DH Moscow Preview: Last Turn Before the Finish Line

Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

by TeamLiquid ESPORTS

Ever since Blizzard revamped the SC2 scene with the WCS system, pacing has become the essential skill for a pro gamer. The pre-2013 mindset, focusing on a primary tournament while traveling to tertiary ones for extra cash and exposure, is antiquated in a world where WCS points spread like weeds and Blizzcon is the equivalent of a theme park ride. Currently, only a few players are tall enough to get on while solely sticking to their region. The rest must rely on frequent flyer miles, halting English and opportune brackets. For those unfortunate schlubs, it’s a pain to maintain the tenuous balance between reflection and exertion. One victorious run at a foreign event can accrue more WCS points than a similar outing at home, and careful planning can reap the benefits from both. On the other hand, franticly zipping around the world can be debilitating to one’s preparation and practice. Without a careful mixture of the two you could find yourself in a situation like soO, a routine finalist still struggling to guarantee his spot.

At this point in the year, any caution must be overridden by a tinge of desperation. Only two partner events remain open to all challengers, and both Dreamhacks will be points of contention for prospective Blizzcon attendees. Several players have signed up for both Moscow and Stockholm, hoping to shave the points gap before November. Players weren’t exactly bashing down Stadium Live’s doors to sign up though. Even before the Samsung boys and Life backed out to attend WECG qualifiers, the lineup was looking rather shoddy. Émigrés like TaeJa and Jaedong were conspicuously missing, as well as your standard globe-hoppers such as DRG. I doubt the missing Koreans were jubilant over missing a trip to The Hero City. It was a sorely needed opportunity for Solar, who might’ve made a decent run at Blizzcon if he had won Dreamhack and beaten Cure in GSL Ro8, and a lost source of foreign experience for his teammates. Moscow is also a financial blow to Life, who would have been a sure favorite to win after his performance at IEM Toronto. Crabby observers are already deeming it the worst Dreamhack lineup in years. They might be right (never forget Dreamhack Bucharest 2012, ugh) but Moscow still promises to be fun in its own way. The final 8 of this tournament will have a huge impact on who goes to the Global Finals and how hard the stragglers will have to work before October finishes.

You Get a Shot, and You Get a Shot, and YOU GET A SHOT

Who benefits from the Korean withdrawal here? Not the audience, who will be treated to a lower level of play and less memorable games. Not the organizers and casters, who must compensate with greater focus on hype and presentation. But for someone hanging onto this event like a life raft, this could be the best Dreamhack of their lives. Weak competition only makes it easier for Blizzcon hopefuls to get their required points and stay in the running. A few attendees must do well here in order to get to Anaheim.

mYi.jjakji (91.25% to 100.00%)*

Going to both Moscow and Stockholm, jjakji has the easiest chance to earn a berth at Blizzcon. All he has to do is reach the semifinals once. He should be very thankful for that. While he won’t be compelled to strive for first place, getting 4th place will be hard enough. Currently jjakji is an inch short of being a championship-caliber player. He garnered two semifinal finishes at IEM Sao Paolo and WCS Europe, losing 1-3 to MC in both circumstances; he barely missed the gold against Vortix in Vasacast Invitational.

This is jjakji’s best chance to win a premier tournament since Sao Paolo. The competition besides TRUE will be familiar, players that jjakji has faced for the entire year, and jjakji already whooped TRUE’s ass back at IEM Shenzhen. He knows from experience that none of them are unbeatable and one can only imagine the shenanigans he has planned. It’s just a matter of actually beating them, a prerogative that’s been pretty hard to accomplish recently. jjakji’s summer record looks incredible when you include all the wins he’s accumulated against middlebrow Europeans, slightly less impressive versus the cream of the crop. His most pressing concern is establishing a rhythm against protoss, as players like MC and First have been his banes in the past.

