With opening day behind us, TSL4 marches on with another set of matches which will mark the halfway point of the Round-of-32.






TSL3 runner-up NaNiwa comes into this tournament looking for redemption. After allowing ThorZaIN to come back from a 1 – 3 deficit to eventually win 4 – 3, NaNiwa placed the blame squarely on himself. Though it's been over a year since that loss, it doesn't seem like NaNiwa's the kind of guy to be over it. Not when he describes himself as the "TSL3 Loser."

NaNiwa might have hoped for an easy match to begin the tournament, but instead he faces a rather perplexing one in Scottish Zerg JonnyREcco, one that may be a check-up or a real challenge.

Only truly active in the pro scene beginning in 2012, JonnyREcco got his first taste of mainstream exposure when he placed third place at the Battle.net WCS UK nationals, scoring a victory against a much more famous Brit in DeMusliM along the way (Demu would repay the favor in the losers' bracket). JonnyREcco's young age of sixteen makes him seem more like a Korean prospect than one we would expect from the Western scene, and one can only speculate where he might end up. Just recently he was picked up by team Dignitas, who were rightfully intrigued by his talent.

Now, the reason JonnyREcco is a threat is not so much because of his own merits (of which he may have many we have yet to see), than it is because of NaNiwa's shortcomings. Though NaNiwa has had some notable, clutch PvZ performances in his career, 100% of his more recent Code S success was due to his prodigious PvP and PvT ability. On the other hand, there's a growing list of Zerg players who have eliminated him from prominent international tournaments. He was eliminated from WCS Sweden by SortOf, DreamHack Summer by DIMAGA, and DreamHack Stockholm by Nerchio and Slivko.

Of course, JonnyREcco can't yet be put on the same level of names such as DIMAGA and Nerchio, but it's not too much of a stretch to say that he can be put in a similar category of skilled, rising Zergs like SortOf and Slivko.

It's hard to say exactly why NaNiwa hasn't had much success with PvZ outside of Korea. He was even able to take DongRaeGu five games, vexing him with well prepared gate-nexus builds. With some of the best micro in or out of Korea and a talent for honing builds, you would think he could just use two-base all-ins to crush most of the international opposition (which would be a strange deja vu from 2010). One possibility is that NaNiwa has found his ideal environment in the GSL, where he has a week to dissect, analyze, and prepare for his opponent. International LANs are an entirely different scenario, where you face a rapidfire gauntlet of opponents.

Luckily for NaNiwa, this is as close to the GSL as it gets. Maybe there won't be dozens of VOD and replays to analyze for JonnyREcco like there will be for a Code S opponent, but NaNiwa still has an opportunity to prepare some player-independent builds for this match. This is essentially home court advantage for NaNiwa, and it would be disappointing if he lost.

NaNiwa 3 – 2 JonnyREcco







Like Hyun versus Major, a match between two friends, and Vortix versus Babyknight, a match between two up-and-coming foreigners, this match also features two players who share a bond, with both Kas and fraer hailing from Ukraine.

Out of all the relatively new foreigner names to qualify for the TSL, including Vortix, Babyknight, and Beastyqt, fraer might just be the scariest. Out of nowhere, fraer has popped up and started to make his presence felt on the scene. Previously known only for monopolizing online European tournaments, fraer made his name known to the general public at Dreamhack Summer where he reached top 4 after beating names like Dimaga, Puma, Vampire, and SaSe. Then, not too long after, fraer took second place in the RSL, an online Russian tourney featuring top Koreans in Bomber, Creator, and Losira. In this tournament, fraer himself personally took down Terran greats including Bomber and Lucifron. So what will it take to take down fraer and his seemingly unmatched momentum in the past month?

Perhaps it's the actual winner of RSL, Kas. In this aforementioned tournament with big names but limited coverage in the Anglo-sphere, Kas met fraer in both the Winners Bracket Finals and the Grand Finals, taking each series with a 3-1 map score. Even more impressive is the manner in which Kas won each game. Every one of the six games he won involved a long macro game, whereas the two games fraer took both involved him holding off one of Kas's all-ins. This is indicative of what Kas is known for: his strong macro play that has him consistently making units while supporting them with much faster upgrades than most Terrans prefer. Kas does not rely on overly flashy drop play, especially cute micro, or Terran trickery; he just makes a heavily upgraded army, drops when he can, attacks when he should, and wins the game. Another aspect of Kas's play that speaks to his late game prowess is his inclination to make a ton of ghosts; perhaps he gets this from his teammate, the true GhostKing, EmpireHappy. With these hidden warriors, Kas can blanket any late-game Protoss army in EMP and better soak up the AOE damage from the Protoss death-ball.

Kas's style of play is perfect for having a consistently good win-rate in mass games of ladder, something Kas is known for. In fact, in the last season of ladder, which lasted around two months, Kas accumulated over 1000 wins, averaging around 17 wins a day. This doesn't include his ladder losses, his custom training games, and his games in tournaments. From this statistic alone, you can tell how much Kas puts into this game, and how much he's willing to put into TSL4.

