In eSports, there is probably no game harsher in both its inherent nature and its professional landscape than StarCraft II. The reality is such that those who enter or persevere in this career must win; anything less would be unacceptable and unsustainable.

For 2 years since his first registered game on Aligulac, this has been the case for Lilbow. Spending most of his time haunting tiny and overlooked online tournaments like the French Underdogs and Francophone Championships, while always trying his best to break through the glass ceiling that was the WCS qualifiers, Lilbow truly exploded into the scene in WCS Season 2. An often forgotten victory over Hydra in that Round of 32 was lost in the noise amidst his defeat in the Finals, but this would be avenged in a startling 3-2 victory in the Round of 8 in the next season. Although his disastrous BlizzCon expedition earned him the mockery of the community, the fundamental point about Lilbow still stands—that he has incredible, explosive potential that could show up at any point and propel him to the very top. People should never forget that this is a man who, in Season 1, was knocked out in Challenger—he’s certainly no stranger to a sudden upturn in form.

Such instant fame and glory, however, was elusive to the mysterious ByuN. Playing ever since the GSL Open Seasons, the terran was once known to play late-game TvP unlike any Terran that would come before or after him. Deploying a pure ghost-viking composition, his games, notably against HerO, would bear an eerily patient and cautious style that would only manifest in one other Terran: TaeJa. However, this was long ago in WoL. ByuN disappeared virtually without explanation in HotS, and only now has he reappeared. Casting his careful playstyle of 3 years ago into the winds, he has been seen deploying a highly aggressive style, not only in the starleagues, but also in online cups. This is most apparent in TvP, where along with TY he is only one of two terrans who beats protoss with a high win-rate on the ladder. However, the ladder is one thing; competitions are another entirely, and ByuN is known to choke and play poorly in tournament settings.

Now, in the new WCS, where events in which Koreans and foreigners could compete directly against one another are few and far between, we have a rare bird of a matchup. The man who recently was known as the king of the foreigners is now up against a virtual Korean ghost—but one who has shown himself to crush foreigners on a weekly basis online. Will Lilbow arise once again to reclaim his mantle, or will the most faceless, the most anonymous of Koreans dispatch him?

Lilbow is notorious for playing a monotonous style that involves lots of blink stalkers in every matchup. However, this predictability has not failed him - a winrate over 60% in each matchup, including victories over TY, Bunny, ForGG, and MarineLorD in PvT in LotV, speaks volumes about his execution. However, this is no longer the first month after LotV has been released, where the game was effectively in a sandbox state in which novelty has a disproportionate effect. Adepts, partially replacing his beloved Stalkers, are no longer as frightening as they once were to Terrans. Furthermore, ByuN has been known to defeat Protoss players even in the days when TvP was declared 'completely broken' - the heads of MyuNgSiK, Creator, sOs, PartinG, and Stats number among his war trophies. His highly aggressive 1-1-1 style, hitting Protoss hard with Liberators in the early game while expanding behind, went against the grain of highly passive play, as pioneered recently by TY. Given TY's highly effective showcase of his TvP variant in Code A though, it remains to be seen what results ByuN’s will bring. It will also do us well to remember that this is the man who was regarded as the best player throughout much of the early life of Legacy of the Void.

Predictions

I expect ByuN to either completely dominate Lilbow with sharp, aggressive 1-1-1 liberator/siege tank attacks in the early game, outplay him in the midgame to late game (which is where Terran is said to be favoured with mass Liberators), or choke hard in his first ever notable foreign tournament.

ByuN 3 - 1 Lilbow

The first to use the 1-1-1, the last of the Terran old guard; once hated, now beloved. Polt is, without doubt, the most resilient player to have ever had a career in SC2. This is in part due to his being one of the most intelligent players to have touched the game. Looking at him now though, one cannot help but scoff,"Why is this fellow still competing? He has the mechanics of a random high Master, and really, all he does is crush foreigners in easier regions. Doubtless Soulkey will demolish him."

