tough battle for MC, I believe he can edge him out to take second in the group. After seeing MC’s impressive showing in the group stage of IPL last weekend, I have confidence that he will beat HuK as well. 

Players to watch:
MarineKingPrime.WE- The man wearing the patch of Reddit, MarineKing will almost certainly smash through the open bracket and we will get the pleasure of seeing several broadcasted matches from him.
Stephano- After IPL, it became clear that Stephano is a foreigner force to be reckoned with. Look for him to place possibly as high as the top 10.

And of course, I’m sure LastRedCoat would like me to mention DeMusliM’s name here. We here at Members Only Crew (especially those of us with ties to the British Isles) will be pulling for him this weekend.

Have a good time watching MLG Orlando this coming weekend, everyone! 

Newest Code S Member: Startale.Curious

Congratulations to Startale.Curious on winning the GSL Code A tournament. Like SlayerS_GanZi of last season, Startale.Curious started this season of the GSL in the Code A preliminaries. In one season, Curious managed to go straight into Code S. He is a strong player and it will be interesting to see whether he can topple the strong core of Terrans still residing safely in Code S. While the finals of Code A were extremely disappointing, taking only an hour for the best of 7 including the break and postgame ceremony, it was still a hard fought battle for Curious who will have to work hard to maintain his Code S spot next season. As for FXOz who had an equally great run through Code A, he will have to try his luck in the up and down matches where he will face several non-Terran players who were dropped from Code S after the group stage.

GSTL Season 1 Champions Crowned!

Congratulations to Team MVP on their win in the first full season of the GSTL. All throughout the season, there were hard fought matches, right up until the finals. In the end, both of the number one seeded teams lost out and the finals were left with Team Prime (who took down the undefeated favorites, Team SCV Life) to get to the finals while MVP took down the winners of the other division (with only one loss, Team NSHoSeo) to earn their place in the finals match.

The match started with Check taking a win over Vampire to bring the early lead to Team Prime. After that, MVP’s Noblesse answered back with three wins over Check, Bumblebee, and (the hero of Prime vs TSL game who got 4 wins) Creator to put the favor squarely with Team MVP. Prime then put out BBoongBBoong to bring the team some wins and he did not disappoint, managing to take down Noblesse as well as MVP powerhouse Genius to tie up the series. MVP then put Keen in the drivers seat and let him play. With DongRaeGu waiting in the wings as the closer, it looked as though Team Prime was in a bad spot. Keen took down BBoongBBoong, putting Prime up against the wall, needing their next player to get 2 more wins before MVP could get one more. For their closing player, Team Prime wisely chose MarineKing. Keen managed to defeat him, thus securing victory for Team MVP.

Congrats to Team MVP on their excellent showing all season in the GSTL and thanks to GOMTV for hosting the games. We here at Members Only Crew can’t wait for the next season to start up.

IPL 3 Predictions

The 3rd IGN Pro League Tournament is starting up today in Atlantic City.  The Tournament runs through Sunday and has a $100,000 Prize Pool.  8 Invited players and 8 qualified players will battle it out for final bracket seeding and 256 players will compete for an additional 16 spots in the final bracket.  Popular streamer and locked out NBA player Gordon Hayward will be making his professional Starcraft debut.  Enough chit chat… on the the picks!

Pool A:
1. BoxeR
2. HuK
3. aLive
4. Stephano

Boxer generally brings his ‘A’ game to foreign tournaments, look for him to battle it out with HuK for seeding.

Pool B:
1. Strelok
2. MC
3. Ryung
4. Ret

I predict a strong showing for the best Ukrainian player not named ‘White-Ra,’ Also, look for MC to use IPL as a springboard for recapturing his Code ‘S’ spot at this months MLG.  Yes, we fanboy here at Members Only.

Pool C:
1. HerO
2. SeleCT
3. Sleep
4. ThorZaIN

What can man do against so much Korean?  Expect some great matches out of this group.

Pool D:
1. MMA
2. White-Ra
3. IdrA
4. TheStC 

IdrA hopes to carry in some momentum from his recent IEM win, but will be hard pressed to do so against the likes of MMA and White-Ra.

Remember, pool play is only for seeding, so all these players will have a chance to advance in the championship bracket regardless of their performance in pool play.  Many high level players will also be fighting through the open bracket for a chance at the championship bracket.  Keep a look out for: KiWiKaki, TT1, DeMusliM, CatZ, PuMa and others.