The path was unexpected, and the outcome briefly came into doubt, but WCS Austin ended as it had been prophesied: Serral won his second WCS Circuit championship in a row. The Finnish phenom was widely regarded by fans and peers as the best player in the non-Korean scene, and it was fait accompli that he would be the victor. Serral advanced to the finals as expected, not losing a single map as he defeated Clem, TLO, Kelazhur and HeroMarine. Lambo—in the midst of his own career-milestone run—managed to draw blood, but lost the series nonetheless.
Serral's sacrificial lamb in the finals turned out to be MaNa, a former European great who had long since fallen from championship contention. MaNa's run was the captivating story of WCS austin, counter-balancing the weight of inevitability imparted by Serral. The Polish Protoss had gone on a miracle run, scoring massive upsets against opponents thought to outclass him: 3-0 vs Neeb, 3-0 vs Snute, 3-1 vs SpeCial. Yet, Serral loomed as a monster too strong for any hero to vanquish, a reality too harsh for any fairy tale to survive.
And then, for a moment, MaNa made everyone believe. Serral took game one as a matter of course, living up to his reputation. But in an alarming twist, MaNa's focus was sharper in the following two games, his Protoss host cutting through endless waves of Zerg by what seemed like sheer force of will. He led 2-1, heading into a pivotal fourth map.
If Serral had been briefly rattled (an impossibility, some may have claimed before the tournament), it would not last. Being down in score only seemed to help Serral recover his poise. Despite continued good play from MaNa, Serral took next three sets in decisive fashion, a predictable 3-0 in a fictional best-of-five where he had never allowed himself to falter. After a brief fist pump—perhaps an appropriate amount of joy for the overwhelming favorite to win it all—Serral walked over to shake his opponent's hand and lift the WCS Austin trophy.
Rotti was right, if MaNa had stopped the flood in game 4 he could have won and completely changed the series. If MaNa can fix small mistakes like that in his play he's not going to be a surprise in Valencia.
Mana's disruptor play was certainly flawed, but it was frequently extremely impressive during this tournament run. In fact, DNS's disruptor play was also sporadically quite good in the series against Heromarine. I really enjoyed seeing some of the PvT disruptor play this tournament, and I'm highly intrigued to see if Mana in particular can clean up some of the flawed micro we saw and really capitalize on his control strengths in his future tournaments runs. Some of those plays were extremely hype!
On June 04 2018 10:27 Obamarauder wrote: mana unphased by the loss. almost like he knew he had no chance vs serral.
In the interview before the match he said something along the lines of "At least I get 4 practice matches against Serral out of it" So yeah, he knew...
But that made for a nice surprise when he actually went up 2-1 at first. Really curious how that series would've turned out if he hadn't messed up with fixing his wall in game 4...
I know it has been pointed out by the casters, but it s insane how hard Mana's run was. He went all the way through the first group-stage to the finals. Not only had he a hard group in the first group-stage his was THE ONLY group that was even remotely contested, pretty much all the other pros were eliminating amateurs or nonames, while he was placed into a group with Optimus and Namshar, and even had the bad luck to have to face both of them to get out. Then in the last group-stage he had to face uThermal (best EU terran probably) twice to get out in the ro16, and from there he went through Neeb (best foreign Protoss), Snute (very tough zerg) and Special (best foreign Terran) and he plowed through all of them to get to the finals where he had a bo7 vs the best foreigner.
had he won, this would have been definitely the hardest path one could have had to this championship, still very impressive he made it a close series.
Serral is really impressive. Even when some players figure out some ways to contest him, he is able to adapt on the fly and eke out an andvantage with little actions that add up to a subsantial impact on the game. But I'm still really happy for Mana. It baffled me all the time that he was no championship contender for such a long period but now he really can come back to the top and show the legacy of TL once more
Honorable mention to Lambo. He really only has to improve his scouting a little bit, and he'll be able to beat Serral. Two of his losses were due to scouting fails (in game two overlord not in the right place to scout serral destructing the rocks, in game three not positioning an overlord or zergling to scout potential runbys) There really was no reason to be as blind on the map as he was considering his highly mobile and aggressive army composition. The good news is, that this should be quite easy to fix for a player of his calibre. Perhaps this faults happened just because of nerves, considering that this was his first time to be on such a big stage in such a high profile match.
I hope we won't need to wait another 2-3 years for another good run from MaNa I think this current, very active to the point of chaos style fits him very well, it takes advantage of his great micro and it's easier to make quick decisions having so much experience.
Mana played fantastic in this tournament. But I am a little bit worried for the zerg players. It looks like Rogue and Serral are just so good that they outplay their opponents. On the other hand, no zerg besides Rogue made it in the quarterfinals of gsl or no other zerg besides Serral was able to beat T or P in the playoffs of Austin. Sure, as said, Mana played fantastic and Special was better then Elazer. I just hope that they can realize that Rogue and Serral are just better than the rest, and more zerg nerfs can be critical to the rest of top Z players.
On June 04 2018 15:26 Grettin wrote: It's sweet to hear a fin winning a tournament and being one of the best, if not the best, non-korean player in Starcraft. Well done Serral!
There was opportunity for such an amazing cinderella story on the parts of MaNa, his path was super amazing! Even managed to take 2 macro games from Serral.
EPT
Serral won his second WCS Circuit championship in a row. The Finnish phenom was widely regarded by fans and peers as the best player in the non-Korean scene, and it was fait accompli that he would be the victor. Serral advanced to the finals as expected, not losing a single map as he defeated Clem, TLO, Kelazhur and HeroMarine. Lambo—in the midst of his own career-milestone run—managed to draw blood, but lost the series nonetheless.
![[image loading]](https://media.giphy.com/media/4a2ZSu5SFL8Gs/giphy.gif)
