Ladies and Gentlemen! The greatest Starcraft II tournament the world has ever seen has arrived in spectacular fashion – the 16 best players of 2013, a $250,000 prize pool up for grabs, and two days of glorious matches casted by the best in the business.
Oh I forgot to mention the best part… BLINK-182 WILL BE PERFORMING AT THE CLOSING CEREMONY!! Just kidding… about it being the best part of course (yes, Blink-182 is really performing at Blizzcon).
This article will highlight my top picks for each respective race, my pick for wildcard of the tournament and foreign hope (I’ll give you three guesses but you’ll only need one!), and of course THE WINNER. Let us begin:
Top Zerg Players
Soulkey is the best zerg in the world right now, period. I could end my analysis at that, but the success + longer length of careers (& relative lack of strong zergs post-WoL) that HyuN and Life have enjoyed currently place them above Soulkey in the global zerg ranking list. That will easily change this weekend if Soulkey wins it all. He’s strong in every matchup that doesn’t involve players named ‘Dear’ or ‘MC’, and if he’s meeting up with one of them it will be in the finals. I suspect he’s been practicing his ZvP since his recent WCS Season 3 Finals loss, so look for him to overtake Naniwa in the first round by playing a reactionary, macro-based defensive playstyle – I don’t suspect that we’ll be seeing his sneaky builds until he hits one of his aforementioned nemesis. Soulkey’s biggest hurdle will be vs. Bomber if he meets him in the RO8 – if he overcomes that matchup, look for Soulkey to charge through to the finals with relative ease.
Jaedong is the only other zerg in the tournament (I wasn’t kidding when I said there was a relative lack of strong zergs post-WoL!), which gives him the second top spot by default. I can’t lie here – the road for the dong is going to be long, hard, and (get your minds out of the gutter!) treacherous. In fact it is going to be overwhelmingly treacherous. I wouldn’t be shocked to see him topple MVP, but I can’t see him taking a map against TaeJa or Dear in his second match. Trust me, I want to see Jaedong return to full tyrant mode just as much as the next nerd, but it’s not happening this year.
Top Protoss Players
Dear is trending – if this guy was a stock he’d be Twitter (TWTR). The sky is the limit for this 19 year old sensation from South Korea, and I don’t know if anyone outside of Maru or Soulkey has what it takes to defeat him. If he’s going to fall, it will be to self-inflicted error. Imagine for one second the nerves he’ll need to display in order to win this tournament – sitting in the booth in the final BO7, the pressure of a nation on his shoulders, a royal roader, the WCS Season three champion, and now potentially the first ever WCS Grand Finals winner. Would you crack under the pressure? I’m not confident I wouldn’t, but then again I have trouble wrapping up ladder games these days. Who am I kidding? If there was ever a favorite, Dear is the chosen one.
HerO may be flying under the radar in this tournament. Sure, he’s been 2-1’d by sOs twice in October, and of course that’s his first matchup, but you know what they say: fool me once, shame on you – fool me twice, shame on me – fool me three… THAT AIN’T HAPPENING! Look for HerO to get his third-time’s-a-charm on and burst into the RO8 well-prepared for the terran that lies in wait. If someone can knock off Soulkey, and HerO has nothing but TvP matchups to the finals, I like his chances better than sOs’. If he’s been practicing with Taeja, I like his chances ever more.
Top Terran Players
INnoVation showed up in October. Despite losing to Taeja at DreamHack Bucharest and struggling with TvT, he’s still globally ranked as the best player in the world and crushing face in team leagues. We’ll see how much he’s developed versus terrans if he meets Maru in the RO8, but he’s got a favorable opponent to start the tournament in duckdeok, who has struggled in PvT recently. Unfortunately for him, there aren’t that many zergs in the tournament to beat up on, but if he can get past Dear late in the bracket and meet Soulkey in the finals it’s going to be his tournament to lose, and a prime opportunity for vengeance and redemption (WCS Korea Season 1 medivac blunder, anybody?).
Maru is going to be the best player in the world next year. With that being said, he’s *currently* leaps and bounds beyond any other terran in TvT, and that’s why I’m including him over others in this list of top terrans for the tournament. Is it possible he can get knocked out early? Sure – read my next paragraph to see my thoughts on that – but in all honesty, anything is possible in Starcraft II. The two biggest threats to Maru in this tournament are Dear and himself. Like Dear, Maru lacks the relative big tournament experience and self-admittedly stated that he doesn’t enjoy playing in front of monster crowds. Unfortunately for Maru, he’ll be playing in front of the largest crowd he may ever see, and it’s precisely the environment that his first round opponent thrives in…
Wildcard of the Tournament
…which brings me to my WILDCARD PICK: MC. The boss toss’ best matchup is PvT. Maru’s worst matchup is TvP. With initial luck like that, who’s to say his goal of hitting $500,000 in career earnings this year is far-fetched? I like his odds in every matchup, and if some of the favorites (Dear, Maru, INnoVation, Soulkey) get knocked off early, I like his experience in rising to the occasion to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Maybe he’s one of the biggest long shots of the tournament, but that’s why he’s my wildcard. If the stars align for MC, we may witness one of the greatest Starcraft II stories ever unfold before our eyes (barring any lag from Twitch servers, in which case we’ll see it unfold frame by frame before our eyes).
The Foreign Hope
That is unless, we see the only foreigner in the tournament, NaNiwa, defy all odds and provide us with the greatest comeback story of all time. For a guy who gets a lot of flak in the community (and his fair share of support, too), you can’t help but root for what seems like a once in a lifetime opportunity for NaNiwa. I dare you to not root for him versus Soulkey – hell, even if you’re a Soukey fan you won’t root against him – it’s not possible. I want NaNiwa to win the tournament. Is it going to happen? Let’s just say the odds aren’t good. But in reality, come Friday night, he’ll have the entire global eSports community rooting for him to win – that’s the stuff of legends – that’s what being the foreign hope is all about.
The Winner
You really want to know who I think is going to win? Isn’t it enough that I gave you eight possibilities already? Ok fine – if you want me to embarrass myself and to curse one of our global finalists I will! Here we go: I’m picking Maru to win the WCS Grand Finals. He’s a beast at TvT, I believe in the universal principle that the third time is a charm (he’ll likely meet Dear in the semifinals for the third time), and in my opinion he’s the best Korean Terran in attendance. I don’t root for Protoss players and I have a passionate angst for all things zerg (stop baneling busting me on ladder you jerks). In all seriousness, I hope you enjoy the tournament, and for all the information you’ll ever need in regards to all things WCS – GO HERE. Peace!