The second day of StarCraft 2 competition at DreamHack Valencia opened with a largely unsurprising round of 16. Most of the tournament favorites dispatched their opponents to move onto the round of 8, which is ongoing an DreamHack’s Twitch channel.
One early surprise, however, was VortiX’s (Juan Moreno Duran, Spanish Zerg) decisive takedown of Korea’s Kim “ViOLet” Dong Hwan. His brother Pedro, the Terran LucifroN, did not fare nearly as well, falling to TargA 1-2. Fully half of the round of 16’s matches, however, were decided 2-0.
Stephano, TaeJa, TheStC, fOrGG, SaSe, and HerO also moved on to the round of eight, where play has resumed and thrown up an early victory for Choi “TheStC” Yun Sik over VortiX. While VortiX got off to a good start, winning their first game, TheStC started anticipating the Zerg’s every move in Game 2 on Metropolis. He always had the right build to counter VortiX, who was investing in strategies that ThesStC had already countered. That pattern continued into a dominant Game 3 performance, where he parked a bunker on top of VortiX’s expansion and strangled him from the start.
Next, Stephano easily bested his former Millenium teammate, Park “fOrGG” Ji Soo, in their first game on Ohana and was off to a dominant start in their second game on Metropolis when ForGG pulled of a miraculous turnaround with a Banshee / Hellion attack that smashed the Zerg’s economy. Their deciding match played out on Cloud Kingdom, where fOrGG just pulled off a stunning upset, leading the match from beginning to end despite some inspired tactical play from Stephano.
Right now, TaeJa and SaSe are about to begin, while HerO v. TargA immediately follows. The semifinals begin at 7 PM BST / 2 PM Eastern, although the tournament is running a few minutes behind schedule.