WCS America Season 1 - Premier League

Ro32: Week 1 Preview
Groups A, E, F and H


Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

by Pokebunny and Waxangel

With WCS Korea and WCS Europe already well underway, the final and most controversial WCS region finally kicks off this week with four Ro32 groups. In some ways, WCS 'America' really did live up to its name. A disproportionate amount of seeds were given to players from the United States, and a generous number of charity seeds were also given to 2012 WCS champions from the Americas. At the same time, a massive Korean invasion through the qualifiers means it's not very American at all, with a full 13 of 32 players hailing from the esports giant of the east. For a tournament that's run out of New York City, perhaps it's not that surprising that it ended up being WCS's melting pot.




To kick off the strange international-American tournament hybrid that is WCS America, we have a pair of match-ups that truly defines the cosmopolitan makeup of MLG's new experiment. We have a talented but unproven American in ROOT.theognis, an unexpected European guest in Liquid`Snute, a greenback bounty hunter in coL.TheStC, and the reigning champion of the home country, ROOT.ViBE.

It would be hard for even the most diehard American fans to deny that the international players in this group have the advantage. Still, the matches may not be as simple as they first appear. While Snute has a major international tournament victory under his belt compared to theognis' threadbare resume, there are some important factors in play that could help the underdog. First of all, Heart of the Swarm is still fairly fresh, and many players like theognis have yet to compete in major tournaments and show their skill level in the game-changing expansion. With Snute falling out of Dreamhack without fanfare and theognis yet to have his shot on stage, all bets are off. The long awaited pendulum swing back towards Terran seems to give theognis the perfect chance to break out. While he has always been talented, he has never had a big result to really push him into the spotlight, and a win in this group would be the perfect way to start his WCS season.

The situation for ViBE and TheStC seems to lean in the opposite direction, however. ViBE hasn't posted up any results since last year's WCS, and Heart of the Swarm has brought about the rebirth of many members of the Korean Terran master race. While his recent stats – victories over Illusion and State and losses to Sen and Bly in ZvZ – don't really say a ton about ViBE's current state, it would certainly be a surprise if he could cause an upset against a player of TheStC's caliber. But when you get a new game with two talented players, almost anything can happen on any given day.

As we get into the rest of the group, all bets are off. It would be a big surprise to see TheStC fail to advance, as the average Korean Terran should be able to take out foreigners below the very top end. Snute does seems to be the favorite here on name value alone, but I wouldn't be surprised to see an American sneak by to represent his country in the Ro16.






It's a shame to see LG-IM_NesTea, a player with three GSL championships and an entire award named after him leave the GSL, but this was something that everyone had to see coming. Nestea's been on the down side of his career for over a year now, and not even Artosis' most desperate screams have been able to stop the slide. That's not to say he's totally washed up or anything – he did take third place at Iron Squid II after all – but the rigors of Code S were just going to be too much for him in his diminished form. The competition in WCS America is definitely a level or two easier, and Nestea can make a realistic campaign for the championship.

Nestea has received a fairly decent group to start, facing one of the lesser known Koreans in Quantic.Apocalypse and two middle-of-the-pack foreigners in ROOT.Minigun and LG-IM_Fenix. Normally a player would lament having a potential team-kill scenario, but it's hard to think Nestea has much sentiment for a teammate living several thousand miles away in Peru (on the other hand, you can't help but think LG-IM head coach Hirai wouldn't be all that pleased if Fenix pulled off the upset against Nestea).

So, with Nestea as the favorite to go through, who's the most likely to progress alongside him? Minigun may have won the most talked about American vs. American series in 2013 when he beat IdrA at the 2013 Winter Showdowns, but he hasn't done a thing of note since. He's our token American of the group: someone to root for, but not someone we expect to beat international level competition.

Fenix is a wild card, barely playing in any matches and having his practice time severely hampered by wrist pain (a common Terran affliction). We have no idea what to expect from him, and making a prediction about his performance would be close to pure guesswork.

