WCS Europe Season 1 - Premier League

Ro32: Group B Recap
Lucifron and Happy advance

Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

by stuchiu

Results from Live Report Thread by Karasaki.
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On another level
- K3.LucifroN goes 4 - 0 to advance to the Ro16

Coming into WCS EU, all eyes were on K3.LucifroN as one of the top threats to take the whole thing. It was a cannon shot heard around Europe as the first half the Spanish armada crushed through his group with a resounding 4 - 0 score, leaving the other three players to eat his dust as he moved onto the ro16. After making a comeback into WoL in 2012, Lucifron has continued to appear stronger and stronger at each event and this trend has continued straight into HotS.

Lucifron started the day by disregarding the hellbat shenanigans that plague the EU TvT ladder as he opted for two quick Thor rushes. Happy seemed completely lost for ideas on how to stop the rush with his hellion and hellbat builds, and he quickly GG'd out of two consecutive games.

In the winners match, Lucifron would take on the Ukrainian Zerg Acer.Bly with a very Korean style of marine-widow mine-medivac with constant aggression Bly started the series by trying to sneak in an early blow with a fast Roach bust, but Lucifron shut the attack down by preemptively making two marauders in preparation. From there both players got into 3 base macro mode, with Lucifron keeping up constant pressure with excellent macro, allowing him to secure a larger and larger lead through sheer mechanics. The game finally tipped irreversibly in Lucifron's favor when he crushed Bly's attempt to take a fourth base, which he used as a staging point for his troops before he hammered the GG out of Bly.

The second game went just as well for Lucifron as Bly opted for a late 1/1 ling-bane Life-style bust that did some minor damage, but left a majority of Lucifron’s army and economy intact. From there Lucifron only had to keep the pressure up and never let Bly get more than 3 bases. Impressively, Bly was able to push Lucifron for long enough to get ultralisks out, but by that time it was 4 base against 3 and the writing was on the wall. Constant attacks finally forced the Zerg defenses to crack, opening Lucifron's way into the Ro16.

Night of the living Undead
- Happy advances past mouz.HasuObs and Acer.Bly to reach the Ro16

With Lucifron having departed early, the remaining three players shared two things in common. All three of them were all once Undead players in WC3, and all three were extremely patient players in StarCraft II. This made the remaining games a grueling test of endurance as the players ended up in a split map scenarios, where both sides refused to gamble on a risky all-out battle until they were 100% sure of victory. Eventually, after all of the blood, sweat and tears, after everything was done and gone to dust, only the Terran player remained.

In the losers match Empire|Happy stuck to his standard bio-medivac into ghost-viking style for the majority of the games against mouz.HasuObs. The first game on Daybreak was – surprise – a split-map standoff. After some initial aggression by Happy to try to do some damage to Hasuobs, both players secured their sides of the map while attacking at the fringes of their opponent's territory. Happy would stick to nukes, drop harassment and snipes to deal damage to Hasuobs, while Hasuobs would constantly use zealot and dt runbys for his damage until he could got his tempest count high enough to start sniping the front. Eventually, this bled out Happy and left him with no choice he tried to do a hail mary attack, which was easily thwarted as Hasuobs' large bank and superior composition took the game.

Games 2 and 3 ended much more quickly, as Happy didn't seem to want to go through the excruciating experience from game one ever again. In the second game, Hasuobs would take on the 50-state coin flip as he took three fast bases against Happy. While HasuObs stopped the first wave of dropships from outright killing him, the follow up aggression was too much, as would lose both his main and natural while defending the third. To add insult to injury, Happy was able to depower 2 forges 1 second before 2/2 was done, delaying Hasuobs' counter all-in. After that Happy just needed to defend and mass up another army to take the game. The deciding game saw both players play more standard, but Happy's good infantry play was able to deny Hasuobs third for a long time, and let him get to the double starport production that countered Hasuobs colossus heavy style. With no transition into HT and a late third, HasuObs had no choice but to GG out of the tournament.

Happy’s games against Acer.Bly were no less arduous. They started on Daybreak and once more it became a split-map scenario. Happy stuck to his bio medivac widow mine, while Bly was able to get to ultra muta ling-bane with some infestors. With neither player willing to take an engagement that could end badly for them, they ended up having to go for a base trade instead. This ended up playing out vastly in Bly's favor, as he was able to double back after doing sufficient damage and clean up Happy's army. Happy tried to turtle back to a max army, but Bly was already too far ahead in the game. After some desperate drop tactics, Happy GG'd out.

Once again down a game, Happy rallied back and took the next two games consecutively. Game two on Whirlwind was yet another arduous and lengthy macro game for Happy, but this time he managed to get a victory out of it. After securing four bases with his mech army, Happy put together together a Thor raven viking that Bly couldn't find the key to unlocking. From there, Happy secured the entire map and bled Bly out till the end of the game. The third game saw more standard play from both sides, but was still rather protracted as Happy's bio-medivac-mine went up against against Bly’s muta-ling-bane. Happy did a good job keeping constant pressure on Bly, denying his attempts to take a fourth and getting off several big mine hits. Bly succeeded at transitioning to ultralisks and prolonging his life, but it was only a matter of time before he was forced to GG out to Happy's superior economy.

All the best to the rest

mouz.HasuObs: HasuObs didn't deviate from his reputation, playing pretty much how you would expect him to play. Whether it was TvP or TvZ, he went for colossus backed macro builds and slowly tried to build the perfect composition while chipping away at his opponents his opponents with harassment. The tempest seems to fit HasuObs' style perfectly as more than ever before, it allows him to sit back and slowly and meticulously crush his opponents. This was worth at least two victories for him on Daybreak, as he defeated both Bly and Happy in excruciatingly long games that would have made even ThorZaIN say "not bad."

Acer.Bly: While not showing anything too far out of the ordinary, Bly did opt try out some fast overlord speed builds that allowed him to scout everything in his opponents bases. This move actually befuddled HasuObs, who appeared to overthink the situation and by delaying his tech for longer than necessary to keep it secret. Overall, Bly showed strong games, though he seemed outmatched by Lucifron, and didn't seem to have any good answers for late game PvZ and MechvZ.

Writers: stuchiu.
Graphics: shiroiusagi
Editor: Waxangel.