Grand Finals Preview

By Type|NarutO

Here we are right before the finals of the IPL TAC2 - and hell, what a tournament we had! In the end we are here with Prime and New Star HoSeo. Even though it's a battle between two Korean teams, this was certainly not the match-up that many expected!

First of all a big congratulations to both thems for making it into the grand finals of this stacked tournament. We've seen cheese, timing attacks, and drawn out macro games. Now we are going into the finals which will hopefully be very entertaining. Prime is in the finals by going all the way through the winner bracket while New Star HoSeo went nearly through the complete losers bracket after getting brutally manhandled by FXOGuMiho in the winners round 2.

This means NSHoSeo has to take two best-of-nines against Prime when all other teams even failed to take out Prime in a single one. Before I'm going into the series, lets give the players some credit with the focus on the kill-count.



Prime

Creator

8 - EIGHT! Creator got an amazing eight kills for his team which is tremendous, but not just that, he did actually finish off oGs in the winner brackets final taking down VINES, who had killed three players before, InCa the PvP specialist, and ace SuperNoVa. This alone makes Creator and his outstanding PvT one of the most valuable players in this teamleague!

MarineKing

8 - Eight again! What is up with the Prime members? Creator and MarineKing both went completely off the charts ín the teamleague. MKP is an insanely good Terran, but its very easy to lose in a best of one situation.
MKP seemed to be bit shaky as he had situations where he just flat out died in his first game, but when he got going, he dominated.

Classic

2 - Two! Classic did win two maps. Good for him.

Byun & Maru

...both took one. Now you cannot really put much into all the members of Prime when you just look at the results, because MKP and Creator basically tag-teamed this teamleague. Both getting eight kills is 80% of the winnings for Prime in the teamleague.



NSHoSeo

Sage

9 - Nine wins in this tournament for Sage while 5 of them were an all-kill against StarTale. That's the most kills of any player in the finals. He's one of those players that can go all-out and win, even against who you would probably call better or more solid players. You can never count out Sage!

Jjakji

7- Jjakji, even though he's the ace (and to me the best player on NSHoSeo) 'only' won 7 matches yet he did finish off two teams. That's really important. To me, Jjakji is insanely good and can take on any player.

San

7 - San took out a bunch of players as well. Really if you sometimes saw NSHoSeo play you could not believe your eyes. I wouldn't dare to call them inferior to others in individual skill, but man, some of their players just went completely crazy and did put up unexpected results. San is no one you can count out, yet I would not say he's the favorite against many of the players in this tournament, including a few he beat!

Seal and Hoon

These two combined did take out 7 players as well (Seal won 4 while Hoon won 3 games) and what you should see immediately is, NSHoSeo really is what I would call a team. All the players are capable of taking out big names and the kills are so evenly spread between all of them. They are able to put results together where no one thought (including me) they could do it!



Now lets turn back to the grand finals Prime against NSHoseo. What is going to happen? I don't know, I can't see the future!

NSHoSeo has the hardest task right in front of them, as they don't have to win one, but two best of nines against one of the best teams standing right now. Can they defeat the 'tag-team' of Prime or will they fall? Will they be defeated by the numbers against them, or can they pull the miracle?

I am certain if NSHoSeo can take out Prime in the first set, they will be able to win it all since the biggest thing to overcome will be the feeling of having to win two sets to your opponent's one. If they win the first set Prime technically has no disadvantage, mentally you might argue they have.

The first map of the first set will be Cloud Kingdom, and the second will be Atlantis Spaceship. But my prediction is that neither Prime nor NSHoSeo will send out an ace right away. Some key points in this team match will be:

*How and when to use Jjakji? Creator is an Protoss vs Terran beast and would give Jjakji a hard run for his money, yet obviously a player like Jjakji can take out a complete team. We will see. I will say NSHoSeo will try to get rid of Creator before sending out Jjakji, as long as they have one map left to fall back on.

*Will the stars deliver or will they fall victim to the mentally strong players from NSHoSeo? NSHoSeo went through nearly the complete losers bracket and did upset a lot of teams. Now they are in the grandfinals with probably the mindset that they already 'won'. Going into such a tournament and dropping out early into the losers bracket, you don't have high hopes making into all the way I guess, but after upsetting oGs they should clearly go into the finals with a high and good mindset.

Funsies Prediction:

Maru < Cloud Kingdom > Seal
MarineKing > Seal
MarineKing > sculp
MarineKing < Sage
BBoongBBoong < Sage
AnnYeong < Sage
Creator > Sage
Creator > San
Creator < Jjakji

First Best-Of-Nine goes into NSHoSeo's favor 5-4!

Prime vs New Star HoSeo #2

MarineKing < Atlantis Spaceship > San
MarineKing > Sage
MarineKing < Seal
AnnYeong > Seal
AnnYeon < Hoon
Maru > Hoon
Maru < Jjakji
Creator > Jjakji

Second Best-Of-Nine goes to Prime 5-3! Your champion is Prime!


Of course all this is very hard to predict if you don't know which maps are already played and which are not, yet I think this could very well end like this.

Hopefully we can see a worthy final! GLHF

Final Rounds Recap

Losers Round 4

Notes: In a nail-biting series, the last non-GSTL team left barely fell short of defeating the huge favorite FXO. With GuMiho, Luck, Leenock, and Oz, the Koreans were one of the favorites for the tournament. With three of their big four set to play here, it's remarkable that Liquid` did so much damage. The hero for TL was Ret, who beat GuMiho in perhaps the greatest game of the tournament, a tremendous, back and forth slugfest on Daybreak. But with Liquid` up 4-2, Oz got in the game, and beat Ret, deflected a prepared snipe build from TLO, and then beat HerO in singularly unfortunate fashion (for Liquid fans) with a desperation DT tech after falling way behind.

