Team Finland won the StarCraft 2 Nation Wars tournament yesterday in Paris for the first time. They grabbed the title by defeating South Korea 5-3 in the finals.
Joona “Serral” Sotala won four out of the five games needed to secure the title for Finland. He’s proven that he’s still the Korean slayer after his victory against Kim “Stats” Dae Yeob from the World Championship Series at BlizzCon 2018.
Serral and his teammates—Wenlei “ZhuGeLiang” Dai and Iiro “TheMusZero” Kumpulainen—brought home $16,000 along with their first title in the tournament’s sixth edition. South Korea was the defending champion with two consecutive titles.
Despite the final match’s high stakes, it was played in a relaxed atmosphere. In the third game, ZhuGeLiang caused a stir by defeating Eo “soO” Yoon Soo, despite being considered the least-skilled player on the Finnish side. After soO’s loss, his teammates’ reactions were priceless.
Nation Wars is an international StarCraft 2 tournament featuring nation-based teams made of three players each. Twenty-four teams qualified for the tournament in September and the bracket was then narrowed down to eight squads.
South Korea swept Canada (4-3) and France (4-1) on their way to the finals. Team Finland, on the other hand, beat the United States—represented by Joseph “Future” Stanish, Alex “Neeb” Sunderhaft, and Chris “MCanning” Canning—4-1 in the quarterfinals. They then took down Italy 4-1 and grabbed the title after a best-of-nine final match.
Another StarCraft 2 event, the North American qualifier for the World Electronic Sports Games 2019, took place yesterday. It ended with a win for Neeb, who defeated Sasha “Scarlett” Hostyn.
Despite the date in its name, WESG 2019 will take place in March 2020.
