WCS Europe Season 2 - Premier League

Ro32: Group E Recap
Welmu and Ret advance

Ro32: Group F Preview
Lucifron, NaNiwa, Bly, Uzer

Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

VODs on Youtube

by Premasiri

Welmu and Ret top group C

Detailed results from Live Report Thread by KristofferAG
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WCS Europe's Group E ended up being an example of class mobility as NrS,Welmu, a player who spent last season down in Challenger, and Liquid`Ret, who had previously been eliminated in the Ro32, both earned spots in the Ro16. To progress, they toppled Na`Vi.BabyKnight and EG.ThorZaIN.RC, players who had finished in the top eight and sixteen of the previous tournament, respectively.

Initial Match 1 – Welmu vs. Babyknight

Two aggressive, micro oriented Protosses with outstanding win rates in the matchup were the first pair of players to meet in last night's WCS EU. Heading into the series, Welmu was unquestionably the underdog – despite having earned his spot in the Premier League after no less than seven tries. BabyKnight was the likely favourite after his legend-killing top 8 finish last season, and the only Protoss in the top 8 at that. With both players having over 70% winrates in PvP in Heart of the swarm, Welmu’s 2:0 was less one-sided than it might appear in the box score. Welmu’s excellent and continuous dark templar harassment was to be the story of the night – After deflecting three-gate aggression from Babyknight in game one on derelict watcher, he was able to consistently snipe probes all game with them, buying himself a valuable economic lead. This lead to him crushing Babyknight’s army in the midgame when the Danish protoss made the risky choice to try and keep up with Welmu’s third base timing on only three gateways.

Game two followed a similar pattern – this time it was a three gate oracle build that Welmu held off while teching straight to DTs. This time however, the follow-up for Welmu was a two base tempest play, which eventually paid off against the colossus deathball that Babyknight gradually accumulated. After sniping both the main and third of Babyknight, Welmu was able to remax faster after every engagement, eventually sweeping aside the remnants of babyknight’s army to take the series.

This first series showed that the Finnish protoss Welmu has many more cards to play in his mirror matchup than the blink stalker builds he has tended to opt for in the past. Having always performed well online, WCS looked to be no exception as the 19 year old was in fine form to kick off the night.

Initial Match 2 – ThorZaIN vs. Ret

Having avoided each other despite being in the same Ro32 group in season 1, Ret and ThorZaIN were the next pair to do battle in group E. It was a clash of two opposing styles: Ret's risky, economy focused style matching up against the spoon turned fork that is thorzain's more aggressive style, adapted to suit the HotS meta. Oddly enough, the two most established players in the group were also perhaps the two players with the most to prove. On the one hand, EG’s ThorZaIN sought to shake off his recent slump in tournaments, and on the other, Liquid’s Ret, was as always battling his worst enemy – himself. While the scoreline for the first series was a clean 2 - 0 victory for Ret, the games themselves were a less one-sided affair. While ThorZaIN was not the ThorZaIN of yesteryear, undisputed best Terran in Europe, he put up a good fight. Game one on Whirlwind started off with a bang, Ret opting for an out-of-character baneling bust, working off only 22 drones. After failing to deal crippling damage to Thorzain’s fast third command centre opener, the game continued into the standard TvZ meta for Hots – Ling-baneling-mutalisk matching up against a drop heavy, bio mine composition. Despite gradually wearing down Ret with efficient engagements and good multitasking, the game was decided in the Liquid Zerg’s favour by a few well-placed fungals to crush ThorZaIN’s army convincingly in the middle of the map.

Game two was a similar affair in many ways. Another early aggressive move, this time on the part of ThorZaIN, came in the form of hellbat drops. With diligent overlord scouting, Ret was able to muster up enough roaches to deal with the harassment, and looked set to control the midgame with a large roach ball. Similar to game two, ThorZaIN once again edged out a lead with better multitasking and harassment, only to fall flat in a single, one-sided engagement in the late game – again falling victim to good fungals and ultralisk cleave damage with a poorly split bio ball.

