August 6--7 2011 European Battle.Net Invitational

[Rui]

{EDIT2, 17:45 GMT+1} StarCraft II matches are over, Ret is the winner!

{EDIT 17:04 GMT+1} The Grand Final is about to start!!!

2011 European Battle.Net Invitational has started

So sorry for the delay, I forgot to post this morning! Link to the stream at the end of the post!​

General information

The 2011 European Battle.net Invitational features the best European StarCraft II and World of Warcraft arena players, who are being invited to compete for riches (prize money pool of over $52,000), prestige, glory, and even prestigious spots at the 2011 Global Battle.Net Invitational, to be held at BlizzCon 2011 (Anaheim, California)!This live event is taking place on August 6 – 7 in Warsaw, Poland in the breathtaking location of the Multikino in the Złote Tarasy mall, in the very heart of the city. ESL TV will broadcast the matches in HD quality via free live stream available right here on this site.
The 2011 European Battle.net Invitational is free to all visitors, and offers pure enjoyment with the finest Blizzard eSports action on show. Come and watch the matches live on the big cinema screen and breathe in the electrifying atmosphere in a unique and stylish location, or tune in to the free HD live stream which will bring the whole event right to your home.In addition to an array of thrilling matches, you will also have the opportunity to play World of Warcraft: Cataclysm and StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty in our free gaming areas, participate in fun activities and have a chat with Blizzard employees present on-site.

Lots of info' already divulged!

» World of WarCraft teams » Commentator team » StarCraft II Map Pool » Schedule

» Bracket system » Matches list so far » Player profiles

Watch the live stream!
Thorzain versus Socke coming up next! (already over)

 

[Vengeancekael]

I watched 2 matches, some of the players really suck lol.
White-Ra lost that game so badly and the 2 commentators god, somebody kill them.

 

[Linaze]

Watching.
Gogo Swedes!

 

[MGCǂSpectre]

Thorzain will win, war3 players ftw! Good Nerchio lost -.- he's like Idra, whines a lot. And I think Blizzard will release replays they did release the pack with Blizzcon 2010. Honestly im not fan of any of the participants but Thorzain does heck of good builds, so he's a candidate for one of my fave eu players.

http://eu.battle.net/blizzcon/en/tournaments/eu-regionals/matches/sc2/video-archive replays and vids

 

[Hemlock]

I watched 2 matches, some of the players really suck lol.
White-Ra lost that game so badly and the 2 commentators god, somebody kill them.

Wow, How did those players really suck? I bet you could easily beat them in a 1v1 match right?
And whats wrong with the "commentators"? They tried to recap what was happening as well as possible, perhaps not the best casters but I would love to hear a repetition from you doing a better job at it.

I don't see why you have to be so offensively towards people that put their effort and passion in what they do, and on the side entertaining people.

 

[Rui]

I admit RotterdaM's accent often makes what he's saying incomprehensible. I like MrBitter though, his voice is funny, I remember him at MLG saying «oh no» in such a sharp tone sometimes =P

Well, here's my comments for the matches. I'm not a 1vs1 pro myself, just pointing out what I thought of the matches:

Thorzain versus Socke: Thorzain had an incredible sense of opportunity. Fast expanding as Protoss versus Terran is way dangerous, especially on Xel'Naga Caverns. It was a mistake, in my opinion. Socke didn't know about the Hellions, but still. When he lost the expansion and went under half of Thorzain's economy after losing 15 probes to Hellions, it was game over right there.
In game no.2, Socke completely committed to that Warp Prism rush. It was a very intelligent move, but the lack of that second force field completely screwed things for him. Then he over-committed, after the Zealots got killed the Stalkers started running around but Thorzain had clearly beaten him off and he was still warping in more units. Amidst this, Socke did not expand. While he was beating off a few SCVs, more were being trained at Thorzain's expansion, which Socke knew existed. Clearly an overcommitment on Socke's part, and Thorzain obviously got back in no time.

