WCS Europe Season 3

Endgame
Finals Bracket

Ro8 Preview

Former BM King
Nerchio

Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

VODs on Youtube

WCS EU Season 3 is drawing to a close, with everything being decided this weekend. The Round of 8 this season could be the strongest lineup across all three seasons and the quality of the games should be very high. Every player needs to perform if they wish to have a shot at the WCS Grand Finals at Blizzcon -- only duckdeok and MC reside within the top 16, but they only have 200 point buffers over the 17th place player. With WCS America still to wrap up, they are anything but safe at this point. Before we get into the preview, let's look at the bracket for the conclusion of Season 3.

By Plexa

Genius vs duckdeok

If you were after an even match, this is certainly it. Not only have Genius and duckdeok performed similarly in recent times, but they also share the same "I prefer aggressive play but I'll play a strange macro game if I really have to" approach to Starcraft. There is one important difference between the two -- duckdeok has far more recent information available, Genius essentially only has his WCS games (of which, he's had one PvP). This has got to work in Genius's favor, and perhaps could even be the deciding factor.

Predicting how duckdeok is going to perform tonight is as easy as predicting the outcome of a dice roll. In the Ro16 he looked very convincing against Titan through demonstrating the insight on when to attack, when to push his advantage and when to defend. But doesn't always look this way, going back to his series against Naniwa in the WCS S2 finals serves to illustrate this point. What is clear is that if duckdeok is going to make another deep run this season, it's going to be on the back of his PvP.

The same doubts about duckdeok's PvP can be extended to Genius -- his series against Grubby to open WCS was anything but convincing. He didn't illustrate the aforementioned insight, rather he played two careful macro games -- losing the position war in the first, and winning the second -- and then gave us our first Yeonsu cannon rush. It's hard to draw any conclusions from that series, except that Genius is prepared to take risks to win the game. While his PvP may be questionable, his other games this season have looked very sharp which leads me to believe that he's in form right now.

So how are these two going to clash? I expect duckdeok to play the role of the initiator and Genius the defender. Duckdeok will probably try make something happen early on while Genius will look long term. Given the state of PvP, I think Genius (with the extra information around on duckdeok) will be able to take the game longer and win it there. But it will largely depend on his ability to scout and prepare accordingly (or cheese really well!).

Prediction: Genius 3-2 duckdeok

Vortix vs Stardust

Since putting himself on the map by winner Dreamhack Summer, Stardust has been that guy who's 'there' but not really a contender. In some ways he currently serves the same purpose to WCS EU as Flash is for WCS KR. He's that guy you can talk about as a former champion, still a very good player, but you're not sure he can actually win another championship. Performing well in this tournament would break him out of this mold and make his presence in tournaments that much more formidable.

Vortix, on the other hand, is regarded as one of the top non-Korean and that alleviates him of the burden that Stardust has to prove himself. No one is going to blame Vortix for losing in this match but the community will rally behind his successes. That should put him in a good position mentally for this series. It is well known that Stardust has his own brand of PvZ focused around aggressive use of zealots (with some form of appropriate support) and I fully expect Vortix to have done his homework and to have worked out a gameplan to account for this.

In the end this should be another close series. Vortix has been playing increasingly well over the last few months while Stardust has dipped down from his peak in June. As such I feel their skill levels are essentially comparable and things could go either way. That said, I have good feeling about Vortix tonight and would happily see him progress to the semifinals.

Prediction: Vortix 3-2 Stardust

Targa vs MC

Not many people would have picked Targa to have made it to the Ro8, particularly given the groups he got given in the Ro32 and Ro16. I also suspect that not many people will be picking Targa to advance over MC either. And justifiably so, I'm sure Targa isn't expecting a victory against MC today and won't be disappointed if that is the outcome (he's done incredibly well just to get this far) but that isn't to say that Targa won't be trying his hardest to cause (yet another) upset. Defeating MC on this stage would be the biggest upset thus far this season; yes even bigger than Showtime taking out Mvp.

As Targa is a player on the rise having scored multiple upsets already, we're going to have to throw aligulac out the window as a predictor and look at how his games unfolded to give a good sense of how Targa will perform. Most of Targa's wins against Protoss have come from him assuming the role of the defender while fending off whatever the Protoss throws at him. Indeed, he was able to overcome Naniwa in the Ro32, despite Naniwa defeating him earlier in the night, by successfully defending Naniwa's cute tactics. This kind of slow methodical ZvP would seem to be a good match against the traditionally cut throat MC. However, MC has illustrated in this tournament that he's not afraid to play a passive macro game when given the opportunity (e.g. against Firecake) and has looked incredibly lethal at every stage of the game. Targa could plausibly pick up a win through defending MC's curve ball in one of the games, but I don't think he can keep up with MC's standard play.

Prediction: MC 3-1 Targa

MMA vs Nerchio

You would be forgiven for thinking that MMA is going to dominate this series and not giving it a second thought. After all, MMA has looked like one of the very best players in the world and is the favorite to win this tournament. But looking at the other players in the Ro8, Nerchio is one of the few who could cause an upset -- the others being MC and possibly Genius/Stardust (if they're having a good day).

