The first day of WCS Challenger EU/NA is in the books, while Challenger matches in Taiwan etc have completed. In terms of predictions Aligulac did extremely well (8-1), while I got wrecked outside of NA (5-4). Before I get into today's match-ups, Has and Sen both return to Premier, stomping their opponents 3-0 each.
WCS Europe
I was quite happy that Apollo/Kaelaris cast the Challenger matches, rather than the Madals/Pengwin combination from last season (their replays, incidentally, seem to have vanished from Youtube for some reason). On the whole the series were not particularly dramatic, with the exception of TLO vs Nerchio, which is well worth checking out. Most of the games, both in EU and NA, had the very simple dynamic where one engagement determined the outcome of the game.
Snute 3 Bly 1
Other than game one, Snute had no difficulty dealing with Bly's aggression. Most of the problems for the Ukrainian involved his engagements rather than strategy. A brief recap of the games:
Echo: Bly kept cancelling Snute's third while going mutas vs Snute's roaches; in response to being behind Snute tried for Nydus, but Bly scouted it immediately, shut it down and Snute tapped out
Coda: Bly went early ling/bane and it failed completely; the game dragged on for a bit, but Bly was hopelessly behind
Expedition Lost: Bly went for an early roach/baneling attack, but Bly wasted his banelings and his attack was crushed, putting him hopelessly behind
Iron Fortress: Bly went two-base muta (like game one), but he was late in getting roaches and Snute simply ran over him before he'd made the transition
Welmu 2 Ret 3
My first failed prediction. Despite the exciting score the series itself was not particularly dynamic--I'd argue the series was less one that Ret won and more one that Welmu lost (particularly his needless cheese in game three and terrible engagement in game two). A look at the games (interesting note, Welmu did not go colossus in any of his games):
Coda: Ret went two-hatch before pool and Welmu used immortal-sentry to kill him before a meaningful muta transition
Vaani: Ret went for cheese with a proxy hatch (aiming for a spine rush), which Welmu accidentally saw immediately (Ret put it too close to the ramp); Ret took the gold, Welmu went phoenix, and lost the game when he lost his ground army while microing his phoenixes elsewhere (dying to roach/hydra)
Expedition Lost: Welmu went double proxy gate inside of Ret's base which was spotted immediately and crushed (a trend for the day, incidentally)
Echo: Ret went two-hatch before pool again, following up with a ling/roach attack to cancel the third; he got the cancel, but his army was crushed by Welmu's immortal-sentry army
Game five: Ret went for an early hydra/ling all-in that Welmu wasn't ready for
TLO 3 Nerchio 2
By far the best series of the day and the only match that Aligulac got wrong (here my instincts were to take TLO (as you can see in my prediction post), but I didn't and failed along with the odds). The games:
Echo: an odd game as Nerchio won the initial ling engagement and then simply died to TLO's follow-up roach attack
Coda: featured a longer ling/bane period with TLO moving to roaches earlier again, this time just killing the third; Nerchio caught up, fell behind due to burrowed roach harass, but took a much better army engagement and that mixed with harass and infestor use won him the game
Expedition Lost: Nerchio went for mutas while TLO attacked with roach//bane (backdoor) and won (amusingly, TLO brought drones with the attack to make spores)
Vaani: both players were passive as they transitioned to roach; Nerchio won the first major engagement (aided by better upgrades), putting TLO fatally behind
Cactus Valley: TLO went 1/1 ling/roach against Nerchio's pure roach and completely steamrolled the Polish player
uThermal 1 Lilbow 3
Yet another fail for me, as the Dutch Terran made some critical errors in falling to Lilbow. The games:
Coda: uThermal did tremendous damage with widowmine drops and harassment, leading to Lilbow going an all-in with two colossus (the Frenchman's strat du jour), which was deflected; Lilbow got back into the game with DTs, but was ultimately annihilated in the next army engagement
Iron Fortress: uThermal went for a widowmine drops again, but this time Lilbow shut them down(uThermal got way too committed to them), putting the Protoss so far ahead the end was never in doubt
Echo: Lilbow went for a two-colossus all-in which uThermal did not anticipate
Vaani: widowmine drop vs blink attack; the drop hit at the right time and did damage, but despite preparing for the blink all-in uThermal's wasn't able to manage his defence and lost
WCS NA
With Rotterdam still in the Netherlands, Gretorp joined Nathanias to cast the games. I had mixed feelings about the latter in the previous season, but he's had months to catch up with the meta and was more on point this time around.
HuK 2 StarDust 3
The Canadian made this close and certainly could have won (illustrating the vulnerability of StarDust yet again), but ultimately HuK made more mistakes. The games:
Coda: HuK went blink vs oracle into robo; while the latter didn't cause damage, HuK wound up ahead anyway; good harass from StarDust and a better main army engagement won him the game
Echo: both players opened the same way, except HuK pressured earlier; poor stalker control put StarDust ahead, but the Canadian used stargate play to even things up and then pull ahead with an earlier third, crushing the Korean in their main engagement
Vaani: HuK went for a proxy two-gate in StarDust's base which was scouted early and just like Welmu's above it failed utterly
Expedition Lost: HuK went DTs and StarDust had no idea until it was too late
Cactus Valley: both players opened up stargate, with HuK using a proxy; the players wound up roughly even, but pressure by HuK afterwards went very poorly and he never recovered from his over commitment
Kane3 PiLiPiLi 0
The Canadian was on form tonight as he read his opponent well and punished him at every opportunity. The games:
Vaani: Kane went for some early lings to cancel the third and followed it up with roach/ling pressure that forced PiLiPiLi into a gateway all-in, dying to mutas before he could execute it
Coda: very passive beginning with PiLiPiLi opening with phoenix into an attack with gateway units; Kane saw it coming, held it off, got ahead, and ran him over with roach/hydra/ling (this was PiLiPiLi's best game, incidentally)
Iron Fortress: PiLiPiLi went stargate with a hidden third; Kane went into mutas and PiLiPiLi was too stretched out trying to defend all his bases and died
Hydra 3 Zeal 0
As expected, the least interesting series of the night. The games:
Expedition Lost: Zeal went for an in-base proxy 2-gate as Hydra took a gold expand (which he cancelled once he spotted the proxy); like the other proxy gates today it failed, although Hydra's errors made it the most difficult of the holds
Echo: Hydra went two-hatch before pool and Zeal responded by fast-expanding and got completely stomped
Vaani: Hydra went for the gold expand and Zeal again tried to macro up; Hydra was messing around (building swarmhosts and ultras) and while this allowed Zeal to almost max out it really didn't matter
This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)
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