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.
i have to say this was well written. ive always considered mana a great player, i remember him beating idrA my all time fav and taking notice from then. I so wanted him to win. I did start to believe. It has definitely been the best starcraft ive seen in a long time, infact, all manas games were great to watch, really made the game look technical kinda makes me want to switch
Serral is already all time top 3 foreigner in my opinion and by the far the most dominant during a period of time, but it feels like there's something missing to be above every other foreigner players.
Neeb has his Kespa Cup win for instance, but more than everything, Serral hasn't contribute to the meta like Stephano did at his peak.
At this rate, however, he will be foreigner GOAT no matter what thanks to his trophy haul.
We have witnessed a few finals for the last few days but I couldn't find any word about the last ASL champ. May be there is an article written but usually it is on top news in TL.net
How can you say Serral is a top three foreigner of ALL TIME when Neeb's reign was 3 WCS's throughout the whole year, and so far Serral's is only two? do some quick maths.
Don't forget that that WCS where neeb only dropped like, 1 map. good times.
I think what makes Serral feel more dominant than Neeb is his dominance in the heads even of the other progamers. Everyone is afraid of facing him and when asked before the match most players say they expect serral to win against themselves and hope to take some maps atleast.
With all the close games during the group stages Mana had, also against a uthermal who was struggling with pneumonia to some degree, I was quite surprised and impressed how much he turned it up in the playoffs.
On June 05 2018 09:58 youngjiddle wrote: How can you say Serral is a top three foreigner of ALL TIME
Sure, I’d personally also wait a bit till making that kind of a statement.
when Neeb's reign was 3 WCS's throughout the whole year, and so far Serral's is only two? do some quick maths.
Though neeb went 17-11 and 18-8 in his first two WCS wins while Serral has gone 17-4 and 17-3 in his first two WCS, while being just as consistent in general. For example since the 4.0.0 patch he's 187-34 in maps, and 60-5 in bo3 or longer series against other foreigners. Neeb was clutch, while Serral has been dominant, so I can understand quite a bit of this hype.
Don't forget that that WCS where neeb only dropped like, 1 map. good times.
Actually neeb went 17-2 in the final WCS of the year after going 10-8 in the third one.
While Serral looks absolutely dominating in WCS, i'd really like to see him try GSL.
So far, the only two tournament I can remember him playing koreans offline were : - WESG where he got to the semis without facing any korean, and then suddenly loses 0-3 to the first Korean in Maru. - IEM World Championship, lost 0-3 to Classic in the semis
He still has a lot to do to be compared to Neeb in terms of performance, who not only won 3 consecutive WCS, and finished in 3rd place of the 4th one, but also won Kespa cup on Korean ground + the Hangzhou carnival in China just a month ago beating Rogue & herO.
While Neeb has proven himself against Koreans, Serral needs to do it as well now that he has conquered the foreign scene. And with the skill he has displayed, it is certainly within his reach.
On June 05 2018 18:45 Snarosc wrote: While Serral looks absolutely dominating in WCS, i'd really like to see him try GSL.
So far, the only two tournament I can remember him playing koreans offline were : - WESG where he got to the semis without facing any korean, and then suddenly loses 0-3 to the first Korean in Maru. - IEM World Championship, lost 0-3 to Classic in the semis
- WESG where he then beat Classic 3-1 in the 3rd place match. - IEM World Championship, won Rogue 2-1, Impact 2-0, Zest 2-0, Trap 3-2
He still has a lot to do to be compared to Neeb in terms of performance, who not only won 3 consecutive WCS, and finished in 3rd place of the 4th one, but also won Kespa cup on Korean ground + the Hangzhou carnival in China just a month ago beating Rogue & herO.
Won 2 consecutive (lost 19 games, Serral lost 7), finished 5-8th in the 3rd WCS, won 1 more*
While Neeb has proven himself against Koreans, Serral needs to do it as well now that he has conquered the foreign scene. And with the skill he has displayed, it is certainly within his reach.
I’d say Serral has proven himself against Koreans (with both him and neeb also having losses against them), but is still behind in overall accomplishments by roughly the amount of a very good performance in a Korean tournament, in 2-3 WCS tournaments and to some degree in a Blizzcon.
On June 05 2018 18:45 Snarosc wrote: While Serral looks absolutely dominating in WCS, i'd really like to see him try GSL.
So far, the only two tournament I can remember him playing koreans offline were : - WESG where he got to the semis without facing any korean, and then suddenly loses 0-3 to the first Korean in Maru. - IEM World Championship, lost 0-3 to Classic in the semis
- WESG where he then beat Classic 3-1 in the 3rd place match. - IEM World Championship, won Rogue 2-1, Impact 2-0, Zest 2-0, Trap 3-2
He still has a lot to do to be compared to Neeb in terms of performance, who not only won 3 consecutive WCS, and finished in 3rd place of the 4th one, but also won Kespa cup on Korean ground + the Hangzhou carnival in China just a month ago beating Rogue & herO.
Won 2 consecutive (lost 19 games, Serral lost 7), finished 5-8th in the 3rd WCS, won 1 more*
While Neeb has proven himself against Koreans, Serral needs to do it as well now that he has conquered the foreign scene. And with the skill he has displayed, it is certainly within his reach.
I’d say Serral has proven himself against Koreans (with both him and neeb also having losses against them), but is still behind in overall accomplishments by roughly the amount of a very good performance in a Korean tournament, in 2-3 WCS tournaments and to some degree in a Blizzcon.
I agree. Right now, Serral is the best foreigner, no question, based on skill level and recent form, but overall Neeb is still above him all time based on accomplishments. I have no doubt Serral can match or even surpass Neeb's WCS dominance, but it's Neeb's Kespa Cup win that makes him still come ahead of Serral, IMO. Serral does, however, have the potential to surpass Neeb all time, unless Neeb returns to old form and suddenly decides to become dominant again.
Neeb is still ahead in overall trophies / accomplishments, but Serral is more dominant than Neeb ever was. Right now, no foreigner has a chance against him in a best of 5+ series, whereas Neeb always looked at least somewhat vulnerable. Not to undermine the accomplishment, but Neeb won the Kespa cup off the back of his #1 in the world PvP at the time. He almost got eliminated by Pet (?) before getting only protosses. Had TY won his semifinal vs Stats, it would've been a different story.
Serral also seems to have the same weakness against top Korean terrans. I would like to see him go to Korea to train for a while and take a crack at GSL season 3 to maybe overcome that.
On June 06 2018 07:50 LTCM wrote: Serral isn't even the best foreigner of lotv so there's no way he's a top three foreigner of all time.
Depends how you define it. If you just want a net sum of all the accomplishments, then no, he is not.
If you subscribe to the idea that the current skill level in (foreigner) SC2 is the highest there has ever been, then yes, Serral is the best player of all time, meaning if he d go back in time with his current skill-level, he would probably beat anyone at any time (disregarding completely broken patches and maps).
On June 04 2018 14:09 Clazziquai10 wrote: Huge props to mana. By far the most unexpected run I've seen in a long while
My thoughts exactly. Also Mana gained few pounds since I've seen him last time on big stage. (sorry)
Yea, it looked like he gained at least 7-8 pounds of pure skill. Awesome run by him this tournament
Coach MC has taught him well.
More Chicken, more skill.
Gotta say that this was certainly not the most enjoyable tournament from a standpoint of production, casting or even games(so many horrible stomps,) but watching MaNa and Lambo was really enjoyable, they played so well. Also how sick is it that we can just call Serral winning the tournament from the beginning and he easily delivers :o
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)
