by kollin



1. EG.Stephano.RC

WCS EU, to the regret and joy of many, might be Stephano's last big hurrah. The extraordinarily successful French Zerg - who through the last half of WoL was universally considered to be the best foreigner in the world - has announced his retirement in August, and with nothing else on the horizon in terms of tournaments for him (as far as we know), this is his chance to prove that he has the best foreigner title on lockdown as long as he is playing, and that he beat the King, LG-IM_Mvp.

Stephano through his long and illustrious career has stood up to, and even overcome the previously unbeatable enigma that was the Korean player. He has revolutionized ZvP and ZvT at least once apiece, and showed engagement skills that even top Korean Zergs struggle to emulate. However, his play in HotS has been riddled with flaws and inconsistencies compared to WoL. He stated in interviews that the harsh training environment and lack of English speaking people to talk to while he stayed in the EG-TL team house massively demotivated and demoralized him, and he simply lost his drive to win. Not too soon after those interviews, Stephano announced his retirement and the end of an era come August.

Despite that, in the past month or so Stephano has had plenty of tournament exposure, as he came second in the first season of WCS EU to a renewed Mvp, got knocked out in the Ro16 of Dreamhack Summer, and lost to Snute in the quarterfinals of Homestory Cup VII. Throughout these multiple top tier events, Stephano took out some of the best foreigners of the moment so there is a very real chance that he could go all the way to the finals again, as long as he avoids ZvZ. This group should not provide too large of a problem, with MC being the only major concern as an opponent.

2. SK_MC

Formerly the best Protoss player in the world, having earned $368,000 from tournaments, MC is now but a shade of his former self and seems to play more of an entertainer role in the SC2 world than anything else as he made repeated cameo appearances through HSC VII and WCS EU Season 1. Now the BossToss is at best a solid Code A player, which is evident through his wins over players such as SortOf, SalvatioN and Socke. But solid Code A player is arguably significantly better than sLivko and Shuttle, and MC's quirky play style can still overcome Stephano if the EG-TL Zerg isn't careful. MC hasn't had a tournament win in over a year, and things have gone downhill ever since he placed second in the Season 3 finals of GSL 2012. If he wants to prove to the world that he's still the face of Koreans taking foreigner money, then he needs to make the finals in this tournament.

3. VP.BenQ.sLivko

The player formerly known as a patch zerg has experienced a slight fall from grace when HotS was released, because infestor brood lord was nerfed...hellbats were brought in... the game's landscape significantly changed, and players had to readjust quickly. While nobody really expected him to straight up win a tournament in WoL, it seems that his chances may have disappeared almost entirely in HotS as he is quite simply not competing at the level he used to. At best, sLivko looks like a mid-tier European player, who manages to take out the lower level pros and occasionally take maps off the higher level Europeans. MC and Stephano are a very scary combination to face. Stephano's ZvZ is very hot and cold, and it could be where Slivko finds his best chance at advancement. If MCs play on the day is below what we've come to expect from him, then that would strengthen sLivko's chances of advancing by a large margin, but if we assume that doesn't happen then the Russian Zerg is looking like he will drop out.

4. c.Shuttle

The American-European-Korean Terran, who is a part of North American team Clarity Gaming and is based in New York was one of the first players to start hellbat dropping like a madman in NA/EU. He was also one of the first Koreans to make it through the extremely gruelling WCS EU qualifiers, seemingly coming out of nowhere and beating Tails in the process. His results lately have deteriorated though, as he went from being players such as SaSe and Beastyqt to losing against miscellaneous EU ladder heroes. While drawing results from online tournaments isn't always the best measure of a player's skill, it is still concerning when considering that none of the players in this group are anything close to EU ladder heroes. Shuttle's only saving grace is hellbats, which is a pretty damn good saving grace but I don't think it will be enough.