A few short hours away from opening, TSL4 looks to be the most impressive iteration of the this tournament yet. The first day contains eight of the strongest players in any tournament, from a rising Spanish star to a GSL silver-medalist. The day will kick off with TSL2 participant Major fighting his friend and seasoned BW vet TSL_HyuN, followed by ST_Curious vs Mill.LaLush and then K3.VortiX vs FXOBabyKnight. The day will end with ST_Squirtle vs Liquid`Ret, a rematch from Red Bull Battlegrounds just months ago.





The lone TvZ of the Ro32, MajOr vs HyuN is a battle of good friends, practice partners, and to some extent; a clash of elephants.

HyuN, a remarkably uninteresting BW pro, became the latest in a string of BW A-teamers who didn't immediately achieve stardom in SC2. But after the initial hype faded, it turned out that HyuN had been improving steadily and enters TSL4 as one of the most intriguing players. There's no doubt that HyuN is a 'scary' player; one whom you'd rather not be paired against. But in the same breath, it seems fair to say that HyuN isn't quite there yet. He feels like a player who is always able to upset a few favorites but never to be the favorite themselves. Known for his tremendous lair-tech play and aggression, HyuN has become notable for his poor hive transitions and control. His ZvP and ZvZ have seemed brilliant, his ZvT weak. Which HyuN will we see in the TSL? It's hard to tell.

Quite interestingly, HyuN's best successes — at least until this most recent GSL Code A — have come online in foreign tournaments. Along with his teammate RevivaL, HyuN is the terror of Playhem Dailies, having racked up at least $1700, in both Playhem NA and EU tournaments. This is definitely a point in HyuN's favor. That success online and overseas suggests that no player in the TSL is better prepared for the brand of international competition that is necessary for this type of tournament. Having shown strength in the TSL qualifiers against the might of the whole Korean scene, this could be HyuN's moment to reverse the disappointing results that he and the other non-KeSPA elephants have achieved so far, and to make the TSL his circus.

MajOr stands in his way. The young Mexican player is something of an elephant in the room for other reasons. Having left x6 — and his last in a string of awful ID's — a while ago, MajOr has trained in Korea and remained teamless. Before the TSL qualifiers began, almost nobody knew where MajOr's abilities were, and almost nobody thought to care. But in two qualifiers, MajOr stomped his way to the finals each time, losing the first but making no mistake of the second. With such a dominant show in his pocket, and as the only qualifier from the Americans, MajOr's stock has risen through the roof. There's no indication that this sudden appreciation of value is a mistake. MajOr did look untouchable in his qualifiers; seeming much more of a sure thing than players like Stephano or HuK who were supposed to qualify easily. As a foreign Terran, MajOr is a curiosity for another reason. With all the top foreign Terrans, including MajOr in TSL4, this is a crucial opportunity to redeem the label.

For this match, MajOr has often felt comfortable in TvZ, and even if he missed out on playing his preferred TvT here, a TvZ against a familiar opponent weak in the match-up is a good draw from him. MajOr's style is versatile; he can play both marine-tank, mech, and all kinds of early aggression. MajOr's mechanics are also superb, and will not be left behind by his Korean opponent in that department.

This match could truly go either way. HyuN is the default pick here, because he has that extra 'Koreaness' that mysteriously is often decisive. But MajOr proved beyond all doubt in the qualifiers that he is an elite foreign player. He has experience in Korea, and with his opponent. And most importantly, he has seemed more at ease in TvZ than his opponent, who has a more unwieldy style. This is one of the most high skilled matches in the Ro32, and I'm going to go with the foreigner.

MajOr 3 – 2 HyuN






The second match of the night is between two players who might be more widely known for their personality traits than the content of their play. First we have Curious, an icon of stoicism who never, ever changes his blank expression when he's competing in the GSL booth. Curious has mentioned that this is intentional, as he actively seeks to stop emotions from affecting his play. As for LaLush, he's known for, well, being a little bit bad mannered.

While we'd love to learn more about LaLush's game, the above might be all you need to know before he drops out of this tournament. Curious has been Startale's ace Zerg for some time now, and he has a highly decorated GSL resume that includes five stints in Code S, as well as a famous undefeated run to win the Code A when it was still a full tournament. While LaLush performed admirably in the TLOpens and is a consistent presence in the small tournament scene, it's hard to think that will measure up to such a formidable Korean opponent.

You might think that the match-up would even things up. Zerg vs Zerg is more upset prone than the non-mirrors, even if it's no PvP. On top of that, LaLush's best match-up is Zerg vs Zerg by far, having over a 62% win rate over his career compared to the sub 50% win rates for his non-mirrors. Unfortunately his opponent can even one up him in this department. With a 68% win rate in Korean Zerg vs Zergs, he is only trumped by players named DongRaeGu or Nestea. If this were a best of three, you might say that with some luck, and the ability to bring his A-game every single time, LaLush would have a chance at making huge waves in the first round. However, TSL4 starts with best of five in the Ro32, and it's going to be even harder for the underdogs to score upsets.

