DHW: Seiplo upsets Group C

Swedish protoss Seiplo dazzled DreamHack's audience as he topped group C in the Ro32 without any trouble. Seiplo opened the with two flawless victories, leaving group favourites like Genius and Sarens behind his back.

The group opened with a PvP between Genius and Seiplo. The Korean had won a protoss heavy group the previous day and was looking forward to another strong start against the Swedish player.

Game one was a back-and-forth one with the first ace being played by Genius who sniped Seiplo's observer and thus completely denying his blink stalker play. The Korean took this as a sign to make a decisive move and sneaked a few stalkers in Seiplo's main, trading them for eight probes. As the stalkers bit the dust, however, Seiplo switched to counter-attack mode and walked now with his army (now strengthened with immortals) but could not reach Genius' base as the Korean met him head-on and won the blink war, pushing his enemy back. It seemed the game was over for the Swedish player - Genius was in his face and firing at his expansion nexus but in the last moment a mistargetting by Genius let the nexus live while the majority of his stalkers fell to Seiplos' reinforcements. Unable to fight back from such a blunder, Genius typed out.



Game two was quicker yet marginally more brutal. Genius opened with an immortal/prism build only to find Seiplo going for its direct counter - blink stalkers. Right as the immortals landed in Seiplo's base he marched and blinked in straight into Genius' natural clearing all of his army and sweeping the 2-0 victory.

Out of streams' sight, Sarens battled through a tough series against DeathAngel with the third set going into a very equal late-game phase where after securing his usual five bases, the zerg went on and tried to take the third but Sarens' position held DeathAngel's economy in reasonable limits. The zerg tried to break through the centre position of the map when he hit brood lord tech but Sarens had anticipated that move and the BLs evaporated under viking fire, winning the French the game.

Genius redeemed himself with a quick and one-sided 2-0 versus DeathAngel while Seiplo continued his brutal advance, overpowering Sarens 2-0 to sit atop Group C with 4-0 in sets and secure his place in the Ro16.

The decisive match for the second Ro16 seed saw Sarens face Genius and by the end of the series the Korean followed him compatriot Puma to the elimination bracket. Game one on Antiga flowed pretty equally until a big engagement just north of Genius' third saw the demise of Sarens. The French had amassed quite the bio army but suffered a complete lack of vikings - not at all an optimal situation when facing colossus/archon deathballs. With the help of reinforcement pylons scattered all across the map, Genius cleaned the terran up and proceeded to take the second set as well, this time punishing Sarens with massive storms that waned down his marauder force to neglectable size.



The second group stage returns 17:30 sets with group E and F and players like SeleCT, SEn, Sase, Hero, Nerchio and DongRaeGu.