Table of Contents

Round 4 Week 1 Preview
Lineups


Fresh faces and familiar names
OMG BISU!


EG-TL's plight
Making the miracle


Protoss players prepare pylons
Lasers abound


Matches of the week
Fantasy vs Flash & Jangbi
herO vs HerO


SK Planet Proleague table and results at Liquipedia

By: Wunder

Proleague has finally returned! Heading into the new round, there is a whole new expansion, new maps and new players. PartinG finally joins his SKT1 teammates, and ex-Fnatic Oz and aLive join the EG-TL roster as well. This round is shaping up to be the most electric and intense round of the season, with EG-TL preparing a fresh start and SKT1 bolstering their roster with the return of Bisu and new players. Brush off your thinking caps and get to your Fantasy league ready for yet another exciting round of Proleague!

Thanks to xpaperclip for formatting!

Round 4 Week 1 Matches

Fresh faces and familiar names

After a strong performance in the Special, Bisu makes his triumphant return back into the ranks of SKT1, getting placed into both matches for his team this week. According to Boxer, Bisu was actually the first to start playing Heart of the Swarm in the team, starting in the middle of round 2, which is a stark contradiction from Bisu's answer, which was that he started practicing in the middle of round 3. Regardless of when he started, it was revealed that Bisu was actually rank 1 GM during the beta, so there is actual precedence outside of the Special tournament that shows Bisu performing well. Starting out with a softball against Action and TurN, Bisu has to prove to his team and himself that he has what it takes by taking out these lower-level players. Action is currently on a 6 game losing streak in Proleague, but does boast wins over Stork and Rain, so Bisu may have to deal with a curveball against this KT Zerg. Similarly, Samsung KHAN’s TurN has not seen a lot of play in Proleague, having a 2-4 record throughout the season. Nevertheless, he has claimed a win against Argo, who is a strong protoss for Team 8. Bisu will have to have strong, safe builds prepared against these players, as they could pull out any amount of tricks to trip up the Revolutionist. If he fails to perform in this first week, Bisu’s place on the starting line-up will be questioned by fans and management alike and as we will see later, Protoss players are in no short supply.

CJ’s Bbyong, seemingly absent from their line-up in round 3, makes his own return back to the game. Maybe his coach saw something in his performance in the Special as well, with him going 1-1, or perhaps the Terran was simply preoccupied with GSL. Nevertheless, he is up against stiff opposition, pit against Team 8’s Terminator and EG-TL’s newest recruit aLive. He will no doubt have to perform well, as their coach has clearly showed he has no qualms about benching the terran in favor for another player.

On the subject of aLive, he and his fellow teammate Oz, in contrast to Bisu and Bbyong, have a much harsher welcome to Proleague. Going up against the likes of ZerO, free and EffOrt is surely going to be a wake up call for the two players, if they aren’t prepared for it. We haven’t seen too much out of these players recently, aLive last appeared in the Up & Downs for GSL, going 0-4 in his group, and Oz lost of Sacsri in the Code A qualifiers last season. But, even with these weak performances at the end of Wings of Liberty, it remains to be seen how well they have transitioned to Heart of the Swarm, as well as what they’ve been doing in the month they’ve had to train up for Proleague.

Lastly, we have PartinG, the former Startale protoss who joined up with SKT1 at the start of the year. Restricted from playing for his team in Proleague for the past two months, PartinG has a lot of lost ground to make up. Even though SKT has done reasonably well without him, PartinG will solidify their line-up even more and cement their position in the rankings. For the first week, PartinG will have to display his PvP prowess, going up against MyuNgSiK and Stork. Though the matches won’t be a walkover, if PartinG wins both his games, it will confirm the assumptions that many have about his place in the team.

EG-TL’s plight

This number represents the map score of EG-TL at the start of round 4 and tells the grim tale of EG-TL's struggles in WoL proleague. When proleague first started, and EG-TL’s partnership was announced, people expected big things. They were touted as one of the premier teams for proleague, and though they were at the middle of the pack for the first two rounds, they took a nosedive in the third round, going 1-6. With a slight roster change and new management, people are once again hopeful that this foreign team can pull through and break out of the mire.

