WCS Europe Season 2
Premier League

Ro8 Recaps
San, Golden, ForGG and StarDust advance

Ro4 Previews
San vs Golden
ForGG vs StarDust

Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

Ro4 Countdown:

Our two foreigner heroes went close, but alas, they couldn't make it through. It was a promising sign that the gap is slowly closing, and many fans will look forward to the prospects of one of our favorite fan favorites going far again next season. The semifinals will not be contested by San, Golden, ForGG and StarDust, ensuring that we will have a new WCS EU champion this season.

San 3 - 1 MC

The favorite to win WCS EU, yFW.San was able to deny MC’s 4th consecutive semifinal appearance with a dominating victory. This makes three straight series in which San has beaten MC. San, who has a 71.0% PvZ win rate, will face Golden in the next round.

Perhaps hoping to throw his opponent off, MC opened with a cannon rush in game one. Though San held on as best he could, MC walked away with the victory on Habitation Station. But from there on, things went downhill quickly for the Boss Toss. Both games two and three began as passive macro games with MC characteristically taking the initiative in engagements. In each game, MC went for a huge attack on San’s third, which San held decisively both times. On the final map, MC was ahead for a good portion of the game but once again tried to push the issue but lost the decisive battle. From there on, the advantage snowballed for San and he was able to deliver the killing blow a few minutes later.

Aside from game one, San showed confidence and trust in his mechanics. His game sense and decision making were on point, and he simply outclassed MC in the macro games. If you’re currently struggling in PvP, you could certainly learn a thing or two from rewatching San’s brilliant quarterfinal performance.

Golden 3 - 2 VortiX

In what might be considered a small upset, Ai.Golden was able to beat Mill.VortiX by a narrow margin in the second series on the night. It was a disappointing finish for Vortix as he was yet again unable to overcome a Korean hurdle to advance to the top four. Golden on the other hand has performed excellently in his first WCS EU season, and will face San tomorrow to attempt to make the Grand Finals.

The first three games of this Zerg vs Zerg series were, as expected, standard Roach vs Roach affairs. Aside from a few early zergling attacks, these games were fairly straight up overall. Golden was able to take Game 1 on Overgrowth as he was somewhat impatient in picking his Roach vs Roach engagements, and Golden did significant economic damage with burrowed roaches at all of Vortix's bases. In games 2 and 3 the "Cucaracha Zerg" played excellent roach based games to take a series lead 2-1. With his back against the wall, Golden would have to showcase solid defense to mount his comeback. In game 4, Golden was able to hold Vortix's attempted 9 pool attack and used his banelings effectively to take the win. Game 5 was a somewhat strange affair as both players tried to get aggressive with ling/baneling, but Golden proved superior in that situation and was able to take the final game and the series.

ForGG 3 - 2 Welmu

In certainly the most one sided series on the day, Mill.ForGG ran all over NrS.Welmu to win 3-0 and advance to the Ro4 for the first time since Season 1 of 2013. Welmu looked off his game and ForGG pulled out some interesting strategies that seemed to take him completely by surprise. ForGG's win means that the racial balance in the Ro4 is quite even with two Protoss players, one Zerg, and one Terran.

ForGG set up an interesting contain on Welmu in game one on Overgrowth, as he used tanks, banshees, and marines in bunkers outside Welmu's natural to keep the Protoss player at home. Attempts to break the contain with colossus failed and Welmu was forced to concede game 1. Game 2 on Merry Go Round was the longest of the three, but wasn't much closer. Welmu tried to put pressure on ForGG with his colossus early on, but ForGG was able to easily snipe the colossus and controlled the game from there, simply having too many units for storms to make enough of a difference in the final fight. In the final game, ForGG utilized hellions to great effect. After morphing eight hellbats outside of Welmu's base, ForGG marched in and killed Welmu's lone stalker and immortal. The resulting probe vs hellbat fight was as one-sided as you can imagine, and ForGG was able to kill nearly all of Welmu's probes to take the game.

StarDust 3 - 1 First

The last quarterfinal of the day featured what Apollo would consider an upset as mYi.StarDust advanced over First. Coming in with a 19-2 PvP record over the past 2 months, First was considered the heavy favorite to advance. However, “CheeseDust” lived up to his name today as he was able to win the first two maps with some mischievous play.

Stardust started off the series with an 11-gate into a fast three-gateway aggression, which caught First in the middle of his Blink research. With overwhelming stalker numbers, Stardust took a clinical win. In a déjà vu scenario, the mYinsanity Protoss chose the exact same strategy on the next map. First appeared to have a build order win with his Dark Shrine, but Stardust’s stalkers did enough damage, and he was able to force out the “gg” once his Observer arrived. In game three, Stardust attempted to pull out the ultimate cheese by playing greedy, but his army was caught out of position which led to First’s first and only victory.

In the final and perhaps the most entertaining game of the series, both players traded workers early on but the game eventually stabilized after a period of drama. Feeling the need to make something happen, First laid on the aggression – first with Blink Stalkers then with DTs – but Stardust weathered the storm well and came out ahead. With six immortals in his army, Stardust demolished First’s natural nexus and then rode that advantage to a maxed army. From there on, Stardust won the final clash and punched a ticket to his first ever WCS semifinal.

yFw.San is no doubt riding high after his 3-1 win over defending champion MC in the Ro8. San certainly removed all doubt about his PvP in the process, and this is looking like San's season to potentially win WCS EU. He is the only player remaining in the tournament who has not dropped a series all season long, and quite frankly has looked unbeatable in his PvP and PvZ.

