WCS Europe Season 3

Ro16 Group B Recap
Vortix and MC Advance

Ro16 Group C Preview
ForGG, ShoWTimE, Nerchio, Genius

Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

VODs on Youtube

VortiX and MC Advance

by Premasiri

On paper, Group B ended as most would have assumed it would: Vortix and MC advancing in first and second place respectively, and part-time fan favourite Thorzain falling out of the competition along with his northern European counterpart, Babyknight. The story of the night has to have been Thorzain’s narrow elimination after upsetting MC 2:0 in their first series, only to fall short in the final game of the night.

Ro16 - Group B
1.	VortiX	2-0 (4-0)
2.	MC	2-1 (4-3)
3.	ThorZaIN	1-2 (3-4)
4.	BabyKnight	0-2 (0-4)

Detailed results from the live report thread by Denar
+ Show Spoiler +

VortiX vs BabyKnight
VortiX BabyKnight
VortiX BabyKnight
VortiX <> BabyKnight

VortiX wins 2-0!

MC vs ThorZaIN
MC ThorZaIN
MC ThorZaIN
MC <> ThorZaIN

ThorZaIN wins 2-0!

Winners' Match
VortiX ThorZaIN
VortiX ThorZaIN
VortiX <> ThorZaIN

VortiX wins 2-0!

Losers' Match
BabyKnight MC
BabyKnight MC
BabyKnight <> MC

MC wins 2-0!

Final Match
ThorZaIN MC
ThorZaIN MC
ThorZaIN MC

MC wins 2-1!

---

VortiX and MC advance to WCS EU Premier Ro8!

Vortix: Impressive, if not too surprising.
Vortix has always felt more impressive to watch than his results might suggest – but it looks like WCS Season 3 is his chance to turn that around. While admittedly in last nights’ games he dodged the strongest contender to advance out of the other three players in the group (MC) that’s not to say he didn’t deserve the round of 8 spot he secured. With a 2:0 dismantling of first Babyknight and then Thorzain, and Russian heavyweight Happy already safely knocked out of his way in the round of 16, the round of 8 is really shaping up to be somewhere Vortix might impress once again. Game one against Babyknight was all above board – holding the Danish Protoss’ trademark aggression to take a late-game victory. But it felt like Babyknight handed him the game and the last 10+ minutes were simply Vortix going through the motions. Game two was a pretty simple battle of the builds – Vortix scouted Babyknight’s air play in good time and simply built a large enough muta and corruptor ball to run him over in the late mid-game. Despite a 2:0 victory over Thorzain, the decision to all-in twice shows vortix isn’t comfortable going late against Terran, and this is something he’ll really need to work on if he wants to make as big a dent in the round of 8 as he did yesterday.

Thorzain: Almost the upset of the group
Thorzain went into this group with next to nothing to prove. He’s gone back to school, and on top of that has been on a gradual decline for quite some time. If anyone in this group would not have caused too much of a splash by ducking out of this group 0:4, it would have been Thorzain. But a Thorzain with nothing to prove is apparently a dangerous weapon. With inspired play against the bookie’s favourite MC in his first series of the night, he took a swift 2:0. With all the tools to defend the game 1 roach all-in of vortix in his next series, it looked like Thorzain could have really made this his group, only to pull SCVs off repairing his bunker for no discernible reason other than the desire to lose. With another quick (this time roach-bane) all-in from Vortix, this time catching Thorzain far less prepared with a greedy third command centre and only a few hellions to his name, Thorzain was left trusting in his earlier 2:0 against MC as he faced the Bosstoss again. An excellent hold of MC’s gateway all-in in game one on Frost was sadly not repeated as Thorzain lost game two to a blink all-in and then game three to proxy void-ray and oracle shenanigans. The fact that he took it to a full game 3 in the final series of the night shows that the first series might not have been a fluke after all, but was no consolation as Thorzain was unable to claim that all important final map to advance to the round of 8.

MC: Had us worried for a second there
It’s no secret that the MC of 2013 has looked shaky. Never “bad”, but not the indomitable force of yesteryear he was. However, going into the group last night MC was one of the remaining favourites to win the tournament. Protoss has always struggled against Terran in heart of the swarm, but it was MC who first showed the world how to shut them down early with stargate play at the end of the beta period, so many months ago. So for MC to fall 0:2 in his opening series of the night was something of a shock – especially to the underdog of the group in terms of WCS performance thus far. To be fair, he was then able to reverse the favour against Babyknight and crush his hopes of advancement well and truly into the ground, first with an excellent and crushing defence against one of Babyknight’s trademark blink-stalker all ins, and then with a build order winning stalker all-in to counter the stargate opener of his opponent. So MC got safely through in the end, but he doesn’t look like the shoe-in to take the tournament as he did before last night’s games.

Babyknight: Disappointing performance
Going out 0:4 in any group of any tournament is no doubt horrible. To add insult to injury, it had to be in the tournament where Babyknight made his name as the legend-killer. In all fairness, without any big tournament victories to cement that reputation in the year since then, perhaps it was time for that particular legend to also die. It’s fairly simple to pin what went wrong – predictable, overly aggressive play. As a micro-oriented player, it’s hard to blame Babyknight for doing what he does best, but as the HotS meta evolves, Babyknight’s particular brand of Protoss seems to be falling off.

