DH Summer Preview Part 1: Can the Koreans be Beat? Text by TL.net ESPORTS Graphics by shiroiusagi

DH: Summer DreamHack:

Summer 2013



Brackets and standings on



Brackets and standings on Liquipedia Preview, Part 1 by TeamLiquid Writers



With our introduction of the official, pan-tournament





The Abridged DreamHack: Summer Power Rank



#1: ST_Life



#2 – #128: Everyone else Everyone else





Now that's out of the way, we can move onto Part One of our preview. What comes first? Why, the first thing you think about at any international tournament: Korean progamers.





Koreans: Beatable or Not? Now that the Koreans, can we (foreigners) beat them or not? Let's go through the roster in alphabetical order.



*Based on the last confirmed roster of players. Cancellations and replacements are a frequent occurrence at DreamHack, and players on this list may not participate..







"Waiter, our money hasn't arrived yet."



WW.Arthur: Beatable

Sure, Arthur should play better in a live setting than he does with KR-NA and KR-EU lag, but his online



WW.Daisy: Beatable

For the half year he was based in Europe, Daisy was one of the strongest players in the region, even earning trips to MLG out of the European qualifiers. However, he has yet to show us a good result since he returned to Korea and switched to HotS, and he wasn't able to qualify for the WCS Europe Premier or Challenge Leagues while playing from Korea. This return to Europe might be just what he needs to turn his fortunes around.



FXO.GuMiho: Potentially Vulnerable?

Gumiho was on his way to certain glory at DreamHack: Stockholm, until he was stopped in his tracks in the Ro8 by Jaedong, a player who waffles between winning ace matches in the Proleague and failing to reach the WCS America Premier League. While at the time it looked like Gumiho just had the misfortune of meeting Jaedong in one of his rare but brilliant moments of clarity, subsequent results suggest that Gumiho just isn't the perennial Code S power he used to be. After DreamHack, he has put up a poor 5 - 12 record against Korean competition, and has failed to qualify for the next Starleague season. At least for now, Gumiho is on the decline. Perhaps that means he will be vulnerable to the foreigners as well?



Quantic.HyuN: Tough but not unbeatable

Once a GSL finalist and 14



It's not like he's suddenly become a 'jobber' as Tastosis might put it, and he's still a really good player. But after once being in the discussion for best player in the world, being merely a 'pretty good Korean' is a big dropoff. I expect HyuN's DH summer to go somewhat similarly to his



EG.Jaedong.RC: Getting better but still beatable

If you get past the golden mouse, the five OSL/MSL titles, and the legendary Brood War legacy, it's clear that Jaedong is a pretty ordinary Korean in SC2. Being a Proleague regular who has a slightly under .500 record still puts him in the upper echelon of competitors at this particular tournament, but no one would be surprised at this point if his poor ZvP saw him fall to any Protoss. In Jaedong's defense, he has been getting slowly better over time, especially in the ZvP match-up which isn't an auto-loss for him anymore. But then sometimes he'll go do something like lose to TheOgnis in the WCS AM Challenger League, and you remember he still has a long way to go before he recovers his past glory.



ST_Life: Surprisingly not-totally unbeatable

Not only is Life the best player at this tournament, he might be the best StarCraft II player to play at a DreamHack EVER. Looking back, the three best players to compete at an SC2 DreamHack are: @ Valencia 2012 (at the height of the summer of TaeJa), @ Winter 2011 (just slightly before his peak), and now Life @ Summer 2013 (slightly come down from his peak). The order is kind of debatable, but all four were at least] Code S top four caliber at the time if not championship level. TaeJa won his tournament, DRG only got cheesed out by an in-his-prime PuMa (using marauder-hellion all-ins), and now it looks like Life should win at Summer.



Life may have been humbled slightly in the Code S group of death, but going 1 - 2 against PartinG and Innovation doesn't revoke one's 'really f***ing good' status. He's a Code S champ, a back to back MLG champ, and without a doubt one of the top ten players in the world.





Life's presumed reaction upon seeing the DreamHack player list.

There's basically no one who can challenge Life on the Protoss or Terran side, but Zerg could actually be a real problem for the prodigy. The one big problem for Life is that the elimination rounds of the tournament are best of three, and he has been known to suffer upsets in in bo3 ZvZ series. The Korean Zergs Lucky, HyuN, viOlet, and Jaedong all have a fair shot at beating him in a series, while even the foreign Zerg contingent with players like Snute (who eliminated him at IPL5), Stephano, TLO, SortOf, etc. could make something happen. Life may be the best player in the tournament, but he is surprisingly vulnerable given that fact.



