WCS Korea Season II

Ro16 - Day Four Preview
Day Four out of Six

Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

VODs on Twitch

by CosmicSpiral and stuchiu

The OSL Ro16 continues forward, with the first confirmed eliminations and advancements now possible. Due to how head to head tie-breaker rules would play out, PartinG MUST win his match against Symbol or he will be eliminated, even if he recovers a point against Soulkey in the final week. At the same time, Symbol beating PartinG would assure Soulkey a Ro8 berth. In Group B, Bomber can decide everything with a win over Flash, which would confirm him and INnovation to advance to the Ro8, while Flash and Bbyong would fall out.

Group A
1.	Soulkey	2 - 0
2.	soO	1 - 1
3.	PartinG	0 - 1
3.	Symbol	0 - 1

Group B
1.	INnoVation	2 - 0
2.	Bomber	1 - 0
3.	Flash	0 - 1
4.	Bbyong	0 - 2

Group C
1.	First	2 - 0
2.	Rain	1 - 1
3.	FanTaSy	0 - 1
3.	hyvaa	0 - 1

Group D
1.	SuperNova	1 - 0
1.	Maru	1 - 0
3.	Trap	1 - 1
4.	KangHo	0 - 2

Azubu.Symbol vs. SKT_PartinG
by stuchiu

Losing once in a matchup can be called bad luck. Losing twice can just be a coincidence. But when you lose six games in a row against all kinds of players in a period of a month, it is a pattern. In the last preview involving PartinG, I favored him against teammate soO believing that Parting’s soul and precise execution would be enough to get him through, despite him being 1 - 6 in his last PvZs. His record has now worsened to 1 - 8, and the games he played against soO sent a clear message to all those who were watching: Parting is running out of soul.

Ever since his transfer from Startale to SK Telecom, something happened to Parting’s PvZ. And while it wasn’t noticeable at first as HotS launched, when PartinG could still just plow through opponents with all-in after successful all-in, it is clear that he doesn't have an answer to PvZ anymore. He has gone from match to match gambling on winning the PvZ build order fight, or relying solely on his stellar micro and force-fields to carry him.

Even that strength seems to have left him. In his last series against Soo, he failed an immortal all-in. And while Parting has lost a few Soul Trains before (notably against Sniper, Suppy and Life) he never failed due to his own micro mistakes but rather because his opponents had out-thought or out-played him on the defense. But last week it was blunder after blunder (including totally forgetting the existence of his warp prism) as Soo easily swept through Parting’s soulless push. And then in the second game, Parting got busted by a roach ling attack and failed to recover.

This bodes badly for Parting as he plays against one of the better Zergs in the world in Symbol. And while Symbol does not play anything like Soo, he will have watched those games. Unlike Parting, who has been having match after match of his PvZ failures broadcasted, Symbol has very few games for Parting to look at. The most Parting can know is that Symbol plays either roach-hydra into swarm hosts or mass muta-corruptor. Basically, all PartinG knows is that Symbol is a Korean Zerg. Even if Symbol can sometimes be susceptible to sharp timing attacks, does Parting still have the soul left to take him out? I say no.

Prediction: Symbol 2 - 0 Parting


ST_Bomber vs. KT_Flash
by CosmicSpiral

There are three imperative questions that will decide this series:

A. How many hellbat drops will we see?
B. What stage of Bomber’s Law is in effect?
C. Does Flash even care about the first two questions?

A. More than any decent human being deserves to endure.

B. None at the moment (surprisingly).

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Bomber’s Law, apparently he/his mother/his grandfather/his 16th century ancestor violated the edicts of Heaven and received some bad mojo in the process. Bomber is now cursed to disappoint his fans and if he wins, it is only to utterly disappoint his fans a little bit later. In particular MLG Dallas and WCS Season 1 encapsulate the supernatural blight that has permeated his entire career and followed him into HotS. He looked shaky in the Ro32 of both tournaments, noticeably improved in the Ro16, and then proceeded to fall flat on his face in the Ro8. It might be another of nature’s cruel jokes that Bomber advanced so far as it would seem to indicate that he could go even further in the future.

Now Bomber hasn’t screwed the pooch or set himself up to screw the pooch…yet. His performance is June is solid enough to reflect his skill but not impressive enough to inspire unreasonable hope. He advanced through the RSL group stages with a few losses, narrowly got through the OSL Ro32 group stage, narrowly beat Bbyong in the Ro16, and clutched out a GSTL win for StarTale against First and MC. Bomber still makes horrible choices that lose him near-guaranteed wins and adjusts his level of micro according to a esoteric reading of the seasons, but right now he is having a good and consistent string of important victories.

Fortunately TvT is Bomber’s most solid matchup in HotS and he hasn’t fallen prey to the massive collapses he has experienced against P and Z players. While he is technically 10-2 overall, 7 of his 10 wins happened more than 3 months ago and his latest games were all close matches.

C. Yes to the first, no to the second.

On the surface Flash seems to be less consistent than his opponent with “only” a 15-7 record in TvT. This is a very deceiving statistic though as 5 out of those 7 losses came against Innovation, 4 of them happened over the last two months in WCS pool play, and the last 2 were due to the joyful inclusion of hellbat drops. Without those he’s sitting at a pretty 15-2. With the exception of Innovation and one game against Fantasy in Proleague, no one has been able to stop Flash.

But his losses to Innovation are important for Bomber, who has undoubtedly analyzed Flash’s games throughout the entire OSL. