Quickie Recap of WR4/6, LR3

Winners Round 4

Notes: oGs rolled once again, with a close match being broken open late by TheStC. FXO is a team in demand lately, and their teamleague line-ups have seemed to suffer a bit, as in this match when only two of their big four were fielded. Without their full strength, the rest of the line-up crumbled against oGs' first line.

A good game for oGs, who have looked very good so far. For FXO, it's seriously time that their full A line-up comes into play, or else their tournament run may be at an end soon. Leenock and Oz are two of the best players on the planet, and FXO needs them in the late rounds. There may be no better team at bringing up new talent than FXO, but their depth in their B-line needs to be replaced by their depth in their A-line. There are only A-class teams left.





Notes: The second battle of Korean teams in the Winners bracket was decided by the stellar performance of MarineKing, who took out Tiger, then crucially eliminated PartinG, who began to gain fame as a PvT sniper. After that, it was clear sailing for MarineKing, as Startale tried to take him out with Squirtle and July, two vastly inferior players who fell apart early and late, respectively. Finally Startale bit the bullet with Bomber, but it was too late, even though he beat MarineKing, Prime then had two chances at the Startale ace, and they only needed Creator to finish the series.

You could say that Bomber was able to overcome MKP thanks to some bad play by the Prime player with an advantage, and that may have been due to fatigue, but overall, Startale's strategy looked particularly poor this time. MarineKing should have been met with better resistance than Squirtle and July. Both of these teams look like they have weak depth on paper, with Prime relying on MarineKing and Creator, while Startale relies on Bomber and PartinG. Yet throughout this event, Prime has found a way to make their seeming lack of depth invisible, while Startale has muddled through a series of easy opponents. It's not ultimately surprising that Startale folded immediately against spirited opposition.



Losers Round 3



Empire has been making a compelling pitch as the best foreign team for a while now, but their campaign suffered a hit as NsHoSeo looked extremely overwhelming here. Wins by Beastyqt and viOlet made this match fun, but NsHoSeo at no point looked threatened. Most surprisingly for Empire this tournament has been the disappointing play of Kas, who is normally a beast online, but was invisible when Empire needed him against Prime and NsHoSeo. His three kill vs coL.MvP was the Kas we normally see, but Empire needed that for more than a single day. Without big runs from viOlet or Beasty, nobody else stepped forward, and Empire couldn't equal the foreigner heroics of Mousesports the season before.

For NsHoSeo, the win was a good comeback after being all-killed the previous round by GuMiho. With this dominating performance, they showed that they're still fighting hard in this tournament, and made a compelling case for that all-kill being a one-time fluke. They face Startale next, and are deeper and may have a better ace option as well.





Notes: Liquid` continued their excellent run, becoming the first non-GSTL team to beat a full GSTL squad, and also becoming the last non-GSTL team in the tournament with their win over TSL. The key result was HerO's defeat of Polt, which cut off the main TSL threat. It came at a key point, in which a Polt four-kill was looking somewhat likely, but on Tal'Darim, HerO's patented three gate pressure killed off the terran who had beaten him earlier at Assembly, and owned a heavy lifetime advantage. Ret and Zenio also banked wins for Liquid`. Both of these teams are very zerg heavy, so seeing three ZvZ's was not a surprise.

TSL became the second GSTL team after ZeNex to bite the dust in the IPL TAC, a result that mirrors the GSTL results. Tested by Vile, it took a more polished effort by a non-Korean based team to give them the final push. This series featured a number of good games, but the Polt wins over Ret and Sheth were probably the closest and best fought. After this win, Liquid` moves on to face FXO, with a spot in the final six guaranteed.



Winners Final



Notes: In a titanic winners bracket final, oGs and Prime traded protoss blows, but with CreatorPrime getting the final say. After Classic and forGG and Maru traded blows, oGs brought out ViNES, their hero against Mousesports, and he went to work, crucially taking out MarineKing as the final of his three kills. But with only Creator left, oGs huffed and puffed and couldn't bring him down. They gambled with two PvPs, but couldn't take the coinflip, and then relied on SuperNoVa, but their ace couldn't deliver. The key for oGs may have been their decision to play TheStC first. In losing to Classic, that set oGs back significantly, and they were left resorting to gambling PvPs to win.

