WCS Europe Season 1 - Premier League

Ro32: Group C Preview
Ret, ThorZaIN, TitaN, Strelok


Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

by Waxangel





The headliner for this group is Evil Geniuses' EG.ThorZaIN.RC, one of most accomplished and decorated players in all of StarCraft II. Ever since he won TSL3 back in 2011, ThorZaIN has been a mainstay of the international StarCraft scene and has always been one of the best Terrans outside Korea.

HotS has been mixed bag for ThorZaIN so far. On the plus side, he crushed fellow Swedes in the E-Sport SM 2012 April Qualifier with just a single map loss, and even won a tight MLG exhibition match against Creator. However, his performances in major tournaments haven't been so hot, as he was eliminated by Chile's Killer at MLG Winter, and recently failed to defend his DH: Stockholm title as he was eliminated from the Ro32 by Verdi and Stephano. All in all, ThorZaIN still should be considered one of the stronger players in the group, but perhaps not the stand-out favorite like he would have been this time one year ago.

Speaking of players with great resumes who are diminished now, we have Liquid`Ret. Once considered a top two or three foreigner in the world, Ret's stock took an incredible fall in the last few months of 2012. Almost as abruptly, Ret started climbing right back up in 2013, rising back into the upper echelons of European StarCraft in Heart of the Swarm. Ret has yet to return to his pre-collapse levels where he was one of THE best in Europe, but he's still recovered to the level where he has a great chance to advance out of any group with no Koreans. He was excellent at both the IEM World Championship and the ESET UK Masters tournament, crushing all of his European opponents and only losing to Koreans like YoDa and Sting.

Unfortunately there's not much useful recent data to go on for Ret, as he was eliminated from last weekend's DreamHack by a combination of Gumiho and Leenock. Considering that most other European prso would have been eliminated in a group with those opponents, it doesn't really tell us too much about his form immediately before this group.

Na`Vi.Strelok may have flown under the radar in different circumstances, but he's created a noticable ruckus coming into this group. European Terran was a race nearing extinction toward the end of WoL, but they've come alive in HotS. Strelok had a particularly remarkable revival, going from being largely out of sight to winning one of the incredibly difficult WCS Europe Qualifiers (wins against finale, PandaTank, and Welmu). On top of that he was part of the highly visible coin-flip disaster at DreamHack Stockholm, tying three times in the Ro64 before finally going through to the Ro32 on a coin-flip. Besides the fact that DreamHack likes stubbornly adhering to an embarassing ruleset, we also learned that Strelok was pretty damn good since he was trading games with Lucifron and YuGiOh to keep tying his group. Though he couldn't keep his momentum up in the Ro32 (losses to Center, Puzzle, and SortOf), he still looks like a strong darkhorse contender in Group C.

While almost everyone else in the WCS system has revealed himself in a major tournament by now,
RoX.KIS.TitaN has remained a mystery in HotS. While nearly all of the WCS Europe competitors were at last weekend's DreamHack, for TitaN we still only have online results to go by. So far it's a mixed bag of results that isn't particularly notable: early elimination from MLG's Winter Showdowns, some wins against lesser know European pros, and losses against players like Lowely and ForGG. While TitaN's current skill level remains murky, he at least proved his tournament chops last WCS by making a top 16 run in the world finals. The Russian champion may yet to have shown us his best games in HotS, and he's one to look out for.

Overall outlook and prediction:

While ThorZaIN hasn't been blowing anyone's socks off lately, we still have to respect his skill in a format where he has ample time to prepare for a match. Ever since TSL3 he's shown an ability to prep intelligently for matches, and hopefully he'll bring something more interesting than "hellbat drop as much as possible." Lucifron already stole his thunder by using well prepared Thor all-ins against Happy in Group B, and we'd like nothing more than to see ThorZaIN try to match him.

Titan is another player who we expect to bring some well prepared strategies, as his good balance of standard and all-in strategies saw him go on some strong tournament runs in WoL. We suspect Strelok might be the one who goes for the "hellbat drop as much as possible" strategy, and probably a ton of mech.

We're really curious to see what Ret has prepared for this group. He has had a reputation of preferring macro games to a fault in the past, but the format of WCS Europe almost neccesitates some careful risk-taking and diversification of strategies.

Ret > Strelok
ThorZaIN > TitaN
ThorZaIN > Ret
Strelok > TitaN
Ret > Strelok

ThorZaIN and Ret advance.

Writers: Waxangel.
Graphics: shiroiusagi
Editor: Waxangel.