If anything, I’d go out on a limb and say that Group B was disappointing. Four well-known, well-respected names, and all we got to see of them was all-ins. One could make the argument that with (as MC vs Thorzain proved) none of the matches being write-offs on paper, every player was keen to up their chances of advancement as quickly as possible with well orchestrated early game aggression. It’s certainly what paid off for Vortix, but on the other side of the coin saw Babyknight crash and burn in spectacular fashion. It was nice to see Thorzain show what he’s still capable of, even if only for three games, but if you’re keen on long, back and forth macro games, Babyknight vs Vortix is your best bet, but even that series included, last night’s group was not for you.

by DarkLordOlli



It's Showtime!

Cheap and obvious puns aside, it really is time for these players to show what they're capable of. ForGG, Showtime, Genius and Nerchio form Group C of Europe's Premier League, all arriving with something to prove.

Consistency

... is what they have to prove.

ForGG has been one of Europe's strongest Terrans for quite some time (we can call him a European Terran by now, right?) but it seems like he's missing that final spark that could make him a tournament champion. A good comparison would be football (E/N: for Americans, soccer) -- no matter how good tight your grip on a game is, if you can't create that final pass that leads to deciding goals, you'll have trouble winning. ForGG certainly has what it takes to win WCS EU, but will he? His TvT is superb, his TvP has upset players like sOs and HerO and he just beat Snute 3-0 in the Millenium House Cup Finals, showing glimpses of what fans will hope to be a much needed improvement in the TvZ matchup. All ForGG really needs to do is play the way he can play and he's got a good shot in every tournament he enters. His powering, mechanically excellent playstyle should match up well against any protoss that isn't exceptionally good at defending insane aggression. Coincidentally, that's exactly what his first opponent seemed strongest at.

What Showtime has to prove should be fairly obvious. He beat Season 1 Champion IM.Mvp twice to advance to the Ro16 - now he has to show that he's got more up his sleeve than holding SCV pulls executed by someone playing from Korea. His teammates seem convinced that the #HardWorkingProtoss' win was not just a fluke but something that was bound to happen eventually. Statistically PvT is the German's weakest matchup so he'll probably be relieved to have only one terran in the group. Even still, Showtime is a clear underdog in this group. Nerchio, Genius and ForGG are all more experienced and more accomplished players than he is. But as far as that's concerned - he beat Mvp. Experience and accomplishments alone will not be enough to beat Showtime. I don't expect the German to defeat ForGG but with PvZ being his strongest matchup and PvP being as crazy as it is, he might not necessarily have to.

Genius and consistency-woes have a long a painful history together. Initially looking poised to become a Protoss legend, Genius won Blizzcon and then kind of faded away. He was always hanging around Code S and he was never a bad player by any means but he just didn't feel like being good either. Be it demotivation, lazyness, mental blocks - who knows what kept Genius tied down for so long. Then, at the start of 2012, he randomly decided to be the best Protoss in the world again and made the GSL finals, losing to his friend DRG in one of the better final series we've had. And then he faded again. Genius left MVP in search of a foreign team but was rejected by his team of choice, Team Liquid. He eventually wound up on Azubu but didn't show anything special for a long time. It seemed like his time had finally come to an end - until they played Startale in the GSTL. Somehow Genius woke the demon inside him yet again and brutally destroyed Curious, Life, Bomber and Hack before finally being stopped by Avenge. Now he managed to break the great wall of lag with another solid performance and the now standard Yeonsu cannon rush to make it to the offline finals of WCS EU Season 3. Group C has to hope that the spark Genius showed has not ignited his fire or there's no telling what he will do.

The final player in the group is Nerchio. After being called out by the destroyer of worlds, Empire.Kas, after predicting Nerchio to advance last time, this writer will not make the same mistake again. Jokes aside, while Nerchio has definitely shaped up considerably in most recent weeks, you can't help but question how good he really is right now. PvZ is statistically his weakest matchup - but looking at recent online results, he beat Stardust 2-0 twice as well as taking series off Tails and Tassadar. But that's always been where he's most comfortable. Online tournaments were Nerchio's territory long before he started attending tournaments regularly and doing quite well for himself. But he hasn't had a lot of those in HotS and his most recent showing at DH Bucharest can't have made him too happy about his PvZ. Not only did he drop series to Oz, Stardust and Alicia in the main tournament but he also lost an important game in the SC2L finals to HerO who didn't look like he had to try very hard to fend off Nerchio's hyperaggressive ling/hydra/corruptor attacks. This group is a good start for Nerchio to get back on track with his offline results. He definitely the potential to cause an upset and even take first place but first he's going to have to overcome the wildcard that is Genius.

Predictions!

For the sake of nostalgia and my predictions being right, I hope the real Genius shows up.

ForGG > Showtime
Genius > Nerchio
ForGG < Genius
Showtime < Nerchio
ForGG < Nerchio

Genius and Nerchio to Advance

Upcoming Groups
Sept 27: MMA, Starbuck, TitaN, duckdeok

Writers: Premasiri, DarkLordOlli
Graphics: shiroiusagi
Banner photo: ESL
Editor: Plexa.