A Special Crown

INnoVation is already locked in for BlizzCon 2015, so the points available in Seattle are not interesting to the Machine. Still, a unique chance offers itself at MSI MGA, as the terran can win his first Triple Crown at the event.

The last time a Triple Crown—awarded for having Premier wins in Korea, Europe and North America—was completed, was in December 2014 when sOs took his first Korean title, winning Hot6ix Cup. Thus the protoss became the seventh player to build a Triple Crown and the ninth crown all in all, because Mvp and Life have both earned two crowns for themselves. Only the most successful progamers are able to contruct a Triple Crown: they have to win on different continents, under different conditions, in different formats and against different opponents, thereby showing not only their skill in the game, but also their capability to adapt and give their best under any circumstances.

While INnoVation had already won the necessary Korean title last year, he was able to obtain a win on European soil only this year by triumphing at IEM gamescom over his team mate soO. Now all that's missing for his Triple Crown is a tournament win in North America—and last time I checked the map, that's exactly where Seattle is located.

The timing could not be better for the Exo Terran, as the Koreans call him: his victory in Cologne is still a factor for good morale. His mech play instills fear into the hearts of terran and zerg opponents alike and close to no protoss player can match his prowess on the battlefield at the moment. This confident SK Telecom T1 player has almost nothing to be afraid of, and while that can be a boon, it can also be dangerous. Too much confidence can lead INnoVation on to a path in which he begins to underestimate opponents. His hate for travelling should also be considered. It might not have stopped him from being triumphant at gamescom, but until the machine proves that he's become immune to switching timezones, this is another factor to keep in mind. Jetlag has cost great men championships before.

Contrary to his good shape, he lost his quarterfinal in StarLeague S3 not so long ago. INnoVation choked against ByuL, forgetting a crucial upgrade in the deciding game, allowing his mech to be defeated. This shouldn't affect his performance in Seattle though. He has already delivered good Proleague results to deflect any doubts about his shape, winning the match against Team MVP as SK telecoms ace. The loss against ByuL should be regarded as slip-up, nothing more.

At IEM tournaments we often see the players coming out of the Korean qualifier in the finals, having fought through qualifier brackets, that are harder than the main event itself. At Masters Gaming Arena we might recognize the same pattern: INnoVation (and originally Zest, who was replaced by sOs, because he has to help his team out in Proleague) earned his spot in this tournament through the KR qualifier, so he naturally has to fear (almost) no opponent waiting for him in North America. He is the favourite to win it all and hammer out the first Triple Crown of 2015, the tenth crown of all time—and take one more step towards immortality, following the path of the legendary Mvp.

The Tripping Stones

The Korean Favorites

PartinG is a title contender in every tournaments he attends, so Innovation probably will have to confront him sooner or later. In this match the Yoe player will find himself in a role, in which he doesn’t have a lot of experience: he will be an underdog. Still, PartinG should be a favourite to win MSI MGA behind the SK telecom player.

2015 has been a weird ride for Solar, but the zerg player is working hard on getting a happy ending for his tumultuous year. He was recently able to end his Proleague slump—one of the deepest in the league's history—and surprised everyone by topping his Code S group against Zest. And let’s not forget, Solar did take one major tournament win this year at Gfinity in the middle of his slump, showing once again that he’s an excellent player on foreign ground, even if things don’t go well at home.

As the winner of last year’s MSI tournament —MSI Beat It— Solar attends Masters Gaming Arena as the defending champion, giving him even more motivation to do better and deny INnoVation’s Triple Crown ambitions at “his” tournament. Indeed, if he can bring his best gameplay, he might very well be able to not only end INno's run, but to take another Premier title for himself.

Also heading to Seattle from Korea is HyuN. The zerg player was victorious in BaseTradeTV’s HIAT event in Canada only a few days ago, so his morale should be on a high level, especially because he had to win a good deal of ZvZ matches to get the title. He proved his iron balls by cheesing Jaedong several times in the final series, which marked the first tournament win of the year for him. HyuN is not a favourite like PartinG or Solar, but on the right day he can be very dangerous to anyone.

