I will try to put the intro in words as good as I can but to experience and grasp the entire epicness you will have to go to Iron Squid's youtube channel, watch it and if you love eSports as much as I do you will, just as I did, manly try not to start crying like a twelve-year-old girl who has just seen Justin Bieber. No opening ceremony I've ever seen could reach what they have done at Iron Squid Chapter II.



First the cellos started with a rather deep, aggressive tune. Then the violins joined in, followed by a distinctive clarinet melody. Finally the wind section, the choir and the band "In Uchronia" join in. On the screen the Iron Squid logo fades in and out again while the musicians continue. The orchestra qiets down and the line "Previously on Iron Squid" appears. Short scenes from Iron Squid Chapter I are shown.
The arrival of the players, the crowd, the players in their booths, their faces on the edge between determination and exhaustion. The crowd chants "MMA". Then scenes from last final's games start, displaying Seong Won 'MMA' Mun and Dong Hyun 'Symbol' Kang battling for the gold medal. As the final moments before MMA's victory run by the music becomes dramaticly quiet, then arises once again when he steps out of his booth as the victor. The screen now shows his face as the winner of the Iron Squid Chapter I.
Once again only cellos now.

The musical buildup starts again while pictures of the final four players of the Iron Squid Chapter II flash on the screen. With every picture 3500 people in the hall cheer and scream. All players are shown at once and the music goes quiet with "II" appearing on the screen, then each player is introduced individually with scenes from their past games in the Iron Squid Chapter II tournament. Finally pictures of the casters flash on the screen, each single one is cheered for like they are superstars, and the musical intro concludes. The crowd goes nuts.

When the hosts and casters entered the stage you could tell by their faces what was going on in their minds. The french casters and Day9 couldn't stop grinning and looked almost "mindblown" while the other English casters didn't seem to have expected such an overwhelming welcome. Kaelaris' facial expressions looked like he was not sure if he should slap himself to ensure he is in fact not dreaming or if he should just be happy about such an amazing crowd.


With the players it was of course no different. They entered through hallways between the tiers while everyone clapped synchronously with In Uchronia's drummer. Seung Hyun 'Life' Lee, Jung-Hoon 'MarineKing' Lee, Soo Ho 'DongRaeGu' Park and Jae-Duck 'NesTea' Lim all have been at big events, of course including GOMTV's also impressive GSL, but although they look calm on the picture and also tried to keep it together on stage MarineKing had to wipe a tear from his eye and everytime one of them spoke into a microphone the crowd chanted the name of the talking person, always resulting in at least a smile.

Then the first series began, MarineKing.Prime vs Life. All matches beside the finals were a best of five series and after the recent dominance of Zergs everywhere MarineKing was the only Terran and therefore also the only non-Zerg in the final four. I doubt that a player of his caliber lets something like that get to him but with or without the extra pressure, MarineKing was only able to live up to his name once in his series against Life.


I don't want to go into deep analysis but Life seemed to know MarineKing's style too well and that, in combination with sloppy mistakes on MarineKing's side, was the Korean Terran's doom. The first game almost looked more like an execution than an even fight. Life knew about MarineKing's tendency to be overly greedy in Terran vs Zerg so he started with early aggression to punish him and never stopped harassing and attacking the entire game. Finally Life outnumbered and outgunned his opponent, the score was 1-0.
The second game should probably have been a win for MarineKing but he made a critical misjudgement early in the game and then lost to his own sloppy play, as he also stated later. On the third map MarineKing relied on the tactics he became popular with, mad micro mass marine/marauder/medivac, and won but he was not able to keep it up in the fourth game, resulting in a 3-1 victory for Life.


The second semifinal was DongRaeGu against Nestea. Nestea, the Zerg who created the universe, has quite a reputation but in late 2012 he had a rough spot, dropping out of Code S for the first time and not reaching a single round of eight in a major tournament since august. For DongRaeGu 2012 was the year of his first Code S gold medal and several more top two placements in other big tournaments. Therefore it was no secret who was commonly seen as the player to bet on in this series, although Nestea seemed to have bigger support in the crowd. Before the games Nestea himself predicted 3-1 in DongRaeGu's favour but at that time he did not yet know how good of a fight he would put up. The series went to the fifth game, each and everyone worthy of such legendary Korean Zergs. A good fight was not enough though and Nestea lost the final map after a 40 minute macrogame.

After these two matches, one fairly one-sided and one extremely close, it was now Jung-Hoon 'MarineKing' Lee and Jae-Duck 'NesTea' Lim who had to play against each other in the best of five for the third place. To say it was a disaster for MarineKing is almost an understatement. No game made it past the 14 minute mark with Nestea coming out on top everytime. It was one of the fastest and seemingly easiest 3-0 victories in the history of tournaments and the only thing MarineKing could respond in an interview between their match and the final was that he had now learned his lesson and would start scouting more and playing less greedy against zergs.