It was a thrilling series from both sides, and one that exemplified what makes can make winners league teamleagues so great.





Notes: This was supposed to be a close series in which NSHoSeo's greater depth would ultimately prove decisive. Instead, it was Sage destroying everyone on Startale. ST was much worse off for lacking PartinG in this match, but even throwing their chances into a PvP probably wouldn't have saved them, as Sage looked on his game. This was a fitting rebuttal for NSHoSeo to their winners bracket defeat at the hands of GuMiho. Here, NSHoSeo said; "we can do it too!"

Happy trails to Startale, who subbed in late for SlayerS, but never really looked so good, despite their reasonably deep run. Startale is a team with good players like PartinG and Curious, but we saw precious little of them, and a lot of bad players like Squirtle and July, who were outmatched in the league.


Losers Round 5



Poor FXO. GuMiho mopped the floor with NSHoSeo in the winners bracket, and they would've loved to have extended series for the rematch (the only one in the tournament). Bo10, FXO up 5-0? Not a chance, said NSHoSeo, and they took sweet revenge, beating a top flight FXO line-up. This was basically the best line-up FXO could've produced, and it still got crushed by Jjakji and Sage.

FXO, despite having a ton of talent, and despite making it very far, still didn't perform as you might've expected them to. Lucky was non-existant for them, and Leenock rarely played. GuMiho and Oz did well on several occasions, but not like MarineKing and Creator carried Prime. Meanwhile, NSHoSeo really got hot after getting scorched by FXO in their one loss. With wins against ZeNex, Empire, Startale, and FXO at this point, they had shown the resilience, depth, and skill of a team of champions. When the going got rough, they got going, and it showed.



Losers Final



Notes: oGs, who were a game away from the finals on three occasions, were bounced unceremoniously to third place by the aforementioned on-fire NSHoSeo. One would've expected oGs to be the heavy favorites, just based on their dominance up until Prime, and then their close loss to the Winners Bracket finalists. But instead, they were smoked by Jjakji, and suffered way too much at the hands of Seal. A lot of fault needs to go to Fin (forGG) for oGs's losses, he has had one win in each, but has lost to a player he should've probably beat immediately after. ForGG came into Code A last season with so much promise, and he should be a player oGs can count on for streaks. Instead, he's been completely absent. TheStC, who was super for oGs against FXO, gets a pass, as does ViNES, who has played well. But oGs, for all of their depth, hasn't really had an ace that they can count on, and it showed here against NSHoSeo, a team that oGs would be favored against.

No Prime or Reason: The Kings of the 5-4

By tree.hugger

As the IPL Team Arena draws to a climactic close tonight, the spotlight focuses on just two teams; Prime, who defeated all comers in the winners bracket, and NSHoSeo, who recovered from being all-killed by GuMiho to take revenge on FXO this week and steam into the finals from the losers bracket.

But while Prime, as the undefeated team is the obvious favorite, NSHeo Seo has looked dominant in the recent games, with 5-0, 5-2, and 5-2 wins over Korean rivals this week alone. In fact, their toughest opponent, aside from GuMiho has been Dignitas in the first round. Who would've guessed?

And on the other side of the coin, Prime, despite having won all their games, hasn't blown anyone away, from their foreign to their Korean opposition. Remarkably, Prime's easiest win came against Startale, the first Korean team they faced at it was 5-3. Meanwhile, they struggled mightily against the foreigners of Empire and Liquid, and they very nearly lost to oGs as well. Three of their four wins have gone to the ace match. That means that for a 4-0 team, Prime has a stunningly low differential of +5. oGs, with one less win and two more losses ended the same, at +5. Liquid`, with the same 3-2 overall score ended +8, the next highest after 6-1 NSHoSeo (+14).

So how did Prime do it? How did they manage to hemorrhage games, yet stem the bleeding before it could result in a loss? The best answer is probably their very unique team dynamic. Five players on Prime have won games for the team, which is a standard number, but two players; MarineKing and Creator, have won 16 of their 20 total wins, or 80%, by far the most dramatic distribution of any team. In contrast, NSHoSeo has won 30 games overall, with 16 (53%) coming from two players, and 23 (76%, still lower!) coming from three.

This means that Prime has gotten to where it is on the backs of just two players. While Prime's back bench has achieved an awful 4-15 (21%) win rate, MKP and Creator's 16-5 (76%) has been barely enough. In three of Prime's wins, the game was ended by one of these two. Only Liquid was able to defeat both Creator and MKP, and yet, against all odds, Prime's beleaguered bench managed to pull out the two wins that MKP had been unable to get, and keep the Prime train running.

It's been a remarkable run for Prime, and tonight, they will have two shots if they need it to take home the IPL TAC 2 championship. But their heavy reliance speaks to a serious vulnerability. Prime has started with one of their aces only once, and would be wise to not do so here. That means NsHoSeo should start with a strong and good all-around player to clean up Prime's back bench and force MKP and Creator to fight. When the aces come out, if NSHoSeo has snipes prepared, then they can take a clean strategic victory. Meanwhile, Prime's chances rely on skill. MKP aren't just lucky, they're good. With players like these, Prime might be hoping to simply overpower NSHoSeo. They certainly have the advantage in ace players; while Jjakji and Sage have both looked excellent in the last few rounds, MKP and Creator deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Strategy vs Skill. Depth vs Aces. The battle between the wobbly favorite, and the surging underdog is joined tonight!