IEM Sao Paulo, Day One - Victory Road

by tree.hugger

Group A

At first glance, a lot of people dubbed this the hardest group in the tournament, but if it is, it's not by a huge margin. What Group A does have, is the single toughest opponent in the event in oGsSuperNoVa. The sole Korean invitee to the event, SuperNoVa has stepped into the role as the Old Generations ace after the departure of MC, and has been a revelation. Always a solid Code S contender, SuperNoVa made the Ro16 this season before dropping out of a group with Puzzle, MMA, and Oz. He will not find such lofty competition in São Paulo.

However, that's not to say that this tournament is automatically his. Group A will provide several challenges for the Korean right from the start. The most interesting player in the group is VileIllusion, who is coming off a month of much publicity and rising interest in the community. He plays an aggressive, multi-task heavy style, which works wonders against foreigners, but will make it difficult for him against a Korean progamer who will play the same style, but better. That said, after going toe to toe with FXOasd in the IPL TAC, an upset from the young American is certainly possible. The X-factor will be Illusion's age. At 15, he can't be expected to be used to the travel and inconveniences of the grueling international circuit. How that affects him remains to be seen.

Playing closer to home will be d.Killer. The Chilean Zerg had a miserable time a few weeks ago as he tried to get to Ukraine for IEM Kiev, wherein he was ultimately foiled by a string of awful logistical screw-ups. In São Paulo, he'll have a chance to prove that the tournament was poorer for it at Kiev. On paper, he's not the favorite. While being a very solid and consistent player all-around, KiLLeR has struggled to really make a name for himself and put together a single remarkable performance. WCG came close, as his group performance was solid, but he lost early in the bracket. His last major appearance was a futile two-kill vs Vile in the IPL TAC, in which he did defeat Illusion. But in São Paulo, only the home continent advantage seems in his column.

The final member of the group is the best known of the non-koreans, and perhaps of all the players in the group. It feels like aTn.DarKFoRcE has been around forever, and while he's in the same boat as KiLLeR in a lack of stellar major tournament results, he's been better exposed overall. DarKFoRcE is a funny player; this writer in particular is almost never impressed by his play, which often feels slow and unimaginative. Yet it's hard to acknowledge that it does achieve above-average results. DarKFoRcE's best result yet was his defeat of aLive in the NASL Season 1 finals, and in his second major tournament in the western hemisphere, he'll hope to recapture that magic.

Prediction:

SuperNoVa: 3 - 0
Illusion: 2 - 1
KiLLeR: 1 - 2
DarKFoRcE: 0 - 3


Group B

Group B has no claim to being the toughest group, but it contains some good players, and some intriguing ones for those of us who like to see players outside the usual crowd. Heading the group, however, is a standard establishment figure; EG.DeMusliM. Currently one of the more confusing players, nobody can seem to figure out whether the British Terran is overrated or underrated. And in true Starcraft fashion, the currents of both viewpoints are so strong, that he may be a little of both. While at any point in the past year, DeMuslim would've been the clear favorite in this group, suddenly he doesn't look as strong. EG has had a miserable time of it in the new year, and DeMusliM is no exception, unofficially relinquishing the de-facto 'best UK player' title that he had held, by losing 3-4 in a showmatch to BlinG (going 0-3 in EG's recent teamleague performances hasn't helped). In São Paulo, he needs to start turning the ship around, and a solid performance to advance from a very manageable group would be a good start.

The next favorite, (or perhaps the favorite) for the group is Mill.Feast, who had an impressive showing at IEM Kiev, his first major LAN. Solid wins over QXC and HerO put him into the bracket where he faced off against MMA, and he took a game off of the former GSL champion though he lost the series. Feast is a very solid player, who relies mostly on good management than fancy micro or greedy macro. His maxed army control is good, his patience in getting there is also good, and he can mix in early timings to keep opponents off balance. Feast isn't the kind of player you'd expect to win this tournament, but he's certainly a player you'd anticipate advancing from this group and possibly win a round or two in the bracket stage. He can handle DeMusliM and everyone else in Group B.

The group's third European is MYM.XlorD, who has always been something of an enigma. We see him rarely, but there are always rumors floating around that he's practicing/taking the game seriously/going to destroy everyone in 2012. The reality is that he's clearly an extremely talented player who can always be relied upon to outperform expectations and give people good games. But because of his focus on school, he never seems to be committed enough to take his game to the next level. At the MLG European qualifiers, he was disappointing, but perhaps with the incentive of his first non-European LAN, he will be able to kick it into high gear. XlorD can totally play the spoiler in this group, but only if the good XlorD shows up.