FXO.Lucky: I don't know, Kev

Outside the time he took second place at IPL3 by debuting the ZvT roach-bane bust before it was a widely known strategy, Lucky has never registered on the mainstream radar. But even in the shadows, Lucky has usually been pretty active, giving us a lot of online, Code A, and team league games to let us know where he's at. However, for this tournament, the little-known FXO Zerg comes in truly shrouded, having played



The most useful piece of info we have to judge Lucky by is that we know FXOpen Korea sends players abroad on merit based system, with some element of taking turns. We can cautiously presume that since Leenock has already earned a seed at the season final at DreamHack Winter, Gumiho and Lucky were the next best players FXOpen deemed capable of placing high at this tournament. On a roster that has players like Hurricane, Gumiho and sC, that's some decent praise.



LG-IM_Squirtle: Kinda unbeatable?

If he hasn't already grown soft from being in Europe a few weeks, Squirtle should be able to live up to his superstar billing at DreamHack. While he wasn't able to win the tournament he went to play in the first place, the



Right now, I'm not that confident about Squirtle's capabilities against his fellow Koreans. Sure he's qualified for the next WCS Korea Starleague, but he didn't look good against Shine or Keen when he was eliminated from Code S last season, nor did he beat particularly good players (Ruin, ALBM, and a walkover) to re-qualify. Maybe he was a GSL finalist a year ago, but that's not who he is now. Still, with a 4 - 0 against Snute, a 3 - 0 win against Kas, and a combined 4 - 1 record against Dayshi since he arrived in Europe, I'm pretty sold on his ability to crush foreigners.



mYi.StarDust: Beatable

Stardust is another Korean who is



WW.Sting: Beatable but dangerous

Sting's fearless cheesiness allows him to punch above his weight in tournaments, but shouldn't people kind of have caught on to him by now? Okay, so it's easier said than done trying to stop a player who avoids the late game like the plague, and surviving against his marine-mine-medivac attacks before getting to hive can be tough. But at least you can narrow down the possibilities against Sting.



Liquid`TaeJa: Mostly unbeatable

This may seem strange to say in a tournament pool that has Life in it, but I think TaeJa might actually be the safer bet to finish high in this tournament. Life has the most potential to win it all, but there's less variance in seeing TaeJa trudge his way to a top four~eight finish. As mentioned above, short ZvZ series are just such a huge X-factor, and even Life at the height of his prime was once eliminated from IPL5 by Snute due to it. Not just that, but there are quite a few good Korean ZvZ players attending as well.



Even though roach-bane all-ins are emerging as the great equalizer in ZvT – with even TaeJa taking a loss to ViBE recently in the Acer TeamStory Cup – Korean Terrans in general seem the least upset prone among their countrymen (also it's the race Mvp plays). Now, take into account that TaeJa and Gumiho are the two best Terrans in the tournament, and that TaeJa tends to play a more standard, macro style... Alright, so maybe all that was a bit of a stretch.



It may have been a while since TaeJa won a foreign tournament and his wrist injuries have seen him decline. But he's always considered foreigners to be free money, and few have proven him wrong thus far.



coL.TheStC: Beatable

Back in mid 2012, TheStC had the potential to become the neo- , a Korean Terran with the financial backing to trot around the globe, and the skill to sweep through weaker tournaments and place high in ones that were Korean-infested. Instead, TheStC has went the way of many of his fellow first-wave prize money hunters, slowly declining and becoming a more or less evenly matched with the foreigners he once preyed upon. With losses to Jim, MacSed, mOOnGLaDe, and Demuslim in recent weeks, it doesn't seem likely that TheStC can prevail against Europe's best.



Azubu.viOLet: Mostly unbeatable

Thought to have cancelled his participation alongside his Azubu teammates Symbol and SuperNoVa, viOLet has made a last minute re-entry into the tournament. As of now, I'm desperate hoping for him to advance far enough to have a stage match, win it, and then rip off his Azubu uniform on stage to reveal the logo of his backers. Ahhh... if only.



Even if his visa related forfeiture from WCS America has left us with very few meaningful HotS games to go by, we still have to give viOLet credit and say he's one of the best players in the tournament. Ever since January of 2012 he's been on a long streak of being a title contender at just about every tournament he's been at, and a brief quiet spell at the start of a new expansion won't make us change our opinion on him just yet.





Overall Foreigner Hope Level: " So you're telling me there's a chance!"



We'll examine the reluctant bearers of foreign hope in part 2!



