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A Change in the Weather
– SKT_Rain advances from Group A in first place, defeating Liquid`TaeJa and TSL_Polt

Sometimes, old proverbs are apt to describe the most modern of sports. In last night's Code S matches, it was a case of 'cometh the hour, cometh the man.' SKT_Rain, rising to prominence with his streak of PvZ victories in WCS Korea, came to show everyone that his PvT was no lesser a force. Put simply, he faced two of the best TvP players in the world, and beat both of them handily to finish first in his group. Rain is no longer merely the best KeSPA player. He is a championship contender.

Picking Liquid`TaeJa during group nominations might have looked silly at face value. However, for Rain the range of selections was narrow, and in hindsight, it's easy to understand why the KeSPA player had such confidence in his TvP. His first two games were a tour de force of how to beat a top player in PvT.

Rain never took big risks, insisting on over-producing observers to create an impenetrable drop defense while he teched up behind it. Cloud Kingdom and Antiga Shipyard can be tricky maps on which to hold off a Terran trying to stretch the Protoss defenses, but liberal use of cannons, templars and observers kept Rain safe from harassment that could have put him behind. While Terran's harassment was shut down entirely, Rain was devilish in his own torment of the Terran economy. Constant storm drops and zealot warp-ins meant that TaeJa never had the economic backbone to stand up to Rain in the late game.

Against TSL_Polt in the winners match, Rain showed another side of his PvT, denying Polt's scout and punishing the TSL player with a 4-gate on Whirlwind. On Antiga, Polt was able to hand Rain his only defeat of the night, taking the lead with a four medivac doom-drop and starving Rain to death in a long game. Facing off on Daybreak to see who would advance in first place, Rain pulled out a three nexus build and won with the same commitment to harassment brought TaeJa to his knees.

There are a few things that really stand out about Rain so far. The first match against Taeja was very Seed’esque, avoiding confrontations and harassing the Terran to death. His play against Polt was more reminiscent of Parting, with a fast double expand and a glut of storms. Of course, having similarities to Seed and Parting is far from a bad thing. Overall, his builds showed diversity, with a propensity to both play to the map and the player. However, his style is becoming quite clear; in a straight up game his plan will be to safely expand and simply run the Terran down slowly by attacking the economy, rather than trying to crush the army in a decisive engagement.

Incidentally, that is also how he played out his PvZs in WCS Korea. Patience, stellar defense and high activity through contesting mid map control and harassing are elements that define him as a player – and they were the highlights of his play in the group.

– Liquid`TaeJa repeats his usual loss-win-win pattern to advance in second place.

In the last three seasons of GSL, TaeJa has not only made the round of eight three consecutive times, he has also shown his resilience in an intriguing way. Three times before, he has advanced from his group after losing his first match, and he made it four times on Tuesday night.

In terms of his games, Taeja did not look quite as good as we have come to expect of him lately. Of course, it was impossible that he would look invincible forever. Taeja was given a master class in how his standard TvP can be defeated by Rain. The games were not lopsided, but Rain only looked really threatened when he made unforced errors. An unusual sight, as we've seen a substantial number of games where Taeja has been able to bend his opponents to his will rather than have to wait for hand outs.

The shakiness continued against MVPDongRaeGu in the losers match. Once again, it would be foolish to say that Taeja did not play some fantastic StarCraft II, but the feeling of something not being quite right lingered. Ultimately, he proved to be the MVP Zerg’s superior on the day through straight up play. While he lost the second game after his double barracks play failed to do much at all, all-in-all Taeja looked comfortable in making DRG's mass muta-bane-ling play look obsolete.

In the final match of the day, the TaeJa rebound came complete. Having looked outplayed and lacking ideas versus Rain, better but still not at his best against DRG, he showed brilliant and commanding marine/tank play against Polt. Once again, shrewd drops and beautiful positional play was combined with slick mechanics to put Taeja through to the final eight.

The best way I can describe Taeja’s play overall would be ‘muted’. Perhaps nerves still a play a factor, perhaps it was some recent losses to all-ins that made him feel the need to play more conservatively. At the very least, he seemed more averse to taking risks, toning down his iconic, flamboyant, bulldozer style just a little.

– The departed two

For Polt, this group always looked to be difficult. When Taeja looks like your easiest opponent on paper, you know you are in for a rough ride. Polt did impress, defeating DRG and taking the only game off Rain in the group. It would probably not have been unjust to see him advance over Rain altogether, as his losses were pretty marginal in the sense that a lot came down to maps and builds. With some more luck in either department, Polt could have advanced to the round of eight for the first time in over a year while looking impressive.

The last player of the group, DongRaeGu, still is a bit of a mystery. I think a fairly common sentiment would be that he is somehow much better than what both results and gameplay indicate. Today, he was almost taken aback by Polt’s play, not punishing him for an incredibly early third in the first game and falling to a marauder/hellion all-in in the third. Against Taeja he looked outclassed. His mechanics seem unchanged from when he was the best Zerg in the world; it was his decision making that fails him.

DRG insisted on playing a prolonged lair phase with mutalisk/ling/bling – a strategy that often seems brilliant when it works, hopeless when it does not. That particular trait is mirrored in DRG as a player at the moment. However, he still has the round of eight in the OSL to look forward to. Not as good as getting there in both tournaments, but to do that, you would have to be...about as good as Rain at least.

– Rating the spells of the day

Psionic storm: Magnificent, thunderous! 10/10
EMP: A slow day, sometimes hitting, but too often underwhelming. 6/10
Fungal growth: Infestors were on strike. No scabs allowed. Not rated.

Group D will be played first, while groups B and C will be played next week.

