x5_PiG

Jared "PiG" Krensel is the reason half the StarCraft II ladder knows what a build order is. The Sydney-based Australian — former Zerg pro, professional caster, streamer, coach, and content creator — has spent over a decade as the bridge between StarCraft's esports elite and the everyday players trying to climb. His daily strategy videos, his tournament casting, and his plain-spoken teaching made him one of the most trusted voices in one of gaming's most demanding communities.

The origin is pure StarCraft romance. Krensel, born in 1989, started as a casual Warcraft III player in Australia — about as far from the esports world as you can get — before StarCraft II consumed him. He chased the pro dream the hard way: grinding the SEA ladder, competing in regional events like WCS Australia 2012, and even representing esports on mainstream Australian news outlets like ABC and SBS back when that was a novelty. He found real success as a player, including time with the Exile5 organization, but his second act would dwarf the first.

The PiG Daily is the institution. What started as a simple idea — a StarCraft II strategy video every single day — became one of the longest-running educational series in esports: build orders, timing attacks, scouting patterns, and decision-making, explained with the patience of a coach and the credibility of a guy who actually played at a high level. For Zerg players especially, the Dailies were a curriculum. New expansions, balance patches, meta shifts — PiG taught through all of it, and the archive became a living history of how StarCraft II was actually played.

The casting career grew in parallel. PiG's energy and game knowledge made him a natural behind the desk, and he became a fan-favorite WCS caster — one of the rare Australians calling the world stage. He's cast at IEM Katowice, sharing the stage with an international lineup of talent, and his chemistry with fellow Aussie caster Maynarde became its own beloved subplot of the broadcast scene. He brings a player's insight to the caster desk: he doesn't just narrate the action, he explains the intention behind it.

The game itself honored him. His likeness was added to StarCraft II as an in-game portrait — first through the Macherino crowdfunding for the BaseTradeTV Star League Season 1, then as part of the 2018 QLASH Casters Invitational portrait pack. For a community that treats its casters like folk heroes, it's the equivalent of a retired jersey: PiG's face, in the game, forever.

He's also helping build what comes next. In 2023, Krensel signed on as a design consultant and tester for ZeroSpace, the cinematic RTS that rallied StarCraft pros and veterans around its Kickstarter — a spiritual successor in the making from developers who grew up on Blizzard's formula. It's a fitting role: who better to stress-test a new real-time strategy game than the man who taught a generation how to play the last great one?

The coaching and content complete the picture. Beyond the Dailies, PiG's detailed build notes, guides, and one-on-one coaching sessions have been a resource for everyone from bronze-league beginners to aspiring pros. His streams — he put in over 140 hours in a single recent month — mix high-level ladder play with the same educational commentary that defined his YouTube. The throughline across every platform is consistency: show up, teach the game, respect the grind.

Why he matters is inseparable from why StarCraft II still matters. The game is well into its second decade, kept alive less by Blizzard than by its community — and nobody did more to sustain that community's knowledge base than PiG. Every era of the game had its champions on stage; PiG was the champion of the ladder, the guy who made sure the next generation knew what they were doing. In esports, careers are usually measured in trophies. His is measured in students.

The Australian context made the career harder — and more remarkable. Competing from Sydney meant brutal ping to most international servers and total isolation from the Korean and European scenes where StarCraft II's elite lived. The SEA region was an afterthought in the game's competitive geography. Krensel didn't just overcome that; he turned it into a mission, becoming the region's most visible ambassador and proving that world-class StarCraft content could come from anywhere with an internet connection and enough stubbornness.

His casting style is the same philosophy as his teaching: clarity over bombast. Where some casters sell the hype, PiG sells the understanding — he'll pause the excitement to explain why a third base timing matters, then ride the wave when the all-in hits. The 2019 IEM Katowice run, calling quarter-finals from the Spodek Arena alongside Maynarde, was a career highlight: two Aussies on the world stage, bringing the southern-hemisphere perspective to the game's biggest crowd.

The content machine never really stopped evolving, either. Beyond the Dailies, his channels have hosted everything from viewer-coaching sessions to deep dives on balance design — the latter carrying real weight given his consultant work on ZeroSpace. When PiG talks about what makes an RTS work, developers listen, because he's spent more hours thinking about StarCraft II's design than almost anyone alive. The student became the teacher; the teacher became one of the game's architects.

Previously covers x5_PiG because the build order is eternal.