WCS America - Premier

Quarter-Finals Preview
China vs. Korea vs. Canada

Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

VODs on Youtube

Compared to WCS America Season 1, the final eight of Season 2 is already an improvement*. We've gone up from two foreigners to three, there's actually one North American in the running, and one of the Koreans is basically an adopted American.


There's even going to be a live audience this time as well, and all signs point to everything being better the second time around. Well, on to the previews!

*If you aren't Korean.

Polt vs. Oz

by DarkLordOlli

Two long standing veterans of the Korean scene clash as CMStorm's Polt and Evil Geniuses' Oz duel for a place in the final four. Both players looked extremely convincing against their opponent's race in the previous round so here's to hoping that we'll get a good PvT series out of this one!

Polt continued his string of impressive performances in Heart of the Swarm by ruthlessly obliterating his Ro16 group 4-0 on the back of his trademark TvP. Alicia and Jim fought valiantly but Polt's famously aggressive MMM style proved too much for either of them to handle. Polt played beautifully, always finding weak spots in his opponent's defense, picking off units, probes and dealing small amounts of damage throughout the game while not missing a beat on macro, upgrades, expansions or transitions at home. This coupled with great unit control, eventually led to him roll over his opponents once he felt comfortable enough to push his advantage and end the games.

Polt has to be really happy to draw another Protoss player as his next opponent. Why? Not only has it always been his best match-up, but he only had Protoss players to prepare for in the last round. The twist is that Oz is a trickier player than most, one known for being intelligent and creative. The question is whether that really fazes Polt and his tons of experience beating all sorts of Protoss opponents.

EG's wizard Oz has been climbing the ladder back up to relevance ever since they picked him up to bolster the EG-TL Proleague team. When he was brought in along with aLive, it didn't take long for him to improve and become a regular in Proleague. While the EG-TL training didn't pay off in time to save them from a last place finish in Proleague, the players have been absolutely dominating foreign tournaments, and Oz got in on the action with a second place finish at IEM Shanghai.

The great and powerful one only had one series to win in the RO16 as viOLet unfortunately forfeited. Oz did lose to his teammate Jaedong, experiencing every Protoss' nightmare in a fifty muta switch. Oz managed to recover nicely though, demolishing AX.Ryung convincingly. In game one, Oz defended his extremely early third against Ryung's pre-medivac pushout with a combination of forcefields, photon overcharge and constantly chronoboosted gateways. Game two seemed to go better for Ryung until a single mistake made him pay dearly - a single zealot managed to find his way into Ryung's third base and killed 11 SCVs in the process while Oz took another fast third. This allowed Oz to hit a strong gateway/colossus timing as soon as storm was done, capitalizing on his stronger production and tech advantage to roll over everything in his path.

Oz's PvT seems really solid overall with good decision making and control but he can also bring creative, fine-tuned builds. Being unpredictable and pulling crazy builds has often been his downfall but it may be exactly what he needs to beat Polt.

Prediction: Polt 3 - 1 Oz

TaeJa vs. MacSed

by DarkLordOlli

Liquid`TaeJa and iG.MacSed have never played against each other in a tournament setting before, but that doesn't stop TaeJa from being forecast as the clear favorite.

So was it really just just the wrists, then? In an interview at ASUS ROG, the crown prince of Terran stated that his physical issues are no longer interfering with his practice, which might explain why TaeJa is getting closer and closer to his Summer 2012 form.

He easily advanced from Group B without dropping so much as a single map. Neither aLive nor Minigun were able to keep up with TeamLiquid's reinvigorated Terran ace. Minigun had a few moments where his phoenix-colossus style looked promising but he couldn't quite capitalize on them and was in the end overrun by TaeJa's solid macro. Against aLive he displayed his mastery of the marine-tank positional wars, including his stunning ability to catch his opponents' tanks unsieged and convert single mistakes into seemingly easy victories.

Another circumstance working in his favor is the fact that TaeJa has been playing a lot of TvP recently which means that he brings good preparation for the matchup even without practicing for MacSed in particular - which would have been difficult anyway since the Chinese Protoss only played PvP and PvZ in WCS America.

iG.MacSed will need a small miracle to beat TaeJa. Not only does he potentially lack the preparation against TaeJa, having prepared for two Zergs and a Protoss in his Ro16 group, but his overall record against Terran is not exactly overwhelming either, having only a 45% winrate in broadcasted HotS matches. The best Terrans he's faced in the zerg expansion so far have been aLive, Polt and YoDa and he lost to all of them. TaeJa's TvP is certainly right up there with them so MacSed will definitely have to step it up if he wants to emerge victorious.

That said, he should certainly be motivated enough to do well after knocking out last season's runner-up Revival 2-0 in their deciding series with two consecutive Gateway all-ins; one hidden by a Stargate opening, the other followed up by an immortal push. Rotterdam has been updating us with lots of information about our new Chinese overlords, and among other news it was stated that the Invictus Gaming coach Edison considers MacSed to be even better than Jim. That's a big claim to make and one that surprised a lot of people considering how strong Jim's showing in WCS has been so far. Now is definitely a good time for MacSed to show us why.