The final member of the group is KEYD.Tunico, who qualified as National Champion of Brazil. One of the most exciting things about IEM in Brazil is the chance to see players like Tunico and his countryman and teammate Potiguar, who are extremely well known locally (they meet in the finals of nearly every Brazilian tournament) but unknown internationally. Tunico is a very young and very talented Zerg player who doesn't rely heavily on gimmicks or non-standard play. Instead, he plays a safe and reactionary style of zerg, which feels like it should do well against Feast but less well against DeMusliM. ZvZ has been a serious problem for Tunico, at least in the past, and that endangers his chances of advancing, as he will most likely need to edge XlorD to move on. But with good play against Feast or DeMu, his chances will look a lot brighter. And there's no doubt he'll have the support of the Brazilian crowd behind him, so who knows how far he could go.

Prediction:

DeMusliM: 2 - 1
Feast: 2 - 1
XlorD: 1 - 2
Tunico: 1 - 2

by Fionn and Waxangel

Despite being just one of sixteen players, oGs.SuperNoVa's status as the sole Korea based Korean player is leading many esports fans to pick him as a heavy favorite to win it all. Resident GSL snobs Fionn and Waxangel weighed in on the oGs ace, and his chances to win a championship.

Let's get this straight. When looking at the players in this tournament, the favorite isn't hard to see. Not to say that Violet, Ret, or DeMusliM aren't fantastic players in their own right, but SuperNoVa is competing at a whole other level. The newly appointed of ace of oGs has quietly become one of the best Korean players in the past few months, even though he just dropped from the Code S RO16 to stiff competition in FXO_z, SlayerS_MMA, and SlayerS_Puzzle. You may think that not getting to the quarterfinals of the toughest tournament in the world doesn't bode well for him going into Brazil, but...

The level of play in Code S has gotten ridiculous since the format shake-up in November, which dumped more than half of the previous seeds. Top 16 in Code S has since then become a legit claim top 16 in the world. Other than SuperNoVa, the only other player attending IEM São Paulo to ever be in a GSL Code S would be Violet, and that was so long ago that it isn't even relevant. If you've found it hard to spare the cash for the GSL as of late, you should be in for a treat if the oGs ace can bring his Code S game to Sao Paulo.

SuperNoVa is a versatile player, and you never really know what you're going to get until you open the box. He can play a very slow, steady game, playing with total patience and using his mastery of tanks to choke you to death. He can also harass you from all angles, abusing hellions and medivacs to terrorize your unprotected bases. And what's a Korean Terran without the ability to bust out some of the sharpest, straight up all-in builds that require perfect reactions to survive?

SuperNoVa's TvZ is his strongest match-up by far, and it's on a ridiculous level. He beat Leenock in the first round of the GSL in crisp fashion, wowing viewers by taking down arguably the best ZvT player in the world alongside DongRaeGu. Oh, on that note – SuperNoVa beat DRG in the AoL in November, and in Code S October before that. Coincidentally, Ret and Violet, the two next best players in the tournament, are Zerg players. Besides them, another eight, not-as-good Zerg players are in the tournament as well. What can we say? Things look pretty good for SuperNoVa.

Though SuperNoVa's TvT is not over-the-top amazing like his TvZ, it's pretty damn good as well. Mvp's the only player who's really had his number in that match-up in the past few months. Seeing that he's beat players like Bomber, Taeja, Gumiho, and Happy in recent months, it doesn't seem that Illusion or DeMusliM will pose too much of a problem.

The best chance the rest of the field has at the moment is to exploit his TvP. SuperNoVa doesn't seem very confident in it lately, going almost exclusively for all-in builds in his GSL RO16 games – perhaps owing to the caliber of opponents he faced in Oz and Puzzle, two of the top five Protosses in the world. That's not to say they were weak, desperation all-ins. Though not quite Puma-level, they were some seriously dangerous 1/1/1's, and they were good enough to beat former teammate SK.MC in the previous round. Oz and Puzzle just happen to be really, really good at PvT.

Luckily for him, there are only three Protosses at the tournament; Real, a Europe-based Korean who had a very good showing at HomeStory Cup, Feast, a rising player coming off an impressive live debut at Kiev, and Potiguar, a quirky player from the host country. While none of them are in the same tier as Puzzle or Oz, they might be able to channel the spirit of the Russian TitaN, who scored a 2 - 0 victory over SuperNoVa at the WCG 2011 grand finals. Arguably, those three aren't as good as TitaN either, but at the very least we know that Supernova can lose to a foreign Protoss.