Liquid’Snute (34.46% to 99.99%)

Snute is the closest thing we have to a New Age Stephano. Over the last three weeks, he showed us that he might deserve to be crowned the new king of the foreigners. His incredible run to the Toronto quarterfinals was only marred by an ugly loss to Flash, where Snute became oddly sclerotic with his strategies. It was unbefitting of Snute, infamous for throttling opponents with his off-kilter muta/swarm host approach, to constantly bash his head against Zest’s defense with failed baneling busts. Just a week later he found more success at WEC, taking down some of the top Chinese to secure second place. Those placements were accompanied by several upsets against top-tier Koreans, enough that they no longer deserve to be called “upsets”. In particular his ZvP has been exemplary. He is 10-5 against everyone not called StarDust, including wins against Stork, sOs, and two marathon slugfests versus herO.

Oddly, the Korean pullout isn’t a great boon for him. He won’t shed tears over the loss of Life (who gave him a 1-6 boxing at IEM), but he might have tolerated Solar if Samsung committed all their players. He’s triumphed over Stork in the past and would likely win again if they met; meanwhile Dear plays a patient style that suits Snute’s commitment to attrition warfare. Meanwhile, the Samsung contingent might have helped Snute by eliminating the top terrans. Snute has lost and won against MMA/YoDa/jjakji in equal measure over the summer and while he ought to be confident in a 1v1 match, he would prefer not taking the risk at all.




Acer.MMA (18.22% to 65.76%)

2014 has been a mixed bag for MMA. The end of 2013 served as his renaissance, when he transformed from dead weight to a heavyweight challenger. In the span of three months he reclaimed his birthright with two semifinals appearances at Dreamhack Bucharest and WCS Europe. Meanwhile, he racked up a blistering 17-3 record in ATC Season 2 on the side. His return culminated with capturing the WCS Europe Season 3 title. Fans genuinely believed that the MMA of yore had returned, and he gave them little reason to doubt their eyes. Squint now and you might be able to maintain the illusion. Certain things stick out to biased eyes: a 16-10 record in ATC (with a resoundingly clutch performance in the grand finals), a 2nd place finish in WCS Europe.

Then there are the disappointments. MMA looked strong at HSC IX only to fall to Scarlett in the Ro8; Patience and ForGG made sure he wouldn’t get out of the Dreamhack Summer group stages; he appeared lethargic at IEM Shenzhen and performed worse; he was another casualty of the chaos that was Gfinity. This year MMA is the Jekyll and Hyde Show, and it’s a mystery which side he will show us at Moscow. Looking at his recent results, he’s lost his last three official matches. Then again, he went 4-17 before demolishing Liquid at the ATC grand finals. As MMA said in an interview, it’s all about his condition on game day.

TCM.YoDa (10.24% to 13.54%)

The best story out of Europe this summer is the rise of Snute; the second best story is the rise of YoDa. The more popular half of the Super Smash Bros, YoDa has risen from IM castoff to a respected WCS contender. He’s accomplished this without winning a major tournament or giving us a particularly laudable performance. IEM Toronto was his best placing since winning IEM World Championship, and he only reached the quarterfinals before he was squashed by Zest. But merely reaching that waypoint is a victory of YoDa’s campaign. Slowly he is reminding viewers that the old maxim still applies: macro terrans are scary.

Similar to Snute, YoDa must be feeling ambivalent about the recent change in Moscow’s lineup. On one level Life, Solar, Stork, and Dear would have been strong threats on an individual level. But in such a situation, he could sneak under the radar. Most players would be concerned with the StarTale zerg and the Samsung crew, assessing the present terrans as hazardous but known threats. Compared to a player like Solar, YoDa would be judged as a minor peril. Now he is a stumbling block for the aforementioned three players, and he can’t ignore the fact he’s a well-known player in the EU region.