Prime has made an incredible run through this event, winning each time by the skin of their teeth. 5-4 vs Empire, 5-4 vs Liquid`, 5-3 vs Startale, and 5-4 vs oGs makes Prime the luckiest team on the planet, and gives them a bizarre 4-0 record with a hilariously small +5 differential.

Winners and Losers Brackets: Next Round Preview

Losers Semi-Finals:
By Deezl

Liquid has been on a bit of a hot streak recently, on the back of some stellar performances from Ret, TLO, and Sheth. Last week they completely shut down TSL, limiting Polt to two wins and cleaning up the rest of TSL nicely. But we all know that FXOpen is not the same beast as TSL. TSL is a bit like a bear with half-grown cubs—FXO is more like a pack of full-grown dire wolves.

Indeed, where TSL won and lost on the back of Polt's performance, FXOpen holds many more all-star cards. I think Liquid really wants this victory, but I wouldn't see them taking it as easily as they have against EG and TSL. FXOpen doesn't really have a hole to exploit, a player or race to train against, and I don't think Liquid will be able to generate the momentum that they have been feeding off of in previous sets.

On the bright side for Liquid, FXOpen really has had a lot of trouble holding their footing from their recent GSL runs. Oz performed well at Winter Arena, but not quite well enough, and Leenock appears a bit unsteady in the GSL now that his baneling landmines have become famous. They also lost pretty hard to oGs, but then again, oGs has been looking super across the board. But in the match against the furthest placing foreign team, I'm not so sure.

Liquid will be counting on a big performance from Ret, Zenio or Hero to blow a hole in FXO's lineup and take a lead—FXO just has to hold strong and make sure their vs. Z is up to par. The Koreans have the edge.

Prediction: 5-2 FXOpen





StarTale has been looking decent in team leagues, but are remarkably short on greatness in the individual leagues, and it came back to bite them in the last round. After getting shredded by MarineKing and getting their ace aced by Creator, they'll be looking to pull themselves back together and try to make a finals run. Relying heavily on PartinG, Bomber, and then an inconsistent supporting cast of July, Squirtle, and AcE, is not a recipe for a championship.

NSHoSeo, meanwhile, has been struggling both in the TAC and in GSTL - recently getting all-killed by GuMiHo. Jjakji, despite crushing through the GSL as little as two months ago, hasn't been the ace that NSHoSeo has been looking for, and the rest of their team is performing at around code A calibre. But they'll be looking to get back on top against the slightly more experienced Startale team. They tore apart Empire, which bodes well for this match.

It comes down to this - NSHoSeo needs to break StarTale early to have a good shot. To win against well-rounded teams, StarTale generally needs a good performance from Bomber as well as some solid wins from another player - and they can't get that consistently from anyone but PartinG. If NSHoSeo can break through the fodder and steal a win from Bomber or PartinG, it opens up StarTale to a massive amount of sniping. The aces seem a bit stacked in StarTale's favor, but NSHoSeo is a very elastic team with all players playing at similar levels, and their versatile nature makes them exactly the team to predict for an upset.

Standing in stark contrast to my prediction is Bomber's 5-0 all-kill against NSHoSeo in the GSTL at the beginning of the year. We didn't get to see HoSeo's full strength come to bear because Bomber simply shut them out - but if they can break through Bomber, I see them as an even match for the rest of StarTale.

And who am I to always pick the favorites, anyway? I'll take NSHoSeo on this one.

Prediction: NSHoSeo 5-4

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Losers Finals:

After the dust clears, we should see a very exciting loser's semifinal match. I'd like to go ahead and speculate some possible results.

I've picked FXO to go head to head with NSHoSeo, and I think that FXOpen should take that match fairly handily. Last time they met, GuMiHo stepped up to the plate and all-killed. Even barring that, FXO is a complete 180 from StarTale, in that they have a team chock full of Code S calibre "Aces" - and are best stopped by a championship calibre player, such as MarineKing or DongRaeGu, that can take out many strong players running. Jjakji hasn't been showing that kind of play, though he's had some good results against FXO in the recent past - and the Code B all-stars that NSHoSeo has been fielding aren't quite at the level they need to be to break FXOpen. If it comes to an ace match, GuMiHo should be able to handle Jjakji, but most likely FXO will have a few games to spare and can break a Jjakji wall with numbers as well as talent.

