You don’t need to be swimming in gold medals to make for an interesting story. Many times losing – a milder and more accurate term than failing – is equally fascinating if not for the players, then at least for writers like yours truly.

For the foreigners, 2013 started with question marks. The year that passed saw the rise of Stephano to full power but also featured the victorious runs of Nerchio, Mana, Snute and Thorzain. We had Dimaga, Grubby, Bly, Vortix and even the somewhat forgotten Adelscott reach grand finals of premier tournaments, which lifted the spirits of the believers in the western scene. Koreans were still winning, of course, but there was resistance at least. When 2013 came, the logical question was how long would that resistance last and will the scene still offer non-Koreans fifteen minutes of fame on semi-regular basis.

With the coming of the new year, west’s brightest hope hit a rough patch. After winning four premier gold medals and finishing top four in several more between August 2011 and December 2012, Stephano finally seemed to be running out of steam. A new game was coming out in March and EG’s poster boy did not look prepared. His travels to GSL and MLG Winter ended with Ro32 eliminations. IEM World Championship (the first Heart of the Swarm tournament ever) placed him only in top twelve.

At the end of March, Stephano set himself a deadline – another six more months and he’d be gone, retired in favor of continuing his studies. “Maybe it’s not my time anymore,” he said then and it did feel like that. The Frenchman could no longer play Zerg with the familiar ingenuity that made him famous and he came to the realization that “it’s a good thing to know when to stop”.

Still, another six months meant a few last chances to retire with a gold medal in hand that this was Stephano’s goal coming into WCS Europe. When season one began, it was almost as the old EG champion had returned. His play was not nearly as dominant but again it had that Stephano-esque uniqueness to it. The circuit wasn’t as Korean-stacked as it’d later become so the Frenchman slaughtered fellow Europeans before reaching the grand final. A long game against BabyKnight advanced him to the semis against ForGG and some fantastic ZvT’s later, Stephano was in the grand final – the first foreigner to place that high since the start of the year.

His loss to Mvp turned out brutal. Not because it was a 1-4 but because it was the bearer of grim news. Stephano never made it to another final after that and he retired after a Ro16 elimination in season two. This also set up the tendency that a non-Korean should place second at best in a premier tournament which takes us back to the opening sentence – it might be a shitty occurrence but it’s some story to tell!



Photo: ESL

A month after Stephano got his silver medal, another famed European followed suit. A serious competitor to inherit the Stephano throne, Naniwa attended DreamHack Stockholm on home Swedish turf, wanting to make a splash at the opening DH event for 2013.

And some splash it was. He came out second from his Ro32 group, eliminating MC along the way. In the Ro16, he had to come back from a 0-1 disadvantage against TLO and then slaughter his compatriot SortOf to advance to semi-finals. And that is where it all became interesting.

If when a foreigner faces a Korean that far in a tournament is a big deal by itself, imagine the impact of the infamous Swede playing the most renowned Zerg player of all time, Jaedong the Tyrant himself. The victory of the Protoss over the BroodWar legend made the headlines – if the bonjwa can be conquered, Leenock could be, too. The hype was tangible.

Unfortunately, so was the disappointment. After a set-for-set race, Naniwa lost and Leenock was champion. Needless to say, the displeasure from the outcome spread beyond the DreamHack halls and entered the living rooms of the viewership. A colleague of mine said that day that instead of a cool ending, we got another Korean kid that needed Reis to translate. I was never a Naniwa fan but I had to agree.

Little did I know I’d relive that exact situation half a year later. The battlefield was different – it was NYC and not Stockholm – but the feeling was the same. Naniwa killed every piece of competition, bar the last one. Another PvZ final against a Korean Zerg, another close series and another loss for Naniwa. With two months to go before the end of the year, the foreigners were running out of options.



​Photo: ESL

The third non-Korean that reached a grand final in 2013 was Snute, Liquid`s newest recruit that donned the blue in early January.

Snute broke out on the scene in late 2012 so he got attached the “patch Zerg” label by default (those were handed out quickly in those days). Although in later interviews Snute would confess that the patch Zerg thing often got to him, the Norwegian talent kept working harder and harder. By the end of 2012, he was a HomeStory Cup champion, a big enough achievement to be recognized by TL.