The New Challenger

The Trickster Toss is late to the party, receiving his spot in MSI MGA because of Zest's forfeit only a few days ago. For sOs this unexpected trip to Seattle is truly a godsend: Not only does he need just 100 WCS points to catapult himself into the top 16 of the rankings, a success-story in North America also might give him enough confidence to stabilize the shaky shape of the last weeks, enabling him to perform his best in these last critical months before BlizzCon.

sOs' latest results haven't been that great. He may have advanced into the Ro16 of GSL, but he was eliminated early in S2SL and his unstable gameplay was one of the prime reasons for the elimination of Jin Air Green Wings from Round 4 of Proleague. The protoss player is vulnerable at the moment, and much of it comes down to his increasingly unconventional builds. Lesser players can be caught off guard, but smarter players often find it easier to deflect. For Seattle, sOs might need to rely on a more traditional plan and eschew his careless risk taking. His goal in this tournament shouldn't be to win no matter the cost. Instead, he should safely secure as many points as possible, fuel himself with confidence and go easy from there.

Of course our past experience with sOs tells us that this is the time when the protoss is the most dangerous. All the talk of chances and win-percentages means nothing to him as his shape could change from one moment to the other. So it all depends on which sOs is going to show up: $O$, or SOS.

The Kings of SEA: MacSed, TooDming, Has and Ian

With the way the groups are constructed Korean dominance is sure to be expected, but even giants stumble over stones sometimes... especially when evil and tricky stones from Taiwan and China are involved.

However 2015 hasn't been a good year for these countries yet. Their expeditions to Korea have been cut short in brutal ways in both StarLeague and Proleague, and on their home turf at IEM Shenzen they were mostly relegated to watch the competition play out from the sidelines. And in WCS the results haven’t been rosy either.

The chances for success might be highest for Ian in group B. With ZvZ's ahead of him and his home scene being relatively zerg heavy anyways, this could be the opportunity to pull an upset. Who could forget his rousing victory of Jaedong at the Taiwan Open? The rest of the line-up has been put in a hard spot: MacSed and Has are tricky and vicious protoss players, but even their infamous craftiness will hardly be enough to overcome the strength of INnoVation and Hydra, while TooDming has to face two strong Koreans in Zest and Solar, as well as a strong European in Harstem.



AMERICA

On their adopted home ground, four players will try to stand up against the onslaught from their origin country. Hydra and Jaedong attended HIAT together with HyuN a few days ago, taking the fourth and second places. Hydra surprisingly lost to Seed in the third place match, and Jaedong fell to HyuN with a 3-4 score in the finals.

For the two zerg players and Polt the chances for survival are good: Polt should take first place in group D with the EG player following in second place, while Hydra should come second in the dangerous group A, if he manages to stay safe from Chinese and Taiwanese cheese. Also it’s going to be interesting to see if Polt stays true to his bio-style, or if he gets seduced by the sweet and easy victories that mech-play promises right now.

Things are not looking good for the fourth migrated Korean however. viOLet is also in group D and will probably bite the dust against his colleagues and even Petraeus, if having no noteworthy result whatsoever this year is a fair measure to judge him by.

The Internationals

Last but not least a trio of players from Europe and New Zealand will be present in Seattle with the goal of getting some kind of good result. First up is the French hope FireCake, who once was feared—in fact, hated—for his swarmhost play and was thought as good as dead when the unit got changed heavily. Being robbed of his most important tool, he showed great skills in adapting to the new situation and was able to win some impressive victories offline (3-2 over TRUE) and online (3-2 over Rain and 3-0 over Soulkey), to show that he’s still a force to be reckoned with. He will need some great ZvZ skills if he wants to survive in Seattle.

Next up is Harstem, the man who was able to secure the name rights for the next decade. Declaring the decade of Harstem hasn’t brought him real success though. Yes, his selfies are more in demand than ever, but the expected big breakthrough performance from the Dutchman is still to be seen. He faces a big challenge in sOs and Solar, and his chances of survival are slim. Yet he has shown in the past that he can occasionally compete with the best Koreans—Seattle would be a good place to prove that.

