ESFI World

As ASUS RoG Assembly Winter 2012 approaches, ESFI World's Derek Staley and Reece Flexner put their heads together on several topics related to the event.  Check out the video for a discussion between our two reporters and read the complete preview below.

Head-to-head video preview by Derek Staley and Reece Flexner

Is this just “the best of the rest” with MLG Winter Arena happening at the same time?

Derek: I don’t think there’s any way to really argue the fact that that the player pool at MLG is overall a bit stronger. Arena will have 3 players who were in the top 8 of GSL this season, including DongRaeGu who is in the round of 4. Add in other Code S staples including Mvp, Nestea, and MarineKing, and MLG has a pretty loaded player pool.

Reece: Still, there are plenty of solid players who declined even participating in the qualifiers, just so that they could attend Assembly. SeleCT, HerO, PuMa, Stephano, Moon - all solid players that preferred to play in Europe. Besides, many of the GSL heavy-hitters do not participate in European tournaments anyway, so the player list might not have looked that different even without MLG.

Derek: Absolutely, Assembly still has a great list of participants. Were MLG played on any other weekend I think we’d have a lot more people talking about this event. We should see a lot of interesting match-ups between mid level Koreans and some of the top European pros that could provide some upsets and compelling storylines.

Reece: The grand prize for both tournaments is the same, so there is just as much on the line. And perhap most importantly, a lot of the fan favorites are at Assembly as well. Stephano, BlinG, and elfi are national e-treasures in their home countries. HerO, PuMa, WhiteRa, and TLO are all hugely popular. And Moon is as much an international esports celebrity as any player at Winter Arena.

What does MLG PPV mean for Assembly Winter?

Reece: Luckily, the timezones and schedule work out such that the overlap might not be that meaningful. Assembly starts at 3 in the morning EST, and the finals are at 2pm on a Saturday. Rather than direct competition, the real question might be viewer fatigue. Will viewers want to pay $20 after watching StarCraft for free until midday Saturday?

Derek: I don’t know if it can really do anything negative for Assembly. You make a good point about the starting time: a large part of the North American audience probably wasn’t going to tune in until the finals anyway since the games are played at 3 AM. I know that it’s difficult to avoid overlapping events at this point, but it would be nice to see increased cooperation between tournaments in that regard.

Reece: One issue is that MLG has announced a free preview stream for the first hour or so of each day to try to entice viewers to cough up the twenty bucks. If that hour happens during a particularly exciting match and nobody watches, there will not be very many people previewing the product. On the other hand, an amazing tournament may in fact just leave fans wanting even more StarCraft, so perhaps MLG will even benefit.

Derek: As far as viewer count goes, I think MLG going to a PPV model for Winter Arena is about the best thing Assembly could have hoped for once the weekend was double booked. There will be a lot of people who don’t want to pay the $20. On top of that, Assembly got a lot of free publicity out of the whole situation with people saying “Assembly is the same weekend, I’ll just watch that instead.”

A somewhat limited number of Korean players and many of the stronger ones will be at MLG. Will an international player break through Assembly?

Derek: I don’t think so. A lot of people are going to point to Stephano right away as the international hope, but if we’re playing the odds you have to go with the Koreans. Just about every Korean player will have a legitimate shot to win the whole thing, and with 10 Koreans attending, I’ll take my chances with them.

Is Stephano the international hope?

Reece: At Assembly Summer, the Scandinavians did very well for themselves. Seven players in the round of 16 were Swedes and Fins. There were far fewer Koreans playing then, but I think the home field advantage means that we should be looking for some Northern Europeans to take down big names. Also, they are used to fending off bears with frost-bitten hands, which I hear happens in Finland.

Derek: I don’t doubt that some Koreans will fall to early upsets, but I just can’t see all of them losing. When there are 2 or 3 Korean players in a tournament, it’s a lot easier to have a couple of big upsets and knock them out. When there’s 10, somebody is going to need to outplay them consistently because you’re going to hit one of them almost every round as the event progresses. I just don’t see anybody outplaying all of these guys throughout the weekend. That said, Stephano did manage to draw a group without a single Korean player.

Reece: As much as I hate to agree, I do. Seven out of eight Koreans in the top eight would not surprise me at all. Still, I’ll be cheering hard for hometown heroes, since it will be their wins that pump up the crowd.

How about the groups and player list? It was invite only, yet there were just half as many Zergs as the other two races.

Reece:  It does seem a bit odd that there are so few Zergs in attendance, but there were nearly only Zergs at Sao Paulo, so I guess it evens out. In terms of groups, it’s always tricky with a completely unseeded tournament. A random selection can give unbalanced results of race and nation representation, but spreading different categories too thin is a good way to ensure all-Korean or all-Terran rounds early on.

Derek:  I never really look too much into the racial distribution of invites, and that’s especially true when there’s another event going on at the same time. You mentioned the 10 Zerg players at IEM Sao Paulo, and Kiev had 9 Protoss players. Racial balance would be nice, but when it comes down to it these tournaments take the best and most marketable players they can get.

