The quarter finals were filled with upsets and surprises – just the way we like it. The first match of the day was between TLO and Morrow, a TvT with enough hype to put Dana White to shame. We had TLO, 6-0 and playing a mirror matchup, no less TvT, which even Day[9] said he had “literally never seen before”. While this was TLO’s self-proclaimed weakest matchup and Morrow’s strongest, Morrow’s trusty 1 barracks FE had completely failed him in the Ro24 against Tarson, leaving him with an obsolete build order to fight TLO’s completely unknown and undocumented TvT.

The matches themselves lived up to all expectations and went the distance. In the ACE match Morrow held off TLO’s all-in and came out the winner, his TvT and composure still top tier despite a rattling experience versus Tarson.



Next was Dimaga vs. DeMuslim, easily the most anticipated series of the quarter finals, and for good reason. It made the closest poll on TL for who would advance and the games reflected that. Dimaga’s sketchy nydus worm build reared its ugly head once again but unlike in his games vs. HasuObs, Dimaga didn’t try to force it to work over and over again and ended up showing us some very nice muta/ling/baneling control in more than one game.

DeMuslim did everything from bunkering Dimaga’s natural to reaper harass and fast banshees, and while these builds were effective, at times DeMuslims was, ironically, perhaps not as aggressive as he could have been while waiting to build up units for a safer push. That being said, Dimaga responded extremely well to any early pressure DeMuslim dished out, a late transfer to his natural being one of the cleverest ways he protected his economy.

Each game played out similarly – Dimaga fought tooth and nail to survive the early game and build up a money composition that would crack DeMuslims army when the Terran moved out. Every game was tense and got my adrenaline pumping, and the finish was as climactic as you can get. Dimaga won game 5 with a brilliant muta/ling/baneling surround on metalopolis, ending, in my opinion, the most entertaining series of the tournament.



While Dimaga vs. DeMuslim had the closest poll, Idra vs. Sarens had the most one-sided, so it was all the more surprising when the French terran came back from a losing his entire army in game 1 to beating Idra in a quick counter-attack, showing off just how good his macro is. In game two Sarens once again had a great start and looked to be in a very dominating position going into the mid-game, his mass reaper opening shutting down any creep spread and forcing Idra to make roaches which he was massing marauders to deal with. This is when the biggest blunder of the tournament happened. Whether he over-estimated his reaper control or under-estimated Idra’s reaction time, Sarens hopped his entire group of reapers – his only means of map control – into Idra’s main to pick off drones and was promptly surrounded, losing all but 1 of the 7 reapers. Idra immediately a-moved to Saren’s base and won the game before a lair was even underway.

The series would, like its predecessors, go all the way to game 5, and though Sarens lost he showed us a different build order nearly every game and some very solid play that had even Idra doubting his advancement to the semifinals and later complimenting Sarens for playing so well. Having left the IEM grand stage with wins over Lucifron and HasuObs and an impressive performance versus Idra, I have a feeling that this won’t be the last time we see Sarens in a Ro16.

In the first day of IEM Tarson showed us he was not quite the underdog everyone was making him out to be. The Terran went into the quarter finals 6-1 with a perfect score in TvZ and TvT, and while he was cheerful and all smiles on camera, the Polish player was ready to bring the pain. MadFrog on the other hand had a much less dominating debut. His ZvP 2-0'd fan favourite WhiteRa but with dismal results from the rest of the Protoss line-up it would be the first and last time MadFrog would get that match up. In ZvT he had a less than ideal win over Cloud and was handily beaten by TLO, so when it came time to play Tarson, though riding on a lot of hype, MadFrog was not in the best of positions. Tarson won 3-0, making some wonder if he could in fact pull off the impossible and beat Idra to create a much dreaded TvT final.

The quarterfinals led to a semifinals with four players who had already shown us the best games of the tournament thus far, and they weren’t about to disappoint. Dimaga vs. Morrow was one of the closest, nail biting games in StarCraft 2’s short history, and certainly of the IEM tournament. In uniform with the previous rounds, Dimaga stuck to his muta/ling/baneling play which he utilized so effectively to get him to the semifinals. Against Morrow, his brilliant surrounds and choking map control won him two games of the five, and almost, almost a third when he attempted a three-pronged attack in game 4 that had me pulling my hair out in frustration. Both players were in top form, their control and management skills really a treat to watch and none of the games ended early from cheese or all-ins. Morrow took the series with infantry heavy armies, using superb control to split and dance his units around Dimaga’s oceans of banelings, showing us that bio play is indeed possible to pull off, albeit barely.



On the other side of the bracket a much different series took place. Idra, a bigger risk taker than Dimaga in the early game, faced off against Tarson, an underdog of the tournament with only one loss coming into the semis. After passing the quarter finals Idra said that he preferred facing Tarson’s solid, standard TvZ style to Saren’s creative play, and indeed the series went much easier for the American Zerg than the previous one. Tarson had a shaky start to the series, showing a modicum of the inexperience people expected from him and less than ideal reaper control, but he seemed to calm down and play much better thereafter, decisively taking the second game and giving us two more entertaining games before Idra finished the series 3-1. Though not nearly as action packed as Dimaga vs. Morrow, or as long, these games still demonstrated the ingenuity of both players and a few build orders and timing pushes that neither Dimaga nor Morrow had to deal with.

The great thing about this tournament is that from the semifinals onward we saw not a single mirror matchup, only TvZs, each game teaching us something new about his hotly contested matchup. Game 1 of Dimaga vs. Tarson was lackluster at best, but a good lesson for all the greedy Zerg players out there (make something other than drones). In game 2 Tarson, unfortunately, once again made some poor decisions with his reapers and lost in the exact same way Sarens lost to Idra in game 2 of their series in the quarter finals – immediately to a roach/zergling counter-attack. The subsequent two games were the best of the series. Tarson tried some neo-SK Terran style in game 3 but without any tanks or even ravens to deal splash damage, Dimaga was able to easily flank the infantry ball and crush it with units to spare. The final games game is a candidate for best of the tournament. We saw Terran drops, Zerg drops, forgotten banelings, failed frontal assaults and enough fungal growths to make even Idra smile. If you only watch four games of the entire tournament, be sure to include game 4 of Tarson vs. Dimaga.

Reapers, reapers, and more reapers. The Grand Finals, the entire IEM tournament, and TvZ itself is saturated with them, and with good cause – they give Terrans the most effective opening versus Zerg, plain and simple. One of the best TvZers in the world and not about to underestimate Idra anytime soon, Morrow skillfully executed his mass reaper opening three times in the Grand Finals, successfully twice, and each time transitioned into both an economically sound and map controlling mid-game that refused to give Idra any advantage. After being caught off-guard in game 1, Idra defended against Morrow’s mass reapers insanely well throughout the rest of the series, managing to barely hold them off while still building an economy. However, no matter how well he survived the early game Morrow would transition into a standard army and keep up pressure so consistently that there was little Idra could do to take a lead in any of the matches.

Morrow took his third victory of the series and 13th of the tournament ingeniously, using, what Idra could see as the same reaper opening of the previous games. But this time, knowing exactly how Idra would respond, Morrow relied on the potential threat of reapers to trick his Zerg opponent and went straight for a marauder/hellion push. With a train of scvs shielding his damage dealing units Morrow easily chewed through Idra's few zerglings and marched into the natural, ending the game.

Morrow's reaper control in the Grand Finals set a new standard for terran players across the world, and with solid transitions, macro, and decision making he won the first StarCraft 2 IEM Global Challenge with the composure and tact of a true champion. I have a feeling he'll be invited to the next one.