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Soulkey vs. sOs
Semi-Final 1 Preview


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by monk

The Woongjin Twins

For those of you who don't follow Proleague closely, Woongjin Stars is currently the first place team in the rankings by a very large margin. Much of this can be attributed to their extremely deep lineup, consisting of seven to nine players who can all stand up to the regulars from the other Proleague teams. But another important aspect of Woongjin is that it has two reliable ace players. While STX has Innovation, SK Telecom has Rain, KT has Flash, and Samsung has RorO, Woongjin Stars lucked out with duo of always reliable players: sOs and Soulkey. In Proleague, sOs and Soulkey have records of 24 - 13 and 23 - 10 respectively, both among the top ten in the league.

Now, it's time for Woongjin's duo to lead their team to glory in individual leagues as well. With a direct ticket to the Proleague finals essentially on lock, they've achieved the same feat by defeating PartinG and Losira in the quarter-finals to set up an all-Stars semi-final matchup. After a years long drought without a major title in either individual or team competition, a glorious double-crown is in reach for Stars.

Because Soulkey played a Protoss last round and sOs played a Zerg last around, a recap of the round of 8 serves as a great preview for this match between two teammates.

Soulkey vs. Protoss

Soulkey plays possibly the most safe and "standard" ZvP there is. His most distinctive trait is his consistent scouting with overseers. During any given ZvP, Soulkey will morph between one and four overseers just to search through his opponent's base. Even more impressive is that he will react to this scouting with deadly precision, as his execution ranks among the very best Zerg has to offer. His series against Parting in the round of 8 shows off his best traits:

• Game 1: Soulkey scouts his opponent's lack of a robotics and appropriately overruns him with ling/roach/hydra
  
• Game 2: Soulkey scouts that PartinG had adjusted by adding a robotics, and plays a long, solid, swarm host-based macro game which eventually overruns his opponent.
  
• Game 3: Soulkey scouts his opponent's three base blink stalker all-in (with an overseer, of course) about as fast as he could, but fails to defend it even though he had an excellent reaction after scouting it. One explanation is his style of delayed upgrades, most of which had not kicked in when the all-in hit.
  
• Game 4: Soulkey anticipates Parting's very specific gateway expand that he always does on Aklion Wastes and gains an early lead with a speedling rush. After it turns into a macro game, Soulkey sends in three more overseer scouts and tries a roach/hydra/viper pressure that doesn't work. In a move that surprises everyone, Parting goes for a desperation max-out push and miraculously runs through the swarm host/spine wall Soulkey has established.
  
• Game 5: A combination of Soulkey's scouting overlord and overseer scouts Parting's plan of a colossi/immortal all-in and he reacts perfectly with a mutalisk opening, easily securing the win.

Above all, Soulkey showed his mastery of scouting in this series. He also sent a strong message that he wasn't a one-trick pony and could play a variety of styles at the highest level. One quirk (or weakness, if an opponent could find a way to exploit it) of Soulkey's place is that he prefers later evo chambers against Protoss, probably motivated by the fact that you no longer need this structure to build spore crawlers.

Outside the GSL, Soulkey shows a few more holes in his ZvP. Against Stats in Proleague, Soulkey showed a weakness to skytoss, a strategy that sOs will likely employ once or twice in their series. And more recently, Soulkey and Rain battled it out in a ZvP where they seemed to be competing in who could play more standard. Rain played stargate into robo expand with a colossi/stalker follow-up while Soulkey played hydra into mass overseer scout into corruptor. Rain won out this standard-off in what was surely a crushing blow to the Woongjin Zerg's ego. Fortunately for him, sOs will probably play the exact opposite of standard.

sOs vs. Zerg

sOs, though on the same team as Soulkey, is perhaps the exact opposite in terms of playstyle. He very rarely relies on standard tactics, instead enjoying playing mind-games with his opponents and exploiting the established meta-game. He'll often try to hide his strategies and produces legions of hallucinations in order to trick his opponents. Furthermore, he uses some of the most unorthodox strategies available to Protoss, that surprise the majority of his opponents. sOs' weakness seems to be execution; in this way, he is the polar opposite of Rain, a player known for perfectly flawless execution of perfectly boring strategies. Naniwa, in a recent interview, even compared himself to sOs, noting that neither may have the best mechanics, but they use their brains to outsmart their opponents. Against Losira in the round of 8, sOs used this brain to concoct a variety of strategies, none of which had really been seen before:

• Game 1: Early pool vs. no scout, nothing to see here.
  
• Game 2: Gateway expand into four gate (with a tricky gas pull). Then gateway pressure into chargelot/archon all-in. Win!
  
• Game 3: Gateway expand into fake four gate into real DTs. Then chargelot archon all-in with a hallucinated warp prism. Loss because Losira made a lot of roaches, and because DTs were atrociously microed against a detection-less opponent.
  
• Game 4: Gateway expand into fake four gate (again!) into double stargate (phoenix) into mass void ray into chargelot/archon into templar. Included a cute lair snipe + recall with a bunch of void rays + msc.
  
• Game 5: 'Fake' cannon rush opener (it's very likely that sOs knew it wouldn't work, but he forced an overreaction from his opponent anyways). Transition into 3-base skytoss plus chargelot/archon. Throw some DTs into that main army too because, why not? Skytoss kills overseers anyways. Win!

There comes a point in a player's life where he ventures from brilliant, creative, and innovative into just plain gimmicky. And sOs, especially from his openings in against Losira certainly looked gimmicky. Against a teammate like Soulkey who consistently scouts for them, sOs will have a hard time pulling off these often DT-based builds. And as for his phoenix/voidray/chargelot/archon/dt composition, he'll have a lot to prove with that as well.

All in all, sOs came out of his semi-finals series looking worse than than before, even if he won by the same 3 - 2 scoreline as Soulkey. We began to see the shaky sOs in a new light, from a new angle and wondered if all his brilliant ideas of the past were but gimmicks destined to fail him in a long series against top player. Then we remembered: wait, he beat RorO, Creator, EffOrt, INnoVation, and Life in the same tournament. Never mind, I guess.

The Verdict

Soulkey is both a GSL veteran and a BW Starleague veteran. On the other hand, sOs' only experience in bo5+ matches was his first match against a supposedly mismatched Losira just one week ago, a match he struggled with. The experience difference alone should give Soulkey a clear advantage. Then there is the question of momentum. Sure, both Woongjin players are possibly in the best shape of their lives, but again, Soulkey ekes out an edge in this category as well. Just look at their HotS Proleague records: 12-3 for Soulkey and 6-5 for sOs. sOs looked especially shaky in his last match against Fantasy where his execution and army positioning left a lot to be desired. Because of these faults, sOs somehow turned a favorable situation into one where he was forced to call Soulkey in order to clean up.

Hey, but who knows? Team-kill matches tend to be unpredictable and sOs is an especially unpredictable player. This combination could be exactly what sOs needs to gain the upper hand in the coming match. But we have to decide now, so we'll say:

Prediction: Soulkey 4 - 3 sOs

Writers: monk.
Graphics: petad_, shiroiusagi.
Editor: Waxangel.