WCS Europe Season 2
Premier League

Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

Welmu, DeMusliM, Nerchio, Stephano
Countdown:

by Trasko

After an exciting first season that provided us with captivating stories and plenty of memorable moments, we're ready to move onto WCS Europe Premier League Season 2. The Ro32 is starting off strong right out of the gates, bringing us a group full of savvy veterans and fan favorites. There are sure to be plenty of cheers as well tears at the end of the night.

EG.Stephano may not be the best player in the group, but he's the one who commands the most attention. The French Zerg may still consider himself to be technically "retired," but it didn't stop him from steamrolling through the WCS Europe qualifiers, defeating defeating uzer 2-0, DIMAGA 2-1, and finally DeMusliM 2-1 to make it to the Challenger League. He then moved on to take out Slovenia's star player Starbuck 3-1 in the Challenger League, earning a return to the Premier League in his first attempt after he said farewell two seasons ago.

Swarm Hosts are one of the hottest topics within the current meta game, and Stephano may be the player who has singlehandedly brought the most attention to the unit's perceived problems. He is fully willing to exploit their ability to stall and prolong games, and is patient enough to see out a seemingly stalemated game to its bitter end. This tactic works especially well in ZvZ – in fact recently we even saw Stephano take two games off Jaedong, the ZvZ master, at Lone Star Clash 3. More infamously, he won a 2+ hour game against Petraeus at the same tournament, simply because he had more patience.


Yet what seems to be Stephano's Achilles' heel is when his opponent denies him from executing the one strategy he so enjoys. Stephano's downfall could be his ZvT, which makes sense as Swarm Hosts are not too viable in the match up at the pro level. Of course, Stephano being Stephano, he still managed to defeat DeMusliM during the EU qualifiers (also whilst enjoying some popcorn... in stream matches), and didn't look too shabby in defeat against Bomber at LSC3. It's very hard to tell what Stephano's ceiling is given the odd relationship he has with SC2 at the time. What we know is we can never count out the man who has pulled off many miracles in the past.

Thankfully for viewers who don't want to be watching WCS until 1AM, the second Zerg in the group is as adverse to using Swarm Hosts as Stephano is fond of them. Acer.Nerchio didn't mind abusing masses of free units in the BL-infestor days, riding the composition to become the top Zerg in Europe behind Stephano (a title he contested with VortiX at times). However, he's had a rougher time in HotS, unable to make it back to the top with his more 'conscientious' unit compositions. He's still a regular in the Premier League, playing in four of five seasons, but has only made it to the Ro8 once (that being his highest finish in the entire HotS era).

Nerchio hasn't been that visible since his WCS Season 1 run was ended by MC in the Ro16, only recently playing some games in Acer TeamStory Cup and Fragbite Masters. Coming in with recent losses to Kas and ForGG, and a ZvP game that hasn't looked very good in HotS, ZvZ might be Nerchio's only saving grace as he chases second place in this group.

Second place? Well, that's because I believe first place has already been locked up by NrS.Welmu. The Finnish Protoss has been continued to slowly improve since his debut, and has become one of Europe's best Protoss players and most formidable Korean killers. Whether it's all-killing the GEM bounty hunters, eliminating RorO from DreamHack, or taking out HyuN and San in Fragbite Masters, Welmu has proven he has the skill to take down any of Koreans in WCS Europe on his best day. It would be a huge upset he were to fall here in the round of 32.

Welmu ended his last WCS season in the Ro8, suffering a rough 0-3 defeat at the hands of San. He comes into this tournament with hopes of making it just as far, or going even further this time around. He's yet to win a major title in his career, but he has all the potential to make it happen this season if the chips fall his way.

The last player in the group is one who has recently started taking mini steps that may build up into what could be one big step in his career. The British Terran player EG.DeMusliM returned to Europe earlier this year with an eye on casting and playing in WCS Europe. As ToD has demonstrated to us, being a part-time caster doesn't necessarily have to interfere with one's improvement as a player. DeMusliM appears to be on a similar track, getting lauded for his commentary at recent DreamHack events while blazing a path through the qualifiers all the way into WCS Europe Premier League. DeMusliM making it to the Premier League was somewhat surprising giving the disappointing results he produced in WCS America, so it will be interesting to see how far his European revival will take him this season.

Prediction: As stated above, Welmu will probably take first place. As for second place, the three remaining players all have mixed (or in some cases, almost nonexistent) results in the recent months, and any one of them could potentially earn a ticket to the Ro16. Call me crazy, but since Stephano has shown that he is more than capable of taking games fairly easily against DeMusliM AND the fact that his Swarm Host ZvZ style has proved to be rather successful, I will put the 'retired' Frenchman as the top contender for second place.

Welmu > DeMusliM
Nerchio < Stephano
Welmu > Stephano
DeMuslim < Nerchio
Stephano > Nerchio

Welmu and Stephano advance.

Writers: Trasko.
Photos: ESL.
Editors: Waxangel.