Infested Aces

The transformation from the IPL TAC to the GSTL is almost complete. After some weeks of resisting the new "all zerg, all the time" trends being seen in the premier Korean teamleague, the premier foreign teamleague has succumbed. Three zergs; Nerchio, VortiX, and Lucky, won thirteen of the twenty eight total matches played last week. Only one winning team got help from any non-zergs. Two teams didn't even bother sending out other races.

So much for depth a key to a team's success. This week it was more; "Do you have an ace zerg? YES/NO"

But let's not drift into a balance discussion here. The week's winners were truely the best players on the field. They just happened to be zerg in this case. In that sense, it was more of a week in which we saw the aces dominate as they should. Will that trend continue this week? It's something to watch for at any rate, as all the remaining teams are stocked with powerful frontmen (and women!) who can turn the tide of the series in a flash.

From now until the end, it's all about the elite of the elite.

Who can we hope to see perform? I'm extremely excited about Acer and TSL; which should be heavy on ZvZ, but also on HSC winner Nerchio, and featuring the debut of Scarlett. Acer has been looking like the foreign heroes so far, and it'd be wonderful to see them extend the streak. Also of note; the super-hot Karont3 battles MvP, and EG hopes to earn a teamleague reputation against NSHoSeo. To close of the week, we've got FXO hoping to get a little lucky and tear into Prime.

Last week looked to be the most viewed week in this season of the IPL TAC. Hype is growing weekly as the number of teams whittled down. At the start of this week, only half the teams that began remain. At its close, only a third of the original twenty four will be left. As foreshadowed by last week's article, is this the end of the road for the foreigners? Will the Korean teams take over from here? These questions, and more, will be answered soon. Things are getting tight.

Week Eight (Losers Round 2) Review

By tree.hugger

In what turned out to be a trend in the week, Acer eliminated aTn-Type with only zergs of the same nationality. While many were hoping to see the debut of Scarlett for Acer, ParanOid and Nerchio combined to make that impossible, but Acer and Scarlett fans probably won't be so disappointed as the win ensures that the lime green, zerg-heavy squad will play again this week. For Nerchio, it was a clinical performance that foreshadowed his weekend win at the Homestory Cup. With Nerchio's recent run of form, and a second ace in Scarlett joining the roster, the surprising Acer isn't so surprising anymore.

Alternate-Type meanwhile didn't completely embarrass themselves in this tournament, but they showed a performance that was bi-polar. Getting crushed by dtG, responding with a win over iS, before falling to Acer here—you have to think they could've done better. With the likes of Socke, ClouD, and DarKFoRcE on their team, they may have lacked a true 'ace' of Nerchio's calibre, but they certainly had a deep line-up of players who presumably could be relied on to get more wins. But for whatever reason; be it luck or simply getting outplayed, Alternate-Type's performance was exactly what it was in the qualifiers; underwhelming.

Back to Acer. They will take on TSL this week, in what promises to be a festival of ZvZ. And surprisingly, Acer has a serious chance. Nerchio, Bly, and Scarlett have all taken down top Korean players before. Even ParanOid has proven himself to be a dangerous wild-card. That can't match up on paper to TSL's phenomenal depth and strength at the front with Polt and SymboL, but it certainly leaves the door open for something special to happen. Acer of course barely missed beating Prime, and have probably been the best surprise of the tournament. It'd be great to see them put it together again to progress.




Already a great looking match-up between some of the best and most underrated players in Europe, this series took on new meaning when both Beastyqt of Empire and VortiX of Karont3 qualified for TSL4 in back to back opens just twenty four hours before the start of this series. And both players delivered exactly as advertised—and fellow TSL4 qualifier Nerchio having four killed the day before—with Beasty taking the first two wins before VortiX beat him, then rolled to the all-kill. Both players displayed a superior level of skill for their teams, but the result was an upset; most people, including this writer, expected Empire to have enough depth to out-muscle VortiX and LucifroN. Instead, perhaps hurt by the end of viOlet's contract, Empire was left looking helpless against the zerg might of Spain.

Empire's run through this IPL TAC has been fairly disappointing. Given the pick-up of ViNES, the emergence of TheMista, and the noticeable improvement made by Beastyqt and viOlet since the last TAC, it seemed like they had the pieces together to go even farther than last time. Instead, they couldn't perform like they have in teamleagues of old. Kas only had one win in four series. Only two for Happy. Of course, Beastyqt all-killed one of those matches, so perhaps it's unfair to count, but against It's GoSu, Empire looked surprisingly vulnerable, and that never really went away. In the end, eight of their fourteen total set wins came from Beasty. It's hard to figure out when went wrong. Empire is a deep team. Their line-up looks fantastic. But it didn't work out, and Empire will need to do some work to figure out what went wrong this time.

