David vs Goliath
The most surprising and talked about result in the round of 16 fell on the hands of ToD. No offense to MysT, but people paid little to no attention to this matchup, as they expected ToD to sweep the “returning-from-inactivity” Brazilian easily. ToD was in shape – he just beat Moon in a convincing fashion in the group stages, and is poised to be a top 4 name. ToD is a WCG veteran; a 3rd place finish in 2004, 4th in 2005 and 2nd in 2006 made it appear as though this can be the year he took it all. But the small bump in the road became an impassable crevasse, leaving ToD going home without a single-digit finish.

Brazilian Wonders

Last year, the biggest upset was between Brazilian player Levin who eliminated South Korean SoJu in the round of 16. The Night Elf mirror match employed two different strategies, with SoJu using the standard Demon Hunter while Levin opted for the Priestess of the Moon.

Unconventional strategies seem to be the key to success for lesser known heroes. ToD has played against most of the top Night Elves – such as Moon, SoJu, ReMinD and Creolophus. While some of them can get creative, the strategy MysT used is almost never encountered. MysT had the advantage knowing how ToD plays by the plethora of replays he has online, but the same can’t be said for the reverse. MysT has been inactive from professional gaming up until he surprised everyone by qualifying out of Brazil instead of the heavy favorite, PaTo.

Next WCG, what is there to be expected from these Brazilian wonders? Probably nothing spectacular – but everyone will end up feeling fidgety when they get matched up against one in the round of 16. They wouldn’t like to be the one who lost to another underestimated player.

China’s Shining Stand-in
xiaOt wasn’t even supposed to be in the WCG, but he managed to take the spot due to Lyc dropping out due to visa problems. Another Orc player (a non-Human, or non-Elf, for that matter) is always welcome in a big tournament such as the WCG.

In the group stages, he was bunched up with Grubby, Giacomo, GlaDe and DeMusliM. Aside from Grubby, xiaOt packs the heaviest punch, but others were uncertain if xiaOt will manage to pull it through. He’s good, but lacks consistency. Nevertheless, he went through the group tying Grubby with a 6-1 score. Grubby is xiaOt’s only loss, giving him the 2nd seed to face recent ESWC winner SoJu.

SoJu’s the heavy favourite to win the matchup, taking into consideration SoJu’s recent successes. SoJu beat Grubby and Lyn in ESWC. Although SoJu lost to xiaOt in PP Stream tournament a few weeks ago and to Ciara in the group stages. These losses seem to mean less than his wins against Orc, however.

When the news broke that xiaOt won 2-0 against SoJu, people wanted to know what exactly happened. SoJu used the standard tri-hero Druid of the Talon strategy against xiaOt on Turtle Rock and Echo Isles. xiaOt always took the offensive to whittle down SoJu before SoJu manages to acquire his perfect army. The battles never stretched out – xiaOt had complete control of the map and of the game. SoJu played worse than what he’s known for, while xiaOt played like a champ.

Too Much, Too Soon
Of course, the match everyone looked forward to was Grubby versus Sky in the round of 16. For most people, the matchup came too fast, and ended too soon. These types of encounters are usually reserved until – at least – at the quarter finals. Two WCG champions meeting face to face this early makes for an exciting morning, but makes the finals less exhilarating.

Grubby fought hard – he knew he was facing a big challenge. In the game on Gnoll Wood, Sky took the Mountain King as his first hero, an unconventional move. It resulted in an air war – Grubby made Wind Riders that worked well with the absence of the piercing damage of Water Elementals. Sky countered with Dragonhawks and later, Gryphons. In the last battle, Sky had Healing Scrolls and Scrolls of Protection against Grubby’s Batriders. The Mountain King’s nuking ability coupled with focus fire from Gryphons made Grubby’s heroes take too much damage, albeit having a Shadow Hunter to aid with healing. The Batriders Grubby had with his army weren’t enough to take Sky’s army down and Grubby left the game.

Sky’s Biggest Nemeses Face Off
There are only a couple of names who can boast of being able to defeat the defending champion multiple times: Fly100% and Moon. These two immediately faced each other early in the round of 16, as Moon took 2nd seed in his group with ToD.

Moon didn’t find any difficulty defeating Fly100%, taking the Chinese Orc down 2-0. Fly100% put up a good fight, but it wasn’t enough to even steal a map away from the revered Night Elf player.

The Other Two
The top 16 hosts two other names people would have never expected to make it that far – sLh from Poland and HasuHasi from Switzerland.

A lot of fans have been complaining about the uneven groups that WCG had this year. Group D contained too much good players, while Group C was devoid of any real competition for XlorD and Group F was extremely easy for Fly100%, especially with the absence of TitaN.

Group G is relatively “easy” too, but it does have more notable players such as Swift and apm. sLh’s performance in that group is commendable – as he managed to defeat the favorite of his group (Creolophus) and finished 1st, while Creo took second.

Do sLh and HasuHasi, who aren’t even considered “underdogs”, deserve the top 16 spot? Who even predicted that sLh could take a top 8 spot? Nevertheless, all of these players deserve everything they managed to achieve. The World Cyber Games isn’t an invitational tournament for a reason – they qualified out of their country, made it out of their groups and took the bracket spots fair and square.

But of course, we can’t help but wish that groups got spread out more evenly. The players aren’t to blame – it’s the luck of the draw.

Last King Standing
Who would have thought that ToD and Grubby would end up dropping out of the tournament at the round of 16, and that Creolophus would be the one left in the tournament? Creolophus has been inactive for some time, and he's the last shining hope for the dominant team in this tournament. Sky is certainly the favored to win in this matchup, but ladyluck has been on Creo's side during this tournament -- who knows, he might just surprise Sky and put a stop to his impending three-peat.