NaNiWa(P) vs. Ret(Z), round 2: All the games were pretty balanced, though NaNiWa let his macro down in multiple situations.
I think it's easy to see the pressure these guys put on themselves =P. I was thinking: why doesn't Ret just come underneath the ramp and surround him? He took quite a few minutes to do it. When Ret attacked, NaNiWa had only a single colossus that I can remember, which made easy work of himself.
Game number 2 was crazy, I think nobody had ever seen someone getting 5 hatcheries at 7 minute mark or something. He would have won if he had attacked mid-game and it could have went great for Ret but he gave the protoss too much time and was at 200/200 with only Roaches, Hydralisks and Zerglings -- Colossi with Force Fields obviously decimated through it easily. But NaNiWa was still again letting his macro down, he had like 2 thousand minerals when he was attacking.

The Grand Final was a well deserved victory for Ret, his zergling raid and quick brood lord in game #1 and his roach mass on game #2 dictated his victory rather quickly.


What are your thoughts?

 

[MGCǂSpectre]

On shakuras, it was very nice to see fast expand stop Socke's 4gate-expand transition as I actually use that build too and have to deal with the same. Socke wasted his game there. The game on XNC he wasn't careful and didn't follow what thorzain was doing. I think Socke needs to loose the gaming on NA server and go back to EU server in case playing vs EU pros will teach him to not do such mistakes.

 

[M0rbid]

For me the really two outstanding players were those who entered the final: Ret and NaNiwa.
Ret showed such an epic makro throughout the whole tournament that he gave his opponents barely a chance, as Rui already pointed out, 5 hatcheries in such a short amount of time, that is some intense booming there.
NaNiwa for me nailed the mikro game perfectly. As Rui pointed out, he did forget about his makro abit against Ret, but in the games versus Thorzain in the consolation bracket final he was able to get a perfect symbiosis of good makro and excellent mikro. Thorzain did a good job there aswell, but in the end NaNi's unit handling did the difference there.
For me, Ret's economy handling skills were just too good in the finals, while NaNi did not show his best match during the tournament there.

Overall I must say I found it pretty entertaining and it was a great tournament with quite incredible quality in the SC2 games.
As someone who never really got in touch with WoW on an extended level, I cannot give a comment about that part of the tournament. I found it tooo confusing to watch for a non-expert aswell.

 

[Gilles]

Wow, How did those players really suck? I bet you could easily beat them in a 1v1 match right?
And whats wrong with the "commentators"? They tried to recap what was happening as well as possible, perhaps not the best casters but I would love to hear a repetition from you doing a better job at it.

I don't see why you have to be so offensively towards people that put their effort and passion in what they do, and on the side entertaining people.

Vengeancekael isn't being paid to play or comment, they are. It's perfectly fair to have expectations about something being done by professionals.

 

[Hemlock]

Lovely to see such extended comments on the games. I personally loved watching Ret. In the first match of the tournament I personally felt he could have played a little more solid against Tarson (altho his macro was reasonable), but he showed more and more skill in his game as the tourney progressed.

I did personally feel the least for Streloks games, they were somehow very static in the builds he picked.

Gilles: As you might be able to read from my comment, I was not talking about the fact that he had an expectation, I was talking about the way he responded.

 

[MGCǂSpectre]

I don't like teamliquid forum and their players, other than HuK maybe. Their forum because of the unreasonable warnings/banning they are going over the edge with it, while I like the idea of closing and baning people for making stupid threads. The TL team overall because some of them take themselves as the gods of sc2, while there are much better eu players. I don't mind TLO, Ret, HuK, Haypro but I dislike Jinro. Except for HuK, I don't like when any of the rest wins so I would have prefered Naniwa to be the winner. Ret is also cool, actually but because he's in TL i was for Naniwa. It is some inner feeling of dislike for teamliquid.

 

[Hemlock]

Well I suppose I can understand your reasoning. I personally feel that TL is doing allot for the e-sports fans out there, specially the starcraftII e-sport fans, thats about the reason I don't dislike them. I do see what you mean about the whole supperiorism (if thats a word).

I like Ret as a person over Nani, I know nani from back of the days, but he's always such a sore loser when he is not able to win. I do admire his skill to pinpoint exactly what he did wrong when he losses.