Meanwhile, full steam ahead for VortiX and Karont3. Before IPL TAC, the strength of the Spain scene was severely in doubt. In these newsposts, we questioned whether there was any depth beyond LucifroN. But his brother, as well as AlaStOr and MikOeL have been extremely impressive so far. This is a team that has looked superb after getting beaten early by Quantic's Hawk. While their next opponents, MvP, are a Korean upgrade to the foreign fare that Karont has devoured so far, there's definitely reason to believe that the Spaniards could pull yet another upset.




This was your reprieve from zerg. In a week where three of four winning teams won with zergs alone, both EG and Dignitas mercifully sent out only one zerg each and that zerg was nice enough to not win. Of course, neither team is particularly zerg-heavy, but still...

EG won, as expected, but surprisingly they committed HuK early, which probably points to this series being played while HuK was outside of Korea. But it was a nice touch from EG to send him out, as he's been underexposed recently, perhaps for the first time in his career. He delivered as well, taking down the two scariest looking players from Dignitas at the moment in SeleCT and KiLLeR. When BlinG finally PvP'd him out, EG goofed off for a round, sending Machine, but then got serious and sent out ThorZaIN to take the inevitable victory. Pretty cut and dry, and one of the few matches in this IPL TAC to follow the script.

Dignitas is out. Their line-up hasn't been as stellar as it has been in the past, and there seems to be a definite need of fresh blood. (There are rumors about it too!) For a team that used to be considered among the elite, having to qualify for this event was an embarrassment, and getting all-killed by Liquid`Zenio was another. They got their act together against Eclypsia, but weren't the most convincing in doing it. Overall, they won where they should've, lost everywhere else and are knocked out just about where you'd expect.

EG, meanwhile, is now coming off two consecutive wins, which ought to put the griping about some of their famous teamleague issues to rest for now. They looked firmly in control against dtG and Dignitas. Now, however, comes their second test. NSHoSeo feels like the weakest Korean team remaining in the tournament along with FXO, but they have Jjakji, and in the last IPL TAC, they silenced all the doubters with a monstrous run through the losers bracket. This is the level of team that EG should be able to go toe to toe with. Will they? Now that's another issue.




FXO brought us back to our regularly scheduled zerg programming, with this victory over CompLexity. I'm tempted to use the word 'stomp' here, even though the score was a very equitable 5-3. But CompLexity has this weird phenomenon where only one player is able to deliver at any given time. It worked in the EG MC, especially with Killer playing like I didn't think was possible. Against FXO.CIS it was Killer. Against It's GoSu, it was qxc and Heart. Here it was Heart and Heart only. Thus the loss. FXO's Korea squad was one of the favorites in IPL TAC 2, but in TAC 3, they're vulnerable. CompLexity's patch-work line-up wasn't the one to do it though.

A shoutout should go to Tri-Master for his performance as CompLexity's final player, where he played very well against Lucky. Heart of course, carried. But to GanZi, who went down in record time, Killer, who opened poorly, and goswser, who for whatever reason was part of a replay snafu (which really should never happen; FXO bears primary responsibility, but coL should have the backup) there will be no points awarded. While coL's depth is questionable, especially compared to GSTL teams, where really no foreign squad can compete, they need to be able to pull together more wins at the same time. Against Lucky, who really isn't the creme de la creme of Korean zergs, and hasn't been for months, you want to see coL do better. Alas, they can't because they're out. I'm sure we'll see more of them in future teamleagues, but for the moment, bon voyage!

Meanwhile, FXO stays alive—tenuously—and moves on to face Prime. KR vs KR matches can, I guess, go anywhere, but FXO's once feared top four; Leenock, Lucky, GuMiho, and Oz is no longer feared... or four. Is there hope for the orangemen against Prime? Yes, yes there is. His name is FXOTear, and he just went on a tear through a curiously under-performing Startale in the GSTL. He also took two games off HyuN and Polt in an earlier match. Lucky, Leenock and GuMiho are also still around, so FXO does have the pieces. And Prime was bumped out of GSTL as well. There's still hope!

