WCS Challenger Season Three: Looking Back

WCS Challenger is in the books and with the Premier matches already determined (thanks again to a giggling Apollo), so it's time to step back and look at the results (specifically NA/EU).  In terms of predictions, here's how things went for myself, Aligulac, and TL:
Me/TL: 14-7 (66%; NA 4-3/3-4, EU 10-4/11-3)
Aligulac: 13-8 (61%; NA 4-3, EU 9-5)
This is a slight improvement from me over season two (13-8), a slight decrease for Aligulac (15-6), and an improvement for TL (11-7; for some reason they didn't predict FireCake vs Zanster and I can't find their predictions for the first day of NA).

Balance:
PvZ 2-2
ZvT 3-2
TvP 3-2

Map scores:
Coda (12) TvP 4-1 ZvT 3-1 PvZ 2-1
Cactus Valley (10) PvZ 3-1 TvP 2-1 ZvT 1-2
Iron Fortress (9) TvP 2-2 PvZ 2-1 ZvT 1-1
Terraform (8) ZvT 3-1 TvP 2-1 PvZ 1-0
Dash and Terminal (6) TvP 2-1 ZvT 1-1 PvZ 0-1
Moonlight Madness (4) ZvT 2-1 TvP 1-0
Bridgehead (3) ZvT 1-1 PvZ 0-1

This is a pretty even distribution between the top-five maps (and it's no surprise older maps were favoured, with Terraform getting the most love out of the new maps).  It's difficult to get a balance feel from such a small sample, but Terrans enjoyed an edge on Coda over Protoss (continuing a trend from season two).

Other observations: the most entertaining matches in NA were the PvP between Neeb and StarDust (link) and the PvT between Hitman and Xenocider (link); most of the other series were one-sided stomps and the five-set match between Kane and HuK wasn't particularly dynamic.  On the EU side there were one-sided series as well (especially day two), but overall it was more competitive, including the most entertaining ZvZ I've seen in awhile between Zanster and FireCake (link) [a reader reminded me of TLO vs Bly was, so here's your link].  Quite a few players in both regions got caught using the same strategy over and over again and got crushed.

The R32 consists of 13 Zergs, 10 Terrans, and 9 Protoss, which compared to last season is one less Zerg and one more Terran.

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)