Dreamhack Winter 2012 - EG vs. Liquid

At this Dreamhack as well as at other big European LANs, we've noticed something that we find quite interesting.

Whenever we spot a player from Liquid they are almost always surrounded by teammates/coaches/managers and so forth.

On the contrary the EG players always seem to be by themselves.

We do not know the reason behind this, and for all we know it might be a coincidence, but it certainly feels like the Liquid players at the european LANs have a greater sense of teamspirit surrounding them.

We realize that our experience might not reflect reality at all, and might be due to the Liquid team being bigger at these events, but it still feels rather odd to witness this difference.

Actually most of the pictures we took today of the players from the two teams, reflect our point pretty well.

Thorzain by himself after he was defeated by Ret

Ret watches replay from the last game he lost to NaNiWa with teammate Hero and manager Robin Nymann

Hero in action with supporters watching closely

Stephano battling and ending the day with a score of 2 wins and 2 losses

Has Zerg always been IMBA?

TL;DR - Stephano feels Zerg has always been IMBA. In our opinion the different races require different skills and therefore depending on who you are, different races will seem easier to you.
This post isn't about the current balance issues, as we too feel there are some zerg-nerfs that needs to be done.


After beating CranK yesterday at the Lone Star Clash 2 event, Stephano said something like:

"It's easy. I've always said Zerg is the best race and it remains that way. It's way way IMBA."

Since Stephano often brags and sometimes comes of as a bit of a douchebag (intentionally we think), it's funny to hear him say that Zerg is IMBA, since in a sense it is the same as saying that his success is not simply due to his overwhelming amount of talent.

At the Lone Star Clash they had the eye-tracker feature that showed where the players looked the most during the games. What was really interesting is that Stephano looked a lot more on the mini map than CranK and as a result a lot less on the actual battlefield.

It's hard not to regard this as proof that for Zerg players, map awareness is often more important than micro. At least it might seem that way when solely looking at the eye-tracker results with race differences in mind.

And when we think of the best Zerg players over the last couple of years like for instance Nestea, DongRaeGu, Symbol, Life or Stephano we don't primarily think of great micro.
Instead we think of skills like fantastic macro, map awareness, game sense, decision making, movement and so forth.

So what's the point with this?

Well we basically feel that it's far too simple to say that the Zerg race in itself is "way way IMBA".
If that was the case then Zerg would have won everything during the last couple of years and they haven't.

However what can be said with certainty is that it requires different skills to master the different races.

And though Infestors might currently be in need of a nerf (and we think they are), it's ludicrous when people rant about one race generally being IMBA and fundamentally easier.
What everyone should acknowledge, is that different people find different aspects of the game easy. Therefore the different races also seem easier to different people.

And to Stephano Zerg seems IMBA because the skills required to master that race feels natural to him. He understands the race and everything about it so of course it's easy for him.

But that's what's great about the game: The three races are so different!

And the different aspects of the races relate to different aspects of your personality and to master them you have to draw on different parts of your mind.

In our opinion this is what makes the game beautiful to watch.

And in fact this is also what makes some of the games feel like genuine art.

Lone Star Clash 2 update

Stephano once again proved why he is considered the best foreigner, as he reclaimed his title at the Lone Star Clash by beating Bomber in grand final.

Stephano didn't drop a single set in the tournament before the final against Bomber, and Stephano's ZvP especially looks absolutely godlike. In fact after watching his dominating wins against Axslav, CranK and BabyKnight we can't possibly imagine how a Protoss could beat him right now.

Speaking of our cute and well-mannered danish hope BabyKnight, he actually played very well at the event as he finished top6 in a very strong field of players.

Yesterday he started out by beating Sheth in a great comeback series.

BabyK lost the first set and in the second set he was pretty far behind, but by playing very patiently he slowly won engagement after engagement and even though Sheth did some nice run-bys he never found a way to deal with BabyK's army.

In the last set BabyK engaged absolutely beautifully with stalkers and colossi at the fourth of Sheth. He blinked beneath all the corrupters of Sheth, while positioning his colossi perfectly in the top out of harms way and they could thus safely tear apart Sheth's ground force. It looked a lot like BabyK needed to prove that he could engage a lot better against Zerg than he had done against Stephano the day before and he certainly did that.

BabyK vs. Sheth = 2 - 1


After BabyK took that series he had to face Polt who had beaten BabyK 2 - 0 one week earlier in the MLG.