However, its just as likely that StarTale advances to play against FXOpen, and then, oddly, FXO is in a much tougher boat. Bomber has been an unpredictable wrecking ball and could make a mess of FXO's seasoned vets, as he's been acing every other team's aces all season without issue. I still think FXO has the depth to take a hit and bounce back, but with Bomber as the final boss, its going to be hard for FXO to prepare against StarTale's deep Protoss lineup as well. I think StarTale might have to be given a slight edge here.

If Liquid pulls off another foreigner upset, not only will I never be allowed to write articles for teamleagues again (having predicted Liquid wrongly almost every single round), I think they have a really good shot of beating either NSHoSeo or StarTale. Liquid has thrived against ace-reliant teams, being narrowly edged out by Prime 5-4 in a strongly disfavored match, and cracking Polt and therefore TSL in the game I mentioned earlier. NSHoSeo is a bit of a different beast, but the Code A level play and NSHoSeo's reliance on a few wins from thier Zerg lineup make them prime pickings for Zenio and Hero. Liquid's failing here might be NSHoSeo's protosses, however, with a reasonable record of ZvZ and ZvT.

On the whole though, I thing FXO is most likely to advance for a rematch against oGs, who defeated them 5-2 in the winner's bracket and so far have been the only team to make me lose faith in FXO's lineup. I don't want to get too ahead of myself here, but that's a rematch I'd certainly like to see.

The Nuts and Bolts of the Teamleague

By Type|NarutO

In eSports and more spot on in Starcraft 2 there are many tournaments with a lot of different formats. There's single elimination, double elimination, groupstages and many more formats to go so first of all let me explain how IPL TAC2 works.

The IPL does set up the battles between the teams in a best-of-nine all-kill format with the losing team picking the map and the next player. The tournament itself is run as a double elimination tournament which means that the team who qualifies for the grandfinal through the losers bracket has to win two best-of-nines against the team from the winner bracket.

We have 16 teams, we have 9 maps and we have 20000$ on the line so be sure the players and teams take this league very serious and want to win it.

What makes a good team

Teamleagues in Starcraft or the IPL TAC at least is based on individual players taking their team to victory. There's no 2 vs 2 involved yet you cannot rely on one player to win it all.

So what exactly does make a good team? Is it enough to have a superstar, especially if the match the individual player playes is just a best-of-one? No. Ofcourse it does always help if you have a superstar on your team, but letting him carry all the weight isn't right. (...insert unimpressed Flash meme here)

A good team should always be a mixed team. No team in the world will only have superstars even though you could argue that the skill level on some Korean teams are insanely high but you still get what I mean to say.

A mixed team, at best with an even race distribution has always the potential to be more dangerous than a team with the majority of the players being one race or even a team that does miss one race completely. This is kind of ironic since one of your favorite teams probably is Liquid and they field only one Terran and two Protoss at the moment.

How does it matter what race is on your team and how many of that race you might ask? If the team you are playing against knows you can only field Terran and Protoss, they can and they will only prepare for two match ups which gives them an advantage, because obviously you can be way more prepared for two than for three - makes sense right?

How to set up

Lets try to play out a sample match for ourselves. I won't make up a match, so I'll be taking the latest match between Liquid and TSL. I will try to go through the thought process of why the team did field the players they did.

To start things, here are the lineups of the teams:

As we can see, both teams have quiet a few foes from the swarm, but both are lacking Protoss and Terran. Still - they have at least one player of every race so if you want to prepare as a team, you need the team to either prepare all match ups, or have a certain person as sniper in mind.

The start map was Darkness Falls which in itself has such a small sample size of games, that you cannot make valid balance statements. As both teams have a lot of Zerg players, you probably want to send out a player that is very strong against Zerg, but also not weak against the other races.

Liquid chose to send out Zenio who is very good against Zerg and decent in his other match ups. TSL did send out Dream who is at least to me - unknown. I know he's a very high grandmaster Protoss player in Korea, yet I've barely ever seen him play.

