SPL 13-14 Power Rank

#8 Prime
When it was announced that Prime, IM and MVP had joined KeSPA, most of us immediately jumped to the conclusion that they wanted to participate in Proleague. We were right about that, and it seems like we'll be right about the second conclusion most immediately came to, as well: Prime is in trouble. With their roster at the time consisting of Maru, ByuN, Creator, B-teamers Chance and TerrOr along with the complete wild card Kal (GooJila). On that roster, Maru was the undisputed ace as the only consistently performing player on Prime in 2013, and indeed one of the best performing players of the year overall. A roster like that was never going to be competing for first place, but they still stood a chance at redeeming themselves through hard work and dedicated preparation. However, with Maru's recent departure to Jin Air Green Wings, the Startale fan in me cheers as Prime have gone from kind of fucked to completely screwed.
Unless Byun and Creator pull it together and get back to their best shapes and Kal shows the world that his great Hybrid League performance was something he could build upon, Prime will end up last. They no longer have a super-ace player to carry them in (if there even is one) an all-kill round and they lack the depth to consistently survive Bo7 matches in Proleague format. MKP may still be in the Prime house looking cute, but unless the team pulls out a miracle, all of MKP's former SC2 team mates will have cried enough to make MKP look like a badass by the season's end.

#7 MVP
Spots 7 through 5 are hotly contested and really just toss-ups. As for team MVP, they unquestionably have a lot of depth, an important ingredient to Proleague success. Though for all their depth (DongRaeGu, KeeN, Dream, Super and team league-sniper supreme TAiLS is not a joke line-up), I remain worried about the team's consistency. DRG regularly goes back and forth between champion and scrub, and while his right-hand men Super and Dream doubtless have incredible potential, they don't consistently put up the results players on their level should. Dream's TvZ when he is on top of his game is reminiscent of MMA in his prime and Super should be a robust team league anchor, but for some reason MVP never strings these things together. I'm very open to the possibility of MVP reaching the playoffs if a few of their players can find the consistency necessary to perform in 2-4 games each week for months on end, but I wouldn't want to bet on it.

#6 Samsung Galaxy Khan
Spots 7 through 5 are hotly contested and really just toss-ups. Samsung Khan (now with 100% more Milky Way) is the team of the B-teamers. eMotion, Solar and BurNing, despite their complete lack of offline results, are part of the next generation of SC2 pros. With no history in competitive Brood War to speak of, these are the KeSPA pros that are carving names for themself solely on the back of their performances in SC2, through almost solely online tournaments. These three guys play a lot of online cups and qualifiers. Although their match histories aren't the most impressive, all of them have at least one match-up hovering around 65% win rate or higher, despite the great wall of lag that often hinders Korean players from performing in EU cups. With Sora's highly impressive, almost meteoric rise to prominence starting with WCG Korea, I've learned to observe the online cups and qualifiers with more interest. And these three, along with last season's regulars Reality, Stork (who is bound to keep improving given his incredible mindset and approach) and RorO (ew), have the potential to either bring Samsung Galaxy Khan to the playoffs, or send them crashing and burning. With how impressive Samsung's b-team trio has looked recently, I feel inclined to believe in the first alternative rather than in the second.

#5 KT Rolster
Spots 7 through 5 are hotly contested and really just toss-ups. KT, KT, KT. Alternative spelling: Flash, Flash, Flash. Last season was a minor disappointment in the eyes of those who prefer KT over SKT, with only two players really delivering: Flash and, somewhat surprisingly, WookiP7GABZest. But despite the duo's Proleague exploits, they failed to make a significant mark in individual leagues just like the rest of the team. Although Flash was booted from Code S through unfortunate (though understandable - Flash's legacy leaves him with a giant target mark on his head) chains of events, usually involving groups of utter annihilation, it's hard to say that 2013 has been a fairly disappointing year for the man known as God. While Flash could carry KT's name in Brood War, this isn't the case in SC2 and the multiple Proleague champions are left with a kind of mediocre-looking line-up. Don't get me wrong, KT's line-up isn't weak and their combined experience is superior to most other teams in the league, but it's not a star-studded line-up. TY and Flash were among the top performing players last season (Flash being the MVP), but where other teams seem to have found new strength in different players or acquisitions, KT has remained seemingly stationary. Once more, it comes down to Flash and Flash's support cast. Puzzle, Stats, TY, Zest and Crazy have all shown periodic flares of brilliance (everything is relative), but with the risk of sounding like a broken record I must repeat that consistency is key. If more than one or two players on KT can bring their play closer to their actual potential, I have a hard time seeing KT not making the playoffs. But it isn't always that simple with KT.

#4 Incredible Miracle
At this point, I feel like IM could start calling themselves IAOG (Incredible Amounts Of Gold) instead. Just look at all the gold. Now, the IM of 2013 isn't as impressive as the IM of 2011, but their current roster seems to have sacrificed some of its gold-digging power for more depth. IM is far from a 2-man show today, and their team, with the addition of Liquid'HerO has too many good players for me to talk about each one in-depth. I'll let this picture speak for itself:



In a team-league format like Proleague's, I'd put money on IM's three best performing players being, in any order: ByuL, First and YoDa. Squirtle isn't in his best shape ever at the moment and Nestea/Mvp are huge question marks. Chances are, since IM is in Proleague, that they will be a lot more willing to participate than they've historically been when it comes to team leagues, and their strategical minds could be of great assistance to IM. Will they actually be good enough to regularly play (and win) themselves, though? It's hard to say, but with Ruin and YongHwa and their Liquid mercenary for backup, IM won't even need to field their combined seven GSL championships. This gives them a little room to get cute with line-ups, more than many other teams can afford.
UPDATE: KangHo apparently left Incredible Miracle. IM thus drops to 4th place.