In the first set against there were some fantastic defense from BabyK against Polt's massive drop play. At the same time BabyK was investing a lot in upgrades and partially because of this and some really good micro he was able to take out Polt's fourth base. From here BabyK slowly got more and more ahead, and while Polt though did manage to stay in the game for a long time, he eventually had to give up.

In the 2nd set BabyK did an aggressive blink stalker build from 1 base, and with that he forced Polt to lift his natural and retreat to his main. On top of that BabyK killed a lot of SCVs and from there he took his own natural and transitioned to Colossi while delaying Polt's natural for quite a while. A couple of minutes later when BabyK had 3 colossi with range, he attacked and Polt desperately tried getting vikings out, but it was too little to late and BabyK took the series.

BabyK vs. Polt = 2 - 0


From there BabyK had to face Violet and to be honest that series was pretty one-sided, but sadly not in BabyK's favor.

In the first set Violet did a very big and nasty overlord drop into BabyK's main and it did so much damage, practically removing most of BabyK's important structures. BabyK though did manage to stabilize somewhat and get up to a good max'd army with mothership. Unfortunately though his mothership was hovering for 2 seconds over the abyss in the middle of the map and Violet's corrupters took it out for free, and that was pretty much GG.

In the second set BabyK tried some early gateway aggression on Violet's third, but Violet defended well. From there BabyK tried taking his third, but left it a bit undefended and Violet forced a cancel on it. From here BabyK decided to go for an all-in and he did manage to take out Violets fourth, but could not push further and ended up losing most of his army. He then tried taking his third again, but Violet got up to 5 bases quickly and was far ahead in everything and eventually just rolled over BabyK.

Violet vs . BabyKnight = 2 - 0


All in all a really good tournament for BabyK who got a chance to show some really impressive PvT, and after winning 2-0 against both TheStC and Polt he is starting to prove that he is a Korean Terran slayer. We still think that it's his PvZ that sometimes looks the least impressive, but then again, he lost to Stephano and Violet and they are certainly two of the best zergs out there, so no shame in that.

We look forward to seeing him in the WCS finals in Shanghai in 5 days.

FXO.BabyKnight fighting!

Dreamhack Valencia Quarterfinals Recap (Stephano vs. ForGG)

So all the quarterfinals turned out to be foreigner vs. korean series.

Of the four quarterfinals Stephano vs. ForGG was probably the one from which most people expected a foreigner to advance.

And in the first two quarterfinals there weren't really any surprises as they were both won by the korean.

TaeJa vs. SaSe = 2-0

TheStC vs. Vortix = 2-1

So it was all up to Stephano, but in the end his series against ForGG ended up being rather strange.

Stephano took the first set on Ohana in dominating fashion and at that point it looked like he would have no problems defeating ForGG.

The second set was on Metropolis.

Stephano went for a quick roach attack with around 7-8 roaches at the 7 minute mark and he managed to catch ForGG completely by surprise.
ForGG had gone for reactor'd helions and was building a banshee and when he finally took out Stephano last roach he only had about half the supply of Stephano.
Stephano also had 3 times as many workers as ForGG and the game should have probably been over at this point if Stephano just had played safe.

Stephano did not really play safe though and it actually looked like Stephano was just so certain that he had won the game that he had forgotten all about his usual perfect gamesense.
And when ForGG attacked with cloaked banshees and hellions Stephano defended miserably.

In the end it was almost surreal to watch how the hellions and banshees just kept killing more and more drones until in the end Stephano had nothing left and was forced to GG a game that he had actually already won 4 minutes earlier.

The third and deciding set wasn't quite as surreal but still weird in the sense that it never felt like Stephano was playing his usual confident play.
ForGG once again went for some hellion and cloaked banshee harass and although it didn't do devastating damage, it still felt like Stephano defended a bit carelessly.

Especially when ForGG attacked at Stephano's third around the 11 minute mark with both hellions and banshees. He took out far too many units and it did not look like a Stephano defense at all.

The game transitioned into a somewhat normal macro game after this, but it was always with Stephano playing from behind.
ForGG got the map control he wanted to get far ahead in bases and production.
For a while Stephano defended really well around the map with ultralisks and infestors and managed to win a lot of engagements.
But ForGG had the economy to constantly remax and eventually he got a good siege up at the ramp to Stephano's natural and when Stephano tried to break this he lost almost all he had left.
Shortly afterwards he was forced to GG and with that Stephano was out of the tournament.

