WCS America - Premier Season II

Finals Day 1 Recap
Quarter-Finals Results


Finals Day 2 Preview
5th place match and Grand Finals


Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

VODs on Youtube

Quarter-Finals Results

Three non-Korean players made it to the quarter-finals of WCS America, but only one would survive to reach the final four. Acer.Scarlett, the 2012 WCS North America champion and long time hope-bearer of the international scene, lived up to her reputation and took a crushing 3 - 0 victory over Evil Geniuses' aLive to take a semi-final spot. The highlight of the series was game two on Derelict Watcher, where Scarlett went old school with brood lord-infestor to take comeback victory.


Another foreigner also came close to earning a Ro4 spot in IG's Jim, as he went the distance with EG.Jaedong in a five game series. However, he couldn't overcome Jaedong at the final hurdle, and fell to his mutalisks and hydralisks to suffer a narrow 2 - 3 loss. Jim's teammate MacSed also suffered elimination at the hands of a Korean, falling 3 - 1 to Liquid's TaeJa who avenged Liquid's Dota2 loss to IG in StarCraft II.

Finally, the adopted American CMStorm_Polt came through with a clinical, 3 - 0 dissection of EG.Oz. Although Oz seemed full of confidence before the series, he was brutally outplayed by the long time TvP master Polt.

Jim and aLive to play 5th place match

The first day of games also saw the first portion of the consolation matches played, with the quarter-final losers competing for the 5th place finish that would earn them a spot at the WCS Season II Finals in Cologne. Jim won 2 - 0 over MacSed and aLive won 2 - 0 over Oz in a pair of team-kill matches, setting up Jim vs. aLive for a ticket to Cologne.

WCS AM Finals - Day 2 Preview

Countdown:

5th place match: EG.aLive vs. IG.Jim

Jim has had a fantastic WCS tournament thus far, establishing himself as a top foreigner not only in Rotterdam's mind, but in the minds of many StarCraft II fans worldwide. With a win in this fifth place match, he can earn a trip to Cologne where he'll have chances to impress even more viewers, especially the ones in Europe. His opponent will be previous top four finisher aLive, who comes in off a 3 - 0 thrashing of Oz in his last match.

Although Jim has shown great gameplay so far, one has to wonder if he's become too exposed at this point. The phoenix-colossus style he and MacSed favor have now been seen multiple times by the Koreans, and they will most certainly have talked about it among themselves. aLive may have been thwarted by Scarlett, but I don't think his foreigner killing spree is ended just yet (Suppy, Demuslim, Minigun so far this tournament). aLive to win 3 - 1.


The Finalists

Would it really be controversial to say that WCS AM has a stronger final four than WCS Europe? Sure, there might be GSL winners in the EU line-up, but when you consider HotS form, Polt, TaeJa, and Jaedong strongly outperform the trio of MC, MMA, and Duckdeok. Even Scarlett might edge out Grubby, although that's more contentious considering neither has won a major international tournament. Anyway, let's meet our finalists.

CMStorm_Polt: Polt said at MLG Anaheim that school breaks lets him get more practice, and it seems to be showing as he looked even stronger than before in his 3 - 0 beatdown of Oz. He should feel okay about his TvT chances, already having fought evenly with TaeJa this season. Polt won in Challenger and TaeJa won in Premier, making this the rubber match. They looked pretty evenly skilled in the past meetings, and their semi-final match should be a thrilling, old-school duel between two marine-tank masters.

The finals is where Polt might get a little bit worried. While his TvZ doesn't lag significantly behind his other match-ups, it has traditionally been his worst. Even though it was good enough to win him MLG Anaheim against HyuN's roach-bane style, it was a very close shave. He lost 2 - 3 against a solid muta-ling-bane player in Revival at IEM Shanghai, and I feel he'll be a slight underdog should he face Jaedong or Scarlett in the final.

Liquid`TaeJa: A championship here will fully confirm Summer of TaeJa 2013. With a championships at HSC7 (early summer?) and ASUS ROG already, TaeJa can make it three on the year like he did in 2012. Like mentioned above, the TvT against Polt should be very even, with both players evenly matched and favoring marine-tank styles in TvT. However, if one player was to give it a twist, it would be TaeJa. While Polt is basically married to marine-tank for life, TaeJa does dabble in mech on some occasions. With mech emerging as a preferred late-game composition for some Korean Terrans, TaeJa may decide to bring it out in a few games.

TvZ was once TaeJa's best match-up and nigh unbeatable, but it has declined since its peak. Notably, TaeJa's micro and amazing splits just aren't there anymore, and he just seems slower on the whole. Even so, he's still a very, very good TvZ player, capable of running circles around lesser players with drops and pressure. In his current state, I think he'll be slightly behind Jaedong, and even or so against Scarlett.

Acer.Scarlett: Uh, let's keep it short. If Scarlett wins, it would be the greatest thing for the foreign scene in f****ing forever. Moving on...

Going up against Jaedong and his 80%+ ZvZ win rate may seem intimidating, but there's a decent amount of fluff making up JD's record. When we consider that Scarlett has gone 2 - 0 against Revival, 2 - 3 against Life, and 2 - 1 against Symbol in ZvZ's since the spore crawler patch, then it looks to be a much closer match than at first glance.

The reward for beating Jaedong will be a ZvT against Polt or TaeJa in the finals. Scarlett has said ZvT is her best match-up and her she certainly convinced us in the Ro8. Polt would probably be the preferred opponent, considering he has dropped TvZ to top foreigners in the past, including against Scarlett in the RSL. While TaeJa hasn't actually lost a best of three or higher series to a foreigner in TvZ yet, he has at least had some close shaves, notably against Snute at HSC7. Scarlett will have more than a fighting chance.

EG.Jaedong: Congratulations Jaedong! You've put in painstaking effort into clearing all the Protoss hurdles, and there's just Zerg and Terran left in the tournament. Finally, you can reach out and take your just reward in a championship.

At least that was what was we were thinking back at DreamHack Valencia when Jaedong defeated Stardust to book a finals match against HyuN. Even though Jaedong got to play his best match-up of ZvZ, he was reminded that anything can happen on a given day, and he lost 1 - 3 to HyuN to finish in second place once more. Jaedong is the slight favorite to win the tournament out of the remaining players, but it's far from a sure thing.

Writers: Waxangel.
Graphics: Pathy
Editor: Waxangel.