The final day of WCS EU Challenger concluded, giving away the last 6 slots in Premier League. The day was filled with intense series and excellent play from all participants. The stage is now set for Premier League, the final step to Blizzcon. One interesting development is the decrease in WCS EU's Korean contingent with Season 3 having only 10, down from 11.
The day kicked off with a high intensity set between two old school players. Property Morrow was looking good, opening the set with a solid mech game on Merry Go Round, taking the match over Mvp with excellent engages and superior harassment. Mech would be the name of the game for the rest of the series, as a back and forth occurred, with the Swede and Mvp trading blows. Morrow showed that 4 years later, he’s still a strong Terran, and one that’s a tournament threat, showing great harass potential and excellent positioning in tank wars.
In contrast to the old timers duking it out, the second series of the day featured Adonminus, an Israeli Protoss, still relatively new to the scene. In his third attempt at reaching Premier, the protoss was paired against Empire.Happy, hoping to make his way back to his old stomping grounds. The set consisted of action packed games, featuring aggressive and micro intensive play from both sides. Adon even broke out a proxy tempest build in game 3, proving that Rotterdam may very well be a prophet. Happy’s micro was on display throughout the entire series, harassing with drops, getting excellent surrounds, and showing great decision making in handling late game situations. Game 2 on Overgrowth was particularly exhilarating, with multiple changes of the lead, before Happy finally won when he took out the Israeli’s carrier fleet. When all was said and done, it was the former WC3 champion that prevailed.
The next set featured another prominent Eastern European in Kas. Going up against Tefel, Kas looked to make his return to Premier League after a season of absence. In the other corner was Tefel, the Polish Zerg, aiming to land back in PL after being knocked out in the Ro32 last season. The set was relatively unexciting, with Tefel simply attempting to go for roach pressure each game, and constantly getting repelled by Kas. The Ukrainian always responded with a slow, steady push of Marine/Tank, calmly taking engagements.
The CIS spree continued, with Bly going up against Stephano for the fourth match of the night. The first game was action packed, with Bly eventually teching to brood lords after a successful muta harassment strategy. The next two were… not as exciting. Stephano continued to play greedy, going hatch first both times, only to be met with 10 pool baneling each go around. Quick wins for Bly and a sad exit for the former Premier League finalist.
The first Korean to advance since Day 1 was AI.Patience, going up against the Danish player Lillekanin. The first match was a wonky one, with Lillekanin making a 2 rax with reactor on Catallena for mass reapers. When the pressure was repelled, he followed up with a mass stim marine push to try and kill the protoss’ natural expansion, all of this while still remaining on a single base himself. Patience easily deflected the aggression and took the win. The next game was a similar stomp, with Lillekanin having all of two Marines to deal with a proxy oracle attack, giving Patience plenty of time to prepare his blink attack followup. After a base race in game 3, the set concluded with Patience taking the second 3-0 of the day.
The evening ended with Liquid`Ret going up against Millenium.Dayshi. In classic Ret fashion, the Dutchman started out the set with an eco heavy game on Overgrowth, getting fast saturation on his bases. Dayshi responded with fast upgrades of his own, and attempted drops. Ret would hold, however, keeping Dayshi on his half of the map, taking the first match with excellent trades. That would be the end of Ret's luck, however. After an intense macro games on Nimbus, featuring fast mutas from Ret, Dayshi would get two quick victories, solidifying his position as the 32nd player in Premier League for Season 3.
foreigners are catching up with koreans. people like snute, scarlett and to some extend welmu already display code s level play on a semi-regular basis. the amount of code a level foreigner sis growing more and more aswell!
On August 03 2014 00:07 Tanzklaue wrote: foreigners are catching up with koreans. people like snute, scarlett and to some extend welmu already display code s level play on a semi-regular basis. the amount of code a level foreigner sis growing more and more aswell!
It's more that there is now a bigger skill gap between the Koreans on the five successful KeSPA teams and all other Koreans. Top KeSPA guys like Maru, soO, Zest, Parting, Rain, Soulkey, etc still have almost no shot of losing to a foreigner but all the Koreans not on those teams I don't think are that far ahead of the top foreigners. It's no coincidence that with a few exceptions like DRG, Trap and INnoVation, Code S is composed entirely out of CJ/Samsung/SKT/KT/Jin Air players.
I have to say I found the title of this thread to be a bit sad. Mvp is probably the most iconic player in SC2 history, this is perhaps the last time anyone sees him play in a broadcast match, and the whole reaction is "one less Korean"? Even the writeup itself says nothing about this at all.
I have to say I found the title of this thread to be a bit sad. Mvp is probably the most iconic player in SC2 history, this is perhaps the last time anyone sees him play in a broadcast match, and the whole reaction is "one less Korean"? Even the writeup itself says nothing about this at all.
The title refers to the total number of Koreans in Premier League, not Mvp specifically. There are 10 Koreans this season, down from 11 last season.
On August 03 2014 00:07 Tanzklaue wrote: foreigners are catching up with koreans. people like snute, scarlett and to some extend welmu already display code s level play on a semi-regular basis. the amount of code a level foreigner sis growing more and more aswell!
It's more that there is now a bigger skill gap between the Koreans on the five successful KeSPA teams and all other Koreans. Top KeSPA guys like Maru, soO, Zest, Parting, Rain, Soulkey, etc still have almost no shot of losing to a foreigner but all the Koreans not on those teams I don't think are that far ahead of the top foreigners. It's no coincidence that with a few exceptions like DRG, Trap and INnoVation, Code S is composed entirely out of CJ/Samsung/SKT/KT/Jin Air players.
I have to say I found the title of this thread to be a bit sad. Mvp is probably the most iconic player in SC2 history, this is perhaps the last time anyone sees him play in a broadcast match, and the whole reaction is "one less Korean"? Even the writeup itself says nothing about this at all.
Well, Snute defeated Code S semifinalist TRUE and Stork last IEM, so saying Kespa/Samsung players have almost no shot of losing to foreigners is maybe a bit far streched, although the gap is still very big and doesn't look smaller than before for me either. Also Taeja deserves some honorable mention somewhere.
Agree fully on the second point, there could be a bit more about Mvp in this write up, but maybe that is an extra article for some day.
On August 03 2014 00:07 Tanzklaue wrote: foreigners are catching up with koreans. people like snute, scarlett and to some extend welmu already display code s level play on a semi-regular basis. the amount of code a level foreigner sis growing more and more aswell!
I think it's roughly the same if not worse actually. We've always had a few outlier foreigners that can regularly compete with Koreans in their respective eras.
Jinro, Idra, Thorzain, Naniwa , Sen, Huk, and Stephano in the past. Nowadays we have Scarlett, Snute, Welmu, Jim, etc. Maybe there's a few more outliers these days, but overall I'd still say there's very few that would probably survive the code A qualifiers and even less that could make code S.
We just came off a year where every single premiere event was won by a Korean and it looks to be the same this year (no foreign finalists even for 2014). Aside from Stephano, a foreigner has yet to even make the finals of a WCS region.
On August 03 2014 00:07 Tanzklaue wrote: foreigners are catching up with koreans. people like snute, scarlett and to some extend welmu already display code s level play on a semi-regular basis. the amount of code a level foreigner sis growing more and more aswell!
If you switch Code S with Code A and Code A with Code B, then it should be right.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Meru/2014/WCS_EU/Season2/WCS_EU_s2_3races.jpg)
![[image loading]](/staff/lichter/WCSEU/2014/Season3/wcseuclgrpc.jpg)
BlinG, 
patience
uThermal, 
TLO, 
12 
11
9
so nice so nice
