[SLCN.Kez]

It’s that time of the year again when nerds start preparing build orders, stressing about their micro, discussing with their comrades which race is the most imbalanced and personal hygiene is even more non-existent. Yes people it is time for another Australia Cyber League.

This ACL will mark the culmination of a hard year practicing and mastering this beautiful game called Starcraft 2. We started off the year having to practice Wings of Liberty for a Heart of the Swarm Final in Brisbane, where we saw KingKong follow the bloodline of his kinsmen and take foreigners money.

The second city to hold this event was of course Melbourne where we saw Iaguz dominate a nearly all-Zerg field to take the 1st place trophy along with some Vitamin C.

Now the time has come where the Grand Finals are up for grab, and you get to make your run for ‘Player of the year’ and cement your place among histories greats, unfortunately many of which chose fit to retire this year.

Coming into the ACL Sydney Grand Finals the layout of competition is as open as it has ever been. Moonglade has been having troubles finding his usual domination, partly at the hands of his team mate Rossi. Pig is placing well in many tournaments but struggling to string together consistent wins after his back to back ACL Melbourne 2012 and WCS Australia victories. Petraeus is showing #dedication but not #results with 2nd place finishes to his team mate Iaguz. Lastly after taking ACL Melbourne 2013, Avcon Arena 2013 and IEM Shanghai qualification, Iaguz is looking like the heavy favourite pending how many of the Zerg race he will face. Throw in recent solid performances of talent from SLCN in Pezz, Stoicwilly and Arze, coupled with old hands Poker, Megafonzie, Myuu and Hut, this tournament suddenly feels like it’s a race for 1st place and certain E-sports money and fame.

Format: Round Robin, top 3 Advance into Single Elimination bracket, 1st place bypasses 1st round.

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Group most likely to get Open Bracket winner:

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• Fray’Petraeus
• Av.Poker
• ToT.Afhrait
• Fray'Ninja

This group should see young gun Petraeus take a relatively comfortable 1st place, but stranger things have happened in SEA tournaments. Poker is a very solid, gifted zerg who is no slouch in the mirror match-up, but Petraeus has cemented himself somewhat king of the zerg vs zerg.

Next is Ninja who has had somewhat of a quiet 2013 compared to his #patchzerg domination in 2012, but is still a strong zerg who will be looking to have a good performance to round out his year. Lastly Afhrait will be trying to get people to remember his name and possibly even spell it correctly.

Pending no big open bracket players this group will see the following:

1. Petraeus
2. Poker
3. Ninja
4. Afhrait

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Team kill:

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• x5.Pig
• x5.Megafonzie
• Fray’Hut
• SLCN.Arze

Apparently the beer and snag gods of Australia do not look down kindly upon x5, with yet another Megafonzie vs Pig team kill. These two met at ACL Melbourne with Pig taking a comfortable victory 2-0. Megafonzie will be practicing hard to show his master what the young apprentice has to offer, meanwhile Hut will be attempting to show people he doesn’t have and addiction to 11/11 and can indeed macro it with the best. With Arze rounding out the group after a solid breakout performance at ACL Melbourne it would be prudent for viewers to keep an eye on this Protoss deviant, even if only to come up with funny puns for dat Arze.

This group is extremely hard to predict as Widow mines still haven’t been nerfed,Pig has been vulnerable to Terran and Protoss in the past and Arze is a protoss and a wildcard. This group shouldn’t be too worried about getting strong open bracket contenders barring any brave or stupid decisions from said open bracket players.

1. Pig
2. Megafonzie
3. Arze
4. Hut

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They took err jobs

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• Av.KingKong
• Nv.Moonglade
• Av.Myuu
• Ecko.Schnitzel

Being a recent addition to this group Moonglade will be looking to retake his place as Australia's top Zerg player. The 'Prince of Blades' has been up to his usual tricks, remaining quite hidden in recent months whilst he practices in his lair with Kerrigan standing over his shoulder instructing him how to best use her swarm.
However, in the past KingKong has won various Australian tournaments and taken our E-sports dollars consistently, showing he not only has the talent but also the 불알 of steel needed. Myuu is a fantastic young player but has been struck down with a terrible case of the LoLs. He’ll have to muster every ounce of 15 y.o blood in him to have the lack of fear all young guns seem to posses to take 1st place in this group. Lastly we have Schnitzel who despite being a delicious meal also appears to have come out of nowhere and secured himself a top 16 spot at this years grand finals, a fantastic feat showing that hard work does indeed pay off.

1. Moonglade
2. KingKong
3. Myuu
4. Schnitzel

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Group of Death

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• Fray’Iaguz
• Nv.Rossi
• SLCN.Pezz
• SLCN.Stoicwilly

In my opinion the most interesting group of the 4, group D will give Iaguz a test we have all been waiting for: How good is he when his opponent isn’t a Zerg?
Having dominated a good portion of 2013, Iaguz is arguably Australia’s strongest player RIGHT NOW. However this group gives him his greatest test to date. Rossi being an extremely strong Terran as always, Stoicwilly being in great form defeating Rossi in ACL qualifier 6, and Pezz being a SEA Protoss ‘new hope, Iaguz will have his work cut out for him.

Further more this group is interesting because we rarely see what non Zerg players do when there is a group where they can’t rely on their most frequent match-up. Pezz notoriously hates PvT, and the only time we have really seen it his adversary has been Rossi, with most series being a nail biter with Rossi holding the lead 2-1. Last ACL we saw Iaguz monster mode over an unsuspecting Stoicwilly who had a funny limp the next few days due to their clash, but has bounced back and two weeks ago managed to topple Australia’s second biggest Terran. This group could really go either-way and a lot of it will come down to who has the best TvT and can Pezz abuse the Mothership core enough to take down 3 in-form Terrans?

1. Iaguz
2. Rossi
3. Pezz
4. Stoicwilly

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Open bracket mentions

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To finish things off it wouldn’t be an ACL without having the (partially) Open Bracket mentioned. For whatever reason the open bracket this season feels particularly lacklustre with the only notable participants being SLCN.Kez, Nv.Deth and solid up and comer Surge from Serpahic Nexus, who recently showed extremely solid macro play in the PXL Season 1.