Terror is one of the few players with more than 150 official games in the ELO rating and among the best there are. In the first half of the year he was a serious threat in the Defiler Tours, won for his team Nb. / SJ. / UED and went after everyone who dared to play him.

Bibiane is a player not known to many of those that are not too familiar with the North American scene. He didn't play a lot, but made it very far in the ISL 3 and showed that this was not a one time achievement later on in Gambit Cup.

Gargoyle is yet another of Russia's hidden talents. We never knew of him until he started to show up for Defiler Tours on sundays and won a couple of them. Actually, he is in the Top 10 of the overall Defiler Tour winners. A coincidence? We don't think so.

Skzlime from Hungary came back after a period of inactivity and showed that you should not have forgotten him. An all-kill against LRM, good results in Defiler Tournaments — who else could brag with this?

The last four are again Russians. Russia seems to breed Terrans in secret caves under the earth. All showed great results in ICC CL, Gambit Cup, Nation Wars and Defiler Tournaments, not to mention the Russian LANs, we had the pleasure to follow. Biggus came out of nowhere, at a couple of decent sized foreigners, but never explained himself — same goes for TTF and Ramms. Their tradition is to lure, jump out, eat, hide again.

Tama and Dewalt are some of the best Russia has to offer. You rarely see Tama, but when you do, you will see a player covered in blood — blood of his victims. His series against Dewalt, Pixy and Bonyth in DT 47 show why we picked him!

Dsaqwe often goes a bit under the radar, yet he shows continously very good results. If you ever watched the replay pack he released, you can see how hard he trains on fish, not even considering to dodge the BJs and even takes some of them down!

DraW is another of the up and down players — rarely plays, but if he does, he is one of the players you expect to finish in the highest places. He didn't really win many tournaments up to this point, but his game list and his Elo show that the potential is there!

Lancerx is another of the players that improved by a lot in the course of this year. At the beginning he was one of those you regularly saw in the Round of 16 and Quarterfinals; now he is one of those you expect to see among the winners — especially after his victory in Moscow last week end!

Bonyth joined the party quite late. We know him from the past, one of the Polish Protoss monsters you were scared off even before StarCraft II. As of late he joined a bunch of tournaments and already raped a bunch of high class people. I guess there is more to come?

Alfio like Scan, might not have the best manners, but a more than decent macro. His series against trutaCz shows that he can play anything and get away with it — on top level. Not playing much, no, but surely one of the best!

The first three of the list were already introduced, but — consider this — all of them were already very good players, are now not only «very» good, but «probably the strongest of their race / nationality»!

WandS and Wallace showed in many tournaments how much they improved in the course of the year, often duking it out in the C Rank events such as YSL, ASL and whatnot. Especially the Bulgarian played his parts in the Defiler Tournaments. Impressive!

Fold, sometimes a bit underrated, streamed his ladder and tournament games in the past year. If you tuned in every now and again, you couldn't help but notice how much better he is now. Motivation, spirit and hard work — this is what it takes.

KeSPA — love it or hate it; probably hate it. But let's not forget that the KeSPA made professional Brood War, if not professional eSports as a whole possible. They built a legacy that ended officially with the Pro League finale. Without them nothing like OSL, MSL or any kind of pro BW would have been possible.

SonicTV with his SOSPA was there when we needed him — even though he encountered a lot of bullshit along the way. Matchfixing again, license issues again — all that couldn't eventually kill the poor fella. Instead of giving up he was the beacon in the darkness, someone we could count on. Thanks man, just thanks and keep your head up!

Defiler.ru stands a bit like an outsider here, but let's not forget that they hosted more than fourty tournaments and funded them entirely on their own. Yes, that money and the time comes all from their own pockets. How about that? Do you think anybody else can keep up with this? Oh, they even managed to actually organize several LANs in Moscow, a task which literally drove other people insane.

Alright, there are not only Russians. There is Sweden, too. All over the world there are Brood War fans, but Sweden, home of DreamHack, didn't give up either. They actually founded the Swedish Brood War Intiative, inspiring a lot of aliens. And, also quite importantly, fund international events like the SBWI Nation Wars. Thumbs up Sweden!

NinaZerg is a bit weird, she'd be the last person to not admit that. Still, she played a major role in running the Yellow Star League, organizes a female tournament, streamed for hours on end, hyped grudge matches, published Giggly Girl ESports and has a wiki article, that's somewhat entertaining to read.

Largo is another restless player, organizer and editor. He's one of the reasons that the Russians are advertising on Teamliquid, does his best to promote both defiler and reps.ru tournaments, and supports every event you could think of. He is one of the guys you can count on — and he has been for years now!

Defi, not only good at playing Brood War, is quite good at motivating the right people. He is the reason we could see Sziky going up against Pusan, the guy who made sure we have the Defi Mini Tours now, one of the reasons why Russia still fields a strong line up in nation wars.

