Two of the biggest fandoms collided last week, resulting in a very hyped series of matches. Of course, SKT prevailed with a score of 4:1 this time around, and Fantasy managed to get over his trauma related to Hite players. But nonetheless, they were mildly entertaining.







The games were rather disappointing of course -- but for the first time, none of it can be faulted to SKT. SKT's players played well -- they did not play fantastically, but most of their wins can be attributed to the loser's blunders rather than the winner's play.

The entry that baffled me is sending out Hydra rather early. Hydra is a very important card for Hite -- after all, it's their only capable Zerg while Effort remains in an odd stasis. But the fact of the matter was that Hydra was thrown away as a card -- being played right before Empire of the Sun. Yes, Zergs have an advantage in Icarus and Hydra could have won the game against Ssak a little bit more decisively. The issue was that by sending out Hydra right before Empire, Hite risked losing their ace in the hole only after one kill. And this is exactly what has happened -- Hydra was used to snipe Ssak, to promptly get rolled over by Fantasy in the next match.

To illustrate my point, Fantasy would have had a harder time against Hydra if the map wasn't Empire -- a map where the thirds aren't protected by ramps, which was a critical factor that allowed Fantasy to roll over Hydra's lurkers at a critical timing a lot easier than it should have been. Considering Hite's Protoss line -- couldn't they have given Hydra a little break and saved him for maps after Empire? Or were they really that afraid of Bisu? Or could no one really beat Ssak other than Hydra?

Hite's Protosses of course was disappointing. Snow proved to us once and for all that his PvT style is purely based on mind games rather than good game sense -- after all, we all remember his game against Flash where he randomly proxied buildings in plain view of the normal scouting range. Mind games after all, are very risky -- and at least for Snow, it backfired. Not knowing about the expansion likely gave Fantasy the patience to build up a more massive army rather than panicking and going after the hidden expansion. Fantasy did note in the interview that not knowing about the hidden expo was what kept him in game. I also believe that I do not have to talk about Movie.

SKT played and prepared well. They used Ssak rather effectively -- SKT's coach mentioned that they knew they had won the second Ssak had won, and it was not surprising since Ssak had prepared simply just to take the first game, and the momentum, away from Hite. It was Ssak's victory that dictated their victory -- as Hite responded rather badly to Ssak's initial victory, wasting their ace and through it, wasting the rest of their Protoss players.

And our season is finally over, spanning an unprecedented two rounds. It was quite a long winner's league, but of course, we were faced with upsets all the way, where in the last few rounds, our long standing leader was overturned by MrMoose. He had was only ahead by a single point before the final match of the round, MrMoose rode RorO's 3 kill in the final match of round 4 to earn his FWL title. So congratulations to MrMoose, the winner of this season's FWL!



And for the rest of the mortals, the only thing we could do is possibly win some awards for excelling in something interesting during this winner's league. Here are our winners.

The “Really” award for best slump predictor
Goes to mtvacuum who mananged to pick an anti-team of only -22 points with Much, Peace and Leta. However, he accomplished this at the cost of his soul, as he traded Leta for Violet after he got diagnosed with leukemia though.

The “Wall Street” award for best trader
Goes to IntoTheEmo who managed a +71 trade differential in only nine trades, eight of them resulting in a gain. A performance which earned him a spot in the top three. A Special mention also goes to InspiredFrog who also managed a +71 trade differential with 14 trades however.

The ”MBC” award for worst trader
Goes to NewPhoenix4 whom, despite trying as hard as he could with a whopping 17 trades, managed to earn a -65 trade differential. He still managed to finish at 163th though!

The “Rock” award for refusing to change anything
Goes to Godlysquirrel who finished at #2 without actually trading. There were actually 4 non-traders in the top 10 for this Winners League, but our winner wasn't one of them.

The “Lee Ssang at Tau Cross” award for biggest comeback
Goes to KT Rolster! From ninth to first within two rounds is pretty damn impressive even if Flash is on that team and it was WL.

The “Manifesto7” award for best staff performance
Would have gone to Plexa (196 points), instead goes to Disciple who showed off his Fantasy Proleague skills this round with an excellent main team that earned him 282 points (better then the winner's 274) and solid trading (+15), sadly a rather bad anti-team (-90) held him back at rank 44.

