EPT
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The regional championships of DreamHack Masters Fall have concluded, with Reynor winning his second straight European title, while Scarlett triumphed in North America to win her second major title.
The dynamic duo on top of European StarCraft may have become a terrific trio over the weekend. Not only did Reynor win his second straight DH Europe tournament, but rising star Clem finished second place—his best major tournament result yet. Clem even earned the winners bracket advantage in the grand finals, having defeated Reynor 3-2 in a closely fought winners bracket series. However, Reynor kept his composure and overcame the one-map deficit in the grand finals, winning the rematch for all the marbles by an overall score 4-3. Defending against early Terran harassment and playing a Lurker-centric composition with 90+ Drones turned out to be the key for Reynor in the finals, giving him the four map wins he needed to claim the championship. Other strategic approaches, such as Ling-Bane intro Ultralisks in game one, or mass Roach-Ravager in game four, fell short of the mark. After the matches, Reynor suggested that learning how to play more unpredictably could be the next step in Clem's growth. Indeed, one would have expected any other top Terran to bust out a Bunker-rush at least once during the series, but Clem opted to play mostly 'honorable' macro games until the bitter end.
The finals capped off a tremendous overall run from Reynor which also saw him defeat his rival Serral in two tough matches. Reddit user yubo56 pointed out that Reynor had to survive four maps on elimination point in order to win the championship, making his victory one of the clutchest performances we've ever seen. Both of the clashes between Serral and Reynor in the winners and losers brackets went the distance, and were decided by the narrowest of margins. In the end, it did seem like Reynor has taken a mental edge in the rivalry, with Serral ruing how he threw an 'impossible to lose' game five in their winners final match. Since July, Reynor has eliminated Serral in three major events: DH Summer Europe, The Douyu Cup, and DH Summer Fall.
Reynor now heads into the Season Finals as the European #1 seed, and will look to improve upon his top four finish from the Summer Finals. As for Clem, it will be interesting to see how much his TvT and TvP have improved since the Summer Season, where he was eliminated from the group stages by Cure and Trap. Serral is in the unfamiliar position of being the 3rd place player from Europe, which is his worst finish in region-locked competition since 2017. Still, as the champion of the Summer Season Finals, he may still be the scariest opponent for every other player except Reynor.
Another French Terran in MarineLorD rounds out the European contingent at the season finals. Once a rising Terran star in Heart of the Swarm (a Clem-before-Clem of sorts), MarineLord achieved his best result since his comeback to SC2 by defeating Vanya, MaNa, Geralard, and PtitDrogo to take fourth place in DH Europe
The North American tournament saw Scarlett—now returned to Canada after a long stint in Korea—win her first major title since IEM PyeongChang back in 2018. Scarlett took the crown at the expense of Astrea, who had defeated Scarlett earlier on in the playoffs but couldn't repeat the feat in the grand finals. The finals was 'typical' Scarlett, as she took the first two maps by leaning on patient, defensive turtle play based on Lurkers. Scarlett then rapidly shifted gears, finishing Astrea off with a series of well-timed attacks early on.
For now, Astrea is the Kong of the Americas, having taken second place in consecutive seasons of DreamHack Masters. The previous season's champion Neeb dropped down to third place after losing to both Scarlett and Astrea, and thus missed the cutoff for the Season Finals.
The Fall Season Finals groups have been drawn, and the tournament will be played out between September 15-20th. The regional representatives and group draws are as follows:
Korea: Rogue, DongRaeGu, Stats, TY, INnoVation, Trap
Europe: Reynor, Clem, Serral, MarineLorD
North America: Scarlett, Astrea
Latin America: Special
China: TIME
Oceania & Rest of Asia: Probe
Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan: Nice
Sick games and great writeup ofc
