DreamHack Leipzig Qualifiers

The qualifiers DreamHack Leipzig are now complete and I have a few thoughts before we look at the results.  The most obvious issue was the random bracket, something mitigated when there was a losers bracket, but even so I think weighted seating would have been a better approach.  Otherwise the qualifiers were a lot of fun and I was happy to see a few surprise players make it through.  Onto the specifics (I addressed the non-NA/EU qualifiers in a previous post).

There were 164 participants in the EU qualifier (which I sadly missed), whose brackets were almost as silly as NA's (see below), but without a losers bracket to make up for it.  Unsurprisingly there were two zergs who qualified from the battle royal (both qualifier finals were also ZvZ's, which certainly fits my perception of where balance is at right now).  Surprise finalist Namshar took out Snute while Serral overcame the other surprise finalist HateMe.  Here's the significant players each finalist had to beat on their way:
HateMe: Majestic
Namshar: Sortof and Welmu
Snute: elazer and ShoWTimE
Serral: Dayshi and Bly

There were some interesting non-participants, such as Lilbow, MarineLorD, HeRoMaRinE, uThermal, TLO, and PtitDrogo.  Given how easy it is for many Europeans to simply travel to Leipzig, the absences aren't that big a deal.  There were some inactive (or not very active) players who also reappeared, such as TitaN and DarkHydra.

Here's where other top players fell: Bunny was knocked out by ShoWTimE in the R64; GunGFuBanDa in the R64 via Welmu; Nerchio in the R128 to elazer; and FireCake to Dayshi in R16.

I really enjoyed the NA qualifier, which featured virtually every player who wants to be taken seriously (63 participated; notables missing were Drunkenboi and Intense).  With Basetrade unable to broadcast due to technical issues and the event early enough for Europe to watch there were a wide range of coverage (the laconic Wardii has improved a little since I last saw him, but Nathanias was the casting highlight).  The seeding for the qualifier was ridiculous--how do State and Neeb meet in the R64?  How does JonSnow meet the winner of puCK/desRow in the R32?  Thank god for the losers bracket (the best two players wound up qualifying).  MaSa couldn't compete due to DreamHack admins (or, as Nathanias said in his cast, not talking to the admins a month ahead of time to get an exemption).

On the weak side of the bracket popular streamer MCanning made his way through players like EJK, RuFF, and KiFirE to the finals before losing consecutively to Scarlett and Neeb.  Speaking of the Canadian Zerg, players that tried to go into macro games with her (Semper, State, and HuK) got wrecked, although each of the aforementioned used virtually the same mid-game builds against her each time (marine/tank and zealot/archon--HuK was the only one to adapt within the series).  As for the other qualifier, Neeb, after getting sent to the losers bracket by State (who was knocked out by Scarlett on the winner's side and then puCK on the losers), took out Semper, JonSnow, HuK, and puCK to make it through.

Here are all the qualifiers by race:
Zerg: Scarlett (NA), iAsonu (China), Serral (EU), Namshar (EU)
Protoss: Neeb (NA), Nice (Tai/HK/Mac), Probe (SEA)
Terran: Kelazhur (LA)

[A note about iAsonu--he can't make it to the tournament due to a scheduling conflict, but it's as yet unknown if Clannad is available to replace him.]

In terms of the raw stats there were distinctive edges for Protoss over Terran (57%), and Zerg over Protoss (58%), both of which fit the balance complaints people have been making (unfortunately there were far fewer PvT's than the other matchups--132 vs 218 ZvP's and 212 ZvT's).  TvZ was almost even (a slight edge for Zerg).

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)