Written by: Nydra and Procyonlotor
October 10th was a day of bracket stage action at IEM New York. Six hours later, as the four winners were revealed, nobody was surprised.
Indeed, the outcome of stage one was shockingly predictable. And I don’t mean just the usual “Koreans will win, of course” but also how the brackets themselves were filled up. From the round one winner’s matches to the very last loser’s games, the players were perfectly aligned according to some unwritten rankings that just make sense. Looking back at the final composition, one could really not think of another way to arrange it except maybe switch Life and DongRaeGu around with the end result remaining unchanged.
As a result, we have San, Hack and their Korean origin dominate Bracket A. As the third best player in the pool and the most accomplished among the foreigners, Snute came third and barely missed a spot in the groups. Snute would also eliminated foreigner #2 in the bracket DeMuslim, who would in turn be the slayer of foreigner #3, Hendralisk. At the same time, Bracket B crowned Life and DongRaeGu with Ro16 seeds while leaving the only three foreigners with some renown – namely Suppy, Puck and Sasquatch – kill each other to entertain the masses.
Just like we said: no surprises whatsoever. None.
It is no secret that Life has been struggling to regain his 2012 renown and that 2013 has been especially rude towards the Zerg prodigy. Outside the Winter Championship gold and the top four finish at DreamHack Bucharest what the current year threw at his face was early Code S eliminations and DreamHack Summer disappointments.
Left on the outside looking in, Life has been enduring a myriad of other problems. While his non-mirrors remain in good shape, his ZvZ is almost atrocious for a player of his status and with TLO and HyuN in his group, his survival is seriously under question. Said status is also what puts an extra pressure on his shoulders as with all those 2012 achievements on his account, it will be long time before Life enters a tournament and does not draw all eyes on him. Watching former glories like MMA rise back to their previous form after long periods of slumping while his struggles continue can’t be very comforting as well.
The only thing that’s going well for Life is his opening match being against Zest. ZvP is currently Life’s best match-up and if he channels that into a victory he’ll only need to beat HyuN (a somewhat unlikely scenario considering his 71% ZvZ win-rate) or TLO (a tad more possible but still extremely hard) to make it to playoffs.
…And have an actual chance of making it out of the group. While all of TLO, State and HuK have been tossed amidst three Koreans to be likely chewed to the bone, Naniwa and qxc are maintaining a rare West-East balance paired with HerO and Hack.
Unfortunately for foreigners’ fans, the odds of Naniwa and/or qxc reaching the playoffs are higher only in the mathematical sense as neither of them are in a good enough shape to convincingly take on the Korean opposition. Naniwa’s latest WCS Europe adventure ended disastrously with Ro32 elimination and although the Swede is known for his drastically fluctuating performances and a drop in results never being an indication for an incoming slump, his fans have all the reasons to be worried. As for the lone American in the group, qxc has never been more than a top 16 competitor and despite his uncanny resistance towards being assimilated into irrelevance, he can’t be realistically counted as a threat to the Koreans.
Speaking of the latter, on one side of the ring we have HerO who is a player who becomes stronger the colder it gets and whose last half a year of tournament attendance has yielded him gold from WCS America and two top fours from DH Stockholm and IEM Shanghai. And finally, there's Hack, a player who dissected Liquid`s Snute at the end of day one with jaw-dropping multitasking and made it clear that he has all the confidence to take out high-profile foreigners. He’ll also be fighting with extra rigorousness for the pride of the Korean Terran minority (he and Flash are the only two of their kind at IEM NY) and if TvP wasn’t historically among his weaker match-ups, he could actually be considered a solid top two.
Isn’t it curious how around the time DongRaeGu started coming back to the fore, MMA also decided to return to his old glory? It’s probably nostalgia, but I see nothing wrong with a Starcraft 2 scene in which MMA and DRG are household names again. Not to say the Zerg princeling has got it made. He might never make it out of the group.
Looking at Curious and Flash is scary but weird. Okay: God still has his church, but there’s not all that much behind the altar. Flash is going to have to bring some serious fire and brimstone if he wants to get the better of his peers. For once, he’s on a level playing field with everybody else. Then there’s Curious. In DRG’s heyday, Curious was a mid tier zerg more often seen in GSTL, but like many team league regulars he was silently building up into an opponent you had to respect. Fail to give him his due and he would take it whether you liked it or not. It’s hard to say whether the new zergs rose because DRG, Nestea, and their generation were getting weaker, or whether they vacillated because the new generation was unstoppable. Curious is not Life or Symbol. It’s hard to put him in the same category, but he is, as DRG might say, a kind of usurper.
Sitting somewhat uncomfortably in this group is State, who already having proven himself as one of the North American players to watch, must have been sweating profusely as he saw his group. I have always said of non-Koreans, even when all evidence insisted otherwise, that they had the skill they needed to defeat any opponent. Nothing is impossible. I say so again, but do not let go of my reservations. Too often they are right.
Another writer might say HuK is facing significant hurdles. I believe he is up against overwhelming opportunity. Remember the times when HuK displayed, alternately, superb, patient play and a daring few have ever matched. His successes were not due to strategy or something he learned from somebody else, they came from something the game pulled out of him. Plays were born that would not have existed otherwise. Here is a chance to see more.
Group D is tough for anyone. sOs has spent the last couple of seasons contending GSL titles; Revival has became a player scarier than he was a year ago; San used be referred to, not so jokingly, as ManZenith. As many commenters will say, sOs has the edge, but we are not here for predictions. They have been shattered before. Instead, consider this: San was there at the beginning, HuK rose shortly thereafter, and somewhere along the way Revival came into the public eye. sOs entered the running later. But here they all are, vying for honor against each other.
Rotator photo: ESL