The “swanized” award for worst staff performance
I'd like to award this one to myself for sheer stupidity. I'm gonna walk you through my incredible logic:”ooohhh, Woongjin is clearly gonna destroy this WL, therefore I should field a lot of woongjin players this way I'm gonna win this FWL”. It only took a few moments later when swanized realized his critical mistake.

“Oh wait it's Winners league, I can't have so many woongjin players, they're not all gonna be able to play. Oh shit, sign-ups are closed.” Woongjin went on to have a 9-9 record and swanized finishes at rank 727. However, PoP did even worse then I, finishing at 788. I guess we'll share the award for this round.

And those are the awards. Self-deprecation aside, this was a fun winner's league. And what better way to wrap it up with little factoids about how some of the individual players performed?

- Most points earned: Flash (82 points) (24-5)
- Most wins: Bisu (28-11)
- Most losses: ggaemo (8-15)
- Most cost-effective: Stats 65 points for 4$ lol
- Most line-up appearances: Bisu (17)
- RorO Award for Most Anti Teams Destroyed: Bogus (30 points, owned by 200 anti-teams)
- Most Popular: Stork (owned by 468 teams, over half the number of teams

Thanks everyone for participating, hope you all had fun and see you next round!
Special thanks to Troxior for being of special assistance to swanized

I met Jaedong for the first time through a rather hyped Proleague game. One of my friends spent a few hours hyping up Jaedong to me before the games had started eventually managing to convince me to watch the series simply because Jaedong was playing.

And Jaedong was promptly cannon rushed.

I had never been able to shake off this first impression, although I did quickly become a Jaedong fan. Through the game I first saw the inherent fragility of Zerg, a fragility that made the Zerg matchups delicate as players danced around with their units with all of their heart just to open a tiny window of time. They struggled to make the game flow in a certain direction. Protoss and Terran players would pressure and release pressure to gain slight advantages, and the Zerg player tugged back, struggling to stay in the game so that they could have a fighting chance. Indeed, the fact that no matter what point of the game the Zerg player was in he could always, and often suddenly, lose – was something that always haunted me.



Of course, Jaedong dominated. And he dominated for a long time, from the very moment he debuted from 2006 till now, and he never stopped dominating. Even his slumps are grossly overstated. Any claims that Jaedong is past his peak dominant years are false -- Jaedong has never dominated more in 2010 than any other year. He kept a 69.6% winrate in the last year despite playing Flash a grand total of 20 times -- and without Flash he would have had a winrate of 75%. All through his career he revolutionized ZvP against Bisu at his peak, and when everyone had fallen against the ultimate weapon, Jaedong faced him alone and kept Flash from transcending and taking his throne.

Yet not even Jaedong could hold him for long. Flash eventually transcended as Jaedong's confidence began to fall. Jaedong was someone who had such strong mental strength that he was only a little fazed by the sudden dismissal of his long time Coach or even the long struggles with Free Agency. He was known as a player who would accomplish epic comebacks, adding drama and even more tension to the game. He never lost focus even as he dropped the first game or two but came back stronger in the next matches to sweep the set. As someone with such a competitive spirit as Jaedong, it is no surprise that it would take a player on the level of Flash to affect him. They were rivals, but Jaedong knew that Flash was slipping away. They played mind games, but Jaedong saw how Flash was always one step ahead, reading his mind and pushing through at the perfect timing. Jaedong's confidence was chipped away slowly and slowly as he crossed blades many times with the ultimate weapon.

And it showed. The fine-tuned nature of the Zerg always meant that the fans could see the player's spirit reverberate into the games -- and Jaedong, for the longest time echoed dominance, confidence, and pride – burning with an unyielding fighting spirit that hated losing more than anything. This was what the fans saw when Jaedong was crowned the Tyrant, an unstoppable force that dominated players through his spirit. But at the same time it was again through this mirror we were again to see the wounds of the Tyrant. The Mutalisk always served as a symbol of Jaedong's confidence, and although Jaedong's Mutalisk once dominated the skies, recently we began to see signs that it isn't what it once was -- to the point where people began to speculate something was wrong with Jaedong's wrists.

And yet he never had the time to recover. He never had a chance to repair his blade, to sit down and recoup, as he carried his team through the first two rounds. His trademark glare is all but gone, and he looks ever so battered. His many clashes with Flash had hurt his game sense against Terran, while the recent Protoss revolution had caught him off guard. He never looked so mortal in his game against Zerg, as his Mutalisks getting dominated and fleeing soon became a rather common occurrence.