Whether it's pure skill, the race breakdown, or even the specific players playing each race, there's almost nothing going wrong for SuperNoVa. Arguably, MMA had worse odds going into IEM Kiev (where nine Protoss players awaited), and look what happened. This really is SuperNoVa's tournament to lose.

At the previous Global Challenge event in Kiev, DIMAGA, Kas, and White-Ra did their country proud by finishing high in the rankings. DIMAGA finished second place in the tournament, after losing to #1 in the world SlayerS_MMA in the finals. In a quick e-mail Q&A session with TeamLiquid, DIMAGA looked back at the tournament and what it meant.

TeamLiquid: Congratulations on a top finish at IEM Kiev. How did it feel to put on such an impressive performance in your home country?

DIMAGA: Thanks! It's really great but still not the best cause I'm not top1 in that tourney TT. I know it was really great result overall but when you play in the finals, you always want to win it, especially when you see all this people cheering so hard for you (thanks to everybody)!!!

Kas mentioned that having the home fans cheer him on helped him play better. Did you get the same kind of inspiration from the crowd? Did you feel extra pressure?

Yea it's true when you see all this people it's just something... you can't tell this in words you just need to feel it

You're known as a player who shows a lot of emotion. How do you think this affects you in tournaments?

Sometimes its really affect me but I trying to be not affected of my emotions in game but it's really hard to do ^^

MMA has done very well in the last few months. Were you more nervous facing him than any other opponent? Did you think you had a good chance of beating him?

Yea MMA is really top player in the world. I wasn't nervous before we start our games vs MMA, I dunno why but I start nervous when I won first game kinda so "easy" :D. In 2nd game beginning was really favor by me, but then I just make one big mistake and lost all match I think TT sometimes happened

MMA had some specific strategies planned out against you. Did you prepare specifically for him as well? How did your plans work out?

I don't think he was making something specific for me. Nothing special was prepared for MMA by me cause have no time to prepare TT. If maybe I have at least one day I think I can do some crazy game . My plan was kinda ok but I made three big mistake and lost my match:

1) Shakuras when I attacked in the middle of map without creep TT, 2) Terminus I pick wrong build order TT, 3) Misunderstand his build (I don't count his SCV) so I think he was making rax CC.

At both HomeStory Cup and IEM Kiev, you were undefeated against other non-Koreans, and only lost games to Korean players. Is there any special reason it is harder to face Korean players?

I was also lucky not to lose non-Korean player cause I have a lot of games when I can easy lose game ^^. Overall it's kinda easy to explain this situation, I think Korean just better then non-Kor.

Liquid`Ret mentioned that foreign Zerg players are as good as Koreans during Lair tech, but have trouble once they reach Hive tech. Do you think this is true?

I'm agree with it. I also think some of us (EU Zerg) is much better then Korean Zerg player

Did winning Assembly Summer in 2011 change your mentality? Did it give you confidence, or did it take away some pressure you had to win a big tournament?

Yea winning such big Lan event like Assembly gives me really great experience and much more confidence in my gameplay.

The Ukrainians did quite well at this tournament, but it seems like it's been the same four guys (Kas, you, White-Ra, Strelok) representing the country for over a year now. Do you think there are any interesting upcoming Ukrainian players that could help Ukraine stay a Starcraft II power in the future?

We already have a lot of good players like bly, happyzerg, underdark and a lot more dont want to forget someone

Going to Korea for a short period to train has become more common lately. You did pretty well the last time you were there; do you have any interest in going for a short period again?

Hmm I don't think about really short period of time but I think it can be possible. I for sure can't stay there for long term period of time, but for some kind of tournament it can be possible for sure But just going to Korea for practice I think it's not for me.

You were very active in 2011, traveling to a lot of live tournaments around the world. Do you plan to be as active in 2012, going to a lot of tournaments as well?

Yea I hope so ^^ I will try do my best this year as well !!!

Any last comments, shoutouts, etc?

Thanks too all fans of e-sports !!! Thanks to my team mTw to our sponsors: XMG, Kaspersky, Sennheiser !!!! See you soon probably :D

In order to figure out what the heck Sao Paulo could mean for the IEM World Championship picture, we sat down with our IEM rulebooks, and Liquipedia ranking charts for an afternoon of number crunching. A few hours later, we found out that IEM had done our work for us: IEM Sao Paulo and World Championship Implications.

Oh well.