by stuchiu

Despite being the reigning champion of GSTL, FXO has yet to gain the kind of respect a title like that usually deserves. Their run was an extremely interesting mish-mash of unexpected players like Sirius and Tear coming in to help, and the Gummi twins of Gumiho and Leenock carrying the team on their backs. On top of that, they were the first team ever to get an all-kill at the GSTL Finals with Gumiho playing one of the best matches of the year against MMA in game one. But their efforts were overshadowed by the Slayers’ drama, LG-IM's rise and fall as a super-team, and most recently by the achievements of Startale. With this GSTL, they want to prove they are still the best team until someone takes that title away from them, and it would be historic for the league if they could be the first repeat champions since Slayers last year.

On the other hand we have StarTale, more infamously and lovingly known as KongTale. Ever since they took two second place trophies in one tournament at IPL4, they have been known as the silver surfers. The two individual championships they won from Bomber and Ace in 2011 were retroactively written off as pre-curse and completely forgotten fort he sake of the much more interesting story of a team that would always get second. For a long time, they fulfilled their role with Squirtle’s back-to-back silvers in IPL and GSL. Then Sound got a second at homestory cup. Life got second to Creator in TSL 4. Parting and Squirtle had the chance to double team Creator, but Creator still took WCS Korea. Parting tried to take WCS Asia, but was denied by Rain.

Finally, Life took a double victory at GSL and MLG, but the community quickly discounted his victories as “Zenex” victories. The curse contniued as Squirtle lost IeSF and Bomber lost Lonestar Clash. However, PartinG won the WCS Global Finals last week, and has almost fully dispelled the curse as a result. The only thing the curse has left to cling to is the GSTL. Yes, Startale crushed LG-IM in the IPTL Finals, but like the desperate fans of the curse we all are, we said, “Well it’s online, so it doesn’t really count.” If Startale wins this GSTL, we can finally take the KongTale curse off life support and declare it to be truly, and finally dead.

FXOpen

In one sentence: FXO is a team with a core of three main players including a world-class Zerg ace, backed by a short, but skillful bench that has consistently performed well despite their lack of name value.

The Core

GuMiho: FXO really likes to send Gumiho in the first position. Who can blame them? Gumiho has for the most part gotten multiple kills against teams in the first position. He’s a hard player to snipe and has no weak matchups.

Tear: Tear has proven himself in the last two seasons as a solid player, despite his lack of tournament exposure outside the GSTL. He always contributes and seems good in all of his matchups. If there is one weakness in Tear’s play, it’s that he’s soulless, so you can’t expect an Ohana immortal-sentry all-in from him.

Leenock: The Ace of FXO. He’s proven himself as a player with an incredibly wide breadth of strategies at his disposal. He has so many builds that after the end of his run at MLG, he still came back to GSL and showed even more builds on top of that. He’s as good an ace as any team could hope for as he is experienced, clutch, and doesn’t fear anyone. But, his loss against Sniper hurts him here and they may not want to play him against any Zergs if they can avoid it.

The Backup

The Zergs: FXO has a wide array of back-up zergs they can choose from. The most experienced of the bunch is Lucky, who has typically been good for at least a single win. Sirius has shown some skills in ZvZ and ZvT, though his ZvP has looked weak. On top of that they have JKS and Whale, but they're unlikely to be used given the five man limit.

The Terrans: First we have asd. While he dropped out of Code A, he’s a solid overall Terran who can play each of the matchups fairly well. And then there is TheBest, a player everyone loves to praise sarcastically, which is a good cover for someone who is actually pretty decent.

Choya: Choya once gained a ton of credit for pulling his team through to the semi-finals by beating MMA and Ryung in a crucial match of a bygone GSTL season. Then he blew all of that credit by choosing himself over Oz in the semi-finals. All told, Choya has shown that he's a good planner and dangerous sniper in PvT and PvP, but his cowboy days seem to be over. Still, you always suspect he's wearing a jersey underneath his suit.


StarTale Roster

In one sentence: Startale is a team with a roster that's so skilled and deep, playing a best of nine series actually hurts them as they have so much more aggregate talent than other teams.

The Core

Bomber: The King of inconsistency. Some days he’s falling to Code B. Other days he’s making a killer run through the greatest players in the world and placing high in tournaments. Currently, Bomber is on a run. He’s gotten 3rd/4th at MLG, 2nd at Lonestar and just made it past his first Code A match. With such a good run, all of his fans are still waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for him to blunder horrendously and crush their hearts. If Startale is smart, they’ll spend Bomber quickly in the first or second pick as he can get really hot and get multi-kills, rather than take a risk when things become more tense.

Curious: The King of consistency. You can always expect him to play extremely well in anything except the ro16 Code S. Another player with no notable weaknesses and a hard to player to snipe. He has always been a workhorse for Startale in the GSTL, even capable of filling in as the Ace, as in their match against MVP where he closed out the series after a stumble from Life.

Life: The dual MLG and GSL champion. He has extremely strong ZvT and ZvZ. Despite losing to Soulkey and having his momentum slowed down, he is still one of the best players in the world. The only thing untested is how he would do against a 3-base timing attack from a PvZ player on the level of Rain or Creator. Startale should avoid sending him out until Tear has been dealt with.

PartinG: With his victory at WCS, Parting has taken the #1 spot for Protoss on his team. He has some inconsistency issues, all-killing IM one day and then dropping out of Code S without winning a single game in the ro16. Overall he has very strong PvT and PvP and he covers his only weakness in PvZ with great depth of soul. A great choice to take on Tear or Gumiho, and Leenock as well if Ohana can be picked.

Squirtle: While Squirtle’s stock is on the decline with his loss at ESWC and elimination Code S, he’s been able to stabilize a bit with his triple kill against IM in the IPTL finals and one-sided win in his Code A first round match. He's still a big threat to Leenock and shouldn't be taken lightly just because of his previous slump.

The Bench

Terrans: Startale has Harrier, Sparta, Virus, Sound and Hack as backup. But only Hack is really likely to play. Hack seemed poised to take Bomber's starting spot with his Code S Ro16 run, but Bomber's good international performances might have forced Hack to prove himself some more.

Protoss: There ACE, Avenge, Brain, TREME, and Tiger. None of them will actually play if Startale is serious about winning.

Zergs: There is Pet, SoN, ZerO, and Suhosin. See Protoss.


Prediction

This should be a very close series despite StarTale having the world’s deepest lineup. Even though FXO’s lineup is smaller, the core three players will be very hard to take down. It all comes down to team picks. Last time, Startale wasted a slot on Sparta and that nearly lost them the entire match against MVP. As long as they don’t randomly decided to go with one of their weaker players for some reason, I expect StarTale to win the close fought battle here.

StarTale 5 - 4 FXO