IEM
Singapore, SITEX 2012 Day #1
Day 1 of IEM
Singapore saw the open brackets with players like Australian Zerg Mafia, a
$300,000 dollars professional poker winner and recent WCS Oceania 2nd
placer behind Australian Zerg mOOnGLaDe, Fanatic’s Oz, LucifroN, Team liquid’s
Zenio all progressing to the main event. You can see the full brackets and
players here.
Many close matches and with Mafia taking down LucifroN as a surprise, this
could be the time that Mafia really shines and shows his skill, brining the SEA
section of Starcraft 2 to greater heights as being capable of producing world
class players. Of course the prime scenario would be a SEA player wining IEM Singapore.
A large multitude
of players advance but there are hardly any or no Terran players at all which
shows the Zerg and Protoss dominance in the IEM league especially here in IEM
Singapore. Casting was done by Artosis, Khalaris and HasuObs on the first day
today and the games were nothing short of fantastic. Great games, great
players, great tournament.
Regardless of it
being a Thursday, there is a whole flood of people at Sitex with many companies
and products on sale. From complex items like camera lenses, to specific items
like particular computer parts to the basic things such as cables or
converters, almost everything can be found here and often bundled with other
things plus at a reasonably cheap price. Large Singapore telecom companies here
have the biggest booths, Starhub has over 20 slots for customers to purchase
telecom deals and customer service, Singtel and M1 alike also have large
sections for customers to have access to them.
Crowded it may be,
but the deals here and the sheer amount of things you can purchase here is just
too great to miss out on. With conventional and promotional sales going with
accordance to the Esports atmosphere that IEM Singapore brings, Sitex 2012 is
something no IT or gaming enthusiast should miss!
Day 2 at Sitex and
IEM saw the continuation of large companies selling their products at very
interesting prices and a multitude of items give away for low prices or free.
IEM gave out several of their Intel sponsor items such as i5 and i7 processors
of the highest power. BenQ, one of the sponsors of IEM, gave out T-shirts, soft
toys and even Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm beta keys to the audience is a
simple and hilarious game of rock, paper, scissors with one of Meet Your Makers
(A League of Legends team that dominated their group with just phenomenal play)
player who, as I watched on gleefully, was really terrible at it. On the first
attempt, an audience member walked away with a Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm
beta key, BenQ soft toys and T-shirt signed by Starcraft 2 pro-gamer Grubby and
an Intel i7 processor all by just winning rock paper scissors!
League of Legends
started early on the main stage from 11am onwards till 5pm in the evening where
then the Starcraft 2 group stages commenced with players from the open bracket
also competing. Full results can be seen here
and the highlights of the day for me was the matches that were played on the
main stage. Do note that games are still being played despite not being on the
main stage and I didn’t really get the chance to watch all of them. However some
matches where very prominent with some upsets and the triumphs as they were
pretty much predicted. Pig, an Australian Zerg player played fantastic but
eventually got eliminated from the tournament. White-Ra, seemingly the one who
could do big upsets on high level players fell 0-3 in his group to be
eliminated. Grubby was one of the more prominent players as predicted by Artosis
to potentially shine and win the tournament, but in a shocking series against
Fanatic’s Oz in the 3rd game of their best of three, forgot thermal
lance to then lose the game and give Fanatic’s Oz the 2:1 win over him. Renaming tournaments can be seen on the ESL_TV stream VODs and results on the
website state earlier.
Sitex has really
made a fantastic decision by allowing IEM to be hosted at their event; it
really brings up the Esports scene in Singapore, giving us a taste of the
thrills of such an event of Esports like IEM.
Day 3 was epic at
IEM with the League of Legend’s finals going on. The game was pretty close with
analyzers predicting the score to be a 2-0 with Meet Your Makers (MYM) winning
it, but surprisingly Absolute Legends NA (ALS) actually got 1 game off MYM in
dominating fashion during game 2. Despite an epic baron steal on game 2 by MYM
ALS took the game. The last game was won by MYM as they simply rolled over the
ALS to claim their first decisive win on the international stage for League of
Legends.
