The StarCraft 2 finals here at DreamHack Summer 2013 just ended and what a finals series it was. StarDust topples BroodWar legend Jaedong in a best of 5 series that went down to the wire. The deciding game was ended in a base race sealing StarDusts victory.
Mistakes were made and arguably Jaedong could’ve won at least the other baserace in the series. But the fact that StarDust was able to put on the amount of pressure required to make one of the most experienced players in the StarCraft franchise crack shows us how frightening he really is.
But StarDust, I’m really happy for you. And I’ma let you finish, but SjoW was the player to watch this tournament. Coming out of retirement back around March I believe, not having any big SjoWings, to suddenly taking out Life and a shared third at DreamHack Summer is crazy.
I’ve always had the biggest respect for SjoW. SjoW is a player who uses extremely smart play and makes every button press count. Perhaps the extreme opposite of a player like StarDust that relies so heavily on pressure and pace. So there might be a bit of bias in play here, but it’s my editorial and I’ll praise who I want to. SjoW is My DreamHack Summer 2013 champ.
Sweden has a great run this DreamHack all around. Though somewhat expected, The Alliance took the DotA2 competition. NiP recovered from their extremely poor day 1 and came back to win it all (but make no mistake, there’s blood in the water and the sharks are circling). As mentioned SjoW had a great showing. Even Street Fighter 4 went to Sweden with Popi taking home the title. Certainly no one predicted that! Sweden certainly made the most of the homefield advantage.
That said, for us all is said and done. I’m packed up and ready to join the other Intel Pack4DreamHackers for another 16~18 hour journey back home. Guys, it’s been a blast. Ask yourself just one question: “why was I not there?”, and unless you have a very good excuse, I’ll see you next DreamHack.
– Martijn Bloemheuvel
