A few days ago, the AusCraft tournament finalized their roster of players by adding in a young talent from the United States, Future. With the tournament beginning on January 10th (the 9th for those of us on NA time), they’ve now finally announced the groups for the first stage of the tournament.
The groups look like they’ll be plenty competitive. In the first group, we have the following six players:
- Vindicta
- PigJunior
- Chase
- Blysk
- Probe
- Pezz
Filling out the second group, we have:
- Future
- Peppy
- Chappy
- Azure
- Seither
- Crimson
The tournament will begin with a round-robin format for the knock-out stage in a best-of-three style. The top four of both groups will advance to the playoffs, where the eight will compete in a double-elimination best-of-five bracket. Whichever two players move on to the finals will play in a best-of-seven to decide the champion.
Seven maps have been chosen for the tournament as well, including the LE variants of Ephemeron, Eternal Empire, Nightshade, Simulacrum, Triton, World of Sleepers, and Zen. The players will be competing not only for the glory of winning AusCraft, but also for their share of the $5,000 AUD prize pool, with the winner taking home $2,500.
This tournament marks the first AusCraft tournament, a tournament local to Australia that includes some of the best local talent as well as plenty of names from the international stage. Players from the United States, Singapore, Australia, and Vietnam are taking part.
The players also will be representing multiple professional teams along with their nations. Resurgence, Alpha X, Infinity Gaming, VietnamGameTV, SYF Gaming, and Legacy Esports all have representatives among the twelve-player roster.
Much of the tournament is made of Zerg players, with only three being Protoss mains and four being Terran players. Given the variety of map, the multiple different playing styles of the contestants themselves, and recent changes made to the balance of the game, it’ll be a fantastic tournament to watch for a few unexpected new strats.
Blizzard’s StarCraft II esports scene has been going through plenty of changes recently. Just the other day, the announcement was made that the WCS, which has been one of the most dominant formats of the professional scene, would be replaced with an ESL circuit instead. Blizzard will be shifting the organization and the lion’s share of responsibilities for this tournament over to DreamHack and ESL. Instead, the developers will be working in a “support role,” providing aid and the prize pools for the next three years of the ESL tournaments.