Our resident Euro-beat writer tree.hugger was unavailable this weekend, so we have unfortunately been forced to cancel our DreamHack Power Rank. Also, we didn't want to deal with people whining about how we had Snute higher than Nerchio. So, along similar lines as our MLG Spring Arena preview, here are our picks for most interesting storylines of DreamHack Stockholm (in no strict sense of order).


Storyline you definitely don't have to follow: the round of 128

DreamHack was unable to fill all 128 spots in its first group stage, throwing a laughable number of byes into the first round. Many players have simply received auto qualification into the RO64, while others need to only place top two in their three man groups. The biggest match-up of the RO128? I ended up with Seala vs sLivko, and Ret vs RunA as a close second.

So schedule a few more hours of drinking on Friday night, or sleep in a few more hours: the first round of DreamHack Stockholm is utterly skippable (unless Sweden is getting ready to spring their own Scarlett on us).


Revenge for DreamHack Winter

I'm not entirely sure how the Europeans feel about it, but at least to me, the last DreamHack felt a bit embarrassing. A tiny pool of Koreans in Liquid`HerO, EG.PuMa, MvPGenius, and MvPDongRaeGu made their way to Jönköping, and mugged the foreigners for 290,000 SEK (~ € 31,000) in first and second place prize money.

That happened under the watch of one of the best foreigner pools of all time: Mill.Stephano, Quantic.SaSe, Quantic.NaNiwa, EG.HuK, Liquid`Ret, mouz.ThorZaIN, Empire|Kas... it was a who's who of great non-Korean players, yet they were all trampled by the rampaging Koreans. There could have been even more Koreans in the final four, if not for some timely team-kills that saw DongRaeGu, PuMa, and Genius be placed in the same quadrant of the bracket, with only PuMa emerging victorious.

Things are a little different this time around. There's no Stephano or HuK, but there's no HerO or DongRaeGu either. NaNiwa and SaSe look even stronger for their additional months in Korea, while newer stars like RoX.KIS.TitaN and RoX.KIS.sLivko have emerged as well.

While the safe bet is still a Korean victory, it will be interesting to see if the Europeans can fight back in the first DreamHack of 2012. A European hasn't won a Dreamhack event since DreamHack Stockholm in 2011, and everyone will be hoping for someone to step up to end this year long drought.


Can we get some new faces in here?

When you compare it to the Korean scene that's full of power struggles, the foreign scene does start to look a bit stagnant. We're seeing some of the same names that dominated beta tournaments remain high up in the rankings in 2012, and there's a surprisingly slow turnover rate on the whole. With the international elite starting to look like an excessively exclusive club, there are some players at DreamHack Stockholm who will try to break the old school monopoly and force their way into the spotlight.

RoX.KIS.TitaN was a player who all the other pros were touting as the next big thing at DreamHack Winter, but as of yet, he's hasn't achieved the results people seem to be expecting of him. But with the pros so high on his talent, then it should be worth checking in on him to see if this is the tournament where he finally breaks out.

While Titan might be the most famous Russian at DreamHack, both in RoX.KIS.sLivko and RoX.KIS.LiveZerg have been flying under the radar and racking up impressive records. LiveZerg is the fourth highest non-Korean in TLPD ELO, while Slivko is coming in at twelfth. In particular, Slivko looked very good against Code S player SuperNoVa at IEM Sao Paulo, barely losing to him in a five set, quarter-final series.


MvPMonster and TSL_HyuN: Underestimate at your own risk

Maybe you haven't heard of them, but you should still be pretty damn afraid. We all know Korean teams are pretty tight on money, and anyone they send overseas will be someone they're pretty damn confident in investing in. How many people outside of avid Korean scene fans heard of coL.GanZi (4th place MLG Anaheim), FXOLucky (2nd place IPL3), or oGs.TheStC (3rd place MLG Orlando) before they appeared out of nowhere and owned face at an international tournament on their first try? Sure, not all of the Koreans end up being championship contenders, but if a Korean pro-team believes in a player's skill, it's probably worth giving him the benefit of the doubt.


F*** IT, WE'LL DO IT LIVE

Acer.Nerchio was the original online-only monster, though he did overcome that reputation a bit by winning the eight-man Battle in Berlin. Beyond that one tournament though, he's never really made a splash in any of the bigger live tournaments, and getting over that hump is yet again, his goal at DreamHack Stockholm.

This time, he'll have some more company. Liquid`TLO has been a beast in online tournaments, most famously defeating three members of the Prime team (including MarineKing) in IPL TAC, while also placing top four in the second ONOG invitational, beating Fnatic's Koreans Rain and aLive in the process. In contrast, his live tournament results have been disappointing, with a first round exit from Assembly and a hasty elimination from MLG Winter Arena in recent months.

Speaking of ONOG, the surprise champion GL.Snute took down a very tough field of opponents (Killer, NightEnd, Titan, Sheth) on his way to the title, only to suffer a rather disappointing early elimination at the hands of VPTuruk at The Gathering LAN in Norway. He hasn't been at enough live events for anyone to get a good measure of his composure, so DreamHack Stockholm will be important in finding out what level of threat he possesses.

It's easy to get excited for any of these guys based on just their online play (and who knows, maybe you could throw in ClouD, MorroW, or even ThorZaIN into this category), but rather paradoxically, it's how good you are live that counts in eSports.