But StarCraft is not, and never was, a game purely about what is seen. At the top level, the unseen elements of the game are more impactful, dictating almost all that occurs in StarCraft. What is easy to see are the numerous supply blocks, the countless resources unspent, the inferior number of troops. What is unseen is Strategy itself - the forgotten third letter. We see the multipronged attacks Polt executes, and think,"Any Terran can do that", without seeing the planning and posture of Polt's forces relative to his enemy's minutes before the fight that confuses the enemy. Anybody can look at Polt's relatively mediocre micro-management in big fights and think,"Maru will do better." But it doesn't matter how much better Polt can do, because what he does is sufficient for him to win. And therein lies Polt's forte. Understanding himself, understanding the opponent, understanding the map and ultimately the game, Polt knows almost precisely what is enough to beat any opponent, and thus by extension the exact route to victory. This is exactly why Polt has been successful across the six years since the very first GSL.

But whether he will be able to beat an unknown quality is another matter. Soulkey, formerly the best Zerg and the best player in the world, with his inspiring triumph over INnoVation, has returned to professional competition. Last year, Soulkey quit his KeSPA team and joined the ranks of Koreans who entered foreign teams. His chosen pasture was TCM, a team with few significant players prior to his arrival. Known for his lackadaisical attitude to practice, and lacking any results since last year’s IEM Taipei, everyone thought Soulkey was gone for good, leaving to enjoy his spoils of his career. However, he reappeared in a big way after LotV's release. Crushing almost everyone in his path through the online scene, including Maru, ByuL and Solar, the only players he seems unable to beat are ByuN and TY. But those two are the clear standouts terrans of the emergent Legacy landscape, and Soulkey has shown already that the best only exist to be beaten.

Predictions

Polt is known neither for flawless macro-management nor for scintillating micro-management. Instead, he is known primarily for utilising highly effective tactics, which, while not extremely efficient, are 'just good enough' for Polt to carry out an overall strategy and get into the late game. He is also famed, and sometimes criticised, for his 'cowardly' strategy of forcing a base-race in all matchups if he is losing by critical margins. Soulkey is actually known for being capable of doing almost anything to defeat his opponent. Down 3 games in a best of 7 against the best terran and bopped in standard games, Soulkey employed 2 classic roach-baneling cheeses to destabilise INnoVation and from there, the Robot's flawed mentality took over. He is also known for being an innovator of swarm host strategies in ZvP, and was a noted 'abuser' of them. Needless to say, however, Soulkey has more recent experience playing in the KR region, which is something Polt lacks, and perhaps explains Polt's poor record against Koreans in 2015. Thus, I expect Soulkey to completely annihilate Polt, or we get an epic series with these 2 players clawing at each other every step of the way.

Soulkey 3 - 0 Polt

Who would have guessed that the biggest winner of 2015 might become the biggest loser of 2016? Certainly not sOs himself. He was the Blizzcon champion was never meant to be—with a mere 2,400 WCS points to the cutoff margin of 3,025, the Million Dollar Man looked to be locked out of the year's largest tournament for a second consecutive year. But in a miraculous turn of events, he was saved by the 2 very last events before Blizzcon - the MSI MGA and Dreamhack Stockholm. Even then, the chances of him sneaking in were slim.

However, one divine favour was granted to him—Zest forfeited his spot at MSI MGA for Proleague (eventually to face Samsung Galaxy Khan's Armani), and sOs was deployed to replace him. And what good use he made of it—he won the event, notably crushing INnoVation. Beyond that, he obtained 750 points—just enough to qualify for BlizzCon—while a top 4 finish at Dreamhack Stockholm ensconced him as the 14th seed—a portentous omen for the other competitors, as the last 14th seed in 2014 was... Life.

We all know what happened in the end. In yet another run, in yet another tournament with a 6-digit 1st place prize, sOs concluded 2015 as the world champion once more, giving us the best Blizzcon finals to date. But his fall from grace, as per his usual fashion, happened brutally—he failed to qualify for either the GSL or the SSL this year. And this time, there would be no further glut of foreign events to save him. But this time, with a truncated bracket and a retired player as his first opponent, will he be able to once again show us the same play which brought him success at the Global Finals twice?

