The kings are dead... long live the (former) kings!
StarCraft II's youth movement was put on pause in the final three winter regionals, with former champions returning to reclaim their crowns. Serral finally toppled Clem to stand tall in Europe once more, Scarlett took down her nemesis Neeb in North America, while veteran Protoss Cyan prevented TIME from winning eight straight in China.
DHM Winter will conclude with the all-region Season Finals, which will be held on November 9-15.
Serral brought Clem's three season reign atop of Eurooppa to an end, defeating the French Terran in 4-1 in the grand finals of the DHM Winter Europe regional. Surprisingly, the victory marked the Finnish Phenom's first time winning the European regional in six seasons of DreamHack Masters, despite him having won three of the pan-regional Season Finals in the same period (Serral later said he has less trouble against Korean foes than Reynor and Clem).
Clem had played a significant part in Serral's regional struggles, eliminating him in two prior DHM Europe tournaments. For nearly a year, the Liquid ace seemed to be an unbeatable foe for Serral, not only bouncing him from EU events but major internationals such as IEM Katowice as well. This season, however, Serral finally overcame his bête noire, defeating Clem convincingly in both the upper-bracket semifinal (3-1) and the grand finals (4-1 with a one-map upper-bracket advantage).
Despite the scorelines, Clem was hardly the victim of one-sided domination—the first three games of the grand finals featured some of the finest, most action-packed TvZ we've seen all year, with Serral coming out with a 3-1 (2+1 with his winner's bracket advantage) lead when the dust settled. Serral then closed the victory out with a well-timed cheese on the fifth map of Oxide, Nydusing his way to the final GG.
Roach-play featured heavily in Serral's victories, seemingly giving him the defensive backbone needed to counter Clem's unparalleled offensive speed. Amusingly enough, Serral was ambivalent about the usefulness of Roaches in his winners' interview, while still admitting they can make defense easier and also slow down Terran multi-tasking by forcing Tank productions instead of Mines. In any case, Serral's victory wasn't as simple as figuring out a 'new' unit composition—he won with more standard Ling-Bane compositions as well, dictating the tempo and finding backdoor opportunities that Clem rarely leaves open.
In retrospect, one might have seen the fall of the once-transcendent TvZ prodigy coming. In the weeks leading up to DHM Europe, Clem had given up a 0-3 loss to Rogue in ASUS ROG Fall and a 0-2 loss to DongRaeGu in the World Team League—perhaps it was inevitable that the top European Zergs would topple him as well. In his interview, Serral declined to say he had "figured out" anything specific about Clem—simply saying he had played well and mixed up his strategies better this time around.
Europe also featured some shake-ups further down the medal stand, with top four regularsHeroMarine and Reynor finding their spots taken by ShoWTimE and MarineLorD.
Having already proved his underdog chops in the previous season by defeating Clem 3-2 in the upper bracket, MarineLorD became an agent of chaos once more by defeating Reynor in his initial playoff match. This sent Reynor down to the lower bracket for an early elimination match against Clem, where the French Terran came out victorious.
While ShoWTimE was somewhat fortunate to earn a top three spot without having to beat any of Clem-Serral-Reynor power trio, he still gave a great account of himself by defeating HeroMarine and also giving Serral his closest series in a 2-3 semifinal match. After several underwhelming seasons after the transition from WCS to EPT, Die Mauer will finally get a chance to represent Europe in the combined DHM Winter Finals.
North American also welcomed a familiar-yet-new champion, as Scarlett took down her regional rival Neeb to claim the championship for the first time since the Fall 2020 season.
Fortunately—or unfortunately for certain masochists—the 4-2 grand finals didn't feature any of the duo's marathon PvZ matches that have become a familiar sight in DHM North America. Instead, mid-game combat ended up being the key to the series, with Scarlett able to notch the three wins needed to clinch her finals victory with an upper bracket advantage. After the finals, Scarlett seemed to be perplexed by Neeb's overly safe approach, declining to go for the extremely aggressive or greedy openers he's proved to be proficient at.
2020's NA breakout star Astrea finished third place in the region, unable to overcome the two traditional powers of the scene, while Nina took her customary 4th place spot.
While Scarlett's victory over Neeb in the finals was a minor upset, the biggest surprise of the NA regional actually came in the group stages where Neeb was almost eliminated. The American Protoss gave up shocking losses to Vindicta, DisK, and Maplez, and only barely clinched the fourth place spot in his group by the difference of one map victory (he was tied 4-3 in series with Vindicta, but had a +2 map differential compare to Vindica's +1). Though Neeb went on a roaring rampage of redemption through the lower-bracket of the playoffs, he was unable to bound the final hurdle of Scarlett in the end.
The Chinese regional delivered the most unexpected result of not just this season, but perhaps all six EPT seasons combined. On the verge of winning his eighth straight Chinese title, regional despot TIME ended up ceding a stupefying reverse-sweep to Cyan in the grand finals.