Considering TaeJa's form and the scary thought that he can perform even better, I'll have to predict the Liquid Terran to take a decisive victory in this series.

Prediction: TaeJa 3 - 1 MacSed

Jim vs. Jaedong

by Waxangel

For an SC2 writer, JvP is the gift that keeps on giving. While some narratives are a bit forced and require a few facts to be overlooked, the story of JvP pretty much tells itself. Protoss have been a well documented obstacle in EG.Jaedong's short HotS career, whether it was your ordinary Proleague match, NaNiwa knocking him out of DH: Stockholm, or Stardust denying him the title at DH: Summer. To be fair to Jaedong, it's not a story of consistent badness, but one of the looming possibility that things can always go horribly, horribly wrong without warning. He plays well in most games, and he even plays well for MOST OF most games; it's just that he likes to make the worst possible decisions at the worst possible times. Let's all watch the Stardust series again, just to brush up.

His opponent, iG.Jim, comes into this match with a considerable amount of hype, largely thanks to one Kevin "Rotterdam" Van der Kooi, who has decided the seventeen year old Chinese Protoss is his new man-crush. Purportedly one of the best ladder players on the Korean server, Jim has lived up to his reputation so far, making it from the bottom of the qualifiers and all the way to the final eight of WCS America. We can safely say he's a top foreigner, and the more optimistic fans might already dub him a championship contender in a strong WCS AM field.

How does Jim measure up to all the other Protosses Jaedong has faced so far? Well, he did already beat Jaedong down in the Challenger League, so that's one thing that looks bad for Jaedong already. In one game Jim used a baby-soul train from a gateway first start to take victory, while in the other he won a convoluted base trade that began with him cannon-rushing Jaedong's hatchery.

Even though Jim is a Chinese player who rarely gets to play in international tournaments, we have at least seen enough of his PvZ that suggests he is an aggressive, all-in favoring kind of player. That's how he beat both Jaedong and Nestea in WCS AM, and he also went for a gateway based all-in when he faced Scarlett in the RSL (he lost that game). On the other hand, his late-game play didn't seem all that special when he played a straight-up game against Scarlett, getting flattened by Scarlett's ultralisk based army after a mundane build up on both sides.

While I know that Jaedong has what it takes to beat Jim, I just can't bring myself to pick him to win a serious ZvP match. Not just yet. He's spontaneously combusted too many times to give him the benefit of the doubt—he's going to have to win a few more convincing series first.

Prediction: Jim 3 - 2 Jaedong

Scarlett vs. aLive

by Waxangel

Although most of us are looking toward WCS Europe to see who will inherit the foreigner throne left empty by Stephano, the new best-foreigner might actually be a player hailing from the much mocked North American region. Yes, I'm talking about Acer.Scarlett, the Korean-beating anomaly from Canada. Scarlett managed to develop Korean-beating powers in seclusion, before she even became known to the SC2 scene at large at IPL4, and has only become better since travelling to Korea to train at the Axiom house. Though her match history is shorter than most, the list of opponents she has defeated lately is impressive:
Revival, Jim, HerO, MaNa, Ryung, and Alicia. Okay, maybe not impressive at a WCS Korea level, but it's more than enough to make her a serious contender to become the WCS America champion.

And since we love to talk continuity here at TL, there's some of that at stake here as well. Nearly one year ago, Scarlett became the first WCS America Champion, defeating USA champion ViBE and a slew of Zergs during the BL-Infestor era. This tournament is her chance to take the title back. While the opposition is much harder this time around, it would make victory that much sweeter. (Also, they'll actually give her a trophy this time).

Ahead of her is an invisible obstacle in EG.aLive. Just good enough to beat every foreign fan favorite and just bland enough to be unable to capture anyone's imagination, aLive is a foreign tournament organizer's worst nightmare. In the past two months alone, aLive has eliminated TLO, Stephano, Suppy, Demuslim, and Minigun from tournaments. Don't remember? Congrats, nothing is wrong with you.

Maybe it's not all aLive's fault. It's not like one can just ask a Korean player to 'be more interesting so we can market you.' They're the players, and the big organizations are the guys with the experience in promoting. So maybe Evil Geniuses should consider taking some more drastic measures. Organize an arm-wrestling contest with iNcontrol, tamale eating contest with Machine, or a free throw shooting contest with Xenocider. Anything. ANYTHING to promote by far the best Terran on their team, a former international champion, and a potential WCS America winner.

In terms of the actual match, it should be a pretty close affair between aLive's standard and effective MMM wave style of play, and Scarlett's varied ZvT toolkit. Scarlett has shown a lot of variety in strategies in the past, and will also have the entire NA brain trust (don't laugh, Europeans) helping her plan for this series. In the end, I'm giving Scarlett the slight edge since she will also be looking to avenge BFF Suppy.

Prediction: Scarlett 3 - 2 aLive

Writers: DarkLordOlli and Waxangel.
Graphics: Pathy
Editor: Waxangel.