In group D New Zealand’s greatest player will enter the race for a good placement. Petraeus is only playing part-time right now, but that didn’t stop him from advancing to the Ro16 in WCS behind Polt and even taking a map from Captain America. His chances of advancing aren’t all too bad: viOlet is not a favourite against him, and he has shown that he can compete with Polt and even Jaedong in the past (even though the Tyrant eliminated him in last season’s WCS). With a good day in ZvZ FireCake and Petraeus could make it out of their groups.

Groups

Group A

ROOT_Hydra vs. iG.MacSed

SKT.T1_INnoVation vs. YoeFW_Has

What we expect to happen: INnoVation dominates the group and makes everyone else look silly, Hydra takes 2nd place behind him after fending off all sorts of Chinese and Taiwanese cheese.

What could happen: Has dominates the group and makes everyone else look really silly for wanting to play longer games, INnoVation advances 2nd by mechin' it happen against Hydra.

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Group B

YoeFW_PartinG vs. YoeFW_Ian

Roccat.HyuN vs. FireCake

What we expect to happen: PartinG choochoo's the group with some trademark micro, while HyuN comes 2nd place after solid ZvZ play.

What could happen: PartinG boycotts the tournament in protest to Blizzard's inability to deal with map hackers (check his recent tweets!), Ian channels his inner Sen and advances in 1st place, HyuN loses to FireCake, who found out how to use the swarmhost and proxy hatches to win ZvZ's.

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Group C

JinAir_sOs vs. ZoO.TooDming

SAMSUNG_Solar vs. Inv|Harstem

What we expect to happen: Solar shows his great shape at foreign events and sweeps the group, however the games against sOs might get a bit crazy. The Jin Air Protoss advances in second place without problems.

What could happen: sOs shows up with his baseball bat in hands, beating up everyone in the group to advance in first place. Luckily for Solar, Samsung's robotic technologies allow him to regenerate fast and follow sOs into the quarterfinals.

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Group D

CMStorm_Polt vs. nV_viOLet

EG_Jaedong vs. mYi|Petraeus

What we expect to happen: Polt and Jaedong top the group, because Polt is on home ground and apparently Jaedong is done with travelling around the world and posting pics on instagram for now and is practicing StarCraft again instead.

What could happen: Polt tops the group, because he is on home ground, but Jaedong disappoints and loses to... viOlet, who actually has worse BlizzCon chances than Petraeus. The zerg from New Zealand advances 2nd though, because being a student and playing part-time gives him the Polt-power he needs.

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The Scramble for Points

While most of the attending players are either already qualified for BlizzCon, or don’t have any real chances at all anymore, a trio of Zerg players needs the WCS points for MSI MGA more than the prize money or the glory that come with a Premier victory. 750 points belong to the winner of the tournament, a critical amount in the race to Anaheim.

sOs (Rank 17, 2400 WCS Points):
Current BlizzCon Chances – 51.13%
BlizzCon Chances if he wins MSI MGA – 63.46%

Outlook: Zest's forfeit spot could be a present from the heavens for sOs, because the points from Seattle will be enough to get him into the top 16 of the ranking, overtaking TY (ironically Zest's team mate gets screwed over by his forfeit the most). In the end he has to do well in Korea, but MSI MGA might be a critical step, especially if he can break his bad shape through a success.

HyuN (Rank 19, 2125 WCS Points):
Current BlizzCon Chances – 10,22%
BlizzCon Chances if he wins MSI MGA – 58,04%

Outlook: HyuN can’t collect any more points in Korea, so he has to go back to his old ways of finding the necessary amount of WCS points to get into BlizzCon: he has to farm as many tournaments as possible.

Jaedong (Rank 31, 1525 WCS Points):
Current BlizzCon Chances – 13,35%
BlizzCon Chances if he wins MSI MGA – 27,56%

Outlook: Jaedong will have to do well in WCS to get enough points for BlizzCon, but even season 3 wouldn’t be enough by itself at this point, so he has to bolster his standings by winning in Seattle.

Solar (Rank 36, 1350 WCS Points):
Current BlizzCon Chances – 9,56%
BlizzCon Chances if he wins MSI MGA – 17,96%

Outlook: Solar’s chances are even worse than Jaedong’s and his chance of winning GSL is much lower, than JD’s to win WCS, but nothing is lost yet. Winning MSI MGA would be a great booster for his confidence going into GSL as well.