With our introduction of the official, pan-tournament Power Rank for StarCraft II, we've decided to refrain from doing a full, pre-tournament power rank for DreamHack Summer. However, we know it's a feature a lot of our fans and readers look forward to, so we made sure to a least provide short, abridged version so you won't be disappointed.Now that's out of the way, we can move ontoof our preview. What comes first? Why, the first thing you think about at any international tournament:Now that the WCS Season 1 Finals have crushed foreigner hope yet again, it's time to look at the Koreans coming to DreamHack Stockholm and play everyone's favorite game show:Let's go through the roster in alphabetical order.Sure, Arthur should play better in a live setting than he does with KR-NA and KR-EU lag, but his online tournament stats still show he isn't that big of a threat. Even at his best, the ex-SlayerS player was just a low Code A player, which isn't enough to strike fear into the hearts of Europeans.For the half year he was based in Europe, Daisy was one of the strongest players in the region, even earning trips to MLG out of the European qualifiers. However, he has yet to show us a good result since he returned to Korea and switched to HotS, and he wasn't able to qualify for the WCS Europe Premier or Challenge Leagues while playing from Korea. This return to Europe might be just what he needs to turn his fortunes around.Gumiho was on his way to certain glory at DreamHack: Stockholm, until he was stopped in his tracks in the Ro8 by Jaedong, a player who waffles between winning ace matches in the Proleague and failing to reach the WCSPremier League. While at the time it looked like Gumiho just had the misfortune of meeting Jaedong in one of his rare but brilliant moments of clarity, subsequent results suggest that Gumiho just isn't the perennial Code S power he used to be. After DreamHack, he has put up a poor 5 - 12 record against Korean competition, and has failed to qualify for the next Starleague season. At least for now, Gumiho is on the decline. Perhaps that means he will be vulnerable to the foreigners as well?Once a GSL finalist and 14 time IPL Fight Club champion, HyuN just hasn't looked the same since he lost that fateful Code S final to Sniper in November of 2012.It's not like he's suddenly become a 'jobber' as Tastosis might put it, and he's still a really good player. But after once being in the discussion for best player in the world, being merely a 'pretty good Korean' is a big dropoff. I expect HyuN's DH summer to go somewhat similarly to his last DreamHack run, where he crushed though most of the foreigners and mid-tier Koreans during the groups, with only the best players in the tournament able to challenge in him the elimination phase. The top handful of foreigners have a chance, but the others will be hard pressed to beat him outside of ZvZ.If you get past the golden mouse, the five OSL/MSL titles, and the legendary Brood War legacy, it's clear that Jaedong is a pretty ordinary Korean in SC2. Being a Proleague regular who has a slightly under .500 record still puts him in the upper echelon of competitors at this particular tournament, but no one would be surprised at this point if his poor ZvP saw him fall to any Protoss. In Jaedong's defense, hebeen getting slowly better over time, especially in the ZvP match-up which isn't an auto-loss for him anymore. But then sometimes he'll go do something like lose to TheOgnis in the WCS AM Challenger League, and you remember he still has a long way to go before he recovers his past glory.Not only is Life the best player at this tournament, he might be the best StarCraft II player to play at a DreamHack EVER. Looking back, the three best players to compete at an SC2 DreamHack are: TaeJa @ Valencia 2012 (at the height of the summer of TaeJa), DongRaeGu @ Winter 2011 (just slightly before his peak), and now Life @ Summer 2013 (slightly come down from his peak). The order is kind of debatable, but all four were at least] Code S top four caliber at the time if not championship level. TaeJa won his tournament, DRG only got cheesed out by an in-his-prime PuMa (using marauder-hellion all-ins), and now it looks like Lifewin at Summer.Life may have been humbled slightly in the Code S group of death, but going 1 - 2 against PartinG and Innovation doesn't revoke one's 'really f***ing good' status. He's a Code S champ, a back to back MLG champ, and without a doubt one of the top ten players in the world.There's basically no one who can challenge Life on the Protoss or Terran side, but Zerg could actually be a real problem for the prodigy. The one big problem for Life is that the elimination rounds of the tournament are best of three, and he has been known to suffer upsets in in bo3 ZvZ series. The Korean Zergs Lucky, HyuN, viOlet, and Jaedong all have a fair shot at beating him in a series, while even the foreign Zerg contingent with players like Snute (who eliminated him at IPL5), Stephano, TLO, SortOf, etc. could make something happen. Life may be the best player in the tournament, but he is surprisingly vulnerable given that fact.Outside the time he took second place at IPL3 by debuting the ZvT roach-bane bust before it was a widely known strategy, Lucky has never registered