So Stephano lost a series that he had practically had in his bag and whether you believe in EG curses or simply being punished for celebrating before the fat lady sings it was a pretty depressing series to watch. At least if you're a Stephano fan.
But you gotta hand it to ForGG. In that second game he just kept playing the game as if he didn't know he was behind and in the third game he actually really played well.

ForGG vs. Stephano = 2-1


Luckily for those people cheering for foreigners Targa managed to take a surprising win against Hero in the last quarterfinal. Hero won the first set but Targa showed some really cool nerve for a relatively new guy on the scene and pulled off an impressive comeback.

TargA vs. HerO = 2-1

Dreamhack Valencia Day 1 Summary

Today was day 1 of Dreamhack Valencia and oh my God did we see a lot of exciting games.

In the first group stage (RO 64) played early today there weren't really any big surprises.

Apart from LiquidRet missing out on the tournament because of a delayed plane or something, almost all the players we had expected to advanced also managed to do so.

The first group stage did result in a lot of good games and series though, and one of our favorite series was probably LiquidTaeJa vs. FnaticNightEnD.

After the first two sets the series was tied which meant they had to play a third an deciding set on Daybreak.

They both got up to three bases without getting harassed at all.
At this point TaeJa decided to go and poke at NightEnD's third with a small bio force + medivac.
This resulted in a nice little engagement where NightEnD threw down perfect forcefields to trap and kill some of TaeJa's units. TaeJa however managed to pick up some of his units beautifully and therefore avoid too big of a loss.

Around three minutes later TaeJa pushed again and this time with a a lot bigger bio army + multiple medivacs. TaeJa's army size was actually a bit bigger than NightEnD's, but NightEnD used good storms and feedback on the medivacs to get out of the engagement a tiny bit ahead.

TaeJa however showed extremely good macro skills and maxed out quicker than his opponent.
For some reason TaeJa at this point decided to pull practically ALL his SCVs for a final All-in push. This wasn't exactly a necessary all-in, but TaeJa had guessed that NightEnD at this point had started transitioning into Colossi tech, and this realisation had made TaeJa decide to try and break him before his colossi started popping out.

With this big push TaeJa managed to take out NightEnD's third easily.
From here TaeJa went towards NightEnD's natural taking out big chunks of NightEnD's army along the way.

Eventually though, NightEnD got a few Collossi out and was able to take a final stand at the ramp to his main. Here he actually managed to take out TaeJa's remaining forces, and having drawn almost all his SCV's TaeJa knew that he was too far behind and he was forced to GG.
So NightEnD was able to take a surprising and impressive win against the bad ass TaeJa

NightEnd vs. TaeJa = 2-1


In the second group stage of today (RO 32) it certainly got hotter with regards to some of the big boys having to work harder in order to qualify for the playoffs sunday.

There weren't exactly that many surprises here either though and once again almost all of the players we had expected to go through also managed to.
One of the biggest upsets was probably that Italian terran Cloud managed to 2-0 DeMusliM and with that knock the EG player out of the tournament.

Grubby was also knocked out of the tournament which in it self perhaps was a bit of a surprise. Unfortunately for him though he had landed in the same group as Stephano and TaeJa, making it the absolute hardest group. This proved too much for Grubby as he was defeated by both Stephano and TaeJa, against whom he did however manage to put up a valiant fight.

Our favourite series of the second group stage was Stephano vs. TaeJa.

They played one of the last series of the day and when they met they had both already qualified for the playoffs. This didn't mean that they weren't totally hooked on crushing their opponent though.

Besides getting the best seeds for the playoffs, there was also a lot of pride at stake in this matchup between the best foreigner in the world, and the korean with the best results in foreign tournaments over the summer.

The first two sets were really close and well-played, with one player each claiming a set.

The third and deciding set was on Metropolis and both player's seemed keen on making it an epic macro game from the start.

They both went up to three bases rather quickly.
Stephano invested alot in getting his creepspread going while TaeJa focused on hellions and banshees to get some map control.
Stephano was actually pretty good at engaging hellions with zerglings and managed to get a good surround on them a couple of times. So with his zerglings he actually prevented TaeJa from taking out too many creep tumors.

Instead TaeJa tried to deny Stephano's fourth with his banshee. Stephano however was on top of it before the banshee had practically landed a single shot. This alertness from Stephano was characteristic of Stephano's play in general as he never seemed to take any damage from drops and so forth through the series.

