Due to the abundance of tournaments in StarCraft 2, people have long been detached from the idea that winning a single tournament makes a great champion. That's why we look at who showed most pressing dominance in the past year in a multitude of tourneys to prove their prowess.
Rain: OSL + WCS Asia
Everyone was anxiously awaiting the arrival of the KeSPA players, and while most would have argued that the transition might take a few months, the player formerly known as by.Sun especially showed that this didn’t have to be the case at all. Despite his arguably easy bracket at the WCS Asia finals, he surprised everyone by taking out both Protoss aficionados HerO and PartinG in the semifinal and grand final respectively and thus winning his first major StarCraft 2 tournament. All that happened not two weeks after his run in GSL, where he survived a group with DRG, TaeJa and Polt and beat HerO to take second place, but also right before won the grand prize in the first non-KeSPA exclusive OSL.He topped a group with MarineKing, DRG and JangBi, marched right on by PartinG, Last and, once again, DRG to take gold at one of the most prestigious tournaments in StarCraft history. He ended his run which lasted a little over a month by coming in third at the Battle.net World Championship after being narrowly defeated by Creator.
TaeJa: MLG Summer Arena + Assembly Summer + DH Valencia 
There was one particular name that loomed over almost all tournaments this summer and it was that of TaeJa. Team Liquid’s latest addition at that time rose to the top at a pace few would have expected. The public awareness of TaeJa skyrocketed after his gold medal at the MLG Spring Arena, where he beat his former teammate Alicia, who himself was on a pretty decent run at the time. Due to the Single Elimination nature of the tournament, he finished it being unbeaten. He followed that up by winning ASUS RoG Summer, again unbeaten. The youngster found himself in playoffs facing HerO, ForGG, and MC, each seemingly not up to par to the task that is overcoming TaeJa in the slightest. Then DreamHack Valencia came where he was off to a rocky start and, god forbid, lost to NightEnd in the first group stage. Fortunately, the rest of the tournament was business as usual and TaeJa and kept his maps lost to a minimum.
HerO: DH Winter + NASL 4
The second major pillar of the Year of Liquid in 2012. HerO is the kind of guy that strings along for a year, is constantly said to be in a slump, despite doing pretty well in all of the tournaments, but then winter comes along and he’s on the top of his game to win the big money. So this winter was almost a carbon copy of last year, only more successful. Instead of being the runner-up, he won NASL this year. Instead of making $29,000 he made $38,000 at DreamHack. And after doing that, instead of being on the brink of tears, he blasted fans and himself with champagne. Well, sort of. If we look at his nothing less than stellar DreamHack Winter performance, there has got to be no doubt that he deserved all that money and the champagne shower. Winning a tournament is already impressive, but losing only two maps in the entire process of doing so is absolute brilliance. Equally impressive is the fact that such a seasonal player like HerO managed to pull through NASL and then step it up to take the whole thing by storm. Whereas the season itself turned out to not be as pleasing as he probably had hoped, the main event bracket was a cakewalk for the introverted Protoss, including a 3:0 destruction of his teammate TaeJa just after the 4:0 walkover in the DreamHack finals.
MarineKing: MLG Winter Arena + MLG Winter Championship
Some might see him as a cuddly little corgi but he showed nothing of said cuddliness in the very beginning of 2012. Unlike the other nominations in this category his streak transgresses only throughout the iterations of the same tournament franchise, as he was seemingly eager to crown himself king of MLG by not only winning the MLG Winter Arena and its Championship later on, but by almost following through with winning the first Spring Arena and its Championship as well. The remarkable part of his first two victories is that he made it through probably the toughest groups and brackets possible. The only hindrance to his everlasting plate in the MLG Hall of Fame came in the shape of DongRaeGu, who boldly announced at the height of the rivalry that no one would win three tournaments in a row. While his promise rang true in the end, MarineKing was able to tag himself the world’s best Terran for that period of time.
Life: GSL S4 + MLG Fall + Blizzard Cup
What an exciting year it was for that 15 year-old kid from Korea. When his former team ZeNEX merged into StarTale, most people potentially didn’t expect what was to follow and most likely didn’t take much notice of that little asset that came along with that merger going by the name of Life. Young players doing well is generally nothing to get too excited about, but the way he dominated the toughest league in StarCraft 2 in his first year participating is outstanding. Up until the overall final against trophy hog Mvp he lost a grand total of two maps, one against last season’s champion Seed and one against a previous GSL finalist, namely MarineKing. One tournament doesn’t make a streak, so he went on to Dallas, Texas, to compete in one of the most competitive MLGs of all time. The first foreign appearance of KeSPA players turned into a showcase of Zerg prowess from Life. Once again besting top notch players left and right, no other than Flash himself dared to put a stop to the youngster’s death march. Not for long, as the double elimination structure allowed Life to retaliate his defeat and beat Leenock for his second major title in 2012.
Parting: WCG + BWC
PartinG crept up from the sidelines all year. He steadily increased his performance just in time to grab the biggest first place prize in StarCraft 2, catapulting him not only into international stardom, but more importantly to the top of 2012’s top earners. We are of course talking about the Battle.net World Championships. During the WCS Korean qualifiers he scored a trip to the Asian qualifiers despite narrowly losing to Creator. During the Asian qualifiers he secured a second place and a spot and the final tournament losing to Rain. Then during the main event, he swept the floor with almost every opponent. Only Suppy came close to beating the Protoss, while everyone else seemed to be extras in the PartinG show. His appearance at the World Cyber Games didn’t go quite as smoothly, the best of one round robin group stage leaving a slight smudge on his record as well as his memorable match against CombatEx. He nonetheless pertained and managed to cash another giant cheque.