Group D: LG-IM_Seed, TSL_Symbol, LG-IM_Happy, ST_Life


LG-IM_Seed vs. TSL_Symbol

There is something truly terrifying about a player who can ask 12 of the top players in the world if they would like to play him, and get no answer. For Seed, that's exactly what happened to him at the Ro16 group selections. Seed is now standing at the top of the mountain, and he has never looked better in his career. He won the last GSL. He defeated Taeja and HerO to win IPL TAC3 for LG-IM. He'll be on his way to WCS Asia to represent Korea. More recently, he was able to ignore the champion's curse and get to the round of 16 of Code S by defeating Suhosin and Parting (who had stopped his run in WCS Korea). 

Seed is easily top 5 in the world in every one of his matchups, but the scariest thing about him is that the higher the pressure, the worse the situation, the better he performs. He was on the verge of getting eliminated multiple times last season against both Symbol and Byun, but he made it back through sheer force of will. Strangely enough, the players Seed beats seem to have their own will crushed in return, never looking quite as strong afterward. Symbol admitted as much at the group selections, saying he couldn't even really play StarCraft for a month after he was eliminated by Seed in last season's quarter-finals. With this in mind, Seed believes he has found the answer to making it to another GSL Finals. That is to destroy Symbol’s soul for a second time.

About two months ago, Symbol looked as strong as Seed did now. Symbol had no weak matchups.  He looked extraordinarily strong in his Ro32 matches and escaped from that season's Ro16 group of death with impressive games. Then he became the first victim of the Leech Seed. After giving up a 2 - 0 lead to Symbol, Seed went into his clutch mode and won the next three games and destroyed Symbol’s will. Symbol then went on a downward spiral of despair as he collapsed in all other Korean leagues as well. Now 2 months later, Symbol has come back out of his funk and is once more climbing the steps to the GSL championship. Unfortunately for him Seed, has chosen him as a sacrifice and plans to re-enact their last GSL meeting. There is one crucial difference between this match and their last match. This time Symbol will be motivated by two of the strongest of human emotions, spite and revenge.

LG-IM_Happy vs. ST_Life

If Symbol can't succeed at exacting revenge, at least he'll have spite to fall back on. After getting selected by Seed, Symbol made sure he would have a back-up plan in the case of defeat by choosing Happy creating the possibility of a painful team-kill for Seed. Happy was probably upset with this, but I couldn’t really tell as his emotions never change. Happy’s chances in this group might be better than they initially seem, as there are two Zerg opponents in this group, and Happy's best match-up is TvZ at a 70 percent win rate. However, most of that record was built up during the Terran dominated year of 2011, and he's only had a mediocre record since. If he can avoid Seed in an elimination match – which is entirely possible considering how good Seed is – then Happy might have a shot at escaping this group.

Every GSL season the group nominations give some insight into what the players think about the skills of the other players.  Generally, the last chosen player is the most in form player at the time. This GSL, the last player chosen was Life. Life is the craziest Zerg player in the world, capable of doing just about anything. He can beat top players in straight macro games when he wants, but he can also beat them with a variety of completely unorthodox strategies as well. From triple hatch before pool, 1 base mutas, roach hydra attacks against Terran, mid game muta switches, slow ling-bane busts, the entire Zerg playbook is open to Life. This makes him an extremely dangerous player and one that cannot be prepared for easily. With that in mind, the fact that Group D was bumped up a week plays into Life’s favor as he won't need much time to dissect the standard play of his opponents, while they will be hard pressed to cover all of Life's many possibilities.

Winners Match and Onwards

Seed should be the overall favorite in the group. He has the best PvZ in the world and is his PvT is top five. Despite Symbol’s thirst for revenge, Seed’s PvZ has only improved since their last meeting, while Symbol has just regained his form from two months ago. Despite Happy's good TvP showings in the Ro32 he shouldn't be much of a problem either. Seed has recently stated he has gained a lot of confidence in PvT, and he's backed it up with great wins over players like Jjakji and TaeJa.

While the other three players in this group are similar in skill, Life should be favored as he has an insane ZvZ win rate of 70 percent, the one match-up where he just plays a straight up style. His ZvP style is his strangest, so it’s hard to predict what would happen if he played Seed. His ZvT falls somewhere in between, though he tends to lean towards macro styles in ZvT unless he has reason to fear the player.

Happy will be the underdog in the group, but not by much.  He defeated both Rain and Genius in Ro32, showing hugely improved TvP since his last foray into Code S. Happy’s ZvT is what made him famous in the first place, but it remains to be seen how it's held up over time, especially in the queen-patch era.

Finally, this is Symbol’s chance for revenge. He already got some satisfaction by knocking down Yoda twice to get to the Ro16. This time Symbol will be going after Seed and Happy at the same time.  In group nominations he said his desired result was both LG-IM players being knocked out and him and Life moving on.  Even if he can’t knock down both LG-IM players, Symbol will still get some satisfaction by ensuring at least one of them will be eliminated, as long as he himself advances. Symbol played an incredibly close series last time against Seed, so he will have a good a shot as any Zerg player against the defending champion.  He has an even better shot against Happy as ZvT has always been Symbol’s specialty. Life will prove a problem for Symbol, but he has the best practice partners anyone could ask for in TSL (The Swarm Life).  

This could be a very important night for Seed and Symbol. Their last series contained many exciting games with a lot of tense moments. Tonight, there will be the added spark of bad blood. Whether Symbol takes his revenge, or has his soul taken for a second time, this could lead to one of the best rivalries we've seen.

Seed > Symbol
Life > Happy
Seed > Life
Symbol > Happy
Life > Symbol

Seed and Life advance.