EPTRo32: Group F Preview
MC, 
Golden, TLO, 
HappyCountdown:
by XXTN
Last Saturday, there were no surprises in Group E with First and Stardust advancing to the Ro16. This makes a total of seven Protosses already through with three groups still remaining. That number will likely rise to eight, as the “Boss Toss” features in today’s group. However, MC will be facing stiff competition from three talented players.
Have all your drinks and snacks ready before the start of the show, because the first series of Group F features the highly entertaining, defending season 1 champ:
MC. As the highest earning player in SC2 history, the flamboyant MC is the favorite to take the group and potentially the entire tournament… or is he? Despite all his success over the course of four years, MC is also notorious for following up his championships with flat performances in his next tournament. Since the end of WCS Season 1, he made the Ro8 at both DH Bucharest and TakeTV Ultra Invitational – depending on your point of view, those could be solid or disappointing results. Perhaps those tournaments were just appetizers to MC, ahead of the WCS main course featuring a juicy paycheck.MC’s biggest concern heading into this group is his PvZ. At Bucharest, he was knocked out of the quarterfinals by Impact. At Fragbite Masters, MC lost to VortiX in the winner’s bracket and afterwards fell to Solar in the loser’s bracket. It was no shame for MC to lose to three strong players, but TLO and Golden are strong Zergs as well. It will be interesting to see if MC tries to stick to the macro PvZ's he has been favoring lately, or if he will bust out the cheeses for this group. The other factor to consider is PvT, which should be no problem for the Boss Toss. Even though his timing attacks are somewhat predictable, MC’s precise execution make his attacks difficult to stop even when opponents know they are coming. His macro-oriented, late game PvT is also nothing to laugh at either. As long as MC doesn’t fall into one of his infamous mini-slumps, he should advance in first place.
MC will begin this season by facing off against
Ai.Golden, the latest addition to Alien Invasion. This will be the first time these two have played each other in a streamed match in HotS. Golden actually retired from SC2 last November, but returned to the game after getting the opportunity to join a foreign team. Unfortunately, Golden may soon be saying goodbye again, with military service awaiting him in December. For now though, Golden has been following in the footsteps of players like MC, Hyun, and jjakji by moving to Europe and competing at international events. However, he has yet to put on a breakout performance and make a deep run at a prestigious tournament. He fell out of the Ro16 at TakeTV Ultra Invitational, and recently lost to YoDa in the HSC IX qualifiers. Perhaps his first appearance in WCS Premier league will be a “golden” opportunity for him to have a successful last hurrah as a progamer.The second series of the day features
Empire.Happy, the #1 ranked Russian player according to Aligulac.com, who made it up from Challenger by defeating Lambo 3-1. Happy's results in online tournaments have been great as usual, and he even put together a second place run at April's Copenhagen Games LAN. An interesting fact to observe is that Happy beat Golden 3-1 in the Ro8 to get there. Although Happy is a consistently good player, he is not known for ruining brackets. Reaching the quarterfinals has been his limit in premier tournaments, even when Koreans and foreigners alike were pegging him as the top Terran player in Europe. Is Happy just jinxed, or is there something to his orthodox, macro-oriented play style that holds him back in long series?
The big problem for Happy in this group is that he's struggled to beat top class Zerg players as of late. Snute, VortiX, HyuN, and Scarlett have all handed him losses in the past month, and more often than not, he lost in rather one-sided games. However, the recent hellbat-hellion change could be just the solution Happy needs to cure his TvZ woes, and he could very well advance to the Ro16 by bringing out some unexpected strategies.
Last but not least is the fan favorite,
Liquid.TLO who returns to Premier league via his Ro16 finish from last season. TLO has been through many ups and downs in his long career, and he might be enjoying the best run of form in his career right now. So far in 2014, he has finished in the semifinals of both IEM Sao Paulo and TakeTV Ultra Invitational, and reached the Ro16 of WCS Europe last season. In ATC, he's contributed to Liquid's 1st place position with a 5-4 record, where he’s defeated the likes of jjakji, Jim, and Impact. With ZvT as TLO’s strongest matchup, he will be delighted to start the night against Happy, barring any unexpected shenanigans. TLO holds an 8-3 record against Happy in HotS and has never dropped a ranked series against the Russian Terran. He has a firm grasp on the line/bane/muta style that pervades HotS ZvT, and is capable of beating any of the Terran contenders in WCS Europe.
Things are really looking up for the Liquid veteran and he seems to have a solid chance of making it out of his group. After finishing in the Ro16 last season, he will be looking to ride his momentum to an even higher finish in Season 2.
Predictions
With the Season 1 championship in hand and possessing winning records against both Happy and TLO, MC is the strong favorite to advance in first place. Though TLO should have a slight edge on Happy, a series against Golden might not be ideal. Golden has a 65% win rate in ZvZ since making his comeback to progaming, and probably wouldn't mind facing TLO in a deciding match. No matter what, the battle for second place will be very tight.
MC > Golden
TLO > Happy
MC > TLO
Golden < Happy
TLO > Happy
MC and TLO advance
