Acer TeamStory Cup

The Story so Far
Highlights from the first four weeks


Recommended Games
Three selections


VODs and Replays on TakeTV.net


Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

by Zealously

Welcome to the Acer TeamStory Cup!

With IPTL being gone following the sale of the IGN Proleague, and the EG Master's Cup on indefinitely hiatus, a void was left unfilled in the foreign tournament scene – there was no top class tournament featuring the international scene's best teams. Korea became the only place to find worthwhile competition, with Evil Geniuses and TeamLiquid entering the Proleague, while Axiom, Acer, and Western Wolves forged partnerships that allowed them to seek success in the GSTL.

But not all teams have the funds or the players for such a risky adventure. As such, the announcement of the Acer TeamStory Cup was a blessing for teams all around the world that wanted a chance to prove themselves in team competition. The tournament plays out much like its Korean counterparts, with a round robin regular season being played to determine who makes it to the playoffs. The twist? Unlike other leagues that were mostly online, or IPL TAC3 that had a live final, the top four teams will be invited to the live finals in Krefeld. If you've enjoyed any of the previous six installments of HomeStoryCup, you have to be excited for this.

The league is going into its fourth week, so here's our overview of the action so far. First, the standings:



*Article was completed before the K3 vs. mouz game on April 21st

You Only Live Thrice

Before we talk about everything that happened so far, we have to talk about the ATC's three, very interesting rules: the "mercenary/joker" rule, the "ace" rule and the "revive" rule. Ripped straight from Liquipedia:

• Match format is best of 9 with the final player on each team being the "ace" (when a team is down X - 4, i.e the last man standing)
  
• The "ace" can be any player, even one who has played and lost before; this is independent of the "revive" rule (below)
  
• Twice a season, a player may be "revived" and play again despite losing an earlier game; can revive only once per match; can be used consecutively with the ace rule
  
• Each team is allowed to add a single "joker" player to their team roster for the whole season. Karont3 added Socke to their roster and Millenium added ToD to theirs.

Yes, that means a single player can play three times in a single match. Already, a few teams have decided to go this rout with their Korean aces, with Quantic choosing to double-resurrect HyuN against Karont3, while ROOT exhumed YugiOh two times in a row against Liquid. If you thought the Korean invasion was already bad, know that the ATC has been turned into a veritable Korean-Zombie apocalypse.

One MaNa Show

mouz.MaNa was the stand-out star of the first few weeks of play. Though we already knew MaNa to top European player with strong online and offline performances, the Polish Protoss went on an absolute tear in weeks 1 and 2 as he amassed a 9 - 2 record, beating Apocalypse, Center, HwangSin and HyuN (twice) against Quantic, and Miya, Ryung, Heart and CranK against Axiom, looking unquestionably strong and right at home in Heart of the Swarm. The one thing that could possibly detract from his performance would be the usual cross-server latency complaints, but considering the strong overall performances of Korean players in the ATC, there's no denying that he's been one of the best foreigner of the tournament so far.

The ROOT of all Problems

If the entirety of ROOT Gaming's roster performed like Sage, they would probably be tied with MVP for the first place spot in the ranking. Over the course of three series, Sage secured 11 out of ROOT's 14 map victories. He 3-killed against Liquid, beating HerO, Ret and Zenio, he sort-of all-killed Acer after defeating Nerchio and ParanOid as the starter, and then came back in zombie form to finish them off. Against Millenium, he beat Feast and ForGG before losing to Feast on his second try.

Meanwhile, YugiOh is 2 - 6, not the kind of record you'd expect from the King of Code A. YuGiOh is constantly being deployed as ROOT's counter to Korean Terrans, but with losses against TaeJa (x3), MMA, Center, and Apocalypse, maybe a change of plans is in order. The only other player to win any games for ROOT was LeiYa, who took down Dayshi and Goswser against Millenium.

This spells trouble for ROOT. Sage has proven himself to be a more than capable super-ace player, currently sitting on a league best 11 wins. But if the rest of ROOT – most importantly Yugioh – cannot bring it together and provide at least one or two kills before sending in Sage, ROOT will be in a lot of trouble going forward.

Some Things Never Change...

It feels almost as if it was just yesterday that Liquid'TaeJa was destroying everyone in IPL TAC3, brute-forcing Team Liquid all the way to the finals and even 7-killing LG-IM before finally going down to GSL champion Seed. Taeja had since cooled off somewhat since the summer of 2012, and he hasn't seen much play in the Proleague due to the worsening condition of his wrists. However, when online team leagues are concerned, TaeJa showed that he's still got what it takes to make Team Liquid into Team TaeJa.


With ATC, Taeja made sure to take the first step toward dispelling the image of him now being weak in team leagues with an all-kill over ROOT Gaming – beating a Sage on fire, MaSa and then YugiOh three times in a row, without it ever being close. Although Sage and Yugioh may not be considered cream of the crop Koreans right now, Taeja's recent advancement in GSL alongside with his all-kill might be considered the first step toward another period of team league domination, and the return of these three players to Liquid's line-up:

+ Show Spoiler +

...But Some Things Do?

