StarCraft II: Championship weekend recap

Last weekend saw a mass of major tournaments around the world for the StarCraft II scene. From Dreamhack in Stockholm to Major League Gaming (MLG)‘s Spring in New York City and the Australian Cyber League (ACL) in Sydney, all around the world we got the chance to watch all our favourite players duke it out.

The ACL results were not too surprising, with Australia’s powerhouse Andrew “mOOnGLaDe” Pender from team Invidia taking the championship. mOOnGLaDe performed remarkably, losing only two sets in the whole tournament to Eve’s West and SQL’s Yang.

Infi’s TargA and Tt eSports’ PiG took second and third placing respectively.

For more details, check out the tournament’s Liquipedia page.

The MLG Spring Arena #1 on the other hand, had some great storylines.

Two-time champion and hope of the foreigners Chris “HuK” Loranger from team Evil Geniuses crashed 1-6 in the group stages, leaving the tournament to be fully dominated by Koreans.

The first and second places were fought between Prime’s Lee “MarineKing” Jung Hoon and MVP’s Park “DongRaeGu” Soo Ho. The 2 ace players have already clashed previously in the finals of two major tournaments and MKP had come up on top the last 2 times. This time, however, DRG fought his way to a 4-3 victory, finally defeating his archnemesis.

Check out MajorLeagueGaming here or the Liquipedia page for the Spring Arena details.

Dreamhack results were the greatest upset of the 3 tournaments.

With over 40 players in the tournament, the group stages were brutal, with even notable players like PuMa, MaNa and NaNiwa getting knocked out.

The final champion was also a relative surprise, with Mousesports‘ Marcus “ThorZaIN” Eklöf defeating Choi “Polt” Sung Hoon to take home 70,000 kr (~S$13,000), as well as a fully paid trip to New York City in May to attend MLG’s Spring Arena #2.

Team Liquid’s Joseph “Ret” de Kroon also got third place, and together with ThorZaIN, showed that “foreigners” still have it within them.

Visit Dreamhack’s site or the Liquipedia page for more details.