IEM Singapore: Six stories from the Lion City

Enough Open Bracket fooling around, a day has come for some serious competition as IEM Singapore gets close to seeing its group stage unfold. The twenty four are ready, only half will make the playoffs and just one will be $6,500 richer.

Introducing the full IEM Singapore pool and our guide through the tournament whose line-up might look unwelcoming on first sight.




On paper, this IEM stop in Singapore had everything you would want from a tournament. The WCS finals just happened in China, which in eSports, is practically around the corner. One of the most prestigious franchises in an exotic location. A renowned enough player list. A roster of casters they could be proud of. Nothing could go wrong right? So everyone thought, until the tourney fell victim to the overabundance of competing events and practically every trap you could fall into. Significant A-list player cancellations, DreamHack Winter overshadowing everything else this weekend, Tasteless unable to make it.

What we’re left with is an IEM that just doesn’t play in the same ballpark as its prequels. With four out of the six players in a group advancing to the play-offs, it’s more of a question asking which of the local players can hold any gravitas in their respective group, which, in any case, would be unimaginable upset. We have, however, picked out four of the storylines that make this tournament worth its while.


While the Moreno/Moreno match-up has been a given in Spanish cup finals for a while now, it wasn’t until this year’s Battle.net World Championship Series that both players stepped into the limelight of the European scene at an equal pace. Starting with the finals of the Spanish qualifiers, the two brothers butted heads at every stage of the tournament, making for some of the most exciting in each of them. When the duel culminated in the “Brothers cast Brothers” match last weekend, it was already apparent that even though VortiX is slowly but steadily getting the better of his brother, this match is something we can all hope for in the play-off stages in Singapore.


MC is a force of nature, he’s a favorite for every tournament he enters, yada yada. What is so astounding about the player that is MC though, is the fact that even though he only took part in three IEMs, he managed to become the poster boy for the tournament after his victory at the Season VI World Championships in March. Who can blame him though, for was it not him and the IEM trophy that blessed the community with one of the most bad-ass images of all time? Sure, his success is not a given at this time, but bear in mind that a slump in terms of MC means that he doesn’t win a quintuple figure cheque for once.


Meet Grubby and WhiteRa: good mannered, smiling, protosses, legends past their very best years, unwithering emblems of eSports and with beautiful, better halves at their side. And both of whom will be fighting to survive groups which have stronger candidates for the top spot.

Fortunately for WhiteRa, his chances are higher then the Dutch maestro. Although actively playing StarCraft is no longer high on WhiteRa's to do list, the competition in Group C might very well be the mildest. Zenio and Revival pose a serious threat but WhiteRa is not shooting for first place anyway. The rest are premier tournament newcomers who've grown up listening to stories about the Grandpa Toss and although venerability is not much of intimidating factor in eSports, the sheer amount of experience might give WhiteRa an advantage over Tarrantius, Ninja and Jabito.

Grubby, on the other hand, is in a lot of trouble, sharing a group with an OSL quarter finalist, a terran that beat him at WCS Europe and one of finest underrated zergs on the Old Continent.

Which reminds me how we wish that Slivko was married as he doesn't really fit the other stories, does he?


What StarCraft 2 exclusivists may not realize is that HasuObs has a long history with ESL run tournaments that slowly approaches an entire decade. He has been an EPS mainstay from way back when in WarCraft 3 and even managed to win the very last season featuring said game. As one of the players with the most invites to the Intel Friday Night events he moved on to StarCraft 2 without losing his relevance in the national scene. This, alongside his reportedly good manners, has brought him an almost legendary status amongst his German fans as well as the rest of Europe.


There’s a lot to say about the “other” Koreans at this tournament, but then again, there’s not. They all have their demons to cope with and in most cases these demons come in the shape of their teammates. RevivaL is often seen as a lesser HyuN, Zenio has yet to complete the multiracial Team Liquid trifecta together with Her0 and TaeJa and StarDust is as of now merely a replacement for Golden. Sting on the other hand scored a surprising fourth place in TSL 4, a feat he has to repeat, though. Lastly there’s Oz. The boy that looked so promising earlier this year acing almost everyone at MLG but then he took a nosedive into mediocrity in late summer and like Sting, wasn’t heard of since in an appropriate fashion.


What's tricky about the Australian scene is that only Aussies know how good the Aussies are. Living one unpayable by sponsors flight away from most of the premier tournaments, everyone there is a bit of a mystery to the viewer. We know their names, sure, but what of anything else?

The Australians made first appearance in IEM Season VII at the stacked to bursting Cologne and met a horrible end, mostly because of said stacking. PiG finished last winning just one map while Moonglade came within one win from making playoffs but Elfi was simply better.

Arguably, the entire line-up of Australia in this tournament is worse then Moonglade (him being the face of the region since StarCraft exists) but the level of competition in Singapore is also nowhere near that of Cologne. Unfortunately, two of the Oceanic boys share a group with each other and there's snowball's chance in hell of both making it out especially with MC, Vortix and Hasu also in there. From the looks of it, IEM will be unkind to the Aussies once more.