Table of Contents

Round 5 Week 2 Review
Spoiler Alert!


Bisu’s Resolve
Bisu 8-1 RorO


Unsung Heroes
The best things in life are free, TY


Innovation’s Bogus Performance
Bogus, man


Games of the week
Flash vs hyvaa
Bisu vs Shine

SK Planet Proleague table and results at Liquipedia

By: Wunder

With the second week of Proleague behind us, we're here to tell you all about how Bisu two-killed Samsung KHAN, why Woongjin is the number one team and why Innovation was so scared of Flash's bio play. We even had a foreigner debut this week in the form of Liquid`Snute. All this and more in this week's Proleague recap!

Round 5 Week 2 Matches

Standings

Bisu’s Resolve

It’s a bit bizarre, the fact that we mention Bisu any chance we get, and yet we’re here again with another update about how the Revolutionist is getting on. While we might have been a bit negative about Bisu’s outlook going into his match against Roro, we still held out a small glimmer of hope for him, the man that made his name through changing how PvZ was played in Brood War. Last week, he performed admirably. Bisu secured two wins for his team last week, beating the last GSL winner, Roro, as well as Shine in a nail biting base race.

The game against RorO was surprising, as Bisu responded well to Roro’s roach aggression and matched his opponent’s movements to edge out an advantage, taking a safe third and managing to defend it as well as his natural from Roro’s advances. While Roro tried to respond with a roach/hydra composition that transitioned into mutalisks, he was caught off-guard by Bisu’s attack and had to force a base trade and couldn't set up a defensive posture fast enough to halt Bisu’s deathball. It was only a matter of time before Bisu crushed the attack in his main and the final hammer came, crashing down at Roro’s third and the Samsung Zerg had to GG.

The next match was against Shine, a player who hasn’t appeared on Proleague for a while, perhaps using his time to train for WCS Korea instead. This game was so brilliant and nail-biting that it's featured in our games of the week section.

While Bisu eventually lost to JangBi in the third set, it was still a monumental achievement and will hopefully instill renewed faith in Bisu fans as well as create new ones. While one would hope Bisu will keep being fielded occasionally and that he will continue to play well, it has reached a point where we have written enough about how Bisu is an underdog. The next time we write about him, it will be entirely on his merits as a StarCraft II player.

Unsung Heroes

free When you think of Woongjin Stars, two players immediately come to mind, the twin players currently in the WCS KR Ro4, sOs and Soulkey. This Protoss and Zerg duo have just blasted past their opponents in the WCS Korea Ro8, but behind these two titans there is yet another duo of Protoss and Zerg - ZerO and Flying. While ZerO may have fallen off in recent times, Flying has continued to soar, getting to the Ro16 in the the first season of WCS Korea. Behind all those players, is the lone Protoss, free, who has always stood head and shoulders above the other Woongjin players like Light, BrAvO and Aria, but has hardly ever broken past the vanguard of the core four that represent the Woongjin name. This all changed last week when he managed to shine, grabbing a total of six wins over the course of two matches.

People could attribute the wins to the fact that they were against the two weakest teams in Proleague, but the fact remains that Woongjin chose to send out free instead of any of the other 4 players they could have sent out. With two wins against each race this week, he is the perfect example of a great all-around player Woongjin has relied on to obtain their now insurmountable lead.

TY: On the topic of underrated players, TY, Team 8's top Terran proved himself last week as well, netting a total of four wins for his team. While Team 8 has never been a stellar team, they have had flashes of brilliance, with Cure’s strong performance near the start of the season and Argo pouring blood, sweat and tears to carry his team to victory, Team 8 has hung in the race for a long time. It was Ty’s turn to shine this week, as after showcasing some stellar mech play against players like aLive in round 4, he took to the stage to display his TvP and TvZ with a myriad of compositions. He used drops to dismantle Hydra, hellbats to disorient EffOrt, and hellions to destroy Bong.

While Team 8 ended up losing both games against Woongjin and CJ, it wasn’t due to Ty’s lack of perseverance and determination, and it’s clear that the player once known as Baby has grown up.

Innovation’s Bogus Performance

While the previous sections have mostly been happy rainbows and unicorns, praising players that have been performing well recently, we here at Teamliquid love being fair and balanced, so we thought we’d take about the underperformers as well, namely INnoVation. Innovation played two games this week and he lost both of them. Granted, both of those games were against his worst match-up, but it was clear that something was off during the games. Innovation got caught off guard by Samsung’s TurN and responded poorly to Flash’s aggression.

In his game against Turn, Innovation opened up relatively safely while Turn went for a heavy hellion build to try and catch Innovation unsieged or moving out across the huge map. He sent his hellions in at the right time, just as Innovation attempted to move out with three tanks and a handful of marines, and roasted Innovation’s entire mineral line at the natural. Turn then shut down Innovation’s pressure with a pincer movement which sandwiched Innovation’s tanks and marines and cleaned up what could have been a dangerous contain in a matter of seconds. From there it was only a matter of time before Innovation succumbed to the huge lead that Turn managed to carve out, and even though Turn made some mistakes of his own, it simply wasn’t enough for Innovation and the game was over.

In our preview, we mentioned that STX Soul vs KT Rolster would be the match to watch, and though it was an extremely important match, it still left something to be desired. This came mainly in the form of the fifth and last set, Innovation vs Flash, the inevitable rematch. They both opted for a drop, with Innovation stuffing his medivac with two widow mines and four marines while Flash went for the octo marine drop. While Innovation’s drop did minimal damage, Flash’s drop elicited a huge reaction from Innovation, which resulted in numerous SCV deaths which was then further compounded by Flash’s hellion runby straight into Innovation’s main, setting the STX Terran back 15 SCVs. Flash used this gigantic advantage well, and played it out slowly but surely, eventually denying Innovation’s third and forcing the Terran to tap out.

Writers: kollin, Wunder.
Graphics: HawaiianPig
Editors: monk.