The season had begun with an unmistakable signal in the form of Boxer launching a Nuclear Missile to eliminate any chance Killer ever had. It was no ordinary nuke, but a message from the Emperor himself to the old gamers: Wake up.

But the signal seemed to have gone largely unnoticed. With the exception of Midas, the old gamers failed to shine as the season progressed. There were little sparks along the way, but they all failed to catch on to something consistent.

Then came Round Five.

The highlight of Round Five was Airforce Ace. Catching second wind as they found opportunities to train with other Progame teams, Ace managed a four game winning streak while managing to reach every goal they have set for themselves at the beginning of the season. Led by the Storm Zerg himself, Ace encountered a revival, allowing many of their players to finally grab their 100th win. Many of the Ace players had their first interview in years, as they rarely had a chance to win. The momentum went forward, allowing Reach and Ruby to even quality for the Starleagues.

But the revival was not limited to the Airforce. Pusan entered Round 5 with a 4 game winning streak against the likes of Bisu and free. NaDa won a TvT against HiyA, ending the season with a three game winning streak, and reminding us once again why he is called the Genius Terran.



This season of the Proleague was filled with winning streaks and records. This section aims to summarize some of the more notable streaks within Proleague.

• A total of eleven Progamers have reached 100 Proleague wins this season - Flash, Bisu, Sea, Stork, Calm, Free, Kal, Light, Leta, NaDa, Anytime.
  
• Jaedong managed to hit a 14 game winning streak, tying Reach's record set in 2004. He also hit a 9 game winning streak against Zerg this season.
  
• Flash hit a 10 game winning streak this season, while setting a 20 game winning streak against Terran and a 11 game winning streak against Zerg.
  
• Light, through his performance in Winner's league, has hit an 11 game winning streak, with two consecutive all kills. Baby has also put forth an impressive 9 game winning streak.
  
• Calm hit a 15 game winning streak against Protoss, Really a 12 game winning streak against Protoss.
  
• Leta managed a 10 game winning streak against Terran, while Snow ended his at 9 and Violet at 8.
  
• Calm also managed to hit a 9 game winning streak against Zerg, followed by Bisu's 7 game winning streak on his best matchup.

And now, what about the Ace matches?

• Jaedong's ace record this season is 8-1. His eight ace match winning streak was broken by s2. This was also Jaedong's first time losing twice since 2006.
  
• Kal had the closest record, with a 7-1 record in the deciding matches. Leta also did well, with a 7-4 record.
  
• Flash had a 6-7 record in Ace matches. Comparably, Ruby ended up with a 2-6 record, and Zero with a 4-9 record. Effort and Really both had a 5-4 record in Ace.

There has also been some talk about the format change of the Proleague. There are some interesting numbers coming from this.

• When Proleague announced its matchups before the games, KT, STX, and MBC were the top 3 teams with 17-5, 14-8, 13-9 records respectively. After the format change, KT and STX recorded an 11-11 record, with MBC Game putting up an unimpressive 10-12 record.
  
• After the format change, WeMade,CJ, and SK Telecom were the top three teams, with WeMade and CJ with a 15-7 record, SKT with a 14-8.

Of course, it's not to say that this is all due to the format change. However, it's interesting to see how well teams such as WeMade and CJ has done after the format change.

For a fan, there was nothing quite like Proleague All-Stars. It was a fitting capstone to the long and grueling season, and the one event that was all about the fans. After a long season where legendary games emerge infrequently amid a forest of Killer ace matches or Canata TvT’s, the Proleague All-star night promised a bunch of games that couldn’t possibly fail to be entertaining. We expected all the match-ups we wished we saw during the regular season. There would be nukes, queens, and scouts. There would be players off-racing. In short; it was the best of the best, playing with no pressure on the crème de la crème of the map pool… what’s not to love? And speaking of love…


The two teams for All-Stars were nicknamed “Challenge” and “Passion”, and managed by Coach Lee of KT, and Coach Park of SKT respectively. Mirroring recent trends, the player line-ups for All-Stars were a little bit skewed to terran, by which I mean there were four more terran (11) than the number of zergs (3) and protoss (4) combined. Being the consummate strategist, SKT’s Coach Park basically grabbed them all.