With ThorZaIN's consistently sub-optimal play recently, this series was always going to be a question of whether Ret would be able to keep his calm - at his best, Ret has shown he is capable of taking a series from nearly anyone, but at his worst, he's crumbled to players much less accomplished than ThorZaIN. What happened in yesterday's group was somewhere between the two - while Ret was able to edge out the victory in both games, his play was littered with questionable engagements and supply blocks.

Winner's Match – Welmu vs. Ret

Heading into his second series of the night with a victory over ThorZaIN, Ret looked to be on top of the inconsistency that caused his embarrassing exit in season 1. Game one on Bel’shir Vestige saw Welmu open gateway expand into phoenix against a typical 3-base opener from ret. A questionable and poorly executed phoenix/zealot push at Ret's well-defended natural, rather than exposed third was a flop, but still left Welmu in a position to take and defend a third while transitioning to colossi. However, having gone heavy on the phoenixes and even having added an extra stargate to ramp up air production, Welmu was caught with too few sentries to zone out an enormous roach-hydra-corruptor push from Ret, which was enough to secure the first game for the Dutch zerg.

Game two on star station saw Welmu once again opt for a curiously aggressive play. A delayed blink stalker attack off the back of a sentry-heavy attack at Ret’s third was his weapon of choice on this occasion. Despite some poor force-fields from Welmu, Ret’s lack of scouting left him with far too many roaches and too few zerglings to successfully deal with the blink stalkers of Welmu, and left him no choice but to tap out.

In tribute to his fellow finn, Elfi, Welmu’s all-in for game three on whirlwind was a 5 gate zealot all in on one base – pulling probes out of gas after one stalker and his warp gate tech. Despite scouting the play at almost the earliest time possible, Ret was simply unable to make enough zerglings to hold off the wall of zealots that marched into his natural, and he made a swift exit from the series, falling 1 - 2.

Welmu’s aggressive style was enough to carry him through the group in first place, and cements his growing reputation as one of the rising European stars. On top of his extremely strong ladder statistics, tonight’s performance places him as a strong contender in the round of 16, and one definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Losers' Match – Babyknight vs. ThorZaIN

Game one of what ought to have been an exciting series – with Babyknight’s aggressive, execution-based style going against the a similarly aggressive Terran meta in the matchup – turned out to be nothing special. Babyknight opened stargate on derelict watcher, managing to do only minor damage to his Swedish opponent. With a good defense of Thorzain’s followup-marine marauder-medivac timing, it was more a matter of time than anything else until Babyknight was able to move out with the patented Protoss deathball to take the victory.

Game two on Star Station came to largely the same conclusion. This time it was blink stalker aggression off two bases that Babyknight used to apply pressure, keeping ThorZaIN contained while taking a third and transitioning first into colossi, and then high templar. Although picking some odd mid-game engagements and trading poorly, Babyknight multitasked well enough to secure a dominant macro lead and was eventually able to once again build a large enough deathball to simply roll over ThorZaIN and eliminate the E.G terran from the group.

Final Match – Ret vs. Babyknight

In the final series of the night, it was Ret who was able to march away triumphant with the final ticket out of Group E, becoming the 10th player to secure a place in the round of 16. While game 1 on Neo Planet S was a hard earned victory, the remaining two matches of the series were surprisingly dull, with Babyknight evening the series 1-1 on Bel’shir vestige before Ret was able to close it out and take the series on Star Station. More important than the matches themselves was the form Ret was able to display tonight. It wasn’t Ret at his best – not by any means – but it was far better than the disappointing exit Ret made as an invitee to the inaugural season of WCS Europe only a few months ago. With the fan support he will undoubtedly receive playing in-studio in the round of 16, Ret’s chances to do well this season and make amends for the last are looking up.

Writers: Premasiri
Graphics: shiroiusagi
Banner photo: ESL
Editor: Waxangel.