Starcraft 2 was
also on a high roll with matches today played by Grubby, Zenio, VortiX and MC
as well as some more players. The highlight was the surprising upset of YugiOh
losing 2-3 to Sting (who was at that time the only remaining Terran in the
tournament) and the simply epic PvP between MC and Grubby. MC took the first
game on Entombed Valley and Grubby surprisingly took 2 games off MC to lead 2-1
on maps Daybreak and Cloud Kingdom. MC then took another game off Grubby in
Ohana, the game then moved on to Metropolis where people, after watching the
series, said that the last game these 2 fantastic Protosses played was possibly
the best PvP ever. Both opened with Stargate into Phoenix play which resulted
in some major air micro war well into the late game with identical decisions
made. Grubby went ahead and had more expansions, better economy, and better
upgrades for the Phoenix and Archons in the battle to win the game.
With that, an
amazing League of Legends final and such fantastic series of games on the
Starcaft 2 side, day 3 at IEM was certainly well worth watching.
The final day of
Sitex and the IEM saw ridiculous promotions from the companies and the
phenomenal Starcarft 2 finals.
Definitely the
player to watch was Grubby as he, like Artosis predicted, showed what he is
capable of and what he can do. On the match after sLivko won the series against
Team Liquid’s Zenio to advance to the semifinals against Grubby, these two
players had such a rivalry and for them to be this close to be in a major
tournament’s finals plus potentially winning it, the stakes were incredibly
high. Things looked grim for Grubby stepping into the match having lost to
sLivko in the group stages previously. It got worse as sLivko with his standard
style of play, extreme mastery of late game broodlord infestor, took the first
2 games against Grubby and was on match point to potentially win the entire
series with a 3-0 to Grubby. On the next map Ohana, Grubby pulled out a build
he used in the Blizzard World Championship that has served him so well, a 7
gate all in. Performing it perfectly and with sLivko not scouting the all in,
Grubby took game 3. Game 4 was then on Cloud Kingdom with Grubby playing
absolutely incredibly with perfect decision making, perfect engagements,
perfect harassment to the point where despite sLivko having over 4000 minerals
and gas in his bank, due to Grubby’s incredible mutli-prong warp-prim harass
that killed off all the hatcherys and tech, Grubby took the game. The last game
saw Grubby pulling out the 7 gate all in again and rolled over sLivko to win
this epic best of 5 and an amazing comeback.
Previously Sting
had progressed through VortiX and will face Grubby in one of the most epic
finals. Again Grubby was down 2 games to the Terran’s solid macro and decision
making. On game 3 it seemed that the Terran was about to win 3-0, but on the
next map Cloud Kingdom, Grubby did some phenomenal micro with a blink stalker
push and some amazing decision making that made Sting lose the game to bring it
to a game 4. Game 4 saw Grubby losing all his immortals and sentrys to a pincer
movement that was done so brilliantly by Sting. The engagement late on with 5
colossi killed was another major setback for Grubby, but by the skin of his
teeth and a clutch colossus, he won the game to pull it to a game 5 with the
crowd simply exploding in joy. Game 5 opened with a proxy gate from Grubby that
killed 5 workers and pulled Grubby ahead, but a 111 all in that served as
retaliation from Sting brought Grubby down and Sting was soon crowned as the
IEM Singapore winner.
The crowd at IEM
was simply amazing and the passion that I could feel by just sitting there with
them was electrifying. I highly believe Singapore has the potential to be a
major Esports gaming hub in SEA to bring players from both local and
international stages here to compete and to also put some home grown talent
into the international limelight.
Sitex was very
generous for allowing IEM to be able to be part of their amazing convention and
the promotions plus things you can get there was certainly well worth the trip
and time.
I’d like to end
off this with thanks to Sitex and IEM. Amazing event, amazing players, amazing
games, amazing organizers. This is Esports.
Complied by Barry
It is unfortunate to state that OSNeon has departed the Team as he has other interest to pursue. We wish him the best of luck in all he does.
-OSL0rd
