EPTWCS America Group A Preview
by Trasko
WCS America kicks off its Premier League with a group that features one of the common themes in WCS AM: foreigners fighting to advance through a difficult group with Korean favorites. In this particular one, Guitarcheese and Neeb are faced with the tough challenge of overcoming HyuN and Arthur. Neeb has shown impressive play in WCS America before, Guitarcheese is a new face. HyuN and Arthur have both made deep runs in Premier League before but they cannot underestimate their opponents.
One thing the WCS system has provided for the StarCraft 2 scene is an opportunity for local players to shine.
Guitarcheese, whilst still relatively unknown, made his mark on the scene last season when he almost qualified against Sen, one of Taiwan's best players. After a close and painful 2-3 loss, Guitarcheese went back to gather his strength and eventually re-qualified for the current season with much higher aspirations than last season, making it all the way to Premier League for the first time in his career. On his way there, he took down other strong foreigners such as JimRiSiNg, Kane and JonSnow in the qualifiers and eventually Suppy in Challenger League.However, it's not the first time Guitarcheese has wreaked havoc against his American countrymen and if you look at his previous results, you can clearly see that most of his losses have come against Korean players. With two Koreans in the group, Guitarcheese will have to give it all he's got in order to advance further. His ZvP record shows an incredible 80% win-rate, but these wins come from tournaments and cups where he faced less accomplished players. He's not a favorite in this group, but perhaps he can surprise us all! WCS America has definitely not been short on upsets after all.
Being young is not necessarily a disadvantage (as Arium proved in Challenger League last week) and
Neeb is someone who has proven over and over that he can count himself among America's best. In fact, this is Neeb's 5th WCS Premier League in a row. He made his deepest run in Season 1, placing 9-12th after falling to eventual semi-finalist Revival. Contrary to Guitarcheese, Neeb has had less trouble with Korean players, taking games off players like Taeja, Revival and even beating Check. Given that Neeb is most likely enjoying holidays lots of time to practice right now, he has a solid chance of making it out of the group if he prepares well. Statistically his strongest match-up is against zerg which should bode well for him in a group with two zerg opponents. When you see
Arthur, the first thing that comes to mind is how innocent he looks, even sad sometimes. His true nature, however, is revealed inside the game. More specifically, when his various all ins push their opponents to the brink of desperation. A regular in online cups and tournaments, Arthur is more than comfortable with playing in the offline stages of WCS. He is still lacking a clear breakout moment in his career and by looking at his recent matches, few would expect this season to change that. After questionable losses to players like Grubby, eMotion and Monty in the past month, Arthur's form does not indicate that he has another deep WCS run in store for us. Last season's Ro32 put him in a group with Xigua, Suppy and Sen where he barely made it through in second place. Arthur has been doubted basically ever since he first entered WCS America but has shown the ability to silence them temporarily. Right now we doubt him as well, maybe he can respond again?Last but not least, we have
HyuN. Fun fact: As of writing this, HyuN has a 67% win-rate in every matchup. With that said, have a look at how successful he has been in the past couple of months: HyuN has been on quite the rampage, destroying players left and right, no matter if they're associated with KeSPA or of European-Korean/American-Korean descent. Even though HyuN's last Premier tournament win was WCS AM Season 1, he achieved plenty of top 8 finishes along with a few major tournament wins since then. The Ro16 seems a given for HyuN with good reason. After an impressive run at both The Big One and Dreamhack Valencia, HyuN has showed that he's not afraid to try different styles of play; a fact that is always beneficial in times of turmoil after balance patches. The players in this group are no MMA, Polt or Bomber, who all fell to HyuN over the past month, so we expect the Spiderzerg to advance quite swiftly. Overall Predictions:
The safe and cliché prediction would be to pick HyuN and Arthur to win the group but there's so much potential in Neeb and it would not be surprising if he was to make the Ro16 again. Arthur has not been performing as well as he would like and the highlight his year, his Ro8 finish in Season 1, was a while ago. We haven't seen much of Guitarcheese in previous tournaments and this could work out in his favor as it's often hard to prepare for a player like that. A formidable ZvZer like HyuN should probably not be too concerned about that though.
HyuN > Guitarcheese
Arthur > Neeb
Hyun > Arthur
Guitarcheese < Neeb
Arthur < Neeb
HyuN and Neeb advance to the Round of 16. 
