Photo: https://pixabay.com/pl/busan-night-scene-most-gwangan-noc-1747130/

After an emotional rollercoaster caused by the recent turmoil on the Korean StarCraft scene, fans of the franchise have a weekend to look forward to.

G-Star, an annual gaming convention held in South Korea, returns for its 12th edition. This year's event is taking place in BEXCO Convention Centre in Busan between the 17th and the 20th of November. Originally held in Seoul, the assembly attracts roughly 200,000 gaming enthusiasts each year. StarCraft fans have a special treat ahead of them, as three separate tournaments are to be held throughout the weekend.

Having started this Thursday, four Olimoleague monthly finalists took to the stage in an effort to win their last tournament before the post-Blizzcon multiplayer changes are implemented into the game.

Byun 'ByuN' Hyun Woo, the world champion of 2016, and Kim 'Ryung' Dong Won, who had just left MVP, were the opening match of the grand final. Though the One Man Army has defeated the latter on many occasions, their most recent scuffle prior to the final ended in a 3:1 victory for Ryung. Luckily for the Team Expert representative, his opponent's skill was not up to the challenge of winning a best of 5 series twice in a row. 

On the other side of the bracket former SK Telecom T1 player Eo 'soO' Yoon Su went up against Koh 'GuMiho' Buyng Jae, the only participant of the grand final, who has not won a monthly Olimoleague title in 2016. The former has recently been seen streaming on platforms such as AfreecaTV and Twitch.tv, whilst the 'Towel Terran' had only competed in the GSL Balance Tournament before going to Busan. The series went all the way to the 5th map, where GuMiho attempted to beat his adversary with a proxy Hellbat push, but fell short of doing sufficient damage to the Zerg and tapped out, thus being eliminated from the tournament.

Though ByuN was heavily favoured against soO in the grand final of the event, his post-BlizzCon momentum seems to have worn off. He had failed to reach the final of VSL as part of team 'TRAIN TO BUSAN' and went down to ByuL in the GSL Cataclysm Tournament the week before G-Star. Even the games against soO hardly do justice to the One Man Army's dominant performance from the period between July and early November. The first two games of the best of 5 series ended in quick victories for the Zerg. It wasn't until the players faced off on'Frost' that ByuN started putting up a fight. That, unfortunately, didn't last long. The architecture of the fourth map, 'Apotheosis', allowed soO to run rings around his opponent, crippling the Terran's economy and forcing him into unfavourable fights against larger, more tech intensive compositions. Ultimately, the former SKT player managed to secure himself a check for 3 million Korean won by beating ByuN with a 3:1 score.

On Saturday, KT, one of the two leading telecoms companies of South Korea, is sponsoring a KT Giga Showmatch featuring TaekBangLeeSsang – Lee 'FlaSh' Young Ho, Kim 'Bisu' Taek Yong, Lee' JaeDong' Jae Dong and Song 'Stork' Buyng Goo. StarCraft 1 is still very much a popular game in the Republic of Korea with an increasing number of players from the KeSPA era returning to stream Brood War on AfreecaTV. To put things into perspective – Flash managed to round up a crowd of just over 90,000 viewers on his first stream.

The event will conclude on Sunday, where the grand final of VSL will take place. The tournament was an initiative to form a team competition open to all players. In the end, representatives of the former SKT roster will take on team 'No Toss' comprising Armani, Dream, Forte, Solar, and Dark. Though 'Yeoksam-dong' are the clear favourites going into the match, Solar and Dark have shown straight up dominant performance in recent months and mustn't be underestimated. Now that Proleague has been discontinued, players feel even more compelled to keep their careers on the right track, and despite the prize purse of roughly nine thousand dollars, the competition is as fierce as can be.

Team Yeoksam-dong:

Kim 'MyuNgSiK' Muyng Sik

Lee 'INnoVation' Shin Hyung

Eo 'soO' Yoon Su

Kim 'Classic' Doh Woo

Kim 'Sorry' Ji Seong (substitute)

Team No Toss:

Park 'Armani' Jin Hyuk

Cho 'Dream' Joong Hyuk

Kim 'Forte' Ki Yong

Kang 'Solar' Min Soo

Park 'Dark' Ryung Woo (substitute)