WCS America 2014
Premier League

Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

VODs on Youtube

by DarkLordOlli

Past the halfway mark in WCS America, the race distribution of players qualified for the Ro16 is looking as even as could be.

Protoss (3): Alicia, Oz, Arthur
Terran (2): Heart, Bomber
Zerg (3): TooDming, HyuN, Revival

However, Protoss are likely to pull ahead with three of them going up against a single Zerg in Group E of the Ro32.

After we saw tournament favorite Jaedong fall out in last place thanks to impressive TvZ from Bomber and very 'graphic' PvZ from Has, the remaining big names have been put on alert. Players who on paper don't seem like tournament contenders have upset big names in WCS America: Toodming took out Scarlett, Has eliminated Jaedong, and Arthur topping his group by scoring an upset against Bomber.

Now, all this considered, favorites are still favorites, and there is no bigger favorite than Liquid`HerO to win this group. Ever since joining the Incredible Miracle team house his play has massively improved, and he's catapulted out of a mini-slump in the second half of 2013. He comes in with solid (though infrequent) performances in Proleague, a second place finish in the online Warer Invitational, and a championship trophy from IEM Cologne. All of HerO's recent achievements have come on the back of wins over top tier players in the world.

The only series HerO dropped at IEM was against Rain, but looking closely at the games it's hard to attribute the losses to weak PvP. HerO put up a great fight after falling behind in game 1 to almost win the game and fell victim to a brilliant mindgame by his opponent in the second. HerO's PvPs should feature mostly standard, refined and flexible builds. The trick for anyone in this group to beat him might be to turn on heavy aggression and taking big risks to gain advantages. Otherwise HerO is currently looking too solid to be broken down.

His first opponent in this group will be Chinese Protoss Top, representing team Zenith of Origin. Top has been around in WCS America ever since its inception but has yet to make it past the Ro32 of Premier League. He does happen to be a consistently good player, having qualified for Premier League in three straight seasons. This season he made it by defeating viOLet, improvising a nexus cancel into a twenty minute all-in strategy to take the final game. That type of strategy is exactly what he needs to bring to the table tonight as well. If he manages to get HerO as confused as viOLet, there may be hope for him.

Jokes aside, Top's PvP record against fellow Chinese Protoss players like MacSed and Jim is not bad and his most recent match against Xigua went in his favor as well. The best Chinese and Taiwanese players deviate a lot from the established metagame and it's proven to be effective already this season. HerO and HuK are both more oriented towards the Korean metagame - which, let's be honest, is the most refined - so they have to keep a close watch on any craziness that might be thrown their way by Top.

Canada's #1 Protoss EG.HuK has been playing quite well as of late, but he's attracted more attention for his blog in defense of Protoss than his play. HuK addressed Has' controversial cannon rush against Jaedong as well as ever prominent PvT issues and the new balance changes. Perhaps most importantly for this group, he talked about the MSC vision change and explained a few implications it has for PvP and PvZ. Most PvP builds are refined in such a way that offer a built in MSC scout in time to react to any tech choice your opponent opens with. With the mothership core vision now severely decreased, scouting becomes infinitely harder in PvP. As a player who is no stranger to taking risks, and one who played SC2 in far more coin-flippy eras, it will be interesting to see how HuK has adjusted.

First however the EG Protoss has to get past iG's XiGua who made it to Premier League by upsetting Tassadar who had been on a tear through the North American ladder prior to the event. HuK's PvZ of the past revolved a lot around 2-base all ins, preferably with as many gateways as possible. More recently he's adapted a more standard playstyle in all matchups... Xigua however is a Chinese Zerg who may not be aware of HuK's reputation, a circumstance that the Canadian might considering exploiting.

In general, Xigua will be the recipient of whatever cruel things the three Protoss players come up with. He's been around for an eternity and was one of the first Chinese players to participate in international tournaments. He never stood out as a Zerg prodigy but I'd also be hard pressed to recall seeing Xigua showing terrible performances. He's fond of early aggression in all matchups, a philosophy that many good-but-not-great Zergs fall back on. Against Protoss it seems to work out best for him as his vP is currently ranked highest out of his three matchups. The Chinese scene is well saturated with strong Protoss players, two of which (Jim and MacSed) are Xigua's teammates. The things he sees in practice may be beyond our scariest nightmares but at least they make Xigua a stronger player and should give him a good idea of how to defend against the crazy 2-base options that the Chinese Protoss players (and many, many others) seem to be so fond of. I have a feeling that he will need to remember that lesson multiple times.

Predictions: Everybody needs to scout like crazy, HerO wins.

HerO > Top
Xigua < HuK
HerO > HuK
Top > Xigua
HuK > Top

HerO and HuK advance.