Around the the 15 minute mark TaeJa did his first big push but when they engaged they ended up taking out most of each other's armies leaving them at a pretty even supply afterwards.

For a very long time the game battled back and forth with Stephano at some point being able to push all the way to the doorsteps of TaeJa's base with broodlords and infestors.
TaeJa managed to defend though, partly because of good raven usage, and eventually he was able to push all the way back towards Stephanos main.
Here he got a goo siege up and at this point things started looking really tough for Stephano.

Stephano tried breaking TaeJa's siegeline a couple of times but to no prevail and eventually he was overrun by TaeJa's forces, and Stephano's 4500 banked minerals couldn't save him.
In fact a big part of his defeat in this set was due to a severe lack of gas in the beginning of the late late game which meant he at that point could no longer remax with important units after a couple of big engagements.

TaeJa vs. Stephano = 2-1

So tomorrow the 16 best players will battle in the playoffs and it's not impossible that we get to see a rematch between TaeJa and Stephano.
They certainly both have what it takes to win the tournament.
If neither of them end up taking it, then our money is on Violet or Hero.
But we'll se tomorrow

General update

So this weekend the 2012 Dreamhack Open: Valencia will take place.

If you haven't seen it they did a pretty cool trailer for it a while ago: Dreamhack Valencia 2012 Trailer

64 great players (mostly europeans) will battle for the 22,000 $ prize pool along with the honor and seeds for the Dreamhack winter.

We feel that it's a bit sad that our local hero FXOBabyKnight wasn't invited to Valencia, even though he just finished in fifth place at the WCS Europe finals, but I guess there isn't a lot we can do about it.

Anyway, of the europeans competing, besides Stephano we would say that home favorites Vortix and Lucifron should probably be expected to go far.

But as usual the small bunch of koreans participating will make it hard for any of them.


Oh and btw don't forget to vote for BabyKnight here: GSL world championship - european poll

You can vote until sunday and he desperately needs your vote. Currently he isn't in the top 16 which he needs to be to qualify for the tournament, where the 16 players with the most votes will battle for the chance to represent the world against korea.


And if you didn't have a chance to go the WCS Europe Finals last weekend and experience what many people called the most awesome SC2 event so far, here are some cool pictures for you that our friend Jack Heinonen took at the event.

GSL World Championship

It was announced some time ago that another GSL World Championship will be held in connection with the IPL5 which takes place in Las Vegas in the last weekend of november .

The idea is that the seven best foreigners in the world will battle against the best koreans in an epic Korea vs. the world showdown.

It has now been decided how the seven players that will represent the world is gonna be selected.

NaNiWa and Stephano were both given a spot by GomTV so there are five spots left for other players.

To find these players two polls have been established.
One for Europe and another for North America, South America and South East Asia.

Everyone then has a chance to vote for the players they think should represent the world and then on september the 23rd the 16 players in each poll with most votes, will qualify for two separate tournaments that will determine who gets to participate in the World Championship.

Here are the links to the polls where you can vote.

North America/South America/South-East Asia Poll

European poll


In all honesty it's feels a bit weird that it's decided by a poll what 16 players will get a chance to fight for the spots.

It doesn't seem fair simply because, as we all know, the most popular and famous players aren't necessarily the best players at the moment,

But oh well. I guess people never get tired of a good old popularity contest...

WCS Europe Finals - We have a champion

So it's official.

We have a Sc2 European champion and his name is Stephano!

A majority of people in the community would probably already have agreed before the WCS Europe finals that Stephano was the best SC2 player in Europe, but to those few who didn't, Stephano certainly proved his worth.

Stephano beat Vortix in the grand final and took the 1st place trophy without ever really having looked truly threatened this weekend.
The fact that Stephano's original airplane from America to Sweden was extremely delayed so that he didn't arrive until shortly before his first game only made his dominance even more impressive.

An essential thing to add is that it's actually the first time that a European champion of a sport also has the coolest hair in Europe.

A very important part of what the players were fighting for in Stockholm were the seeds for the WCS world finals in Shanghai in November.
The 6 european players that managed to qualify were Vortix, Lucifron, LoWeLy, BabyKnight, Grubby and Nerchio along with Stephano and Socke who had already qualified earlier.

Congratulations to them all.

Stephano dancing everyone's pants off

 Stephano giving high fives while scouting for possible groupies

Stephano proudly waving the flag of his homecountry USA (no wait, is that right?

