KODE5 prevings Preview
Twenty of Europe and Asia’s finest competitors will trek to the Motherland this weekend for one of the most anticipated Warcraft events of the year, the KODE5 global finals.
Russia, although somewhat segregated, is an important piece of the E-sports puzzle with a huge Warcraft fan base. Not only Warcraft, but Counter-Strike is also a wildly popular title in Russia, making Moscow a prime location for one of the biggest E-sports events of the year.
Excitement for the KODE5 finals has been building slowly these past few months, the announcement that fan favourite and general security threat Andrei β*Deadman*β Sobolev would be participating got the fans especially excited. In addition to boasting some premium veteran talent at the event, KODE5 also offers the opportunity for up and comers to showcase their abilities.
The likes of XyLigan, Happy and TeRRoR are all talented players literally bursting at the seams with potential, just waiting for an opportunity to score their first big international win. Yoan "*ToD* Merlo – Seed #1
  First under the proctoscope… I mean microscope, is human player Yoan βToDβ Merlo of the German based Mousesports. Merlo has been off and on lately, since as far back as the Extreme Masters finals if not longer. His performance will be difficult to predict given how sensitive he is to tournament surrounds. A light breeze could very well cost him a pivotal match.
Yoan’s trouble spots are his orc and undead games, granted it usually takes a world class orc or undead (Lyn or Lucifer for example) to bring him down, but sitting slap bang between TeRRoR and HasuObs is no laughing matter. It’s well within the realm of possibilities that the undead duo could best him.
ToD puts far too much stock in his fast expansion strategy and rarely recovers from losing his expansion in the early stages of a match. When up against orc, more often than not, if ToD should lose his expansion early then he’ll go all in with a tower push at the enemy’s base. A move I suspect won’t fly with Grubby for a second.
I believe more so than race match ups, Grubby in fact will be ToD’s biggest obstacle for this event. Grubby has a strong human match and is very much in the know of ToD’s strategy and habits. It’s quite likely that should any player be eligible to win this event they’ll have to go through Grubby to do it, ToD has to be prepared not just for orc, but for Grubby. Manuel “Grubby” Schenkhuizen – Seed #2
  Grubby’s performance lately has been quite the sight to behold. Two very strong performances at the Race War and Road of the King events have gone a long way towards proving Grubby is out of his slump and has been ever since the Extreme Masters event.
Schenkhuizen’s trouble spots are without doubt his night elf and mirror match-ups. His weaker mirror match we can let slide in light of the poor orc turn out this year. RotterdaM could pose a slight threat when taking their previous encounters into consideration, but it’s quite unlikely we’ll see RotterdaM advance from his group, so it’s not something to lose sleep over.
It’s essential Grubby has practiced his night elf game and gotten it down to a science, there’s little room for error when up against Shy or Soccer. The mass talon strategy seems to be giving Grubby a spot of bother when he’s up against someone who knows how to use it, Shy and Soccer just so happen to posses that very ability.
Grubby’s group is quite low risk with only XyLigan posing a direct threat. Grubby’s powerful human match up should see him right when up against the Russian, but then again XyLigan is known for being one hell of a competitor on LAN. The result of this match should be a good indication of how Grubby is liable to fair against InFi or ToD.
Given the lack of serious orc competition it’s safe to assume Grubby has had ample time to fine tune his night elf game, a good use of map vetoes to minimize the risk of a loss and Grubby could be laughing all the way to the Grand Final. Deok Man “SocceR” Yoon – Seed #4
  The duck man qualified from what was probably the most difficult qualifier of the year, having to topple the likes of FoV, Moon and Lyn before being presented a ticket to the final. SocceR, for quite a while now, has been a devastating force both internationally and in the local Korean scene, tearing up AWL and KODE5 events like it was going out of fashion.
Not to break habit, SocceR has once again found himself in the middle of relativly tough group. SocceR could run into trouble early on with competitors like Deadman and Happy sharing his group. Deadman is as of yet uncategorized given his long inactive period, but it’s quite possible he could come to the event back on form and as dangerous as ever.
Happy meanwhile has been improving by leaps and bounds. His performance at the NGL Finals stuck out like a sore thumb in comparison to his teammates lackluster performance and again it’s absolutely within the realm of possibility that Happy shows up firing on all cylinders.
SocceR may find himself in what is arguably the toughest group, but it’s nothing out of the ordinary for this competitor. SocceR has been performing wonderfully these past few months and shows no signs of stopping, surely a top contender for the championship title this weekend. Predictions
I’m having a difficult time beating down and silencing the fan boy in me who is dying to scream “GRUBBY MAKE WINNINGS!”, but there’s a nagging feeling in the back of my head that says both SocceR and InFi have been practicing twenty five hours a day in preparation for this event.
Against my better judgment I’m going to let my inner fan boy out and predict that Grubby will finish top, with ToD right behind him, SocceR in third, InFi taking fourth and Happy pinching fifth.
I might not be entirely objective with that one mind you, so I wouldn’t go running to XLBet just yet.
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