Group A: MC, dignitasKiLLeR, Beastyqt, Kas

This is a great kick-off group. I'm extremely excited to Min Chul back in the foreign scene again to make some noise and stomp some nerds. But strangely enough, there are doubts surrounding the strongest SC2 Protoss player of all time. He hasn't had very strong performances in the GSL the past few seasons, but I believe MC will come off strong as ever this time around. He'll bring horror to IEM and take first place in this group to start with.

That leaves us with two Ukrainian Terrans and the replacement for IdrA, KiLLeR. KiLLeR received IdrA's spot as he was one of the next people in line from the American qualifier. But I'm fairly sure that the top two in this group will be MC and Kas. Kas is one of the most fearsome, solid Terrans to play this game. He plays more than anybody else according to his ladderstats and wins one weekly tournament after another.

It's really a toss up between the last two players in the group, but I'm going to give the edge to KiLLeR who managed to qualify for BlizzCon through the Latin American qualifier one week ago. He showed some solid Zerg play and definitely has the upper hand in LAN experience. The last and fourth place will be Beastyqt. A player who is known for long, intensive games in his appearances in various online tournaments. A player who definitely can make the upset if the wind is blowing his way.




Group B: SeleCT, Socke, TSL_Killer, DieStar

This is the group, I'm looking forward to the most. Two of the players I enjoy the most watching are SeleCT and Socke. Both players are super competitive and always bring some fun games to the table. SeleCT's TvP is something I have no words for. His multi-pronged attacks are just on a level where a lot of Protoss users can't compete. Also he won 10,000$ last weekend winning the Blizzard North American Invitational in front of stars like Sheth, HuK and IdrA. A big win like that will have brought back a lot of confidence to the handsome Korean player, SeleCT.

My second pick in this group is actually going to be Socke. One might be surprised by this pick, but Socke is a strong PvP player and has played a lot of important games in this matchup throughout his entire StarCraft 2 carreer. He's been a seriously rival to HuK in tournaments (though HuK's "rivalry" with Idra is more well known), where they're pretty much 50/50 in wins/losses. However, his PvP seems to have dropped off a little lately, so I feel that he's going to rely on his strong PvT.

Killer is one of the few top level Koreans that I haven't been too impressed with. More than once, I've seen him display mediocre strategy and gameplay. Coming into these foreign events and getting into a group with two of the absolute premiere players from the North American and European scenes; it's going to be one of his toughest events, because of what people expect from him as a Korean pro.

The fourth player is DieStar. DieStar is one of the players who lies low in the scene, practices a lot and coming to events being pretty strong. Not knowing what level he's at and what he can do at the moment, I will seed him as the fourth player.




Group C: HuK, Tarson, mOOnGLaDe, Nerchio

Here comes the boom, ready or not! No, but really. HuK has been on great streak over the past few months, winning DreamHack and HomeStoryCup back to back on his last trip to Europe. Over the past few weeks HuK has also been on a big travel run to tournaments all over the world. First he went to MLG Anaheim and flew directly to Finland to play Assembly. After Assembly he went to Holland for a few days prior going to the Blizzard North American Invitational. Then he went back to Korea to play his Code S match and now he’ll play IEM GamesCom in Cologne, Germany. Even though HuK has been on a long and exhausting tour, I’m sure he’ll do great at this event and take first place in the group.

About the second place in this group, I’m a little torn and let me tell you why. Tarson and Nerchio are two incredible players. Both of them show tremendous strategies and consistency online, but have yet to really prove themselves on LAN events. Tarson has been playing a few LAN events and has been doing fairly good in some of them, his best performance at the last IEM European Championship in Kiev where he took fourth place. As far as Nerchio goes, despite having played very well to reach the grand finals of online-only IPL2, he only participated in one live international event recently; the European Blizzard Invitational. An invitational where he didn’t do that well. I think after some thorough review, I’d have to go with Tarson for the second place prediction in this group. He’s a strong Terran player and he has high expectations of himself, also he’s the most experienced LAN player of the two. That's often the deciding factor when players have to compete on huge international stages like IEM.

My last and fourth place predicition in this group will be mOOnGLaDe. One of the players who did exceedingly well in the latest season of Intel Extreme Masters and went to Korea shortly after. Though he had strong performances 4-6 months ago, we haven’t seen mOOnGLaDe represent himself and his country in a strong fashion since and I’m not sure where he’s at skillwise.




Group D: PuMa, Stephano, MaNa, SaSe

Wow, just wow. I’d say this group is the toughest group at IEM GamesCom and besides first place, it’s totally open. PuMa is an outstanding Terran user who earlier in his career was the practice partner for Flash in Brood War. He joined team Evil Genuises after an amazing run through the NASL Season 1 Open Qualifiers into winning the Grand Final championship.

If I’d have to make a guess, I’d put Stephano as second place. There’s a few reasons for me to do that. First of all I have to point out that Stephano is an unbelievably talented young Zerg, who’s taken lightly. In the RTS-genre you need to possess a lot of qualities to be successful; composure, stamina, strong mechanics and a great strategic mind. At Assembly he showed us that he has all these things. I expect nothing but greatness from him.

Even though MaNa finished second at Assembly and took out HuK in the groupstage, I just have a special feeling about SaSe. SaSe became known for his speed, knowledge and composure in the foreign WarCraft 3 scene. He has been playing tournaments all over the world, most recently in China, where he used to live with ToD back in the WarCraft era. In terms of international experience, he's unmatched here. And though he's not with a Korean team right now, he's been living in Korea and training with Korean players.