Week Nine (Losers Round Three) Preview

By NrGmonk

In the past few months, if there's one thing we've learned about team leagues it's that Zergs are the key to success. The more Zergs, the better. Fortunately for them, both teams have Zergs in spades. In fact, here's a neat little tidbit: on their way to qualifying for the round of four of GSTL, TSL had to win 4 matches (20 games in total). TSL did win those games, but a staggering 20 out of 20 games were won by Zergs. While TSL does have strong Terran and Protoss choices in Polt and Inori, they have not contributed at all to TSL's recent GSTL success. Acer is in a similar boat, as five of its six players are Zerg, including Acer's most notable players, Nerchio, Bly, and Scarlett. While DarkHydra, ironically the team's only Terran, has contributed wins to his team during IPL TAC, it's pretty obvious the team relies on Zergs, which consist of a whopping 83% of its roster.

And not only do both teams have a large quantity of Zergs, each team has at least one top tier Zerg player. For TSL, Symbol is possibly the hottest player in Starcraft right now, going from zero to hero for his team in a matter of months. His most recent results including basically all-killing two teams in the GSTL, and making the round of 8 in the GSL as one of the most likely royal roader candidates we've ever seen. Acer's corresponding star is Nerchio, a foreigner Zerg star who won Homestory Cup V this weekend, a result which speaks for itself. In his run, he most notably beat MC, arguably the best PvZ player in the world, in a bo5 series, cementing himself as one of the best Zergs in the world. And Scarlett? Lets not forget the last time we saw her, she defeated BumbleBeePrime and nearly took out Oz in IPL 4.

However...

We joke a lot about Zergs dominating team leagues (partly because it's true), but other races exist too! A key part of team leagues is getting favorable match-ups on favorable maps, and TSL has the clear advantage in this regard. TSL has top tier players of other races such as Polt and Inori to reliably abuse anti-Zerg maps, while Acer has just a relatively unknown name in DarkHydra. Point for TSL.

And another key part I've been neglecting to mention is that TSL is, after all, a GSTL team. No wait, they're currently a top 4 GSTL team, having beaten the likes of Fnatic, LG-IM-SK, FXO.KR, and NSH to get this prestigious title. And while Acer have surprised many with their results in IPL TAC3, and they've proven they can take games off of the most formidable foes, they're still heavy underdogs against any top tier Korean team, which includes TSL.

Prediction: TSL 5:2 Acer




MvP's 1-5 loss to IM last week was surely a surprise to those who actually follow team leagues. Traditionally, MvP is the much stronger team league team, anchored by the king of team leagues himself, DRG. IM, on the other hand, is known as that team with the bumbling coach who calls all the wrong plays and thus makes his team under-preform. And while IM did best MvP this one time, don't take this as evidence that MvP or DRG is slumping. DRG, in this match, was cheesed by a proxy 2 rax on a map he didn't know well, certainly not a true gauge of his skill. And although in this weekend's IPL showmatch at Hot Import Nights, DRG did not win, he certainly did not look too much worse. Against MMA, DRG showed convincing games including an amazing comeback, and against Hero, DRG still looked insanely strong in macro games, and only seemed to struggle against some of Hero's all-ins. MvP also deserves no pity, as they, along with TSL, are one of the only two teams qualified for GSTL round of 4, getting there with minimal use of DRG.

Every week that Karont3 plays, we often make it all about LucifroN. LucifroN this, LucifroN that. But this week, we're going to focus on a different Moreno Durán brother, a Juan "VortiX" Moreno Durán. While adamant followers of IPL TAC3 know VortiX for his previously strong performances in this league, and followers of sc2ranks.com know of his high ranks on ladder, very few could have predicted the week he had last week. Within a single week (or within a single day from the perspective of a viewer), VortiX qualified for TSL4 AND all-killed Empire in IPL TAC3, notably preventing a possible all-kill from another TSL4 qualified player, Beastyqt. But while on one hand, it's great for VortiX that he all-killed such a strong team like Empire, it doesn't exactly put the team in a very good light. In all of Karont3's three match, only Vortix and Alastor have contributed wins, which begs the question, can Karont3's other team members even complete at the same level? Of course, we know LucifroN can and does, but still, a three man team already puts you down two men in a team league.

Like Acer, Karont3 has surprised us all and done more than enough to prove themselves, but perhaps they're a bit out of their league here. Past this round, we'll be down to eight teams, the eight best teams on the planet. Unfortunately for Karont3, I just don't see that for them...yet.