The expectations towards Snute were different than those towards Stephano and Naniwa. The French and the Swede had already proven themselves but Snute was still a new name and he had a lot of critics to prove wrong. And for the better part of 2013 he very much failed to do so.

It was not until Snute’s return to HomeStory Cup in June that he was able to reenter the spotlights and once again Take’s event extracted the best out of the Liquid Zerg. Snute enjoyed an 8-1 score after the two group stage, followed it up with a 3-1 against Stephano in the quarter finals and a 3-2 comeback against HyuN in the semis. Even his own team-mate, the famed TvZ player Taeja, did not have an easy time with him and it’d take the Terran all seven games to finally prevail. Snute added another silver medal to the foreigners’ account after a series to remember. He must’ve understood how Naniwa felt in Stockholm.

Sadly for his fans, Snute never had such a peak performance. He went on to win Red Bull Training Grounds 2 but it was a smaller tournament and one lacking any players in their prime. It was not the year of Snute by any margin.



Photo: GosuGamers

The fourth and last player on our list is Zerg Queen Scarlett herself and she had to wait one whole year before playing in a premier grand final.

Like Snute, Scarlett emerged in 2012 as a new and aspiring player. She had won WCS Canada and WCS America and was considered the best player in North America, arguably the only one who could go head-to-head with the Koreans as Iron Squid II showed. She was about to be big in 2013, believers said, and they were right.

Still, it was a slow start for Scarlett in the beginning. Her first WCS America run ended at the Ro16 but the next season rewarded her generously. She eliminated the season one champion and runner-up along her way to the playoffs and 3-0’d aLive in the quarter finals as he was nothing. She went head to head with Jaedong – arguably the best ZvZ’er of that time – before she was stopped. While it wasn’t the first time a foreigner would go that far in a big tournament, she did it in WCS America – an event considered to be Korean territory – and she was a North American to that. After being treated as a dying entity for so long, the NA scene was finally given a cause for celebration. Their 2012 hero, it seemed, was no one-hit wonder.

Though she retained her humbleness for the most part, the rapid improvement of Scarlett helped her improve her confidence and that showed in the Season 2 finals. Would-be champion MMA and OSL royal roader Maru fell 2-0 and eventual winner Bomber had to fight the TvZ of his life before he could move on.

Despite her 2-3 loss to the StarTale Terran, Scarlett was applauded for her perseverance. She found her way out of seemingly unwinnable situations and laid the foundations for what would become one of the great rivalries of this year.

Scarlett and Bomber would meet again at Red Bull NYC and IEM Singapore and this time the Zerg got her revenge. She robbed Bomber of the bronze medal in New York and eliminated him in Singapore. Although the math shows an even 7-7 in maps between them, at the end of the year Scarlett definitely stands as the winner of this rivalry.



Photo: Marv Watson / Red Bull

Of course, this rivalry wasn’t the only thing that defined Scarlett this year (though it was a nice build-up). In the first week of December, Scarlett flew to Germany to take part in the last premier tournament of the year and the last chance of the non-Koreans to finally win something.

In spite of the many good foreigners that attended, all eyes were set on Scarlett. Not only was she the only North American there but she was the only non-Korean that had actual results to show. The Korean competition was hard but beatable, every one of her match-ups were around 55%. Not all hope was lost.

Despite playing outstandingly, Scarlett didn’t manage to win NorthCon and the quest of the non-Koreans was failed – twelve months of competition, thirty-three premier tournaments, zero gold medals.

Ironically, Scarlett’s defeat wasn’t taken as hard as those of Naniwa, Snute or Stephano. Although it still meant a barren year for the non-Koreans, it helped another crowd favorite – EG’s Jaedong – to break his Kong curse and take home a championship. It must’ve been painful to pursue a grand final for a whole year just to finish second, I am certain, but at least something good came of it, didn’t it?

There’s still next year though and I choose to believe that it’ll be different. It must be (after all, what’s the point in thinking about the alternative). Scarlett and Naniwa showed there’s still strength and consistency to be found in the non-Koreans and I refuse to accept we’ve seen the last of Snute. There’s young talent growing up, too, and at least some part of it should be championship material. It’d really suck if it was otherwise.

Merry Christmas, foreign scene, and may you have better luck next year.

So far on "12 days of Christmas":