How many Koreans will place in the top eight?

The last time a non-Korean player finished in the top eight of MLG was over a year ago at the 2012 Spring Championship, where SaSe placed fourth and Stephano tied for 6th. Since then it's been iron-fisted Korean domination most of the way, with NaNiwa and Stephano coming the closest to breaking their hegemony.

However, with the reduced prize money and lack of paid flights, Spring Championship has the weakest Korean contingent we've seen at an MLG in almost two years. There aren't even seeds for last season's top four: the terrifying quartet of Life, Flash, Innovation and MC. The Koreans at this tournament are ones with foreign team support such as Liquid`HerO, ROOT.YugiOh, EG.Jaedong.RC and coL.TheStC, or players who just happened to be America like ST_Sound,ST_Golden (temporarily in the states for the Red Bull Training Grounds), and CMStorm_Polt (studying in Texas). Combined with a surprising KeSPA qualifier result that saw three of the less-known Koreans make it to the tournament, fans of foreign StarCraft might start to get their hopes up.

Unfortunately, this tournament takes place in North America, a region not particularly known for its global competitiveness in StarCraft. While a couple of top Europeans like EG,ThorZaIN.RC and Alliance.NaNiwa have secured their attendance, and even Australia's Nv.mOOnGLaDe will be showing up, the foreign contingent is in the bleak state of having to rest their hopes on mostly on Americans and Canadians. HuK and IdrA are the only two North Americans who ever really did well after Koreans started raiding MLG for cash, but one looks like a shell of his former self, while the other one is straight up retired.

While the situation looks bad, it's hard to see the brackets work out in SO terrible a way that the Koreans will take all of the prize-money giving spots (the top eight). Players like ROOT.Kane and ROOT.ViBE can certainly take a ZvZ series off Koreans on their best days, and EG.Suppy.RC showed us in WCS America that roach-bane busting can even topple Code S Terrans. Oh, and don't forget Grubby's ability to play some top notch PvP!

With some bracket luck and Korean team-kills, I can see maybe two or three non-Koreans finishing in the top eight or higher. Is that an optimistic or pessimistic prediction? I can't really tell.


Will the KeSPA trio dominate?

The KeSPA qualifier was probably a huge disappointment to most fans, who would have wanted to see players like Flash, Soulkey, and Innovation come to Anaheim. Instead, the qualifiers ended up having a TON of major upsets, with team aces and championship winners dropping out left and right. At the end of the day, KT_Stats, SKT_soO, and STX_Dear were the three players left standing.

Who? Well, I guess if you're not a Proleague viewer or an old school Brood War fan, that's a valid question to ask. According to our scouting report they're a very solid bunch of players, but not ones that demand the spotlight. They're regulars who back up stars like Flash and Innovation, playing vital roles for their teams. While they may not be GREAT by Korean standards, they're definitely quite good at least—and good by Korean standards has typically been enough to clean house at foreign tournaments.

There's definitely an Elephant in the Room subplot going on here, as supporters of the theory have been absolutely effusive these days, with KeSPA players dominating the top spots in the previous WCS Korea and WCS Season Finals. But honestly, this tournament isn't that good a backdrop to develop that storyline, as even most eSF/non-KeSPA fans would admit that the Korean representation at this tournament isn't the strongest, and even concede that the KeSPA trio at the tournament are top contenders to take it all.

The Proleague players finishing in the top spots is actually the expected result, and their failure to do well would be a bigger surprise. Whether we blame it on jet lag, food poisoning, or JYP touching their shoulder during a game, it would definitely take some explaining.


Which strategy will look broken on the big stage?

Back in the old days, it really seemed like a handful of games was all it took to get something changed. Thors were nerfed after ThorZaIN displayed some powerful all-ins in TSL3, blue-flame hellions were nerfed after SlayerS Terrans showcased them at MLG Anaheim 2011, and ghost snipe was run into the ground after Mvp abused them to death at Blizzcon. Alas, those days are gone, and Blizzard seems to care more about sample sizes and long observation, as evidenced by the fact that Brood Lord - Infestor didn't get fixed for about half a year.

Still, there's a chance that a hated strategy might make itself truly infamous at MLG Anaheim, forcing Blizzard to at least give it a looking over. It's not so much an issue of balance here—if games aren't fun to watch at the highest level because of a specific strategy, then there's always the possibility of change.

Hellbat drops, are already on Blizz's watch-list, and a series of ridiculous TvTs featuring hellbats and just hellbats might help convince the higher ups that for the sake of everyone's sanity, the high powered worker incinerators could use a fix (or at least their ride). Yeah, Innovation might say hellbat drop TvT is exciting and good, but I'm going to put that down as one of his eccentricities.

The other thing to wonder about is swarm hosts in a stalemate. Swarm host based turtling is very effective on certain maps, and you can't blame Zergs for using them to grind out the wins. While it's marginally more tolerable than brood lord-infestor from a viewer's standpoint, due to Protoss having their own long range weapons to fight back, it still leads to long stand-offs and wars of attrition. While it was interesting to see the first few times around—and there are sure to be new viewers of Anaheim who don't mind it yet—it's a top candidate to quickly wear out its welcome. Well, at least Newkirk Precinct isn't in the map pool.