BabyKnight getting his prize thinking that it is hopefully the first of many to come

WCS Europe Finals update

SPOILERS BELOW:

Unfortunately it is over for our danish hero BabyKnight.

He went up against teammate LoWeLy who is from Belarus in what turned out to be a pretty depressing series. At least if you're a BabyKnight fan.

FXOBabyKnight vs. FXOLoWeLy

In the first set BabyKnight went for a typical Forge Fast Expand. Lowely had a few zerglings trying to run through BabyK's wall at the natural.
BabyK placed a quick pylon to protect his natural until the cannon could finish.
He then wanted to cancel the pylon after the zerglings were gone but accidentally cancelled his Nexus.
This seemed to throw BabyK completely of and he then forgot to cancel the pylon at the wall so that he was completely walled in, and had a lot of structures in an awkward place.
From here BabyK probably felt that he was far behind so he decided to take a very quick third.
This was very risky and probably not wise, as LoWeLy had gone for an aggressive 2 base build.
LoWeLy decided to put constant baneling/zergling pressure on BabyK's third and natural and for a while BabyK was able to defend, but LoWeLy was enough ahead that he could just keep sending units.
Eventually LoWeLy just took his fourth and fifth and BabyK could do nothing and even though BabyK got some colossi out, it was enough.
LoWeLy took the game easily.

Second set was on Ohana and this time BabyK didn't do any major mistakes but you still had a feeling that he was probably somewhere in his head still regretting the mistakes from the first game.
BabyK went for three bases relatively quick, but LoWeLy once again stayed on 2 bases for a long time to get some aggression going.
He put on some baneling/zerglings pressure, and then later dropped zerglings in BabyK's main with overlords. He did this a couple of times and every time BabyK had to passively warp in stalkers to try and save his probes.
BabyK never really felt safe enough to move out and LoWeLy simply took a lot of bases all around the map.
Eventually BabyK moved out and did have some decent engagements, but LoWeLy's economy and map presence was just way better and the game never really got close.
BabyK typed in GG WP and sadly that was the end of his WCS run.

LoWeLy vs. BabyKnight = 2 - 0


But the most important thing was that he managed to qualify for WCS world finals in Shanghai and he can certainly be proud of his results this weekend.

We went to our local Barcraft at CafeAE in Copenhagen to watch and cheer for BabyKnight.

It is of course always fantastic to watch SC2 at a bar with other nerds, but today the general mood suddenly turned somewhat blue as everyone was naturally a bit disappointing that BabyK didn't perform better.

But that's how it goes sometimes, and as the grand final gets nearer the mood will definitely improve again as people get drunker and get to enjoy some great final matches.

Stephano just beat Vortix 2 - 0 in the winners bracket final and he is now waiting in the grand final for either LucifroN, LoWeLy or Vortix again if he can make it back from the Losers bracket final.

Whoever meets Stephano in the grand final will have a very hard job ahead of him, as Stephano is certainly looking like a WCS Europe Final Champion. But let's see, everything can happen...

WCS Europe Finals day 1 Summary!

In the upper half of the winners bracket Vortix played some fantastic ZvZs and ended up in the 1st winners Bracket semifinal against our dear BabyKnight. Unfortunately for BabyK it was Vortix that came out on top in a pretty close series.

Vortix vs. BabyKnight = 2 - 1


In the lower half of the winners bracket Stephano lived up to expectations and tore his way through a list of very good opponents. He won his first three games 2-0 and it wasn't until he met Lucifron in the 2nd winners Bracket semifinal that he was actually challenged.
He did take the series though and knocked Lucifron into the losers bracket, even though Lucifron had played a really good tournament so far.

Stephano vs. Lucfron = 2 - 1


In the losers bracket the 4 players making it to round 5 were Nerchio, Grubby, Happy and LoWeLy.
Most people had probably not expected Nerchio, with his good results recently, to end up in the losers bracket, but seeing that he did it was probably no surprise that he ended up making it far.

So Nerchio and Grubby are now playing in the 1st losers bracket semifinal in what is turning out to be a fantastic series.
After that Happy and LoWeLy will play in the 2nd Losers bracket semifinal.
The winners of these two games will then face BabyKnight and Lucifron to see who can get to the losers bracket final.

Who ever reaches that final will then have to battle for a chance to play the winner of the winners bracket final between Vortix and Stephano in the Grand Final.

And then we will have our selves a European Champion!