With line-ups set, and the obligatory pre-match trashtalk in the books, all that remained was to figure out the best possible match-ups out of both teams. The first set, then, didn't disappoint, with fantasy and Jaedong stepping into the booths to play on Outsider. Fantasy and Jaedong had played twice before on this map, showing two of the greatest TvZ's in recent memory in last season's playoff finals, and the subsequent OSL semi-finals. The results had been split in those games, however, making this All-Star game the rubber match.

To the surprise of no one, fantasy walled off at the 9 o'clock position and proceeded to break out a nasty two-port wraith that Jaedong seemed ill-prepared for.


As fantasy's invisible paper planes terrorized his drones, Jaedong responded by pumping mutalisks and gamely trying to equal fantasy's harass. After a series of thrilling aerial micro battles, in which neither side could convincingly get the upper hand, fantasy landed an irradiate that massacred nearly all of Jaedong's mutalisks, and cleared the way for a push into Jaedong's natural that forced the GG. Right after the game had ended, both teams distributed pizza to the audience, as a nice thank you to the fans.


The next match featured a 3 player relay match on Andromeda between EffOrt, Really and free playing protoss, and Sea, Midas, and Leta being bullies and playing terran. Equally exciting was the commentary debut of Boxer and Yellow, who stepped up to the announcers table for this game. As the crowd ate pizza, and the camera lingered on Boxer's girlfriend, Team Challenge made things exciting, with EffOrt forgetting he wasn't playing zerg, and pioneering a revolutionary Three Nexus Before Gateway build, which put the protoss at a formidable econ advantage. However, with Sea at the helm against a hapless Really, Team Passion was able set up a formidable contain that put protoss behind, even though free was able to eventually break it while playing against Leta. Both sides battled for space, until EffOrt got off an ineffective recall in terran's main, and free lost an arbiter to mass turrets, which sealed protoss's fate.

The third set was undoubtedly the highlight of the night, indeed, one of the highlights of all of professional starcraft. Straight out of commentating, BoxeR and YellOw walked into the booth for the resumption of their age-old rivalry, and what's becoming an All-Stars ritual. Understandably, it led to some excitement among the viewers.

The match was on Heartbreak Ridge, and began with Boxer building two supply depots much to Yellow's confusion and then walling in with an off-center CC at his natural. The game quickly evened out with Boxer rolling out a mech/valkyrie build while Yellow used his mutalisks to shut down vulture harass. Yellow then tried to be cute by slipping lurkers around the back of Boxer's natural, but this wasn't particularly effective. Boxer established a position outside of his natural with massed tanks and goliaths and take his third, while Yellow expanded around the map, and macroed up an army of hydra/muta/queen. Wait. QUEENS?


Yellow finally struck when Boxer's valkyries were out of town (presumably eating pizza), and destroyed much of the emperor's army and all the scvs at his third, although the CC escaped at half health. Yellow lost most of his army to mines and tank fire in the process however, and was obliged to pull back and macro up again. Boxer pushed out again to outside of his natural, and tried to harass his way back into the game with vultures, but by this point, there were zerg expansions at nearly every base on the map, including the center. Yellow, seeking a quick end, moved to shut down Boxer's third again, but some lucky ggaemo mines killed his entire hydra force, and allowed Boxer the time to get a nuke silo (and everyone's hopes) up. Alas, the comeback was not to be, as Yellow stormed in moments later with mass mutalisks and his few remaining queens. With his entire tank army ensnared, his CC infested, and mass mutalisks battering down his natural, Boxer GG'd, and Yellow went into the audience to steal Boxer's girlfriend. No really. Vae Victus!