While his opponent MC is a very different kind of player, they certainly share some of the same sensibilities. Spending the majority of his time jumping from team to team, with his last one being Trig e-Sports, this tournament may mark MC's return to form and professionalism, should he do well. While sOs spent the entirety of his career in a KeSPA teamhouse, MC was never constrained by that kind of environment. That’s reflected in his play, which primarily consists of sharp, brutal all-ins against all races alike. sOs, while more macro-oriented, is, however, equally as wild in his play - from dropping Colossi against Zest to performing gold-base Gateway all-ins against Flash to executing all manner of all-ins against Zerg players, sOs can be said to be much more consistent in his inconsistency than MC.

We have seen very little of both players in LotV. However, from what we can deduce from MC's stream, his playstyle has changed little from his old days as a professional—he still employs a wide range of highly aggressive builds, which can only have expanded with the addition of the adept and the new mothership core. The same cannot be said of sOs—he was almost unseen during the qualifiers for Code A and the SSL, and he has only played five matches of LotV, losing 4 out of 5 to them. His most notable loss was to Dear, but Reality, Armani, and ByuN have all come out on top against him—all inferior opponents in the previous expansion. In his match against Dear, Dear executed some extremely aggressive moves—such as blinking his stalkers forward to destroy disruptors while their novas are active—which caught sOs completely unprepared. We can only hope he has improved since then.

Predictions

sOs has spent the vast majority of his time on a KeSPA teamhouse and is thus subject to a strict training regimen, unlike MC, who 'retired', and in his retirement message, said that he had no one to practice with and thus no one to check his skill against. MC has since then spent the majority of his time being a streamer, while being knocked out of the GSL qualifiers, losing to the likes of Super, DeParture, and Cure. While sOs has done little better, his better environment and experience should serve him better.

sOs 3 - 2 MC

Before April 9, 2015, Snute was a world-class ZvP player who could defeat the very best of Korean Protoss. He would still prove that his ZvP was of that calibre even after the swarm host change, but similarly to how the marauder embodied Maru's style in TvP, it was the swarm host that truly formed the backbone of Snute's character in ZvP. In times gone by, Snute's swarm host play could have truly been said to be the best in all of the world. Naturally, this brought him into direct competition with the best protoss willing to travel to overseas events. Inevitably, his rivalry with herO—similarly a specialist in PvZ—created the foundation of swarm host ZvP from both sides.

While their rivalry contained only 3 matches—with Snute winning 2 matches, and 6 out of the 11 games—the games themselves were long, strategic slugfests from which the basis of this matchup would be forged. In the beginning, Snute defeated herO twice in the same IEM Toronto tournament (2-1 both times), with herO displaying marked inexperience against the SH-spore turtle style. Later on, in IEM San Jose's Round of 8, they met again, this time in a Best of 5 format. At first, Snute obliterated herO with his trademark style, going up 2 games. But herO's own play evolved throughout the series—he discovered that not were the swarm hosts themselves highly immobile, but that locusts themselves were actually highly unwieldy and difficult to control. By attacking in multiple places at once with mass zealot runbys, he constantly forced Snute to redirect his swarm host rally points while manoeuvring with his main army to obtain a favourable position. This new strategy was the key difference that separated herO's slow death by strangulation before, and the win streak he ground out to take the series, on his way to another IEM title.

Predictions

Now, in a new expansion, a new, much faster game—it seems that herO should have that same advantage with his strong multitasking capacity . But Snute has surprised us before—as with his performance in IEM Shenzhen, when he defeated GSL and SSL champions Rain and Classic back-to-back with basic hydralisk-roach play to emerge first in his group. However, as of late, Snute has not played against too many championship calibre Protoss for us to truly gauge his skill; his only losses in ZvP in 2016 thus far have come against Harstem and PiLiPiLi. Meanwhile, herO has been looking very strong against Zerg, crushing Life 3-0 to advance to Code S and ByuL 3-2 before that.

herO 3 - 1 Snute