EPTDisclaimer: This is not an actual analysis, but a telling of a hero in a tragicomedy manner.
With a play style reminiscent of management zergs in their heyday, Zero appears to be an anachronism in the individual leagues. After all, zerg champions are donned by impeccable mutalisk micros in swarm seasons and not by scaling metal walls in the impenetrable terran maps. Zero suffers from being good, but not good enough, to compete for a championship in his respective matchups. His furthest runs in the individual leagues are both stopped in the semifinals—both of which ended with ZvZ, and both of those leagues ended with zerg champions. While blamed for his inconsistency, Zero is strangely consistent if we don’t look at his opponents— he is good with ZvP, bad in ace games, and always hovering around the .500 line in his ZvZ. As for ZvT, with the exception of Lee Jaedong, there is no current zerg that is consistently decent against terran. It’s the nature of the matchup; there are too many timing windows that terrans can simply overwhelm zergs. Currently, Calm has the third highest ZvT Elo behind Zero and Jaedong— Yikes!
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/yt4O3.jpg)
Zero, like the qtpies in comics, is dangerous because of his innocent exterior.
It is altogether quite ironic that Zero started getting noticed by his muta micro… if he could get to that point in a ZvZ. In his breakout run during the Lost Saga MSL, he was touted as having one of the most sublime muta micro in that time. He climbed over the “Bisu group” in ro32 with 3 zergs, jumped over Fake Yellow in ro16, and stopped Savior’s comeback (much to Savior’s fandom’s dismay) in the ro8. However, Zero has come to the .500 mark in his ZvZ after the series with Savior. After going above the .500 line in his next victory over Roro in WL, karma’s in the work, and Zero promptly gets wrecked by zergs in his next few matchups, including Luxury in the semi.
If there is a Luxury Chaos Theory, then there is a Zero-Sum Game. For every win as a +1, there is a loss as a -1. Zero’s sum will return to zero, but crossing over into positive territory is bad karma. Any time he goes above .500, there will be a great resistance. In the case of PDPop MSL, the resistance came in the form of Great. At a miraculous 3 games above the .500 mark after his victory over Soulkey, Zero crashed and burned and is knocked down to a game below .500 after losing to Great. Even if Zero manages to pass Great, he will be at an even greater deviation from the zero sum, and will get destroyed by Hydra in the final. This is, unfortunately, how the universe operates—a swarm season involves long strings of ZvZ to get to the final.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/1UEd1.jpg)
ZvZ doesn’t stand for Zero vs Zerg.
What does this mean for Zero? Woongjin Stars are in a precarious position and need to make a climb up the standings, so Zero can’t exactly borrow losses from Proleague. His very first game in the ABC MSL will be against a zerg. If he were to win that match, he would be left at the -1 mark. At the very best, that allows him to win one boX before breaking even in the zero-sum game. However, the season is looking to be anything but a swarm season, with the introduction of Monte Cristo. Jaedong is stuck in the group of death, Hydra is locked in battle with an invisible force, and many other zergs are threatened by the existence of terrans crowding the league. If Zero is to win, it would be through the ridiculous late game management that dominated the game a long time ago. Rarely has Zero been eliminated by ZvT in a boX series. This is the time for the test.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/kfd9I.jpg)
Kaboom, Fuck Yeah Zero.
This may be the ABC MSL, but the last laugh will be had by Zero.
P.S. the first pic, as the stamp suggests, is from Fomos. The last one is an image macro by Realpenguin, as I'm sure many of you know.
I'm leaving this in blog because I might do some for other Stars players, once their slump ends.