Prediction: MvP 5:2 Karont3




NSHoSeo isn't exactly the most exciting team to follow. As a team with relatively few sponsors, we don't get to see many of their players being sent overseas to foreign tournaments. As such, NSHoSeo players get much less exposure than players from some of the more well-endowed teams, like SlayerS or MvP. In addition, because very few NSHS players qualify for thie GSL, we don't see much from them in this format either. In fact, most of what we do know about NSHS comes from team leagues such as this league and the GSTL. And what we do know is that NSH is a very competitive team filled with players who play the game a bit differently than their peers (or a lot differently if you're Freaky). On paper, NSHS is generally a slight underdog to most other Korean teams, but what makes them so exciting in team leagues is that they still win about 50% of their matches, even as the underdog.

Curiously though, HoSeo finds themselves in a rather unusual, but favorable position going into this week's match. NSHS is, after all, a Korean team, and the last time EG tried to face a GSTL level Korean team in this all-kill format, they got badly bruised and beaten all over. EG is a team that consists of the world's best foreigners, including team league virtuoso Thorzain in addition to top international tournament performer, Puma, and previously top GSTL performer, JYP. Yet for some reason, they just can't seem to get it all together at the same time for a team league match. Yes, EG beat both dtG and Dignitas in their last matches in the IPL TAC, but these results are to be expected, and show little about the current form of the team. In fact, EG has been rather silent lately, with most of their players training vigorously in Korea, awaiting for the next opportunity to prove their new-found skills; perhaps this is it. To their credit, EG has the best chances out of any other team in this round for a non-GSTL team(sorta) to knock a GSTL team out of the tournament. And if the heinous heads can make this happen, perhaps it might be time to consider retiring the whole "EG is bad at team leagues" shtick.

Prediction: NSHoSeo 5:3 EG




Prime, as a team, has been nothing but disappointing in the last few months. They are the reigning GSTL, IPL TAC, and KSL champions, but they have not performed like it in their recent matches. Every time Prime plays, I predict a win for them given their past performances, and every time I'm disappointed due to the entirety of Prime's star lineup choking all at once. Prime has gone 0 for 3 in their last 3 clan wars, losing to Fnatic, Liquid, and Slayers-EG, even managing to be all-killed twice by Taeja and Coca. And although I hate to go back to this issue, I can't help but wonder whether Prime's lack of success could possibly come from a lack of a good Zerg. Prime has probably the best Terran lineup in the world consisting of MKP, Byun, and Maru, and one of the best Protoss in the world in Creator(or the best Protoss in the world if you ask Naniwa). What they're lacking is a solid Zerg who can help them through these tough Zerg-dominated times. (Sorry Bbongbbong, losing to dts after you've scouted them does not make you a solid Zerg.) So hey, Life, if that Zenex thing doesn't happen to work out for you, I know of a team that would be more than happy to pick you up.

Meanwhile, FXO.KR, while on paper has one of the weaker Korean lineups, has managed to accomplish what Prime could not: they're still in the GSTL. Last week, FXO.KR bested GSTL runner-up Startale in order to stay in the GSTL and have a chance to move onto the round of 4. While their roster may not be as glorious as once was, FXO.KR has still shown a strong capacity and will to win, focusing on their new talent. After Oz left, FXO.KR began recruitment, realizing that cultivating future talent was the key to the success of the team. And while most every other team was repeatedly sending out known names in the GSTL, FXO.KR, in their match versus Startale, sent out a relative newbie in Tear. This bet eventually apparently paid off as Tear went on to beat three of Startale's best players in Curious, Squirtle, and Parting, securing the win.

FXO.KR also makes it certain that they know how to win in team leagues with their last match in IPL TAC3. Against complexity, they sent out all Zergs, even though they could have easily diversified the lineup. With FXO's rather full six man Zerg lineup, consisting of mainstays such as Leenock and Lucky, but also relative unknowns in Whale, Sirius, JKS, and Supreme, FXO has six possible winning all-Zerg lineups, six ways to all but guarantee yet another team league win.

If all the favorites of this week's matches win, the loser of this match will be the first GSTL team to be eliminated from IPL TAC3, and what a shame that would be. While all the trends point to FXO.KR taking this match, I cannot turn my back on my dear struggling Prime team. Even though FXO.KR are the younger, more hip kids on the block, the Prime team consists of veterans who weathered storms together and gone through thick and thin with each other. They are champions and champions do not quit after being bludgeoned, beaten, and all-killed a few times. They get back up and ask for more.

Prediction: Prime 5:4 FXO.KR