Generally TSL could have send Polt, but the main reason you don't want to send your best player is the following: If the other team did expect you to send your best player on the start map which is known, they might have someone prepared who's only task is to snipe your player, thats why sending an overall solid player is the best choice for the first match, especially considering this is a best-of-nine.

Zenio went on to take down Dream. Now its TSL's map and player choice and from their lineup (Note: Inori wasn't part of TSL when this match was played). They chose Shine and he did pick Terminus. Now one might think, why would you send a Zerg against Zenio, but this could be a player prepared especially to take down Zenio. We don't know, but it could be.

A big part of teamleagues is actually knowledge of the teams and the players. Who is Shine? What is his strength, what his weakness? Only a prepared team is a good team. Shine did nearly take down Team Vile on his own, winning against DdoRo, HasHe, ChAnCe and Yong before his killing streak was finally put to an end by State, so he seems to be a good allrounder.

I for my part would have send out Ret, and Liquid is with me there. Ret is a very good player all around and is an absolute beast in ZvZ. He took down Shine in the match very handily and brought the score into Liquids favor once again. Now TSL's position is not bad, Liquid did field one of their best, if not their best player at the moment and they are only behind one map.

In my opinion they should send out a player that is most likely to even up the score, yet is not their best player. They decided to send out RevivaL which I think is along with Symbol the best choice they could have made. Ret is certainly the best player against Terran on Liquid and even though Polt in my eyes is the superior player, ret would have a chance to take him down.

Unfortunately for TSL, ret did also win against Revival and now they have to take a risk. They are down two maps and Liquid still has Ret on the field - and a few aces such as TLO, Sheth and HerO.

I would have send out Polt now, and so did TSL. Polt did take down ret in a good game which wasn't exactly close, but it wasn't one-sided either. With TSL's best player on the line now, its up to Liquid to snipe him. Personally I'd say sending out TLO would be a great choice, not because I think TLO is on Polts level, but TLO is a very tricky opponent to play. He is capable of playing different styles and reading him is not easy.

In addition his mechanics and his level all around are enough to carry an advantage if he gets one. Liquid on the other hand did send out Sheth who eventually lost leaving Liquid back against the wall. They still have HerO and TLO which - in my opinion and this is without offence to JinrO, HayprO or Tyler are the only players left with an actual chance to take down Polt.

HerO isn't really up to par with Polt when it comes down to head-to-head score, yet he's a very high level player who can beat anyone. He did pick Tal'Darim and ended the game quickly with 3 gate pressure.

Now after taking down TSL's ace Polt HerO basically has free reign about TSL, as he is an absolute beasts in PvZ and TSL is most likely to send out a Zerg, since there Zergs that are left are superior to the other players in the team and they need a good allrounder in case of beating HerO.

Top-Teams talking about a teamleague

Its certainly is not easy to pick top-teams and especially talking about TAC2, as all the teams are very high level and all teams can easily field individual high skill players and players that are very good in certain match ups, but if I would have to pick a very well rounded team it would be mousesports.

Let me break that down for you, as people might say mousesports does lack a player that is up to part with a superstar the Korean teams could send out.

ThorZaIN

He's one of the most solid players in the foreign scene and certainly is capable of taking down everyone. He doesn't really have a weak match up and can go toe-to-toe with S-Class players.

HasuObs

HasuObs is insanely good in PvP and very good in his other match ups as well. He general level of play in mousesports is amazingly high, even though I would not rate HasuObs PvZ S-class.

MaNa

MaNa is a PvT specialist and while is PvZ is lacking, he's still dangerous as again - the general level of play is just amazingly high.

MorroW

MorroW - the only race picker for a certain match up is an S-Class Terran vs Zerg player and his other match ups are nearly evenly matched with his Terran vs Zerg. He really has no weak match up and can also take down nearly everyone.

biGs

biGs is not as known as the other players from mousesports, yet he's a very strong player who probably isn't capable of beating anyone, but he's able to beat a lot of very strong players in all match ups, especially considering its best-of-one. Take his run against SlayerS for example.


Now this ofcourse is all personal opinion and I would never go into an argument defending mousesports as they best team out there, especially considerung they are out of IPL TAC2 'already' , yet they are a very well rounded team with high class players, match up snipers and good allrounders.