Team Acer may have lost both their matches to MVP and ROOT respectively, but Acer.MMA made sure to point out that he's still here, and is doing much better in HotS than he was toward the end of WoL. He had a convincing showing in taking out Sage, YugiOh, ViBE and TT1 before falling to a revived Sage, and although he lost to Vampire in the match vs. MVP, so did most everyone. Combine that with MMA's impressive double-kill over NAKSEO and DongRaeGu in GSTL, and we may be witnessing the return of the original GSTL super-ace to his former team league glory.

MMA is definitely looking better than he has in almost a year, but it's too early to say he's back to being the clutch team league player he was before. Acer's match against Millenium in week five will be a good chance for us to judge where MMA really is in terms of skill right now. He's looked impressive recently, but will he fall back to mediocrity or keep climbing back toward the top? Against a team like Millenium, with ForGG, Goswser and the newly WCS EU-qualified Feast, there will be plenty of opportunity for MMA to show us what he's got.

Mercenary Work

Although the mercenary rule looked like the perfect way for the EU/NA teams to make sure they'd be able to compete with the teams with stronger line-ups, the only two mercenaries in the league have seen no success so far. aTn.Socke proved his worth to Karont3 when he all-killed team aAa in the qualifiers, but he hasn't been able to perform in the regular season, losing to HyuN and CranK while not being able to win any games. ToD, playing for Millenium, likewise ended up on the wrong side of the Korean beatdown-stick as he lost his only game to Billowy (formerly Lure).

We Tried to Think of a Spanish Header but Failed

While Karont3 – the Spanish team known for being a two-man army consisting of the brothers Dúran, LucifroN and VortiX – didn't get as much help as expected from Socke, they got a boost from their new Swedish player viPro. viPro, one of the least known players to play as the point man for a team, softened up Millenium by taking out Feast and Goswser, leading to an eventual K3 victory.

With strong play from one player of each race, Karont3 were able to bring themselves to finish up week 3 with a 2-1 record, beating Millenium and Quantic but falling, not too surprisingly, to the all-Korean Axiom. While Karont3 may not be able to compete with teams like MVP that are filled with high-tier Koreans (and honestly, what team can?), they made a very clear statement – their trio (quartet, including Socke) is able to hang with the top European teams (Vortix took out both HyuN and ForGG in impressive showings) and they can beat Koreans if they can get hot. With consistent performances from their players, they might be able to secure themselves a top 4 finish and a trip to Krefield for the offline finals. The deciding factor will be if Socke can get it together and play at the high level he's shown throughout his career, in which case a top 4 finish would be very much in reach for the pan-European coalition.

MVP used Protoss. It's Super effective!

Unsurprisingly, the sole eSF team MVP sits at the top of the rankings with a 4 - 0 (20 - 8) record with wins against Acer, Millenium, Axiom and Quantic. Surprisingly, only MVP and FXO entered the US/KR qualifier for TeamStory Cup, and MVP won the head to head battle that decided which one of them would get to fight for what must have looked like easy money. Considering that MVP has gotten this far playing mostly bench members (they do have a VERY deep bench, to be fair), fans might be surprised that LG-IM or Startale didn't take a shot, but MVP isn't complaining.

Unlike in 2011 and 2012, MVP's success right now has very little to do with their powerful Zerg line-up of Monster, Sniper and DRG, and much more to do with their less famous, but almost as strong, Protoss/Terran line-up. Super and Billowy, formerly known as Vampire and Lure, went to town on Acer and Millenium respectively – each grabbing three kills, and Super achieving two more against Quantic.


Even the relatively unknown (even in comparison to Billowy and Super) Bang made his presence known by making the most of his opportunities by taking out ForGG, Nerchio and Feast.

All in all, MVP has a +12 map score and first place despite fielding what most would consider their ”B” line-up. Considering that MVP even has players like DRG, Keen (both out of Code S and available for duty), Tails and finale who have not even played yet, it becomes difficult to see any other team but MVP taking the #1 spot in the online portion of the tournament.

Crank it up, Axiom

With Axiom-Acer's impressive performance in GSTL, a lot of people were expecting the all-Korean Axiom to perform very well in ATC. Axiom-Acer had managed to defeat both LG-IM and MVP in the GSTL, and while we mean no offense, most of the teams in the ATC are much weaker.

Although Axiom didn't disappoint in the ATC so far, their GSTL success does not seem to fully translate into ATC results. They are 1 - 2 (11-13) in the league so far, with CranK having been the team's most valuable player with five wins. With Axiom's players having tasted great success in Gom's team league, it's worth setting their goals quite high for this tournament as well.

The loss to MVP was something of a reality check, with MVP's 1.5th string players avenging the GSTL loss against an MMA-less Axiom. While missing two excellent players in Scarlett and MMA is certainly going to hurt Axiom in the ATC compared to the GSTL, they're still one of the top-heaviest, and Korean-heaviest teams in a tournament where that kind of thing really matters, and it would be surprising if they didn't rally back in the coming weeks.

Writers: Zealously
Graphics: Pathy
Editor: Waxangel.