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esports
The Best Archon Wins in Toronto
HuK and Scarlett's easy run through Toronto Battle Grounds Qualifier shut-down by MaSa and viOLet.
MaSa and viOLet at Toronto
© Maria Jose Govea / Red Bull Content Pool
Professional gaming is usually a bad place to look for morality tales, because stories rarely go according to plot. In StarCraft, especially, the underdog usually loses pretty badly while the overconfident champ glides to new heights.
Yet there was a "Tortoise and the Hare" theme to the Archon Mode tournament in Toronto this weekend, complete with a humbling comeuppance for the cocky competitors while the hard-working underdogs walked away with the prize money and an invitation to Red Bull Battle Grounds D.C.
While the Canadian duo of Chris "HuK" Loranger and Sasha "Scarlett" Hostyn may have clowned and crushed their way through the qualifier bracket in Toronto, Maru "MaSa" Kim and Kim "viOLet" Dong Hwan shut them down with serious, pro Archon play.
Scarlett and HuK in front of the Toronto audience
© Maria Jose Govea / Red Bull Content Pool
Filthy casuals
You couldn't blame Scarlett and HuK for being overconfident. For a lot of this tournament, it looked like the two players, arguably the most accomplished players in Canadian StarCraft, would be able to win this one with their eyes closed.
Or with one half of the Archon sitting on his hands, as the case may be. On Saturday afternoon, during their semifinal game against NoRegreT and Bloice, Scarlett apparently told HuK that she was going to solo the first game and he could just take the game off. HuK made a show of kicking-back and relaxing while Scarlett rushed the Terran Archon. While Scarlett sneaked a Nydus Network up on the Terrans, HuK is playing with thundersticks and checking his phone or watching over Scarlett's shoulder.
The antics only ended-up winning more of the crowd over to Scarlett and HuK's side. They had a laid-back, comedy-roast kind of vibe that was a breath of fresh air compared to the tension and nerves that usually accompany a StarCraft semfinal.
But it wasn't just cockiness and gentle bad manners that made Scarlett and HuK play that way. Throughout the weekend, they seemed to be treating Legacy of the Void pretty much like standard Heart of the Swarm play. When Scarlett asked HuK to sit out a game, it also reflected her wish to play her normal Zerg game without distraction.
But as NoRegreT and Bloice pushed Scarlett and HuK to match-point, they definitively proved that two good players working together in Archon Mode are better — a LOT better — than two North American legends who can't coordinate.
Once HuK and Scarlett realized they were in a real fight, however, they started working together and scraped through to the finals. But the one thing they never showed was a real vision for how to play Legacy of the Void Archon Mode. They're great players who, when they put their heads together, are able to play very skilled, very traditional StarCraft. But they weren't playing traditional StarCraft. They were playing Archon Mode.
And they were about to meet a real one.
MaSa and viOLet join the casting desk
© Maria Jose Govea / Red Bull Content Pool
Dynamic duo
MaSa and viOLet were not competing at the Toronto qualifier for laughs. They put the hammer to every single team they encountered, getting to the finals against HuK and Scarlett without dropping so much as a single map.
Unlike a lot of their competitors, they really were taking full advantage of Archon Mode, playing like a single brain that was somehow everywhere at once. They crushed NaNiwa and DesRow by conducting almost nonstop drops that NaNi-DesRow were powerless to stop thanks to their overreliance on Protoss Adepts. It was the kind of nonstop macro-micro that Archon Mode has made possible at the highest level.
HuK and Scarlett weren't able to find an answer for MaSa and viOLet's Terran onslaught. Neither side really did much with the new units, but the Terran side continued to leverage their improved Medivac micro and their new ability to pick up tanks in Siege Mode to get murderously effective trades against the Zerg side.
ViOLet and MaSa swept the Zerg pair 3-0 in the final as HuK GG'd with a "terran OP," but it might just have been that ViOLet and MaSa's uncanny efficiency and refusal to let Scarlett macro safely was the really unbalanced element in the series.
That victory will send viOLet and MaSa to Red Bull Battle Grounds Finals in Washington D.C. in September, where they will face the other victorious Archon teams from the qualifiers. But it's not just for pros to compete! There are three more qualifiers. Stay tuned to the Battle Grounds website for more details on the qualifiers, starting with Qualfier 1 on July 3.
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