But wounds heal. Time heals everything they say, and this most recent break hopefully served as a time of rehabilitation. He knows that he does not need to carry his team anymore due to the revival of his teammates, giving him even more time to rest and recover. What better time for him to announce his revival than through the playoffs of Winner's League? What better stage for him to bring the ultimate weapon down to earth than the grand stage of the finals? Indeed, we will soon see the effects of time.

When T1 meets Oz in the WL Semifinals, all hell shall break loose. Flaring fanboys, tempestuous tempers, euphoric enthusiasm and despondent dejection will be just some of the emotions seen in this upcoming hyped match. For some, it will be the best of times. For others, it will be the worst of times. Some will try to spread wisdom and rationality after the match is over but ultimately, legions of fans will show just how foolish they really are and cause massive amounts of moderation in thread. Winning this match will lead the way to the light, the Promised Land itself, the Winner League Finals. Losing this match though only leads to darkness and never to be seen again until the next round of Proleague starts. Hope springs eternal for those who manage to win this game and then beat KT aftewards. However losing can lead to despair and slumps that no team can afford with how competitive the race for Proleague playoffs is. It can not be said just how important momentum really is going into round 5 as teams can have everything going for them and easily clinch a spot in the playoffs. Losing this game though means some will walk away with nothing except perhaps for some fallen tears. These two teams also have quite the history and never want to lose to each other and the winning (Oz) fanboys will be in cloud 9/heaven while the losing (T1) fanboys would rather kill themselves and end up in that other place. Banhammers will even fly after the match. Literally.

Map order for this series is pretty interesting as the more terran favored maps are in the 4th and 5th set and T1 usually likes to send Fantasy relatively early as he is relatively well-rounded comparatively to Bisu. Oz could potentially lead off with anyone as they have varied who they sent on La Mancha pretty well although maps afterward would make me lean towards either Killer or PerfectMan. Now we all know that if it is Killer sent out first then T1 is going to be all-killed ez so in the interests of hype, let's just ignore that for now. T1 could easily send Best first despite some recent setbacks and overall uninspiring play. His morale can't be that great either after a recent interview was basically with questions like, "y u suck so much? you ever gonna win again?!?!" However, there could be no better time for him to break out of his rut especially since T1 needs all the help it can get vs KT.

Should Best win his first game then he'll probably be facing a zerg. Oz hasn't sent Princess in a while and now would be a perfect time to send him. He probably wants revenge for the last time these two met and very well could have won if he had a targeted a critical reaver that saved Best from utter defeat.

Neither player's broadcasted records on Aztec are that great but T1 must have some kind of confidence in Hyuk or n.Die_soO for them to send either of them out so often. It's pretty unclear how a ZvZ between Princess and a T1 zerg would go as none of them have been impressive lately and it being a 3 player map means that anything could potentially happen.

Should Princess win then there is no doubt that T1 will be sending Fantasy next. Fantasy has really elevated his tvz lately and outside of him doing something lolbad, (which is very possible given that it is Fantasy after all) Princess really doesn't stand much of a chance.

That means that the next game is on Empire of the Sun. Now normally, Oz would like to send HiyA here but A.) he is 0-3 vs Fantasy on this map B.) Hiya is very Jekyll and Hyde in his TvT's as one moment he is showing some great decision-making and then next second has suddenly lost all hope of winning game by making some kind of facepalm worthy mistake. C.) Dear has a monstrous record on this map including a very decisive macro victory over BaBy whose style is very similar to Fantasy's. Now, the last time these two played, Fantasy did win but should Dear feel less of an early urge to suicide early and instead just focus on macro and defending vulture harass/3 base allin then he can definitely take this game. After all, his macro is as good as Best's.

However, Dear has no confidence whatsoever in his pvp and his pvp is probably at a level where even Bisu would look competent. Bisu will probably make some DTs and Dear loses all of his probes just because he can.

This leads to a final game on Benzene with the two players everyone wants to see play each other. I'm not going to comment on the JvB itself as the hype practically writes itself but I will say that a 4-3 ending with these two finishing off the night is just the kind of thing every BW fan dreams of no matter the outcome. Hopefully, it is as epic as their most recent replay seen here:

The real outcome though will be Killer 4-0 T1. He'll extend his record over T1's current roster to around 17-4 or 18-4. You might even call him the T1 killer.