It's too early to call it a complete success, but StarCraft legend Flash's decision to leave his current tournament in fate's hands started out with as clean a result as possible. StarCraft: Brood War, or StarCraft: Remastered with its new coat of paint on, is an iconic real-time strategy game from developer Blizzard that is widely considered to be one of the progenitors of the modern esports scene.
Lee "Flash" Young-ho is without a doubt one of the greatest esports players of all-time, and though some fans would argue it isn't cut-and-dry, he's likely the closest thing to a consensus "best StarCraft player" the scene ever produced. Recently, Flash made the startling decision to switch his race - something very few successful players ever do. Even more surprising was what he switched to, moving from Terran to Random, which, like the name implies, randomly selects one of StarCraft: Brood War's three races at the beginning of each game. No one in modern StarCraft has ever made Random their main race and gone on to see meaningful success - it's incredibly difficult to play one of the game's races on a professional level, let alone all of them.
Flash, however, could finally be the exception to that rule. He has a long way to go, but Flash's Random paid off in spades during the AfreecaTV Starleague Season 10 Round of 16, when he played in Group C earlier this week and emerged unblemished with an undefeated record and first place in the group. It was the first time Flash had actually played Random in a major tournament since announcing his intent to do so way back in April of this year, and it was a historic moment for a game that's now over two decades old.
As luck would have it, Flash's first game saw him roll Terran, the race he played for his entire career until the switch. In the winner's match, however, he rolled Protoss twice and managed to take a 2-0 win over Snow, a player many would consider in contention for the best active Protoss player in 2020. Flash also demonstrated his trademark ability to create wins from deficits, having fallen far behind Snow in one game before catching the player on one positioning mistake and brutally punishing it to somehow snag the win.
No matter how much Flash practices his Random, it is a pick that will inherently create a lot more chaos in his performances. Playing all three races across a varied map pool, mixes of opponents, and with different builds means Flash's tournaments will be must-watch performances every time. Fans also have yet to see his Zerg in an official tournament, which is rumored to be the weakest of his three races. Still, so far, Flash's bizarre choice to race switch to Random after his eight previous ASL attempts resulted four first place, one second, and two third/fourth places may actually be paying off. If nothing else, it's giving the man fans simply call "God" a lot more of a human aura, and that makes for some compelling StarCraft: Brood War.
Source: AfreecaTV StarLeague Season 10
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