With the headliners having played in the third set, it fell to BaBy and Stork to follow up in the fourth on Judgment Day. At this point, Team Passion was also ahead 3-0, which meant that Team Challenge's pride was resting on BaBy's shoulders. Dangerously, Stork went for two gate pressure, but BaBy coolly held it off and was able to expand safely. Stork meanwhile kept the pressure on with a proxy shuttle and persistent zealot/reaver drops, but BaBy already had gotten his starport and defended Stork's harass with little damage. The initiative now with the terran, BaBy took his third, and began a relentless parade of drops into Stork's natural and main which slowly whittled down Stork's probe count.


Stork, now badly behind in economy and with too little troops to deal with BaBy's harass or his forward positioning desperately counter-attacked at BaBy's natural, and caused the CC to lift, but reinforcements eventually destroyed the last of Stork's army and he conceded the game.

For the fifth set, Reach and NaDa played a 2v2 against Tossgirl and Ruby on the ICCUP staple; Python. Like a game of bridge, each player spawned across from their partner. With Reach and NaDa at the left and right and Tossgirl and Ruby at the top and bottom. Tossgirl and Ruby played standard factory expand builds, while Reach and Nada, perhaps unaware of the potential of tank/scout went dts and four port wraith.


However, Tossgirl and Ruby both held off the double cheese comfortably, which left Reach and NaDa with the awkward task of finding something that dt/wraith transitioned into. Unfortunately, this question went unanswered as a strong push from Tossgirl erased Reach's natural and third, while Ruby took his third and pressed NaDa's tank line. A last-gasp four vulture drop into Tossgirl's main tried to kill a supply depot and was mopped up easily. With his the death of NaDa's island expansion eminent, the pair called GG.

With Team Passion having convincingly defeated Team Challenge, there remained one match left to play, and two players left to play it. Oddly, Bisu against Flash on Fighting Spirit was perhaps the least interesting of all the games, although it was still fun. Flash took his expansion after a barracks, and fended off Bisu's zealot and dragoon pressure while taking a secret expansion at the top of the map. Bisu scouted it soon after, and forced it to lift, but Flash brought it back into operation the moment the dragoons had left. Meanwhile, Bisu produced two scouts, which proved hilariously useless at anything except scouting, and pretty poor at that as well. The first scout couldn't kill an scv in the time it took for a goliath to run from the main to the third. The second scout killed two scvs before being taken out by an expedition of three marines. Meanwhile, Flash turned the joke back on Bisu by going mass tanks, and successively dealing with several waves of zealots and dragoons with ease. Bisu fans were heartened by his single use of storm, and the fact that he never built an archon, but overall it was a one-sided beat-down from the ultimate weapon.




After the match, there was some interviews, and Yellow was awarded the MVP award for being a complete baller. He got flowers. The terrans all smiled. The progamers saluted their fans. And like all good things, the All-Stars came to an end. But was anything learned? Was this just yet another evening of cheap entertainment, some silly builds, some trash talk, some old faces rolled out for the occasion?

Au contraire, mon frère.

With yet another proleague season long in the bag, BW faces an uncertain future. But re-watching these games, and the finals, I'm continually reminded that this all is about much more than just the game itself. There are the fans, the commentators, the players, and the teams. There are great rivalries and histories which all intertwine to make BW what it is today. That's something to consider. The All-Star match is great because it's not really about the games, the BM, or the silly strategies. It's so fun to watch the players with big banana grins as they play because the whole scene is more than just a twelve year old game. It's a celebration of the notion of sport as a whole.

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And then midnight struck, and the amusement park started to close. With the scent of fresh fireworks still lingering in your memories, you sip your bottle of Pocari Sweat, and laugh. It's been one hell of a ride, you think to yourself, and you laugh at all the news you thought marked the end of Brood War.

The off-season, after all, felt like a long roller coaster ride. For a long time you thought it was just going straight down, with no hopes of it ever going up again. You start to recall the odds and ends that you have overheard during this off-season.