Curious 3 – 1 LaLush







There's a glass half empty and a glass half full way of looking at this match-up. One one hand, it's a shame that these two rapidly rising Europeans, who have both held one of the top two places on the EU ladder for the past week, will have to play each other in the opening round. On the positive side, the match-up guarantees that one will survive, and proceed on, presumably to cause some serious damage.

BabyKnight is the points qualifier here, achieving the second highest total with an impressive run of top finishes, including one in the finals. He formerly was a formidable DotA player, but switched to SC2 and struggled to distinguish himself for a while. Recently however, he has hit his stride in a huge way. There is a difference between players who can reach the top 30 of the ladder if they try, and players who can reach the top position at will. In the last few months, BabyKnight has made that transition, and his TSL4 qualification and pick-up by FXO are proof of his emerging skill.

Unfortunately for BabyKnight, PvZ is his most vulnerable match-up. You can bet that Dane would have enjoyed the match-up against MC that awaited his countryman, Ciara in TSL3. BabyKnight's blink PvP, with its never ending harassment is one of the finest things we saw in the qualifiers. But in PvZ, BabyKnight hasn't had as much success with his desire to harass and micro against overwhelming odds. He's favored gateway heavy timings and storm/blink play in the past, and the key in this series will be making sure his army doesn't die as he's pushing in the mid-game.

Meanwhile, VortiX has usually been known as LucifroN's brother. (Did you know he's LucifroN's brother?) But at this point, it's well past time we started referring to VortiX as his own person. In fact, it might not be so long until we refer to LucifroN as VortiX's brother. The Spaniard has, like his opponent, gone from being unknown internationally, to being one of the most feared up and comers in the foreign scene. His TLOpen win, 3-0 over Golden and his all-kill of Empire in the IPL TAC3 shortly thereafter made up one of the more impressive weeks we've seen recently. But just from a sentimental perspective, VortiX is exactly the kind of player on paper — actually, BK too — that everyone is looking for when they talk about the TSL and the 'next ThorZaIN'. Not well known outside of Spain before this tournament, he could use TSL4 to prove that he's ready for the world stage.

VortiX's ZvP is his strongest match-up statistically, and his 3-5 loss to Squirtle in the IPL Fight Club shows his abilities. His style has traditionally been heavy lair with very frequent mutalisk play, or else roach ling multi-pronged aggression. It's fast and mechanically demanding to execute and to defend. The key with VortiX and BabyKnight will be how the Protoss will deal with the Zerg aggression. Whether BK's micro and multi-task on defense will be enough to bring him to the late game and whether VortiX can keep BabyKnight's deadly timed attacks from killing him, to even allow the midgame to develop in the first place. It'll be a fascinating back and forth to watch.

I love both of these players, and both have bright futures. Unfortunately, only one can advance, and VortiX has the edge here in playing his top match-up.

VortiX 3 – 1 BabyKnight






No seeding system is perfect, and we kick off the first round of TSL4 with a blockbuster foreigner vs. Korean that one would normally expect to see far deeper in the tournament. In one corner we have Ret, a player who has long been considered to be among the best non-Korean players in the world, but has rarely-if-ever been in the running to be THE best. Squirtle has recently entered a similar situation on his side of the pond. His run from the open bracket to the silver medal at IPL4, alongside a near perfect GSL Season Two run before falling to Mvp in the finals, have confirmed him as a top Protoss player in most eyes. But without an actual championship, it has been hard for him to be mentioned in the same breath as names such as MarineKing, DongRaeGu, or MC. For Ret and Squirtle, every tournament is an opportunity to try and prove that there are none others above them.

Ret and Squirtle met once before at the Red Bull Battlegrounds in Austin. It was only a short, three game series, but it was a microcosm of each players' strengths and weaknesses in the Zerg vs Protoss match-up. Squirtle lived up to his reputation as a near textbook tournament player, mixing up semi all-in play and macro builds to stay unpredictable. In turn, Ret showed that he could play the lair phase as well as any Korean, never looking behind until the game entered the hive phase. There, his most notable weaknesses came to light, as his mismanagement of brood lord armies combined with his mortal enemy, the warp-prism, cost him the series.

Though some time has passed since that series, it doesn't seem like any player has significantly changed his game. In the most recent tournaments of note, Squirtle continued to look slightly featureless, but still very solid and strong in a very textbook way in the GSL, while Ret continued to stomp out two base all-ins and lose his greater spire to warp-ins at NASL.

This is a match-up where Ret will play his reactionary Zerg style, while it will be up to Squirtle to shape the series with his choice of strategies. Squirtle's dogged adherence to variety for its own sake might hurt him could hurt him here, as one of Ret's greatest strengths is his ability to deflect all but the most well-executed all-ins. Instead of risking defeat like Puzzle, who lost all three of his NASL games to Ret after a failed two base attack, the best approach for Squirtle would be to play long games where both players get high tech units.

Squirtle 3 – 1 Ret

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