“Photo courtesy of battle.net”

There are a lot of different things to look out for this weekend at the WCS Season 2 Finals. Here are some of the ones I’m most interested in (in no particular order):

Maru – does he have enough talent?

Maru is our defending WCS Korean champion, and as such, must be considered one of the tournament favorites. The kid is extremely young, ridiculously talented, and already a long time veteran of offline conditions.

The thing is, if you look at the way WCS Korea went down, Maru had amazing plans for everyone. He took Rain and INnoVation apart piece by piece. Amazing play, but the way he did it was very format-specific. He had time each week to prepare for one match. This weekend, he’s going to have a huge amount of opponents, with almost no preparation time for each match. In this type of tournament, its more about being solid and steady, less about mind gaming your opponents.

So the question for Maru is, does he have enough raw talent to fall back on his mechanics and patented aggression to make it deep and perhaps even win the season 2 finals?

Rain – safe and steady…but what about his PvP?

Rain is playing some fantastic StarCraft right now, fresh off a 2nd place finish in WCS Korea. His solid defensive macro-based play is just the type of thing that will get you deep in a weekend tournament. Without a question, Rain should be one of the players on everybody’s short list to win this event. Looking at the lineup of players, Rain is probably a favorite vs both Zergs, and every Terran except INnoVation (and maybe a few others like Maru can be argued..). The problem for Rain this weekend, though, could be his PvP. Generally speaking, Rain has had ridiculously strong PvP. So strong in Wings Of Liberty that he literally mapped out how to properly play it. There are some holes in his HotS PvP though. It’s not the unbeatable and perfectly constructed game that we saw from him in WoL.

Rain might be able to go really far in this tournament, or even win, if he can show us some world class PvP.

“Photo courtesy of battle.net”

Jaedong – he’s still coming.

People say Jaedong’s ZvP is weak. Yes, he generally gets killed in the matchup, but hes actually playing it extremely strongly now.

And, well….he’s Jaedong. And because he’s Jaedong, he is probably pretty damn sick of 2nd places. And because he’s Jaedong, and he’s sick of 2nd places, he might just hit SSJ (Super Sayain Jaedong) level 2 and kill everybody.

Also take into consideration that all the pro’s preparation against Zergs is probably at an all time low for this event. The stars may just align.

INnoVation – 2 in a row?

We were all sure that INnoVation would win WCS Korea Season 1. Almost. So close.

We were all sure that INnoVation would win WCS Season 1 Finals. eZ np.

We were all sure that INnoVation would win WCS Korea Season 2. Big surprise falling out so ‘early’.

Now ask yourself, why are we always so sure that INnoVation will win every event? Well, because he’s the best player in the world, that’s why. He might actually just take down his 2nd season finals in a row, and get almost burried in WCS points. What a feat that would be.

Scarlett and Welmu (yes, yes, and Naniwa//Grubby as well..)

Of course, everyone’s eyes are going to be on the foreigners, hoping to see them do well. Naniwa and Grubby probably have the biggest fan bases, and this is a position that many people would expect them in. We’ve seen it before from them, and we will see it again. I’m excited to see them play, but Scarlett and Welmu are even more exciting this time.

First, Scarlett:

She’s good. Damn good. Scary good. A Korean killer at heart, and with the same advantage as Jaedong as being one of the only 2 Zergs (people are bound to under-prepare for them), Scarlett could do amazing things in this tournament. This is definitely a huge opportunity for her.

Second, Welmu:

Welmu, from a strategic point of view, plays better PvP than almost all the Korean pros. In the initial group with 2 Protoss players and Jaedong, Welmu is not someone who most see advancing. It might happen though. The kid is seriously legit. If he can keep his nerves under wraps, and execute what his brain knows about PvP, he may very well make it out. And of course, then, with a bit of bracket luck, he could go even further. Very excited to see what he can do this weekend.

“Photo courtesy of battle.net”

So awesome.

This weekend is going to be, in my estimation, one of the best weekends of the year for SC2. Definitely one you don’t want to miss.