by Waxangel



Grack's back, BabyKnight rains on Rain's parade, TitaN towers over the competition, and all sorts of chaos.

Wow. Where to begin. Well, how about this picture for starters:


Yes, it was that kind of night.

After EG.IdrA.RC lost to 1 - 2 to coL.Sasquatch at MLG Raleigh and attributed his loss to his opponent's inability to play correctly, it didn't really seem like America's favorite player was going to find much success in Zerg vs Zerg. But on Friday night in Shanghai, IdrA looked like a maestro of the Zerg mirror, crushing Samsung_RorO and teammate EG.Stephano.RC with alarming ease. IdrA's play even earned accolades compliments from one FXOLeenock, a player who had just made it into the GSL Ro8 on the back of some seriously impressive ZvZ of his own.

IdrA defeated his two opponents in long, macro games (what else?), taking better engagements while controlling the flow of the game. The most notable aspect of IdrA's ZvZ might have been his tendency to keep a lower infestor count - in the sixes and eights, compared to the tens and twenty's commonly seen in recent ZvZ's between Koreans. In any case, IdrA earned the shock result of finishing first place in the consensus group-of-death, and he even flashed a rare smile after he sealed his final victory against Stephano.

Naturally, the StarCraft gods decided to reward IdrA by giving him the best player in the entire touranment as his Ro16 opponent. Wait, what?

- Koreans drop games, series, and some drop out of the entire tournament.

The brackets worked out so that IdrA was slated to face the second place player in Group D, which contained SKT_Rain, FXOBabyKnight, Quantic.State, and iM.MaFia. However, instead of crushing his group like he was supposed to, the OSL champion and WCS Asia Champion decided it would be cool if he lost 0 - 2 to BabyKnight, giving up the first place spot to the Danish champion.

Rain was one of the players working on getting rid of the notion of PvP as a coin-flip, consistently playing long games and winning with superior late-game management. However, BabyKnight would have none of that, using aggressive strategies and taking advantage of his excellent micro in two consecutive games. Rain crumpled helplessly, his five-series PvP winning streak broken by a foreigner.

While IdrA and BabyKnight were indeed impressive, the performance of the night belonged to Russia's RoX.KIS.TitaN, who defeated not one but two of the vaunted Koreans to advance to the Ro16. Alright, so perhaps one of his victories was against serial choker Curious in one of the messiest series of the tournament - we can overlook that kind of blemish when a foreigner has defeated a six time Code S player. No such flaws could be found in TitaN's victory over KeSPA's CJ_herO[jOin], where he won in both a prolonged laser show as well as with a cheesy 3-gate attack.

TitaN's victories directly led to a later deathmatch between Curious and Hero[join], ensuring there would be one less Korean for any foreigners to face in the later rounds. Unlike IdrA, TitaN received a reward of sorts, getting matched up against Chile's d.KiLLeR in the Ro16 - one of the more palattable opponents he could have faced.

- Top Europeans Stephano and Nerchio bow out early, casting shadows on day two.

It wasn't all good news for the non-Korean world. Two of the players touted as the greatest weapons against Korean hegemony, Stephano and Acer.Nerchio, were eliminated early. While Stephano's loss to IdrA has already been mentioned, it happened to be that Nerchio also had his teammate to thanks for his exit from the tournament.

Neither Nerchio nor Acer.Scarlett were able with stand the might of CreatorPrime's devastating 3-base pre-hive attacks, but at the same time both were able to triumph over Australia's Nv.mOOnGLaDe. That left to the two Acer Zergs to fight it out for the last Ro16 seed in their group, which went to Scarlett in the end after she triumphed in a horrifically boring BL-infestor vs BL-infestor war.

Stephano's exit from the touranment proved to be far more interesting, as he took on Liquid's HerO in the final match of his group. Stephano had easily beaten down HerO earlier in the day, and things looked grim for the Protoss player. However, HerO had one sleight of hand prepared for use against the foe who had tormented him in many tournaments before, and with the score tied 1 - 1, HerO deployed a clever hallucinated colossus fake. It worked like a charm, with Stephano overinvesting in neural parasite and corruptors, giving HerO the advantage he needed to win with a horde of stalkers, immortals, and archons.

While the Koreans also lost RorO and hero[join] on day one, it's hardly a fair trade from the Korea vs. World point of view. As encouraging as it was to see TitaN, IdrA, and BabyKnight perform well, they are not the proven, tested Korean-Killers like Stephano and Nerchio. Looking ahead to the final bracket, one must wonder if the elation of day one might come with a later cost.

- A list of other surprises and players that deserve mention, but can't be written about at length since this article will become too long.

• EG.Suppy.RC was the first player to advance to the Ro16, defeating beat Comm and ROOTViBE. USA! USA!
  
• d.KiLLeR managed to narrowly edge out Grubby for a Ro16 spot in some very ugly games.
  
• The mysterious Fenix looked pretty good, and he answered all our questions by showing up in an LG-IM jersey. He didn't advance, but was good enough to 2 - 0 aTn.Socke.
  
• On that note, German champion aTn.Socke was very disappointing, unable to win a single map as he went out of the tournament. Quantic.Illusion took the second place spot in Group A instead.
  
• ROOTMajor came pretty close to winning a series against a Korean, going 1 - 2 against both Hero[join] and Curious.
  
• Though they were avoided for the most part, iS.Insur and FXOLoWeLy managed to make sure some truly dreadful late-game PvZ would be played. After losing two of them, Insur opted to play weird two-base builds instead of tolerating playing a late game PvZ again (he lost).
  
• Brazil's Levin actually managed to take a map off Lucifron to finish 1 - 4 on maps, better than the 0 - 4 records of Mafia and Socke.
  

- A list of things the few things that actually went as expected

• ST_PartinG swept Illusion and Socke to clear his group without a hitch, attracting 0 attention.
  
• The brothers Duran, LucifroN and VortiX, quietly made their way through their Korean-less groups and into the Ro16.
  
• Gamania.Sen looked a step above most foreigners as usual, defeating Grubby and Killer to advance.