Pucca was very eager to make everything as perfect as it can be. We admins know that our reputation isn't the best (an understatement), so did Pucca. We're glad to have had him in our team — seriously. Without him there wouldn't be dozens of ICC CL VODs, there would have been no talk show like Blitz, events like Pucca's Capture the Flag. Certainly an inspiring character. Thanks Pucca!

Stratos, a quite nice guy from the Czech Republic, doesn't like to be interviewed. Even though he deserves it, truely deserves it. He posts updates, plays regularly in team leagues and streams minor events. His biggest contributions however are his clips; just watch one of them — you'll certainly agree with us when we say that this is really worth your time!

Teamliquid's coverage is always flawless in every detail. And we mean it, every thing works out perfectly. What would the ABC, the SOSPA LR Threads and countless other BW related events look without the works of Hawaiianpig? There are people that design banners, and there is him. Thanks for this inspiring artwork!

Trozz is a bit weird and you only know him if you frequently read Teamliquid. With weird we mean he only posts in Haikus. He also draws a lot with MS Paint and designs his own games. And he promotes his board game with a Brood War tournament, featuring the likes of Rekrul. Well, if that isn't worth a mention, I don't know what is!

Bakuryu does a lot behind the scenes and never gets enough credit for it. It's hard to find a player willing to explain Brood War and strategy to you; most don't want to talk after a ladder match, others, especially the really talented ones, hesitate to publicly explain why they do the things they way they do. Not so Bakuryu — he is always there if you need a helping hand, gives tipps, ready for an interview and doesn't event want anything in exchange. A perfect gentleman!

Teamliquid ABC Writers

Teamliquid has a new look, a better coverage — thanks to the crew of the Amateur Brood War coverage. We now focus on the editors around2pacalypse- that brought us good write ups of events like the Defiler Tournaments, Gambit Cup, Nation Wars and whatnot. These hold up the Brood War banner and do a shitload of work for you.

Liquipedia Editors

There are many guys like Mewka, Endy, Epoxide and itsjustatank — people that sacrifice their spare time and transform confusing events into a good looking, readable article. These heroes make coverage a lot easier, always do their best to keep us informed and work their butts off behind the scenes.

TL.net SOSPA Crew

The three of them — kjwcj, ArvickHero and Snipealot — are names you should have heard of. Every one of them spent countless hours to either write reports about the new Korean SOSPA and BJ scene, translated articles or interviews or made it happen that we could follow our beloved heros. Make no mistake, this was only possible thanks to blood, sweat and tears. Time to give back maybe?

China Connection

Caihead, Pucca, Xiphos and stevewch, probably a few others that we forgot — do you know them? Well you should. Turns out they established a few connections to China, which has never given up on Brood War. Thanks to them we were able to follow the C-OSL and had a team running in Nation Wars and Gambit Cup; this might have turned out badly in terms of lag issues, but screw this — thanks for showing us what the Chinese do!

D Ranks Event Crew

Cobaltblu, Nikon, Pebble444 and chrisolo — only four names out of many. These made sure that our most important target population, the new players, had a place to compete. The D Rank Team Leagues, Tournaments and show matches have been created by them, with an Elo ranking (thanks to birdie) and casts. These guys really show that we can still hope!

Everyone who doesn't know yoda, doesn't know what to watch, honestly. Casting for more than eight ours per sunday, this man showed what a real Brood War fanatic is made of. But well, it's not only this charismatic guy, no, we could also see guest appearances of his stuffed cat, sometimes even from his wife!

The duo that is Elegant and Hacklebeast are most known for the coverage of any kind of foreign event. The gentleman and the… beast. Funny, experienced and endless hours of Gambit Cup, Nation Wars, ISL and misc. commentary, always a joke on the side and good camera movement. Both of them deserve it!

Pucca sadly moved on to play some other games, but well, he did comment a bunch of things. Pucca CTF, the Blitz Show, most of the ICC CL wars and other events. He constantly worked on getting better — which he did — and made it possible that R1CH finally agreed to release the infamous TSL overlay tool.

Largo, quite analytical, is one of the casters you probably missed if you only browsed on Teamliquid. Just another proof how much defiler.ru did for the community. Largo brought us several streams — mostly for Russia KOTH and Defiler Tournaments, in addition, keep that in mind gentleman, to his tremendous work as editor, leader and organizer!

Negroplay, in comparison to all others listed here, did the least. The least means, in this very context, that he «only» casted for the entire December — Defi Mini Tours, LANs and so on. Eight hours without break don't stop him, he can carry on. Thanks for that Don Negrote!

Sayle, probably the most popular caster in the scene, did also cast in this year. We should not forget that he did cast the Frankenmonster that was Pro League, in addition to some SOSPA Events and the OSL. Now, some people argued that he was more of a SCII person now — honestly, stop being silly. Another person that did his very best to promote our game, even in rough times!