As the WCS Europe Round of 16 Group C matches came to a close today, viewers and commentators alike were starting to finally feel a little more comfortable with the players they were seeing. After two days of stunning upsets, today’s competition saw Starcraft II international veterans NaNiwa and MMA moving on to the round of 8. Of course, even with familiar players, the round of 8 is already shaping up to be far different from the competition we saw last year. For one thing, MMA is the only Terran player to be moving on to the next round and is, in fact, the only non-Protoss player to move on so far. Tomorrow’s Group D matches will continue the ‘Toss heavy trend, with TitaN, MC, and MaNa all playing Protoss. Poor VortiX is Zerg’s only chance to move beyond this round. No pressure.

The preferred races of the players aren’t the only changes to be seen in this year’s competitive Starcraft scene. The series have also taken noticeably longer than games in the past. No longer are early attacks the deciding factors in games. Cheese has been nearly non-existent in this competition so far. More and more, we are seeing the deciding moments in games being large scale, battles between supply-maxed armies, rather than the more micro heavy, smaller, earlier plays of previous years. Given how many veteran players we have seen fall to newcomers in this bracket so far, it’s probably worth looking into favoring these new, long term tactics over the more aggressive play of the past.

The full replay of today’s games can be seen here