WCS Europe Season 2 - Premier League

Ro32: Group H Recap
TitaN and Happy advance

Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

VODs on Youtube

by kollin

Russia duo of TitaN and Happy take final Ro16 spots

Detailed results from Live Report Thread by NovemberstOrm.
+ Show Spoiler [Detailed Results] +

Almost one year after RoX.KIS.TitaN and Empire|Happy took 1st and 2nd at WCS Russia 2012, the duo took the top two places in another WCS tournament. Granted, the stakes weren't nearly as high. The Russian duo topped the final Ro32 group of Europe's Premier League, advancing to the Ro16, eliminating Alliance.SortOf and XMg.ToD in the process.

While SortOf's instant relegation might have been expected due to the Korea-Europe lag factor, Tod was not a player many expected to get knocked out in last place. But that's exactly what happened as TitaN and Happy flexed their muscles, making sure their country would have representation in the live, Ro16 rounds.

The first series of the night between Happy and Titan was a fairly interesting one. In the first game Happy opened as he did in almost every TvP on the night, with one barracks fast expand plus an ebay block at his opponent's natural. Meanwhile, Titan opened up normally with a gateway expand. After a midgame lull, things heated up as both players attempted to take their fourth bases. Titan did a fantastic job of pressuring Happy from multiple angles to prevent him from taking a crucial fourth base, while he secured five bases on his side of the map. While Happy's absurd ghost count nearly allowed him to overcome the resource disadvantage, colossus production from three robotics facilities and an insane amount of warp gates ensured that Titan would take the win.

In game two, Titan attempted to go for a immortal-colossus all-in but delayed for several minutes, which resulted in Happy getting up several bunkers and enough vikings to shut down the all in. The final game in the series was rather quirky, as Titan was forced to take his second base at his third due to the ebay block. However he defended the midgame bio pressure and crushed through Happy's defences with an archon HT zealot army.

On the other side of the bracket SortOf faced off against Tod, with the Frenchman being the clear favourite on paper due to SortOf's abysmal ZvP record in HotS and high ping. However, SortOf managed to take a 2 - 0 victory, even after failing with a speedling rush in game one. A successful mutalisk tech switch managed to catch Tod with his pants down, and SortOf took the victory. In the next game Tod was in a much better position, having taken a quick third and having amassed a fairly large skytoss army. However he made a fatal mistake in engaging out in the open against a huge amount of hydralisks and infestors, and ended up losing the game.

However, TitaN would not make such mistakes when he faced SortOf in the winner's match. Both players powered up economically early on, and while SortOf looked like he might have been able to take the win with his huge roach hydra viper army after sniping Titan's third, he was caught transitioning away from vipers and had to tap out to a four base Titan. Their situations were reversed in the next game, where it was Titan who was caught transitioning to colossus and swarmed over by wave after wave of roach hydra. The final game showed that Titan can not only sit back and macro, but also apply constant aggression from the beginning to the end of the game. Titan used the recently popular phoenix-zealot pressure to deal huge damage to SortOf's economy, gaining a considerable lead. From there all he had to do was macro up, take a third and hit an immortal archon timing to end the game.

In the losers matches Happy went up against Tod, and had to fight a fairly hard battle to take him out 2 - 1. In the first game Happy got demolished by a proxy oracle, which his one rax FE did not have an answer for. He stayed in the game for a while longer, but the spectators, the commentators and surely Happy himself knew that he was just delaying the inevitable. In the second game Tod once again went for an early cheese in the form of a seven gate, and while he did manage to contain Happy on one base all the Terran player had to do was doom drop, force the base trade and take the win. The final game was underwhelming, as Tod tried to do too many things at once - take a third, tech to DTs, tech to colossus - and was killed by a simple double drop in his main.

In the final match SortOf went up against Happy to decide who took the final Ro16 spot in the entire tournament. In the first game, SortOf took a huge amount of damage from reapers and then the following hellions, and his attempted baneling bust did not do enough damage to warrant the Swede staying in the game any longer. In the following game SortOf tried to all in again, seemingly sick of the Korea to Europe lag, but Happy's solid defence in these situations once again saved him from the three base roach bane bust. While SortOf was by no means down and out after getting repelled, Happy's subsequent drop that killed his lair and forced him into one final, yet ultimately doomed all in. After that attack failed, SortOf GG'd out to concede the game, set and Ro16 spot to Happy.

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