USA semi professional Benjamin "Gatored" Brewer of It's Gosu sported a very effective warp prism strategy against group stage opponents Eugin "Strelok" Oparyshev and Su Ho "DongRaeGu" Park to come out 2-1 in each set after the first day of the Intel Extreme Masters Thursday.
| IEM NY Group B Results | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
  DongRaeGu | 2-1 | 5-3 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
  Gatored | 2-1 | 4-4 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
  Strelok | 1-2 | 4-4 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| StrifeCro | 1-2 | 2-4 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
StrifeCro 2-0 Gatored Strelok 1-2 DongRaeGu Gatored 2-1 DongRaeGu Strelok 2-0 StrifeCro Strelok 1-2 Gatored StrifeCro 0-2 DongRaeGu | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
"Gatored" was able to withstand the a bit too late zergling-infestor bust by "DongRaeGu" in the first game to finish the game off with a standard but fierce colossi, sentry, stalker army on the grounds of Shattered Temple.
The Korean Zerg could bounce back on the second game played on Dual Sight by defending well to Gatored's adrenalinic all-in push.
But it was on game three that Gatored showed his warp prism play and force field laydowns. Gatored went for a fast expansion to move into a double stargate plan while he saw his opponent go speedlings.
As six phoenixes had warped in for "Gatored" he roamed the Zerg base and sniped off all of the Korean player's queens effectively hindering any larvae injections.
The nail in the coffin was the warp prism that warped in zealots and sentries inside the base of "DongRaeGu". With well-timed force fields at the ramp to the natural expansion, the warpgate units could roam free in the Zerg main.
"DongRaeGu" attempted to counter-attack with roaches and hydralisks, but "Gatored's" natural expansion was well defended, especially when the phoenixes flew home to lift up and take out the remaining hydralisks.
Heavily ahead, "Gatored" continued with a second warp prism, and sealed the deal when he warped in the much needed stalkers to eliminate the scary but yet insufficient air troop of "Strelok".
| IEM NY Group A Results | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Killer | 2-1 | 5-3 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
 KiLLeR | 2-1 | 5-3 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
 SjoW | 1-2 | 3-4 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
 Attero | 1-2 | 2-5 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
SjoW 1-2 KiLLeR Attero 2-1 Killer KiLLeR 1-2 Killer SjoW 2-0 Attero KiLLeR 2-0 Attero SjoW 0-2 Killer | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
ESL TV shoutcasters Kevin "RotterdaM" van der Kooi and Ben "MrBitter" Nichol came on the stream after an hour's downtime due to bandwidth issues in New York, to bring the viewers a battle of killers. The Dutch caster van der Kooi revealed that the Chilean and the Korean not only played for the survival and good seed-in for the playoffs, but also for the player handle.
And it turned out so that "KiLLeR" will be the one to change his name after his Korean namesake efficiently won game one and three with fast nexus play into phoenix and void rays.
"KiLLeR" did however impress the onlookers with a quick tech switch on the second game played out on Tal'Darim Altar as he heaved 11 mutalisks up in the sky after having showed "Killer" nothing but roaches and zerglings.
The Korean Protoss took some heavy hits in the mineral line, having lost up to 30 probes to the sniping mutalisks only to be followed up with a throng of roaches taking out the majority of "Killer's" stalker and colossi mix.
