AusCraft’s final day ended with a grand final match between Future, the champion of the Upper Bracket, and Vindicta, champion of the Lower Bracket. After taking Cheeseadelphia and dominating much of the tournament, many people went in expecting Future to take the championship – and they weren’t disappointed.
It only took Future four games to win the best-of-seven, defeating Vindicta in a clean sweep in a series that saw him never quite losing dominance. Throughout most of the tournament, Future never seemed challenged, save for the final against Blysk that saw him having to go to the fifth game to win the series 3-2. Other than that set, Future only lost a single match through the entire tournament, dropping one map to Pezz in the start of playoffs.
Most of the matchup saw Future keeping map dominance, such as the assaults in the twelfth minute of the third game. Future already had his fourth base when he charged in with a full tanks/marines/medivac army, effectively embargoing Vindicta and refusing to allow him to expand any further.
This first AusCraft tournament was a fantastic highlight of upcoming talent and a showcase of North American talent, with both finalists being United States natives. Vindicta had a strong tournament despite being swept by Future, finding victory against Crimson, Seither, Pigjunior, and Blysk.
In truth, some of the games did feel a little stale, with TvT being the main factor of this. Most of the games ended up being tank/marine/medivac armies pushing against each other with some macro-heavy combat. Very rarely did anything move into micro-focused tactics or battles that were decided with air superiority, with ravens, battlecruisers, vikings, and banshees rarely appearing in the mostly-mech builds that both players went into.
Despite this, Vindicta and Future were able to keep the games interesting, with more than a handful of proxy situations popping up. The fourth game saw an interesting tactic from Future, who decided to drop a barracks into the middle of Vindicta’s base as a quasi-proxy scouting tactic. Vindicta denied Future his natural expansion as retribution.
There’s still plenty of StarCraft esports to come out of 2020 now that AusCraft has ended, and there’s a good chance that Future and Vindicta might be popping up in a few more tournaments along with their fellow contestants. Blizzard recently reorganized their esports network into the ESL, which is certain to have some level of impact on the international scale of competitive StarCraft. Either way, we’ll be seeing plenty more matches soon, so congratulations to Future on his victory!