on the mainstream radar. But even in the shadows, Lucky has usually been pretty active, giving us a lot of online, Code A, and team league games to let us know where he's at. However, for this tournament, the little-known FXO Zerg comes in truly shrouded, having played barely any tournament games in the past two months. The latest result we have to go by is his performance in the HomeStory Cup 7 qualifiers, where he defeated MarineKing (not a big deal nowadays) and Arthur (nothing to write home about) before losing to teammate and OSL player Hurricane (also not surprising in the least).The most useful piece of info we have to judge Lucky by is that we know FXOpen Korea sends players abroad on merit based system, with some element of taking turns. We can cautiously presume that since Leenock has already earned a seed at the season final at DreamHack Winter, Gumiho and Lucky were the next best players FXOpen deemed capable of placing high at this tournament. On a roster that has players like Hurricane, Gumiho and sC, that's some decent praise.If he hasn't already grown soft from being in Europe a few weeks, Squirtle should be able to live up to his superstar billing at DreamHack. While he wasn't able to win the tournament he went to play in the first place, the Numericable M-House Cup where he lost to ForGG and HyuN, Squirtle did make up for it somewhat by winning the Gigabyte Proleague.Right now, I'm not that confident about Squirtle's capabilities against his fellow Koreans. Sure he's qualified for the next WCS Korea Starleague, but he didn't look good against Shine or Keen when he was eliminated from Code S last season, nor did he beat particularly good players (Ruin, ALBM, and a walkover) to re-qualify. Maybe he was a GSL finalist a year ago, but that's not who he is now. Still, with a 4 - 0 against Snute, a 3 - 0 win against Kas, and a combined 4 - 1 record against Dayshi since he arrived in Europe, I'm pretty sold on his ability to crush foreigners.Stardust is another Korean who is playing out of Europe , and he is now presumably the best player in Switzerland. However his record since his arrival isn't particularly hot, as he was eliminated from the HSC 7 Europe qualifiers by Bunny. While Stardust may end up like ForGG or Daisy eventually, right now he's looking more like a Real.Sting's fearless cheesiness allows him to punch above his weight in tournaments, but shouldn't people kind of have caught on to him by now? Okay, so it's easier said than done trying to stop a player who avoids the late game like the plague, and surviving against his marine-mine-medivac attacks before getting to hive can be tough. But at least you can narrow down the possibilities against Sting.This may seem strange to say in a tournament pool that has Life in it, but I think TaeJa might actually be thebet to finish high in this tournament. Life has the most potential to win it all, but there's less variance in seeing TaeJa trudge his way to a top four~eight finish. As mentioned above, short ZvZ series are just such a huge X-factor, and even Life at the height of his prime was once eliminated from IPL5 by Snute due to it. Not just that, but there are quite a few good Korean ZvZ players attending as well.Even though roach-bane all-ins are emerging as the great equalizer in ZvT – with even TaeJa taking a loss to ViBE recently in the Acer TeamStory Cup – Korean Terrans in general seem the least upset prone among their countrymen (also it's the race Mvp plays). Now, take into account that TaeJa and Gumiho are the two best Terrans in the tournament, and that TaeJa tends to play a more standard, macro style... Alright, so maybe all that was a bit of a stretch.It may have been a while since TaeJa won a foreign tournament and his wrist injuries have seen him decline. But he's always considered foreigners to be free money, and few have proven him wrong thus far.Back in mid 2012, TheStC had the potential to become the neo- PuMa , a Korean Terran with the financial backing to trot around the globe, and the skill to sweep through weaker tournaments and place high in ones that were Korean-infested. Instead, TheStC has went the way of many of his fellow first-wave prize money hunters, slowly declining and becoming a more or less evenly matched with the foreigners he once preyed upon. With losses to Jim, MacSed, mOOnGLaDe, and Demuslim in recent weeks, it doesn't seem likely that TheStC can prevail against Europe's best.Thought to have cancelled his participation alongside his Azubu teammates Symbol and SuperNoVa, viOLet has made a last minute re-entry into the tournament. As of now, I'm desperate hoping for him to advance far enough to have a stage match, win it, and then rip off his Azubu uniform on stage to reveal the logo of his backers. Ahhh... if only.Even if his visa related forfeiture from WCS America has left us with very few meaningful HotS games to go by, we still have to give viOLet credit and say he's one of the best players in the tournament. Ever since January of 2012 he's been on a long streak of being a title contender at just about every tournament he's been at, and a brief quiet spell at the start of a new expansion won't make us change our opinion on him just yet.We'll examine the reluctant bearers of foreign hope in part 2!