WCS Europe Season 1 - Premier League

Ro32: Group E Preview
NaNiwa, Shuttle, TLO, Kas


Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

by Waxangel





While WCS Europe can't match WCS Korea's historic, absurdly stacked group of death, it does bring us a very solid group with strong players. First and foremost there's Alliance.NaNiwa, who needed one weekend in his home country of Sweden to take back the 'best foreigner' crown from Stephano. NaNiwa was a mystery coming into DreamHack: Stockholm, with many wondering how he measured up in HotS after a long time away from live tournaments. The answer: very, very well. NaNiwa made a famous run to the DreamHack finals, defeating players like MC, YuGiOh and Jaedong, before finally losing to Leenock in an extremely close 2 - 3 final. It was like seeing NaNiwa who had reached the Code S Ro8 twice in a row return right before our very eyes.

That should strike fear into the heart of NaNiwa's first opponent, c.Shuttle. Typically, the reaction to facing a Korean Terran would be "f***, he's probably really good," but instead Shuttle comes across as a player the Europeans will consider to be more like themselves. Of course, he is a good player, or else he would never have broken through the brutally hard WCS Europe Qualifiers, but he has no results to suggest he's like one of those Koreans. Take the Korean flag off his name and take a look through his match history—could you really tell him apart from a middling European pro? In fact, Shuttle is in the strange position of being the only Korean in the group, yet also being the least favored player to advance. His three opponents are some of the best in Europe, and Shuttle hasn't proven he can play on that level... yet.

On the other side of the bracket we have Liquid`TLO facing Empire|Kas. The two have interesting contrasting stories behind them, as TLO was once a very popular player in spite of a dearth of tournament results, whereas Kas has never enjoyed much popularity outside of Europe despite always being considered one of the best players on the continent. In TLO's case, he has improved his skills massively over the course of the last year or so (his recovery from a wrist injury being a factor), going from first round elimination candidate to a player lurking just outside the title picture. Unfortunately, we can't say that Kas' PR has improved at such a pace—Bitterdam will have to redouble their efforts at promoting the Ukrainian Terran.

The relationship between the two is an interesting one, with TLO surprisingly having an extremely favorable record over Kas. Considering that Kas has a near-even or better record against almost every Zerg in Europe not named Stephano and VortiX, it's a surprise that he has somewhere around a combined 5 - 15 record (depending on what kind of games you want to count) against TLO in 'official' games. Either TLO's style totally counters Kas', or this is one of the weirder statistical aberrations in StarCraft. Whatever the case, this is the most high-stakes match the two have faced in, so perhaps Kas will have thought deeply about the reason behind it and will have found the solution.

Final thoughts and prediction

NaNiwa is the favorite in this group, but he's also the most exposed due to his deep run at DreamHack. Fortunately for NaNiwa he didn't have to show much PvT, but he did have to reveal a lot of his PvZ play in his Zerg heavy run (which even included TLO). His gateway-expand openers and myriad follow-up strategies might have caught his opponents with their pants down at DreamHack—a peculiar 2-immortal, only zealot all-in was especially effective—but TLO will be more ready to face him now.

Shuttle is the wild card in this group, and if he can show the level of play expected from a Korean, he can really shake things up.

If the TLO-Kas relationship isn't just an aberration, then this group becomes somewhat easy to call: NaNiwa's the favorite, Shuttle is the opposite, and TLO edges out Kas for second place.

NaNiwa > Shuttle
TLO > Kas
NaNiwa > TLO
Kas > Shuttle
TLO > Kas

NaNiwa and TLO advance.

Writers: Waxangel.
Graphics: shiroiusagi
Editor: Waxangel.