Cyan had put up great fights against TIME in both the group stage and upper bracket (despite losing both times), but got off to a dreadful start when they clashed for all the marbles in the grand finals. He started off by losing to TIME in a macro game on Beckett, followed by a deflating loss to a mine-drop on Jagannatha. But despite being down 0-3, Cyan kept his cool to manufacture a miracle.
As in the case of Clem, TIME's downfall could have been foreseeable in hindsight. Late-game TvP was the one area of relative difficulty for TIME when facing his regional peers (including his previous two matches against Cyan), with successful early-game harassment or tank-pushes being crucial to his victories. While Cyan wasn't exactly favored against TIME in drawn out macro games, they were still his best chance to win, and he played excellently to seize that small chance. Game after game, he found ways to patiently survive until the late-game—or even take the lead early with his own strikes—despite facing the spectre of imminent defeat. After shutting down a desperate game-seven tank push from TIME, Cyan finally emerged as the new EPT China champion.
Though the GGG Protoss had won a couple of regional championships in the pre-TIME era, he was one of the many veterans swept aside after TIME came to power. While there's a good chance that TIME comes back stronger than ever, for now, fans can hope for a more competitive Chinese region in 2022.
Thanks for the summary! I didn't pay any attention to the Chinese Qualifier and was more than suprised to not see TIME standing on top. It'll be interesting to see how Cyan will perform on the big stage.
Gotta watch that Cyan vs Time series if it's available. Cyan hasn't made any real noise in a long time and TIME is a G or at least lately. hard result to accept gonna have to watch that myself to see what happened.
I'm glad Serral got the win. It's really hard facing one of your most difficult opponents twice in the bracket stages, but he did a great job battling Clem both times. Clem should be very proud of his run too!
Serral winning this is bad news for Clem. I feel like once Serral has beaten Reynor, he lost his "fear" against him. If the same happens to Clem, I don't know who will challenge Serral next.
Neeb really did put in the bare minimum of effort to get to the Globals, huh? :D Obviously I just mean score-wise, not saying he played bad or lazy.
Wow, the competitiveness of the EU Region is just amazing. It's not just the usual awe-inspiring battles between "The Big Three". Now that the gap is closing for the four contenders Heromarine, Maxpax, Marinelord and Showtime, the fight for "survival" in the European Playoffs is getting extremely tense. And Clem and Serral are really pushing each other to perfect their TvZ more and more. GGs to all the European Heros
On October 21 2021 15:12 Riner1212 wrote: (Serral later said he has less trouble against Korean foes than Reynor and Clem).
right: lost 3-0 to maru lol.
Serral stans are just going to say "but he's beaten Maru in the past" and completely ignore the rest.
Completely ignore how Serral no longer has a rigged map pool and overpowered Zerg balance meta at his advantage when he loses. Completely ignore how he had both of those things when he's faced Maru in the past.
On October 21 2021 15:12 Riner1212 wrote: (Serral later said he has less trouble against Korean foes than Reynor and Clem).
right: lost 3-0 to maru lol.
Serral stans are just going to say "but he's beaten Maru in the past" and completely ignore the rest.
Completely ignore how Serral no longer has a rigged map pool and overpowered Zerg balance meta at his advantage when he loses. Completely ignore how he had both of those things when he's faced Maru in the past.
On October 21 2021 15:12 Riner1212 wrote: (Serral later said he has less trouble against Korean foes than Reynor and Clem).
right: lost 3-0 to maru lol.
Serral stans are just going to say "but he's beaten Maru in the past" and completely ignore the rest.
Completely ignore how Serral no longer has a rigged map pool and overpowered Zerg balance meta at his advantage when he loses. Completely ignore how he had both of those things when he's faced Maru in the past.
On October 21 2021 15:12 Riner1212 wrote: (Serral later said he has less trouble against Korean foes than Reynor and Clem).
right: lost 3-0 to maru lol.
Regardless of what you think about the Serral Maru H2H (will Maru always beat Serral going forward, will they trade series, etc) it's pretty obvious that Serral does better in season finals than regionals, seeing as he's won 3/5 of those and 1/6 DHM EUs lol. Considering how many of his high profile losses have been to those two over the past year and a half seems like a very reasonable statement from Serral.
On October 20 2021 23:34 Balnazza wrote: Serral winning this is bad news for Clem. I feel like once Serral has beaten Reynor, he lost his "fear" against him. If the same happens to Clem, I don't know who will challenge Serral next.
Neeb really did put in the bare minimum of effort to get to the Globals, huh? :D Obviously I just mean score-wise, not saying he played bad or lazy.
I think Clem will be back at an amazing TvZ level in Katowice, Serral shouldn’t be the hardest EU zerg there. On the other hand, Reynor will probably peak at Katowice and be far more difficult than Serral. Should be interesting!
On October 21 2021 15:12 Riner1212 wrote: (Serral later said he has less trouble against Korean foes than Reynor and Clem).
right: lost 3-0 to maru lol.
Serral stans are just going to say "but he's beaten Maru in the past" and completely ignore the rest.