Reece: I just worry that we will have another Zerg-less Ro8. Only Stephano and Moon seem to be good bets to make it out of of their their groups. While it’s great to see some PvT as the matchup really seems to be evolving at the moment, I always get discouraged from watching as soon as one race gets eliminated. At least the groups seems rather balanced, with none being particularly weak or strong. I have confidence that the best players will make it into later rounds.

Derek: As much as I enjoy watching ZvP, if we lost all of the Zerg players and I dont’ have to see a ZvZ all weekend, I think I’ll be ok with that. I’m one of the people who finds TvT really interesting to watch, as well as TvP, so it won’t have a huge negative impact on me either way. Still, it would be nice to see the variety late in the event and have at least on Zerg player make a deep run.

Aside from Korea, the two big player blocs are Sweden/Finland and Russia/Ukraine. Which pair of countries is likely to do better? 

Derek:  Normally, I’d say Sweden/Finland because I think they have a better collection of talent overall. But not here.  Without players like MorroW, NaNiwa, ThorZaIN, SjoW, and SaSe, many of the best Swedes won’t be in attendance and the Russia/Ukraine group looks pretty strong with players like Brat_OK, Happy, Strelok, and Kas.

Reece:  Holy geez I always forget how deep Sweden's pool of talent is.  Still, you’re right- most of Sweden’s top players are in fact at MLG while the Russians and Ukrainians are only giving up Pomi. Kas and Brat_OK alone are enough to think that Russia may do the best of the non-Korean countries.

Derek: It’s pretty amazing that Sweden can give up that many players and still have Jinro, Seiplo, and Bischu at Assembly.  Add in elfi, Welmu, and Satiini from Finland and that group is still pretty solid.  I still don’t think they’ll be able to keep up with their Russian and Ukrainian counterparts though. .

Reece: Their best chance is the home-field advantage. Also, Elfi sometimes will come out of nowhere and beast an entire tournament, so perhaps he is the most likely player to represent the host country well..

Underdog

Reece: White-Ra always seems to do inordinately well when he plays close to home. Obviously he’s not on home soil, but perhaps he’s close enough for that advantage to take effect. Also, Select has been a bit quiet lately. It feels like it might be time for him to make another solid run.

Jonathan "Jinro" Walsh

	Name	Jonathan Walsh
	Handle	Jinro
	Age	23
	Country	Sweden
	Team	Team Liquid
	Race	Terran

Derek: I picked Kas as my underdog in Kiev and he finished 3rd, so I’m going to go with him again. He’s playing extremely well this year, winning the ONOG Invitational in addition to his Kiev performance. I have high hopes for him this year so I may as well stay consistent on my underdog picks.

Reece: For more non-Korean picks, I really want TLO and Jinro to do well. TLO recently nearly all-killed team Prime in the IPL TAC. Jinro is much more wishful thinking, just because I feel like I haven’t even seen him play a match in forever. For my Korean “underdog” I’ve got to pick Moon. Despite having played next to no competitive StarCraft 2 lately, he always does so well as foreign tournaments, and I’m looking forward to seeing him own some... dudes of European decent.

Derek: TLO isn’t a bad pick, although he does draw Bling and two Korean players in his group in Polt and PhoeNix.  Moon is interesting because we don’t really know how much full time practice he’s had with Starcraft II lately.  We should be seeing a lot more from him this year than last, but it’ll be interesting to see if his full time SC2 has paid off yet or if he still needs a bit more time to get back up to speed.

Winner

Derek: Usually there’s a player or two who performing extremely well and stick out when looking for a potential winner.  That isn’t really the case here as none of the Korean players made it to the RO8 in Code S and several aren’t even in Code A right now.  That said, I’m going to go with HerO.  He’s shown the ability to perform well at international events, seems to be playing very well lately, and has a group that should be pretty manageable.

Reece: I love the growing HerO/PuMa rivalry, and each is good enough to take it. However, Polt is the only GSL winner in the tournament, so despite his being knocked out of Code A, I think I’ll take the safe bet and go with him.

Derek: Polt is a solid pick.  Despite his recent struggles in Code A he just recently rolled through the last qualifier for IPL4 in an absolutely stacked bracket.  Along the way he beat Dream, TheStc, Creator, Bomber, and my pick HerO.  His group should be a bit more difficult than HerO’s though, with BlinG, TLO, and PhoeNix.  Polt’s inconsistent play means that an early upset isn’t entirely out of the question.

Reece: While BlinG is quite good, Polt’s TvP is top notch, and the two Zergs are not on his level. HerO, on the other hand has to beat Select, who has 2-0’d him before, and Sieplo, who has shown himself to be a mirror match specialist in the past. It will probably depend on how the brackets fall, though, since there are four more rounds after groups.

By Derek Staley and Reece Flexner