Thus, we have to look toward the other Korean in the group, Apocalypse, as the leading candidate to progress alongside Nestea. Yes, he's probably the weakest Korean in the entire tournament. Yes, we know he had an extremely easy and lucky bracket to even qualify for the Premier League at all (wins against PiG, Hwangsin, and a walkover against Chinese champion Comm who was disqualified). But at the end of the day he's still a Korean Terran, which means he's probably better than the other two guys in the group.






The star of this very diverse group is Australia's Nv.mOOnGLaDe, the only SEA player competing in any of the WCS Premier divisions. While isolation often brings stagnation, Moonglade has been an exception for almost the entirety of StarCraft II's run as an esport, showing that he can hang with the best foreigners whenever he gets a rare opportunity to go to a major tournament. A tough draw into a group with two Koreans could have seen the SEA region's hopes crushed faster than those of the Chinese, but luckily Moonglade has drawn a very palatable group.

His first opponent is mouz.Illusion, a player much hyped as America's next hope since 2012. Unfortunately, he has turned out to be very American indeed, with a big name but none of the results to back it up. Strangely enough, the advent of HotS doesn't seem to have helped out Illusion that much at all, considering that he has the speed to abuse all of Terran's new toys. After losing 2 - 3 to ViBE in the MLG qualifiers, Illusion has only continued to lose, going down to Miya, viPro, and Lure in the Acer TeamStory Cup. Still, TvZ at the Western level does seem to favor Terran a little, and Illusion might be able to rely on a barrage of widow mine shots and relentless drops to power him through.

The other match-up is probably the most lopsided match in all of WCS, with maybe HuK vs. Capoch (Group G) coming in as a close second. In one corner we have Alicia, a runner up at MLG and NASL, coming into WCS after defeating Zenio, JYP, and Revival in his qualifier bracket. In the other corner we have Maker, who as far as we can tell, got in solely because MLG decided Mexico needed two seeds for whatever reason, and they decided to pick the 2nd place finisher from last year's WCS Mexico. While this isn't on the "Minigun vs. Life at MLG Winter" level of hopelessness, it's still one of those KR vs. NA matches that threatens to be painfully one-sided to watch.

Overall, Alicia is the favorite to clean up the group, leaving the other three to fight it out for second. While there's not much recent data for Illusion, Moonglade, or Maker, we'll go with Moonglade here since he has the best track record at getting things done in important matches.






Move aside China, Latin America is now the main target of MLG's ire. C.KiLLeR and 8th_MajOr are undoubtedly the two best Latin American players in the entire tournament, but they face the threat of simultaneous early elimination as they have been put into a two-Korean group. It's not any two-Korean group either, with Liquid`HerO and EG.aLive.RC bringing truly impressive tournament resumes to the group with two dreamhacks, an NASL, and an IPL won between them.

Liquid`HerO looks like the strongest player coming into this group, being the most accomplished player in terms of both past achievements and recent tournament results. He comes in off a semi-final run at DreamHack: Stockholm, where he was eliminated 1 - 2 by eventual champion Leenock. While he's disadvantaged by not being able to play PvP – his best match-up in recent weeks – it's hard to see the Liquid Protoss not making it out of this group.

On the other hand, C.KiLLeR looks like the lock to be eliminated in this group of death. As one of the most overlooked and underrated players in the tournament, he would have been our elitist hipster pick to do well had he been in any other group. Instead, he's in what's arguably the toughest group of all, going up against three players who have trained lengthily in Korea. That's right, even the other non-Korean in this group, Major, has actually spent the last five months in Korea training alongside KeSPA Team Eight, leaving Killer to wonder whether he should have just played WCS Europe instead.

We expect 8th_MajOr and EG.aLive.RC to battle over the remaining Ro16 spot. We've barely seen either of them play since HotS was released, but you could make an argument that aLive is better because he at least earns Proleague starts for his team. However, that might be more related to the fact that EG-TL's Terran line is threadbare (especially with TaeJa making only infrequent appearances), and that they have no other option but aLive. Major might not have earned his first start yet, but he says he's an active contributor in practice. Even before Major moved to Team Eight he was one of the best non-Korean players out there, and with KeSPA training he should be able to give aLive is a good fight.

Writers: Pokebunny and Waxangel
Graphics: shiroiusagi
Editor: Waxangel.