Finals were AcerNerchio and nBMonty
Semi Finals (I casted) were between White-Ra and nBMonty.
I played the first round as per the usual, got paired against a Masters from Austria (I'm plat) he rushed me with 6 lings and 6 drones, I killed all of them only losing one zealot and one probe. Did a 5 gate timing at 7minutes and just all-ined. He never even said GG.
Then Round 2 was against Rox.Kis|Pro7ect did my 5 gate all in again, but bungled the micro and macro, losing all of my probes to 2 banshees in my base. Gave him a bit of pressure though, so that felt nice to be able to do

Semi Final matches: only caught the last of the White-Ra vs nBMonty, but basically it was robo vs blink (respectively) then white-ra transitioned into blink very quickly. Monty had the momentum, and eventually won.
In the finals, Monty showed a lot of BM against Nerchio, but Nerchio took the bo5 series 3 games in a row. Some really nasty things were said, I imagine a lot of it was just trolling, but to make the case... E-sports is never going to be part of the rest of the world if it takes on a non-professional attitude, when you play you are representing all other Starcraft2 players trying to make the game into a legit sport. I personally hope this trend continues, we have good friendly, but intense and fierce games where at the end we say GG. Because you did your best and you lost, that is what it means to have a good game. Throw cheese, mechanics, class balances, maps, all out of the window. A loss is a loss, but getting a loss at your best is a pretty powerful situation, use that to reach new heights of power.
Lots of tournaments kept the cast small once again, WCS Combined Euro, Zotac, Go4Sc2, and I think IPN Korean qualifier? (not sure on the last one) 19 max at one point.
Discovered the nifty advert feature in scene switcher though, now I don't have to open my stream in a window anymore to run adverts or anything, its all automatic

~David "Icicle" Rynearson