Nerchio brings a unique style of Zerg to the table which isn't necessarily cheesy, just unconventional. His decision to use roach/hydra against ForGG in the Ro16 is a great example of this. Of course that isn't to say he's incapable of playing standard, more that he's decided that this is the best way for him to play in the current metagame. We'll have more on Nerchio later on in this article, so let's look at MMA. MMA is the guy to beat in this tournament. With a very impressive showing at Dreamhack and utter domination of his WCS groups it isn't hard to see why this is the case. It wouldn't be surprising to see MMA throw a cheese into the series, but I would expect him to play reasonably standard Terran executed to perfection.

With both players begin in form at the moment this should be an excellent series of games regardless of the score. As Nerchio recently took a game off of Taeja and has looked really good lately (barring his games against Genius) my heart wants to say that Nerchio will be able to edge out a 3-2 victory over MMA. However, my head says otherwise. The rational prediction for this series is a 3-1 to MMA. MMA has just looked better than Nerchio lately -- slightly cleaner execution, slightly better thought out plans, slightly better macro -- and that leads my head to believe that he should advance.

Prediction: MMA 3-1 Nerchio

(Thanks for ctrl+f'ing your name in our coverage!)

by lichter

Everyone knows who Nerchio is. At one point, he was Acer’s Ace Zerg and in the conversation for "Best Foreigner" after his win in Homestory Cup V over YongHwa, 2nd Place at IEM Cologne against Mvp, and gold at DreamHack Bucharest, all towards the end of 2012. However, this pretty much sums up what we all know Nerchio is best at:

+ Show Spoiler +
His reputation as a BM guy in-game (but a nice guy outside of it) and constant belief that Zerg is underpowered often colors our opinion of the man from Poland. Even during his successes in 2012, foreigners such as NaNiwa, Stephano, VortiX and a few others have always been considered a step above Acer’s Original Zerg, and perhaps part of it could be blamed on his negative reputation. 2013 has been a much quieter year for Nerchio, with no podium finish to speak of—and no big PR debacle—but he enters WCS EU Round of 8 looking as impressive as he ever has.

Nerchio advanced from both group stages in second place after losing his initial matches, but demolishing everyone else 4-0 to go through. To some, perhaps that looks like spotty form, but his transformation between his initial matches and the losers matches was striking. It was as if those first 2 or 3 games were just warm ups, and his true talents could only be revealed once he was on the ropes and close to elimination. It was good enough to get him through to the playoffs, but will it be enough to make him WCS EU Champion?

In all 4 of his losses so far, it was trickery and early aggression that did him in. Against TitaN, Nerchio lost to an unscouted immortal all in and an unexpected VR-based attack. It was much of the same in his games against Genius, as a stargate fake into 6gate all in and a sentry drop dispatched of him in 20 minutes. With only those games as evidence, one would easily think that Nerchio scraped through and was lucky to make it this far. His scouting seemed poor, his reading of the game insufficient. Even in his victories he has had the tendency to stockpile resources too greedily for future tech, and both TitaN and Genius had no problems in taking advantage of this hole in his play. If Nerchio continues to play stubbornly without more meticulous scouting, he has no chance of winning WCS EU.


Unfortunately for his future opponents, that won’t happen. Nerchio has shown great resiliency in coming back from the loser’s match both times, and with playoff ties all “lose or go home”, Nerchio will waste no time with warm up matches. If he finds his stride early and avoids jumping into his own grave early in the set, I give Nerchio a solid chance of beating anyone left in WCS EU, even the aforementioned Genius and TitaN.

His games against Terran—Shuttle and ForGG, admittedly weak in the matchup—were bops. In both series Nerchio used Roaches (and Hydras vs ForGG) not only to defend during the early game, but to punish Terran early CC builds. Shuttle could not match Nerchio’s superior engagements and decision making, and raised his white flag with little resistance. ForGG was able to last a bit longer, but Nerchio’s untouched macro behind his constantly threatening roach hydra army allowed him to easily overrun the Millenium Terran. Believe it or not, but Nerchio is on a 14 game ZvT win streak, against the likes of Taeja (2-0), Happy (3-0) and aLive (1-0).He is 19-1 in his last 20, with 1 loss against Dream’s formidable TvZ.

His form in vZ and vP has looked uneven as of late, but both matchups have followed a similar trend. His early game and defense against all-ins and clever builds looks like a weakness that everyone has become aware of, but his macro game has looked imperious. His losses against Genius and TitaN both looked like lessons in bamboozling Zerg, while his wins against ShowTime and HasuObs were outright stomps. With 4 Korean Protoss left in the competition, all of whom prefer to play it short against Zerg, it looks grim for Nerchio unless he can improve his scouting and defense against the various builds he might see this weekend. He has shown a stubbornness to only play macro games so far, but with money and precious WCS points on the line, Nerchio will have to adjust if he wants this to be more than just a good season.

If Nerchio is able to shake off his tendency for slow starts and corrects those exploited shortcomings, I give him a good chance of being the first foreigner to defend his home region. However, if Nerchio loses one or two quick games, it might be too difficult to climb back out of those holes against superior opposition. Even though Nerchio’s games have looked dominating in wins, he has only beaten players that have been eliminated so far. He will have to bring his A-game right off the bat, but he gives foreigners hope of being represented at the Season 3 Finals. Not bad for Ex-BM King.

Writers: Plexa, lichter
Graphics: shiroiusagi
Banner photo: ESL
Editor: Plexa.