NrS.Welmu (3.92% to 12.10%)

Once hyped as a possible foreigner hope, Welmu’s sharp rise has gradually smoothed out to a smooth incline. Welmu is known for getting moderate results at weekend tournaments, comfortably ending up in the Ro16 of most Dreamhack and Assembly events. The NewRoSoft protoss truly shines in WCS though. He has proven himself with two quarterfinal appearances this year and currently looks to repeat that result in WCS Europe Season 3. With some of the best PvP and PvZ in Europe, Welmu will eagerly take on the weakened field to break his inauspicious streak. That doesn’t mean he can afford to get tunnel vision here. Even if he wins Moscow, Welmu will likely have to take WCS Season 3 and finish well at Stockholm for a shot at Anaheim.

Goddamn, Just Leave Me Be

Moscow’s main storyline is how it impacts the Blizzcon race. Snute, jjakji, and MMA urgently want to take this tournament with different degrees of desperation. It’s almost a requirement that Snute wins while MMA has a slight cushion with WCS Europe, and all jjakji has to do is not die in the group stages. The greatest threats to their dreams are not the long shots (after all YoDa and Welmu will be under the same mental pressure), but the players without anything to lose. Most attendees have no shot at qualifying for the Global Finals; consequently, they have no quibbles over where they will ultimately finish. All these players want is the prestige and money that comes with winning Dreamhack, and they can pursue that goal with clear focus.

ROCCAT.HyuN (100.00% to 100.00%)

There’s nothing large at stake here for HyuN. He could forfeit all his matches at Moscow and only lose a pittance in the process. With his WCS America group scheduled for September 17th, I doubt he will even expend the necessary energy to do research on his opponents. It’s not like he’s intimate with their playstyles or anything; he’s only faced the European elite dozens of times in all sorts of random scenarios. Not to mention, it would be a Pyrrhic victory if taking Moscow resulting in failing his WCS America group.

HyuN’s primary motivation here is a thirst for trophies. Besides Symbol, HyuN is the most prolific zerg in SC2 history without an associated period of dominance. He was always acclaimed as one of the best zergs since his breakout in summer 2012, but he never parlayed his wins into a flurry of awards. No matter how successful he was at any given moment, he was inevitably overshadowed by someone else. Doing his initial rise to glory, Life hogged all the attention; when he won Dreamhack Valencia, Soulkey and Jaedong were the talks of the town; his WCS America win was a second thought to soO and TRUE. In retrospect there’s no better time to strike. Soulkey has declined to the point where he is (rightly) considered inferior to soO, and the latter has made his name off not winning when it counts. The throne is currently empty and HyuN is in a prime position to make his bid.

AI.Golden (4.96% to 8.70%)

The first business of eSports is entertainment. The second business is necromancy. No one truly retires in eSports. Sure, they might have every decent reason to put away their keyboards and return to a regular life. Bad backs, ruined wrists, life on the verge of poverty, failed dreams, toxic teammates, cramped beds in a virtual youth hostel, “no girlfriends”…there are an endless number of reasons to quit. And the siren song of computer-related fame keeps drawing them back in.

Golden’s return (thanks for making my tribute meaningless, bro) has been one of the happier examples of zombification. After announcing his retirement prior to Red Bull Battlegrounds: NYC, Golden found out that he had been mistaken. He was supposed to enlist for military notice in December 2014, not March. Deciding his departure would be a bit rash, he consequently joined Alien Invasion with a rejuvenated mindset. With a semifinal appearance in WCS Europe, second place finish at ESET Masters, and a quarterfinals run at Dreamhack Valencia, Golden is having the best year of his career. So far he’s shown he can be a possible contender at Moscow, and he might pull it off with some bracket luck.




Empire.Happy (2.42% to 8.01%)

Don’t laugh. Seriously guys, he’s a good player. One of CIS’ finest Warcraft 3 players back in the day, Happy has been searching for his old brilliance since he began playing SC2 in 2011. Since the release of HotS the Russian has slowly started to hit his stride, finishing in the quarterfinals of several events including a Ro8 finish in WCS last year. Although he has not ascended to the plain where MMA and jjakji reside, he is undoubtedly one of the best Europeans now. This week the Empire Terran managed to micro his way to a 2nd place finish in his WCS group. Hopefully he can keep the momentum going.