Many will suggest that Kas is just not as good as he used to be, at least compared to how much the scene has grown up around him. Seeing that he hasn't had a big tournament result in a while, critics of Kas will suggest that he is merely a ladder warrior, not capable of competing with more flamboyant Terrans like MKP and Taeja. To these people, might I remind you that Kas hasn't posted big LAN results because he doesn't attend too many LANs, but every one he does attend usually ends up in with a top placement. Remember IEM Kiev where Kas took third place when Koreans like HerO and Zenio were in attendance? Or perhaps you should look at the Copenhagen games back in April where Kas took the gold over other TSL4 players such as Welmu, Babyknight, and Elfi.

fraer, in contrast to Kas's standard macro style, plays one of the most unique Protoss styles that exist. Most casual viewers are familiar with Korean PvT, a mildly varied style that focuses on gateway pushes, fast thirds, and sometimes fast templar; most are even familiar with European PvT, style where Protoss just camps to 200/200 to build a death ball. But few truly know fraer PvT, and only when you see it can you truly understand it. fraer, much like the Protoss President himself, MC, likes to march to the beat of his own drum, ignoring Protoss conventions, and plays PvT the way he thinks it should be played. As such, you'll see builds like one gate fast expand into two gates (instead of the usual three) and one gate fast expand into blink + obs off of one gate; you'll see late game compositions that include both a whopping seven colossi and eight templar. If you're tired of standard Protoss play, definitely check out both fraer and this match.

Kas 3 – 1 fraer







The community let out a collective "Oh s***!" when Welmu crushed PuMa 2 – 0 at Summer Arena, only to be perplexed when he was eliminated one day later by GoOdy. It turned out that while PuMa couldn't deal with colossi at all, Welmu couldn't deal with GoOdy's maxed out armies either. Though those are quite amusing results, there's not much to deduce from them. It's not uncommon to see a foreigner score a massive upset at a live LAN, only to get eliminated by one of their peers in the next round. The fact is, skilled foreigners can beat Koreans in best 2 of 3's when they're playing at their best, and there aren't any serious implications when it happens (not that it stops it from being really interesting and entertaining).

On that note, Keen's limited international experiences don't suggest that he's going to fall victim to that kind of upset. Though he has lost to players like Stephano and NaNiwa in tournaments, those are two players at the top of the international pack. Otherwise, Keen's only been stopped by more established, more skilled Koreans in global competition.

Despite being a Code S player, Keen is someone who hard to put your finger on. Though he's a good player, he hasn't had much success going up against the elite players of the world in direct combat, and he's had to resort to taking risks or using all-ins to defeat those players. The one quote that might tell you all you need to know about Keen might be from his interview after he used consecutive proxy marine rush builds to defeat GSL silver medalist Squirtle last season: "After losing the first game, I thought Squirtle was better than me. So I gambled. It worked once, so I used it again." That's not necessarily a negative quality, however, as the ability to successfully cheese other players is an uncommon trait, and one that's useful in multi-game series.

With that in mind, Welmu's best chance at taking out Keen is probably the time tested deathball approach, looking to cut apart the Terran army with unlimited amounts of splash. Keen's late game TvP is good, but he's not an absolute maniac at infantry-splitting and templar-sniping like players such as TaeJa or aLive. A possible edge of Welmu is that Keen probably won't take him as seriously as he should, and will play macro games assuming that he will just win because he is the better player. That's dangerous thinking, as PuMa painfully learned.

KeeN 3 – 1 Welmu







The last match of the day pits two of the strangest players in TSL4 against each other. First we have the absurdly slow-handed, mechanically lacking, cat-video watching Elfi. Entire volumes of quotes could probably be gathered of what Elfi's contemporaries have to say about him behind the scenes, perplexed by how a player with such low APM, a player who shouldn't win according to Starcraft II common sense, actually keeps winning. However, he does win, and he wins a lot. The image on top of the Elfi fanclub is a pretty good representation of who he is: The aloof king of anarchy, burning down the established conventions one at a time. We fully expect Hot_Bid to open the APM tab several times during this match.

Then we have Life, the 15 year old Korean online phenom, whose willingness to six pool, eight minute nydus, or use any other kind of all-in at the drop of the dime seems to stem more from whimsy than a coldly calculating mind. Even beyond the early game, Life has shown a fondness for using nydus worms and drops in the mid game, which has won him more than a few easy games. Life caught some criticism for six-pooling twice in a row in the fifth and last Korean TLOpen final, causing some viewers to think he was throwing the match. In a vacuum, it may seem so. But in reality, that's just Life.

Put that all together, and where does that get you? At first, one might think Life's style is predictable enough that Elfi might take an advantage (though maybe he just watched cat videos instead of preparing). However, Life's sustained success suggests that knowing is less than half the battle. On top of that, Life is actually one of the most mechanically gifted players out there, and he's going to be favored even if he plays a standard game. Then again, this is elfi we're talking about, the guy who snapped Stephano's 30+ game ZvP streak with an immortal all-in, and Gatored thanked after lifting one of his builds to beat DongRaeGu at IEM New York.

At the end of the day, it's a battle between players who will have never had to face anything like each other. The Korean advantage says Life should win, but with elfi in the mix, would any result surprise you?

Life 3 – 0 Elfi

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