EPTRo32: Group A Preview
Welcome to the first season of WCS America in 2014! After a wonderfully entertaining tournament experience delivered by IEM last weekend, Premier Leagues are beginning to roll out in Europe and America.
Polt, HerO and Jaedong did WCS America proud in IEM Cologne, taking three of the top four spots along the championship. With Bomber joining the fray as well, WCS AM has confirmed its place as a region that can give Code S a run for its money in terms of competitiveness. Let the games begin!
Ro32 Group A: Nestea, Oz, desRow, Alicia
Countdown
The seeded player in Group A is the freelancer
Oz, who I've heard is motivated and eager to impress potential international employers. Oz is joined by three strong challengers who fought their way into Premier League through Challenger: AX.Alicia, 
IM_NesTea and top-3 (?!?!) Canadian Protoss desRow.Having fallen under the radar for most of 2012,
Oz started to pick himself back up in 2013. EG-TL's participation in Proleague saw them need to bolster their Protoss line, and Oz found himself put in a perfect situation. He was given opportunities to compete in top level tournaments in both Korea and abroad, and was thus motivated to hone his skills. Oz slowly started stringing results together in both Proleague and individual tournaments, and reminded fans that he had once been called the next-big-thing in 2011. It all culminated with a second place finish at IEM Shanghai, where he lost to fellow EG beneficiary Revival. However, disaster soon struck. EG released Oz, Revival and aLive at once as part of a wide scale budget cut on their SC2 team. It happened at an unfortunate time for Oz as he seemed to be growing under EG, but instead found himself right back in the unemployment line. Fast forward to 2014 and Oz' situation has not improved. But one good run in WCS America may change his fortunes yet.
His opponent would probably sympathize with such troubles, but he can hardly be said to be familiar with them. While
IM_NesTea is well past his prime, he's still one of the most popular and successful StarCraft 2 players ever. Finding work will never be an issue for him, and you get the feeling that he's employed with IM at his own pleasure. After Nestea's marriage in 2013, you have to wonder how long his career as an active player will last. Nestea hasn't had any impressive results in 2013 that would indicate he has a chance of making a comeback, even though he is more than good enough to stick around in Premier League... Nevertheless, he seems to enjoy StarCraft 2 enough to keep at it, and the fans certainly love seeing him stay in WCS America. Though he's an underdog in this group, Nestea is still an incredibly smart player capable of taking games and series off anyone.
There's a special club in the SC2 scene that Oz is a part of. This lonely hearts club band consists exclusively of Protoss players who were once considered to be world-class talents, but never won that elusive championship to prove it. Club president San recently resigned to join the rapidly growing, opposing club of "Protoss players who are suddenly winning for some mysterious reason," leaving Axiom's
Alicia to take his place. Three silver medals in his career make Alicia's storyline in WCS 2014 pretty straight-forward: can he finally win a championship?Amazingly enough, the player in this group who has attracted the most attention lately might be
desRow. Once the proprietor of a niche entertainment stream, desRow has slowly developed his skills and become a legitimately good Premier League class player. He broke through Challenger League in convincing fashion, defeating the Korean Terran Apocalypse. Unfortunately, his good deeds have been rewarded with placement into a three Korean group.There is hope for desRow however as none of his opponents look in their best shape at the moment. Also, instead of facing Taeja, HerO, Jaedong, Polt, or HyuN, desRow at least gets to play Koreans who haven't won championships in the last two years. Finally, PvP is famous as the match-up of upsets, and desRow will surely have been practicing hard to exploit that point.
Predictions!
Oz has been immensely quiet as of late but if he's able to pick up where he we last saw him then he has a good shot at taking this group. He'll probably be closely followed by Alicia, who has always been one of WCS America's better players despite his lack of publicity. I would not be surprised to see them playing for first place in the winners' match. But hey, throw in a few muta base-trades (Nestea's favorite ZvP strategy) and a few PvP build order wins there, and there is no result we can't dream about.
Oz > Nestea
Alicia > DesRow
Oz > Alicia
Nestea < DesRow
Alicia > DesRow
Oz and Alicia advance.
