Last time, we highlighted early stages of the qualifying tournament held on August 5. A qualifying tournament that determines the top 8 qualified players for the WCS ANZ Season 4 Finals that kick off August 26. Let's get to it.

After Varun ‘Demi’ Immanuel disposed of Ryan ‘NXZ’ Jones in the upper bracket, he met his match with David ‘MightyKiwi’ Gore in a qualifying match. The winner would qualify for the main event, while the loser would be sent to the lower bracket to fight for their tournament life.

MightyKiwi has arguably the best Zerg versus Zerg (ZvZ) form in our region. The result was not entirely unexpected as he handily defeated Demi, securing his qualification. Elsewhere in the bracket, Ben ‘Crimson’ Macdonald repeated his Season 3 performance by vanquishing two formidable Terran opponents to qualify for the main event. First in the firing line was Josh ‘Runamok’ McMillan, then next was Craig ‘Azure’ MacKechnie.

Tran ‘Meomaika’ Hong Phuc and Sheldon ‘Seither’ Barrow surprised no-one as they charged through their opponents in qualifying matches. By this stage, six of the top eight finalists were determined and the crowd’s attention turned towards the lower bracket. Being forced to compete in the lower bracket of a tournament is a challenging ordeal. The workload increases several-fold as players are forced to play many more games in a more stressful setting, against tough opposition.

Demi managed to prevail against Ashley ‘Frustration’ Cox in a controversial series, becoming the seventh qualified player. While passport and travel complications may prove a more difficult obstacle to overcome than a Protoss player, should Demi make it to the finals, he’ll be a force to be reckoned with.

The final qualification match was an interesting affair as Thomas ‘Blysk’ Kopankiewicz matched against Cameron ‘Yours’ Foster. Yours has been a consistently active player for the past few years, but hasn’t yet had a breakthrough moment in his career. Blysk was one of the best Protoss players in our region during Heart of the Swarm but retired soon after LotV launched. According to his liquipedia page, Blysk is still a retired player. In reality, people don’t retire from playing StarCraft. They just take breaks.

The first map was played off-stream and we joined the series as Blysk was enjoying a one-map advantage in the best-of-three. Abyssal Reef was the map of choice for Blysk to employ an unorthodox three-stargate style, opting for an army composition of Void Rays and Zealots. Blysk showed his relative lack of consistent practice with sloppy engagements, allowing Yours to tie the series with stock-standard macro play.



The third game was a longer tactical match as both players opted to secure a large economy. Yours seemed content with his glass-cannon Hydralisk/Baneling army, while Blysk had a pick-and-mix Protoss composition straight out of StarCraft II’s prior expansion. Blysk crumbled as Yours added Lurkers to the mix, and provided Yours with his first major tournament achievement.



The final stages of the bracket were played out to determine final seeding. Meomaika ended up clinching the finals against MightyKiwi and claimed himself the top seed from the event.

After over eight hours of combat, our top 8 players were crowned. Iaguz, Probe, Meomaika, MightyKiwi, Seither, Crimson, Yours and Demi will be travelling to Sydney on August 26 for the main event. Tickets for the event are available here.

Stay tuned for continuing coverage of StarCraft II WCS ANZ Season 4 here at AusGamers and make sure you don’t miss out on the live action, where one lucky event attendee will win a trip to South Korea alongside the winner of the StarCraft: Remastered match between Legionnaire and mOOnGlaDe.