But enough about what San has done so far in the tournament, lets talk about what he has ahead of him. San doesn't have a notably weak matchup, but he does have one matchup that is one of the best in the world: his PvZ. Although he hasn't had too many chances to show it off this season of WCS EU, San has a lifetime PvZ win rate of over 70%. In Starcraft II if a player has a 70% win rate in a matchup then that is a matchup to be feared. The last tournament PvZ that San played? A fairly easy 2-0 victory over Golden at Dreamhack Summer a few weeks ago. Yeah, I've got some confidence in San here.

As ToD said at the end of the Ro8 broadcast, "If someone told me that Golden was going to be top four at the beginning of the season, I would have said: Get out of here." Indeed, Ai.Golden really took a lot of people by surprise making it this far in the tournament. He has been under the radar the whole way and is probably the name that looks out of place in the top four here. However, Golden has in fact made it to the semifinals and has every chance of getting to the Grand Finals in one of the more unlikely tournament runs in Starcraft II.

Here is the only problem with Golden's cinderella story: he has yet to beat a single Korean in WCS EU. That's right. Golden's match history in this season of WCS EU is 0-2 MC, 2-0 TLO, 2-1 Happy, 0-2 First, 2-0 Grubby, 2-1 MaNa, 3-2 Vortix. I don't want to take anything away from Golden, as he has performed admirably to get here, but San may just be too much for him. Golden has shown some passable ZvP throughout the tournament, but was 2-0'd by both MC and First in the group stage, two Korean Protoss players who don't have quite the PvZ reputation of San. In addition, Golden was beaten 2-0 by San at Dreamhack just a few weeks ago. Golden's run through the tournament was great, and very few people would have expected him to end up in the final four, but he may end up being overmatched against San here.

Prediction:

Apologies to Golden, but this should be San's series. His PvZ is vicious and crisp, and I don't think Golden will be able to keep up. San looks like the most complete player left in the tournament, and he looks poised to potentially claim the Season 2 trophy. As for Golden, finishing top four isn't so bad.

San 3-0 Golden

TvP may be Mill.ForGG's weakest matchup statistically, but nothing about his play looked weak in his quarterfinal match against Welmu. He obliterated the Finnish Protoss in every way with a quick 3-0 sweep into the semifinal. His play was entertaining throughout the series, using clever builds and outside the box strategies to keep his opponent guessing the whole way. As the last Terran in the Ro8, ForGG is carrying the banner for the race well, but he will have to get past one more Protoss opponent if he hopes to reach the Grand Finals of a Premier tournament for the first time since 2012.

As stated earlier, TvP is ForGG's weakest matchup statistically. His inventive strategies were able to carry him past Welmu, but will it be enough against a more formidable adversary? Maybe. ForGG continues to be one of the Terran players who is really toying with the recent Hellbat change and finding new timings. If StarDust hasn't practiced against these new builds, ForGG may have a leg up on his Protoss opponent. If those fail, ForGG still has his drop and multitask heavy bio style to fall back on, so he has a decent chance to advance here. ForGG has never lost to StarDust in tournament play, and he will be looking to continue that trend to reach the grand finals of WCS EU.

Alright mYi.StarDust. I promise to never use recent win rates of the two players to predict a PvP series again. StarDust looked far superior to his quarterfinal opponent First in their Protoss mirror, as StarDust was able to convincingly take the series 3-1. StarDust is a player you expect to see hang around the Round of 8 or Round of 4 in WCS Europe, but this season he has an excellent chance to reach the Grand Finals, and potentially win his first Premier Tournament since his surprising victory at Dreamhack Summer last year.

StarDust proved that he has some stellar PvP with a win over First, but it is harder to predict how he will play in the PvT matchup. He has only played one PvT over the last two seasons of WCS, and hasn't played a single Korean Terran. Over the past month, StarDust is 3-1 in the matchup, but his wins came over three foreigners while he was defeated by Polt. StarDust is known affectionately (or perhaps not so affectionately) as "CheeseDust", and there is a good chance that we see a proxy oracle, blink all in, or something equally aggressive mixed in with StarDust's macro games. StarDust has already surpassed his previous best effort in WCS EU, but he is no doubt looking to earn a spot in the grand finals, and prove that he is one of the powerhouse Protoss players of Europe.

Prediction:

Man this is difficult. ForGG and StarDust haven't played each other in a single Bo3 in tournament play, which makes it hard to predict. ForGG outperformed StarDust slightly at Dreamhack Summer as StarDust fell out in the Ro32, while ForGG made the top 16 bracket before being eliminated by First. However, StarDust then went to Anaheim and advanced through a stacked MLG Open Bracket to finish in 6th place overall, so both players have been playing fairly well. Interestingly enough, neither of these players won either of their groups (San is the only semifinalist to win a group in either the Ro32 or the Ro16).

Regardless, I am going to pick StarDust to win in a tight series. I can see StarDust going for some early aggression and ForGG responding in kind with some more interesting uses of Hellbats. Overall, I will give the edge to StarDust, but this could really go either way.

ForGG 2-3 StarDust

Writers: Darkhorse, XXTN.
Photos: ESL.
Editors: lichter.