Finally Seung Hyun 'Life' Lee and Soo Ho 'DongRaeGu' Park as the last two players still standing started their battle for the first place and what a struggle it was.

After Nestea DongRaeGu was considered the "King of Zerg" from late 2011 on until late 2012 but in august 2012 a new heir arose, striving for the throne. Life is the youngest GSL Code S champion, the first to take the title in his first Code S appearance and he also won the first MLG and Blizzard Cup he ever attended. Together with his second place in his first TSL it was five months of first times and he did exceptionally well everywhere. The win at Iron Squid Chapter II would have perfected this picture and with DongRaeGu as his opponent he would even "dethrone" him personally. Of course we are still talking about MVP's DongRaeGu here so to say it would be a walk in the park certainly never crossed Life's mind and he was right to think so.

In a best of seven the winner was to be determined and after three games it looked very grim for StarTale's Life. Favouring builds which open up options for early aggression for him Life likes to attack constantly and never let his opponent rest for even one second but in those three maps DongRaeGu showed how to defend such aggressive play and even made Life suffer the way his opponents usually do.
In the first two games Life tried to go for his usual early aggression but not only was he unable to get a single even trade, DongRaeGu also always managed to bring the fight to Life's doorstep. Although overall the fights were relatively even DRG managed to defend Life's runbys too well until eventually he just outproduced Life and ran him over with his army. The third game was a perfect read by DRG, ending the game after little more than six ingame minutes.

It looked like it was over for Life, a 4-0, maybe 4-1 or 4-2 victory for DongRaeGu was in sight with four matchpoints ahead. As Day9 stated several times during the cast, Life must have been under enormous pressure being 3-0 behind. Performing so well in late 2012 many expected him to win but pulling of four wins in a row against a player of DongRaeGu's caliber is something most players would consider impossible or as likely as climbing the Mount Everest one-handedly. It was obvious how tense Life must have felt. After the first game he ran out of his booth, appearently furious about the loss, and between the games he always seemed very upset and agitated. And yet he crawled his way back into the series.


The fourth game was as well played by Life as it was bold and brave. he allinned DongRaeGu with an extremely microheavy tactic with no room for any mistakes, which would probably be the last thing any other professional player would do under such pressure, but maybe it was exactly that what won Life the game. Going for something like that must have at least impressed DongRaeGu or maybe even triggered a "Are you serious right now?" kind of reaction in DRG's head as he knows about the almost non-existent room for error in such builds. Instead of cracking under the pressure Life's control became superhuman and defeated DRG, the start of a tale he will probably tell his grandchildren. The two following games both went on for more than 20 minutes with life gaining small advantages whereever he could, resulting in a convincing victory for Life both times.

It had happened. When Life was down 3-0 pretty much everyone counted him out, thinking "DongRaeGu will surely take at least one of four games!" but here they were. Life brought it to the seventh map, already an achievement after such a huge deficit, but it was not enough the young Zerg. In the final game DongRaeGu decided not to take on Life in another macrogame but instead to try to defeat him as fast as possible with an extremely early allin. Two minutes of intense microbattle until a "gg" appeared in the chat.

Neither the casters, nor the crowd, nor Life himself could believe it. He went from a 0-3 disadvantage to winning 4-3, the smile and the tears following this win were well deserved.

Now I would definitely say that Life is the current King of Zerg, probably even a candidate for the currently best player in the world.
Following the entire thing I have to say that most of the games were astonishing and so was the rest of the event. The amazing 3500 people crowd, the incredible intro, music and interviews between the matches, an accustic song for each individual player that was played live by In Uchronia after every won map, a free 1080p+ stream in French, English and Russian, a planned through steampunk scenery and a HotS showmatch between Yoan 'ToD' Merlo and Pierre 'SarenS' Guivarch made it a happening that tournaments in the future should try to live up to. But not only was it good for the viewers.

Because there were only four players at the event they were exceptionally well taken care of. They were flewn in days in advance to eliminate the chance of jetlag, each of them had an individual room in the theatre with a computer, food and drinks and a couch or something else so they could train and rest in their breaks.
Overall a smaller tournament tree for the live event ment fewer matches but therefore longer series, an extremely high production standard and more entertainment beside the games. Not everyone likes seeing less players at events but I think the money it saves the organisers is put to good use on other ends, benefitting the players and the quality of the event and for me that puts the Iron Squid Chapter II ahead of other tournaments
Pretty much the only bad critique I can give is that more of the onstage program could have been shown to the English and Russian viewers, even if it was in French, and around three times or so the direction switched to the desktop while a game was going on but those were just the few small inevitable mistakes that happen during an event this size.

Once again I can only congratulate Life for such an incredible performance and for another big tournament win. May his streak continue and carry on into Heart of the Swarm. The last thing I want to say is:
Isn't it a remarkable result that the arguably currently best Zerg in the world took first, his predecessor took second and the oldest and probably most legendary Zerg took third place?


Sources: IronSquid facebook