Pride of the hosts

Obviously, there wouldn't be any greater thing for DreamHack than if a Swede managed to take home the first place prize. But let's be realistic – winning an entire tournament will always be a tough goal to reach when Koreans are in contention. Still, even without winning the championship, there's a reasonable level of performance that would still do the home fans proud.

For benchmarking purposes, let's look at February's ASUS ROG's Assembly Winter in Helsinki, Finland. Among the 32 pros competing, six were Koreans at the Code A level of higher, and three were from the host country of Finland (elfi, Welmu, Satiini). In this field, Aprilfools.Welmu reached the RO16 while Acer.elfi made it to the RO8, a result the home crowd seemed rather pleased with. Considering the strength of the field, the number of representatives for Finland, and the fact that aL.Naama wasn't even playing, it was a very good result for the hosts.

Now, let's look at Stockholm. Among the players, there around forty of them are "notable," and half of those notable players are Swedish. With Quantic.NaNiwa, Quantic.SaSe, and mouz.MorroW flying over from Korea, the entire Swedish A-team roster has been assembled, alongside the B, C, and D team. Against them are the usual crew of European tournament circuit pros (minus Stephano), and four Code A or above Koreans.

After careful deliberation, I've come to the conclusion that will Sweden need at least one player in the semi-finals if they don't want to be outdone by Finland. Personally, I'm rooting for the Swedes here. They've already lost at hockey, so it would be a shame to lose at Starcraft II as well (yeah, I went there).


Is homegrown strength enough?

NaNiwa's achievements in Code S are extremely impressive. Only a handful of players have the devotion to go to Korea and train there for months, and fewer of them have the skill to turn it into tangible results. While we're proud of all of our successful foreigners, there's still something that feels different about players who joined the Koreans and learned their ways, and the ones who decided to cultivate their skill at home but can still compete with the best. One of those makes intuitive sense, the other is still somewhat of a mystery.

With Stephano off skiing somewhere and deciding that he does indeed like money, DreamHack will feature the two other enigmatic homegrown gosus: Liquid`Ret and mouz.ThorZaIN. Both players tried out the Korea experience, decided it wasn't the thing for them, and returned to play from home. And so far, it hasn't really hurt them. ThorZaIN has been a rock for Mousesports in team leagues, holding his own against a variety of opponents thrown at him by Korean teams. Ret has also looked like a player that could cut in Korea, even scoring an upset over Mvp at the last MLG Winter Arena.

So far, Stephano's been the only homegrown, non-Korean player who has managed to win a major live event with Korean participants, and that was back at IPL3 in October of 2011. ThorZaIN defeated MC on his TSL3 championship run, but that was online. Ret has won live championships, but only against Europeans. At DreamHack Stockholm, we'll see how far they can really go.


Taking aim at Polt & PuMa

There are two players who will come into Stockholm with giant target marks on their backs.

EG.PuMa is a player who needs little introduction, having won around $100,000 dollars in international prize money in 2011. While the generally higher skill level in Korea means that any Koreans at a foreign tournament will have an advantage, PuMa has been especially successful because of his skill in elimination tournament settings. He lays out his strategies for multi-game series extremely well, and uses deception and mind-games better than almost any Terran player on the planet.

TSL_Polt got into the international tournament scene a bit late, but he's been rolling in 2012, crushing online cups and winning his first international title at ASUS ROG Assembly Winter 2011. While he's not as devious as PuMa, he seems to possess a stronger all around game, with great macro, micro, and decision making that make him extremely difficult to beat.

These two are two best Koreans, if not the two best players coming into DreamHack – but they are still quite beatable. Though they both possess excellent TvP and TvT, TvZ has been pointed out as a weakness for both. Most recently, Stephano manhandled PuMa at Assembly, while a well-prepared Sheth defeated Polt at MLG Columbus with carefully chosen counter-strategies.

Stephano might not be at DH, but players like Ret, Nerchio, and sLivko have shown they can play great TvZ. Take into account the fact that PuMa has been looking less than invincible in TvP lately (Socke took him down at MLG), the attendance of strong TvP players such as Mana and SaSe will be present, and the fact that everyone will be gunning for the two Koreans, and it might just be a matter of when, and not if, the Korean duo goes down.


NaNiwa

Criticized, discarded, mocked, ignored, hated.

Few people have had to endure as much as NaNiwa. Though the industry he works in can be incredibly cruel and harsh, he's fortunate that it adheres to one iron principle: Win, and all is forgiven. NaNiwa has been very good at winning.

NaNiwa may be the most polarizing player in the world, but right now, there's no one who has a better chance to upset the Koreans and deliver a championship to the rest of the world. Not just this weekend at Stockholm, but also in the GSL, the very heart of the Korean scene. Neither HuK, nor Stephano can make that claim.

It's only taken nine games for NaNiwa to reach that exalted status, nine games that didn't even show us anything that was new. It was precise, well calculated PvP as always, and solid, if not particularly flashy PvT. They were ordinary games we could have seen from him anywhere – at the Red Bull Lan, or an MLG event. Had those nine games happened anywhere else, no one would be giving NaNiwa a chance to win this weekend at DreamHack.

All that has changed is that now people believe. The fans in him, and perhaps even him in himself. It's the reason why now, more so than ever, he has a chance to win in his home country. Because a lot of players have skill, intelligence, or luck. Not many have faith.