Practice and Grandmaster leagues

There isn’t much to talk about the various leagues in StarCraft 2, but we would like to tell you a thing or two about 2 special leagues.

The Practice League

Actually this is not even a league! These are 50 practice matches designed for new players to try out the game and the races. The maps are not ordinary league maps. Here the entrances to each base are blocked by rocks, which protect the players from early rushes. What’s more the gameplay speed is set to fast, which is slower than the standard speed for the other leagues (faster). Also, keep in mind that those 50 matches are unranked, so your wins/losses won’t be displayed in your profile. Sure, you can choose to skip these matches and go straight to the placement ones. Is this a good idea, though?

We believe that this is right thing to do, even if you are brand new to StarCraft 2 and RTS game as a general. Why? Simple, the practice league won’t teach you anything you can use in a real league game. In the league game everything happens very quickly: rushes, counter attacks and so on. You have to learn to respond quickly and to defend against early pressure. If you play the whole 50 games and then you go into a real league game, you will feel like you have wasted your time for nothing. You haven’t learned a thing about defense or pressure. If you are new to StarCraft 2, we recommend playing some games against AI opponents in order to start feeling the race and then jump straight into the action.

The Grandmaster league

This is the place where every StarCraft 2 player wants to be - The Aces league, the best players in the World. The Grandmaster league has a fix number of slots – 200, so being there is kinda prestige. In order to be promoted to a Grandmaster you have to be in a Masters division; you have to have an extremely high MMR and your bonus pool should be more than 60.

If you manage to get to the Grandmasters, you have to remain active; if you bonus pool reaches 180, you will be dropped.