Completely ignore how Serral no longer has a rigged map pool and overpowered Zerg balance meta at his advantage when he loses. Completely ignore how he had both of those things when he's faced Maru in the past.
Who cares about Maru? He hasn't won a GSL in nearly three years, hasn't won a DH Masters and even his last great victory (GSL Super Tournament) was nearly two years ago. At this point there are far more interesting rivalries out there than Serral vs. Maru.
But if you are interested in the stats: Maru won two times against Serral (both times 3-0), but lost 4 times (2x 0-2, 1x 0-3 and 1x 1-2). Both thoses 0-2 losses where in the same year as his wins against Serral. So I don't really see how this has anything to do with balance. And before you start with map pool...in their last two matches, both tournaments used the exact same maps
As mentioned above, it is true that Clem and Reynor are statistically hard opponents to Serral. However, starting from January 1st 2021 until today, Aligulac statistics say that:
Vs Non-Koreans Serral is 141–40 (77.90%) in games and 61–9 (87.14%) in matches.
Vs Koreans Serral is 72–41 (63.72%) in games and 26–14 (65.00%) in matches.
While it's not only about a loss to Maru. This year Serral has lost matches also against random SC2 gamers like Rogue, DRG, Byun, Cure, Trap, Zest, Stats, Solar, and Dark, against some of them - several times.
Maybe it is more about Serral's inner feeling when confronting Koreans than Clem or Reynor what he meant when saying "he has less trouble against Korean foes than Reynor and Clem", as statistically Koreans as a whole have been more difficult opponents than Foreigners, not including Clem and Reynor.
If either of them managed to get under Serral's skin then it is about the time to finally get rid of that kind mental boogies before Katowice. Good luck.
@UnLarva: Don't know if you can apply the raw statistics for his own feelings here though. I think it is save to say that the most important tournaments of the last two years (for Serral) are the DH Masters, the BlizzCon 2019 and IEM Grand Finals 2020/21. Most of the times he got eliminated in these by Clem (including the one time he didn't even qualifiy for Masters), one time by Reynor and two times by koreans (Trap and Zest).
So while his overall score against koreans might be weaker than against foreigners (or rather Reynor/Clem), he actually got kicked out more often by those two than by any korean rival. Could be just seeding etc. but there seems to be atleast some merrit to the fact that he has more trouble with Reynor/Clem than with the korean elite.
On October 21 2021 15:12 Riner1212 wrote: (Serral later said he has less trouble against Korean foes than Reynor and Clem).
right: lost 3-0 to maru lol.
Serral stans are just going to say "but he's beaten Maru in the past" and completely ignore the rest.
Completely ignore how Serral no longer has a rigged map pool and overpowered Zerg balance meta at his advantage when he loses. Completely ignore how he had both of those things when he's faced Maru in the past.
Who cares about Maru? He hasn't won a GSL in nearly three years, hasn't won a DH Masters and even his last great victory (GSL Super Tournament) was nearly two years ago. At this point there are far more interesting rivalries out there than Serral vs. Maru.
But if you are interested in the stats: Maru won two times against Serral (both times 3-0), but lost 4 times (2x 0-2, 1x 0-3 and 1x 1-2). Both thoses 0-2 losses where in the same year as his wins against Serral. So I don't really see how this has anything to do with balance. And before you start with map pool...in their last two matches, both tournaments used the exact same maps
What is the "far more interesting rivalries out there" you are talking about? Clem vs Reynor might be one but the need more time to get the hype up. Serral vs Maru is one that we all wanted to see years ago at their absolute best but never got to it because of Maru "weakness" in TvP. It take 2 years till now where we can say that Serral and Maru is at the top of their game again. In fact, Serral ranked No.1 and Maru ranked No.2 on the current Aligulac kinda speak out for the hype, not that I really agree to whole Aligulac ranking to begin with. Somehow you imply that Maru is "washed up" is pretty interesting, the same way as people think Serral was "washed up" before his recent DH tournament win. The idea that "either you are a champion or you are trash" is simply not correct, just look at Zest, he hasnt won shit for years, but most people including me believe he is the best Protoss out there and he showed that by beating Serral up convincingly last night.
@Balnazza. Yeah. I've no reasons to dig this topic too deep. If Serral says something about his adversaries, then I take it as it's face value (Just like every self respecting Serral fanbois and stans does). However, hard stats support his perception in this only partially. All in all, no matter who you are, you are always expected to lose a lot against top Koreans, regardless of race or circumstances. I checked this out because there was clear contradiction between what Serral said and what was my own impression on his overall performances during this year.
I hope only good for Serral, Reynor, and Clem, and also other Europeans for them being able to continue slowly rise against Koreans traditional near total dominance. But if I have to pick between Serral, Reynor, and Clem (or any other player) then it's Serral. I also hope that bracket luck would not ever seed these three against each others in early phases of a tournament. Tournaments are generally more entertaining if they all are in until last matches.
EPT
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