#3 Jin Air Green Wings
Until yesterday, I would have put Jin Air in 7th place just ahead of Prime. A roster consisting of TRUE, Terminator, Savage, MANBABY and Cure doesn't really inspire confidence. Polar opposite of many SC2 teams, those 5 would make a great bulk in any team but unfortunately seem to lack a super-ace on the level of Maru, Soulkey or Parting. Fortunately for ex-Team 8, the Jin Air money seems to have remedied this with the acquisition of not one, but two aces: Maru and sOs. Two WCS champions stronger, Jin Air suddenly looks a lot less like the Team 8 that had to struggle with ace matches and more like a team that'll be at its best at match point. For each match, Jin Air can bring five reliable players and leave the sixth match for whoever they feel fits the most. Having 7-8 players capable of consistently winning games is a huge advantage in the Proleague format. Add in the patented unpredictability of sOs and Maru for most if not all ace matches, and Jin Air becomes a juggernaut that'll only be stopped by teams with equal rosters. Which, naturally, isn't that many.

#2 SK Telecom T1
"Zealously, you're crazy! Have you even looked at SKT's line-up? They're completely unbeatable!", you say. "Yes, they have the most impressive roster", I answer. "But that's not all there is to team league success". This is a well-documented fact in Starcraft. Just having the star power doesn't make your team the winning team. IM repeatedly failed to win GSTL despite their line-up becoming scarier by the season, and there are similar examples in Brood War when a team had the most impressive line-up in terms of individual league results and still failed to deliver. It happens, and it makes me cautious when assessing SKT's chances in the upcoming season.
They'll make the playoffs unless a miracles happens, that much is for certain, but beyond that point, what is certain?
As their core players, they have PartinG, Rain and Soulkey, with soO and Classic filling the support roles. FanTaSy is the wildest card in Proleague and might actually decide whether or not SKT wins the season. If iloveoov has taught him that having a 2k bank at 15 minutes actually isn't very useful, his trademark high-octane aggression and superb micro will make him a force to be reckoned with and probably enough to cover up any weaknesses that may surface in SKT's line-up as the season progresses. If not, however... Well, he'll keep sucking and SKT's fate will pretty much hang on the same 4-or-so players never losing, which isn't a comfortable spot to be in as a team.

#1 CJ Entus
"Zealously you're drunk, go home!", you say. "I don't drink alcohol!", I reply, upset.
Seriously, though, putting CJ Entus in first place is a leap of faith, I do not deny it. But my track record with leaps of faith is very decent, and here is why CJ Entus will win SPL '13-14:

• The Coach Park effect: Yong Woon Park had a clearly positive effect on EG-TL last season. Though he joined the team well into the season, the players quickly began talking about improvements in team atmosphere and general practise environment, and my short chat with Coach Park at Dreamhack: Stockholm helped sell the picture that the guy is a genius. On CJ, it seems that he has had a similarly positive effect. He correctly predicted herO being the first player on CJ to win a premier championship, and the series of showmatches organised by CJ seems to be mostly his doing.
  
• Potential: Obviously, this point is a subjective one. Many would argue that players like Soulkey, Flash or Parting have equal or greater potential, but based on what I've seen recently, three of CJ's core players seem to have hit their strides simultaneously. IEM Singapore had the CJ trio consisting of Effort, Hydra and herO in the top 8, with both Effort and Hydra falling to the PvZ maestro San but putting on otherwise very convincing performances. The trio's kill list includes Oz, Dream (x2), Bomber, Squirtle, Hack, Mvp, DRG and San. What should strike you about this list is that it roughly represents the average skill level in Proleague, and if the trio keeps improving at their current pace, the list of players that could reliably stop them will keep shrinking.
  
• Sora: I won't lie, I'm a huge Sora fan. Behind Life, Sora is the player I'm rooting the hardest for and subsequently also the player I'm the most willing to be impressed by. But look at this shit, seriously. His match history is relatively short, but very impressive. He has an 81.48% win rate in PvT. Yes, you read that right. Sora has recently beaten Parting (74% PvP win rate) 3-1 in an offline Bo5, showcasing a mastery of both macro PvP and intense early-game micro battles. This fact alone bodes very well for any SPL ace matches, where Protoss players are bound to appear in great numbers.
  
• Wild cards: This point is closely tied with the Coach Park effect - the former SKT coach has an eye for talent and seems to be very good at developing said talent. Bbyong and SonGDuri have both made it into Code S this year, while Trust, Bunny and sKyHigh have all made it to Code A at least once. Should these three players raise their level of play to that of your average Code S player, CJ won't just have two (or more) stunningly good aces in herO and Sora, they will also have a bulk of players of all three races that can maintain a 50%+ win rate in Proleague, enough to win matches straight-up against weaker teams and enough to bring it to the ace match against the more dangerous teams, where the championship-winning play of Sora and herO can close it out.
  
  Edit: Proleague format confirmed to be Bo5. CJ wins.
  

Unlike last season, I don't think SPL 13-14 can be as one-sided as Woongjin's dominance during the regular season made it feel last season. SKT and CJ will, most likely, battle it out to the very last match - these two are far and away the teams that should be fighting for the #1 spot.
It'll be exciting.

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