Day three of DreamHack Winter saw the beginning of the playoffs bracket as the top 16 players in the tournament poured in to sift out the better eight. Despite being extremely dominant during the group stage phase, the protoss race saw only one representative of itself make it to the next round.
The first half of the DreamHack Sapphire AMD elimination bracket started with two unpredicted results. White-Ra and SaSe, who both showed spectacular play in the group stage, lost in the first round against Naama and NightEnd, respectively. Naama came back from a disadvantage as WhiteRa took game one but showed solid play to earn his Ro8 spot. NightEnd vs Sase was much more unforgiving as it befits any protoss mirror and NightEnd came the stronger contender, throwing Sase out of DH with a 2-0 victory.
In the second PvT for the day, Puma found Genius to be not even a minot hindrance on his way to the top eight. The protoss opened the first map with a double forge/immortal build with a tier 3 transition to colossi and templars, hoping to catch Puma's pure bio by surprise. That he did but to a very minor extent and Puma threw down additional starports as soon as his saw the colossi and had enough time macro up those crucial vikings. When the two finally met in a maxed up battle in the centre, Genius threw some amazing storms and colossus shots but it was not at all enough - Puma's vikings cleared the colossus threat in a blink of an eye and with no sustainable AoE damage, the Genius ran back towards the GG with tail between his legs.
Game two saw Puma on the hunt for wild protoss meat. EG's terran opened with a 1/1/1 build and damaged Genius' economy so bad that he could not enjoy the usual stable mid-game timings. When Puma's subsequent marine/tank/banshee arrived at protoss' natural, Genius found himself contained to such a degree that he could barely maneuver around his own base. With thermal lance just mid-way through completion and only a single colossus on the field, Genius crumbled undet the heavy terran pressure.
In the last game in the upper half of the bracket, Naniwa fell to DRG, who won 1-2 after being down one game. In game 2, Naniwa opened double stargate void rays but DRG scouted that in time to react with spores and mutalisks. Game 3 saw Nani open fast expo into sentry prism drop, which however failed miserably as the only victim was an unfortunate overlord. All DRG had to do is approach the mid-game with a ton of roaches and lings that crippled Nani's sentry count and finish the games with a sun-eclipsing mutalisk cloud.
"It's not the Naniwa we're used to see," said Tasteless after the game.
| DH Winter playoffs | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Round of 16 | ||||||||||||||||||||
  WhiteRa | 1-2 |   Naama NightEnd2-0 |  Sase Puma2-0 | Genius Naniwa1-2 |  DongraeGuRound of 8 | Naamavs | NightEnd Pumavs | DongRaeGu | ||||||||||||
The next round of bracket games will see players like Mana, ToD, HuK, Puma, Sheth, Hero and Ret fight for the remaining four quarter final spots.