TCM.First (0.03% to 0.31%)

Mario gets the lion’s share of attention, so it’s no surprise Luigi is scarcely noticed. It’s a testament to how quickly fortunes change that an IEM champion could be called washed-up a year later, and First subsequently reversed his fortune to reclaim that status. Currently he is the best PvP player in Europe, being a regular thorn in MC’s side and sOs’ vanquisher at IEM Toronto; First also has the PvT chomps to beat first-rate players like TaeJa and Bomber, not to mention he can claim wins over every terran player in attendance. His only perceptible weakness is PvZ. Sometimes he achieves great things against HyuN and Sacsri. Sometimes he loses offhandedly to Reynor and Guru.

DeadPixels.TRUE (0.01% to 0.28%)

After falling out of GSL in unimpressive fashion, TRUE should enter Moscow with a white-hot coal burning in his chest. He needed to advance from his group. A GSL victory, however unlikely, was his only shot at reaching Blizzcon. Even a win at Moscow will be poor compensation compared to what could’ve been.

Contrary to popular belief, TRUE isn’t the clear favorite either. To be fair, he will probably steamroll any protoss he encounters and dismiss any zerg with the exceptions of Snute and HyuN. If he manages to dodge or beat them, he will still have to deal with his real nemesis: the entire terran race. The assembly of terrans here is decent and normally, they would be a severe annoyance to an experienced KeSPA talent. In TRUE’s case they constitute a palpable threat to his tournament life. He is one of the few Code S zergs who is simply bad at ZvT. Any doubts regarding that assertion can be easily alleviated by a quick look at his record. His career record is a lackluster 30-36 (45.45%); he is only 7-13 (35.00%) since July 1st. TRUE is capable of counteracting his typical ineptitude with preparation, and someone who has beaten Bbyong and TY should never be taken lightly. He won’t have time to plan for three different opponents over two days though, and an ill-fated meeting with MMA or YoDa could end his hopes.

BBoongBBoong (0.00% to 0.00%)



Huh? The Pizza Zerg finally emerges from the wilderness without a hint of warning. No one really knows who is sponsoring his trip or what he will contribute to the hodgepodge lineup. Does BBoongBBoong have one last spark of brilliance to show the world? Has he finally gone senile from years of mediocre results and failed prospects?

AI.Patience/Wayi.Daisy/Planetkey.Oz (???)

Technically, these players will gain something if they manage to win the tournament: money and a trophy. In the face of statistical despair, that’s all they can settle for this weekend. As the winner cries silent tears for his Blizzcon loss, he can dabble his moist eyes on the edge of the giant check. Or maybe not. PVC isn’t the most reliable sponge.

I hope this isn’t perceived as a snub. Historically, Patience has his best performances at Dreamhack. He made an improbable third-place run last year at Winter, defeating a who’s who of Korean talent, and more recently took sixth place at Summer. Similarly Daisy is one of those respectable opponents who doesn’t generate much interest, but will punish you at the slightest hint of underestimation. I wouldn’t place any bets on Oz though. His exit from WCS America Ro16 last season kicked off a massive slump, and there’s no telling when he’ll recover his winning ways.

Cascade.Kas/elfi/ImG.TargA/mYi.Serral

Godspeed gentleman. Don't cede an inch to the infidels.**

* The percentage shift refers to the player's chance of qualifying for Blizzcon if he wins Moscow. All statistics are taken from Die4Ever's WCS Predictor.

** Yes, this is a joke about the Crusades. Sue me.

Writers: CosmicSpiral, Peanuts
Graphics: Meru
Photo: GOMeXP. Blizzard
Editor: CosmicSpiral, stuchiu