Where They Stand

After competing together with Old Generations for two seasons, Team Liquid is finally participating in the GSTL as an independent team. TLO's arrival in Korea gave Liquid the bare minimum depth needed to compete in the best of nine league, and Liquid decided to make the gamble of playing with their skeleton squad.

It's an intriguing decision. On the face of it, it seems like Liquid is competing for the sake of competing, even if victory is just a remote possibility. That's a concept every foreigner team and player is familiar with in this increasingly Korean world. However, while individual players can move on from getting 2 – 0'd by a Korean player in the fourth round of Code A qualifiers, could Liquid the team, really live down getting 0 – 2'd from the tournament?

Let's put it this way, when F.United and the old FXO went into the GSTL, they went in with zero expectations. When they ended up achieving something, they couldn't help but be winners. Liquid is not like either of those teams. For better or for worse, it's a team with popularity, a team with a reputation, and a team with expectations. Crushing disappointment is a possibility.

Of course, Liquid knew all this as they decided whether or not to play in the GSTL. Their decision to go forth means that they must have had a fair amount of confidence. We'll see if it was well founded.




Speaking of expectations and the lack thereof, we have ZeNEX. ZeNEX has rapidly become the Air Force ACE of Starcraft II, the lovable losers who are endearing precisely because of their inability to win. It's a veritable miracle that they've outlasted oGs, and we like to believe that it's a testament to someTHING – even if we're not quite sure what it is.

Once upon a time, ZeNEX used to be a good team. In fact, if they had kept all the members they lost since their foundation, they would probably be one of the best teams in Korea. Puzzle, TaeJa, Hack, CoCa, Genius, GhostKing are all former ZeNEX players, yet they managed to drop them one by one following each beating, like some kind of pro-gamer pinata.

The constant hemorrhaging of players has made them literally the worst Korean team. They've won exactly two series in the history of the GSTL: A 4 – 3 victory against SlayerS in their very first match in the GSTL, and a freebie 4 – 0 win over the old, foreigners + Oz (then twilight) FXO team. Somehow, everyone who left ZeNEX did so just before they achieved their success (although, that could say something about ZeNEX's ability to develop players), leaving Line's RO4 finish in the Super Tournament as their best individual league achievement.

I would like to say there's nothing to lose for ZeNEX in this tournament, but it's easy to envision a scenario where their best player is immediately snapped up by a foreign team should they make an improbable run.


Key Players

TeamLiquid: TaeJa, TLO

TaeJa is the single most important player in this entire match, but for an unusual reason: He probably won't be there. Unfortunately for Liquid, his flight back from Red Bull Battlegrounds doesn't have him back quite in time for GSTL, and he is likely to be missing from the roster. Any team in the world would be hurt by having their second best player unavailable for duty, but for Liquid's threadbare, six-man team, it's a particularly mortal wound. TaeJa is a player who's shown he's very well suited to the GSTL stage, scoring two all-kills as a member of SlayerS (in fact, he all-killed ZeNEX once). It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say he makes up for more than 25% of Liquid's strength in this tournament, and that without him, it will be very hard to win a single match.

After getting over his wrist injury and switching to Zerg, TLO has experienced a pleasant revival in his career. TLO has always been very popular, but now he's finally started showing the high level play to back it up. He's performed quite well against other top foreigners in recent tournaments, while his three kill against Prime in IPL TAC (including MarineKing) would have been an impressive haul for even a Code S player.

The problem with TLO is that he's only really been good online, and at the lower stages of live tournaments thus far. He hasn't been able to get it done in live tournaments or pressure situations, and this GSTL will be an extreme combination of both. Zenio, Haypro, and Jinro haven't really changed much in the past six months, so if someone is to be a surprise boost for Liquid, TLO will have to break out in this tournament.

ZeNEX: Life, Extreme

Life is a player you frequently hear people thanking in post match interviews for helping them practice, and he always seems to pop up on some famous player's stream as a ladder opponent and shows off some serious skills. At the age of sixteen, this makes Life a kind of Zerg counterpart to TaeJa in the past – an young, online monster with a lot of potential who has yet to achieve anything in a live tournament. However, while TaeJa has gotten over his live tournament nerves, Life's skill suffers greatly when he enters the GSL booth. ZeNEX's success will depend on how much progress Life has made in overcoming those jitters.

We got to see a little bit of Extreme's potential in the previous GSTL, where he scored a three-kill against TheStC, Nada, and fOrGG to bring oGs dangerously close to defeat. He's built on that strong performance in the KSL team league since then, four killing IM (sans Nestea and Mvp) and NSH, and he played well against FXO and Startale as well. For ZeNEX, Extreme is the closest thing they have to a real 'rising prospect,' and it will be interesting to see which foreign team snaps him up if he can continue to build his reputation in the GSTL.


Aces

Liquid`HerO

HerO is the biggest advantage Team Liquid have going into the GSTL. He's always been called one of the most talented players in the world by his peers and pundits alike, and he made good on some of those expectations last Code S by reaching the top four. He is one of the best PvZ players in the world, which will be very valuable against a ZeNEX team that will rely heavily on Line and Life.

The pressure of being the Ace for a team will certainly weigh heavily on HerO's shoulders, but his Code S semi-final run shows he's come a long way towards overcoming his nerve issues. In fact, can't we say he's actually better than average in that department now? Still, being an average ace isn't going to cut it given TL's thin roster, so it will be important for HerO to make the next step by becoming a player who is even better under pressure.


ZeNEXLine:

Most people would probably say Life is a 'better' player, at least in the IdrA sense of the word. Line looked very mediocre in his last two Code A outings, and he only progressed to the Up/Downs this season because he received an extremely lucky walkover against Boxer in the first round. However, once he reached the Up/Downs, it was an entirely different story. I wouldn't say he so much "turned it on" as much as he simply found ways to win, ala Virus, Heart, and players of that sort.

In the aftermath of Mvp's Code S victory, we can't help but strongly rate players who can manufacture wins when it matters. Line might have been virtually anonymous for nearly a year, and he might have several teammates who are overshadowing him in terms of talent, but Line is still indisputably the ace of the team.


Prediction

If TaeJa were available, Liquid would be favored to win this match by a narrow margin. However, without TaeJa, the burden on HerO and Zenio has become a bit excessive. I can imagine the Liquid huddle now: "Hey, HerO, you kinda need to go out there and win three or more games." Besides DongRaeGu, has any other player in the GSTL had that seriously expected from him? For any other top-loaded team, you can still reasonably expect the supporting cast to squeeze out a win or two between them. For TLO, Jinro, and HayprO? I'm tempted to see what odds I would get if I wanted to bet on zero wins between the three.

The mitigating factor here is that they're facing ZeNEX, literally the worst Korean pro-team. They're basically a collection of unproven talent, and Puzzle showed us yesterday what a solid, Code S player can do to a collection of unproven talent. Against a team like SlayerS, HerO would have the right to reply to the aforementioned request with "Are you f***ing kidding me?" but against ZeNEX, he might just nod his head and say "Okay."

ZeNEX 5 – 4 Liquid