-Park Yong Woon, newly appointed head coach of EG-TL

After being tweeted by Coach Park, these inspiring words will be tested this week, as EG-TL faces off two of the toughest teams in the league - CJ Entus, and the leader of the pack, Woongjin Stars. So what’s their strategy against these two teams? For starters, they have worked out a core team of four players: HerO, Jaedong, Oz and aLive. These four players will ostensibly be playing in every match, which allows them to get familiar with the format and maps and establish some order in the weeks to come. This leaves two spots to swap players in and out as they please. According to HuK, they have in-house rankings, so the players who show that they are practicing hard and doing well on ladder or against their teammates, will get a chance to be put in the line-up for that week.

So while all of these preparations and strategy is well and good, we haven’t addressed a major issue that has been clear from the start. Where is Liquid`Taeja? The star Terran showed up near the end of round 3, only to lose to Fantasy. He has been seen online, in team leagues such as the Acer Teamstory Cup, where he all-killed Root. But he is nowhere to be seen in the line-ups for this week. Will he make an appearance? What will his condition be like? The absence of the Terran will be something that hurts EG-TL in the long run, and it may prove fatal.

Protoss players prepare pylons

An interesting trend that has cropped up in the first week of line-ups is the abundance of Protoss players in the latest round. EG-TL, STX Soul and SKT1 are all fielding 4 Protoss in their line-ups for at least one match, and this week features 9 PvPs, while there are half that number of the other mirrors. So what gives? Why are there suddenly so many Protoss players in a day and age where Terran all killed twice in GSTL? Well, we can attribute it partially to some roster changes that occurred prior to the start of round 4.

As we’ve already seen, SKT1 was finally allowed to add PartinG into their roster, but they also added another Protoss player, ex-SlayerS Brown. Following SKT1, EG-TL added Oz to their roster, which adds yet another Protoss powerhouse to their line-up. Though Woongjin Stars removed Bisang from their roster, he rarely featured in proleague to begin with, so there isn’t much change to their starting line-up anyway. We even have a race switch, as STX’s Classic has decided Terran was not the race for him and took up the mantle of Protoss. As a result, STX has had to field their entire Protoss line-up as they await Classic to get up to speed.

Matches of the week

If you only have time for a few choice matches this week, you should keep an eye on both Fantasy and HerO’s matches. In the first match of the round, Fantasy is up against his eternal Terran rival, Flash. In Broodwar, their rivalry in TvT was well documented and though Fantasy won their last match, Flash still had the lead in the end. However in Starcraft 2, their rivalry has only just begun, and with the score tied at 1-1, which player will triumph? Can Fantasy pull ahead under the banner of the new expansion? Or will Flash continue his streak of dominance? In the same week, Fantasy faces off against another rival, this time in the form of his OSL rival Jangbi. These players faced twice consecutively in the finals in the last Broodwar OSL, with Jangbi beating Fantasy out both times. In Starcraft 2, they haven’t had the pleasure of meeting in an official televised match yet, how will Fantasy stand up to Samsung KHAN’s ace Protoss? Regardless, both matches should be extremely exciting to see, so keep an eye out for those games!


While we’re on the topic of hard matches, HerO has his work cut out for him as well, against Woongjin’s Soulkey and CJ’s herO. No pushovers themselves, Soulkey and herO lay claim to their respective teams ace positions, and HerO will have to pull out all the stops if he wants to triumph over these monstrous players. Against Soulkey, who currently has an 11-7 record in this season of Proleague, HerO will have to harness the high quality PvZ he displayed consistently throughout Wings of Liberty. Up against CJ’s herO, we may finally discover which hero is the one we need, and which is the one we truly deserve. But with herO boasting a 67% winrate in PvP, HerO might have to hold out for his own hero to save him if he wants any chance of besting CJ’s ace. Nevertheless, all four of these match-ups should be incredible, and also a great way to usher in the new expansion, and the return of Proleague!

Writers: Wunder.
Graphics: HawaiianPig
Editors: monk.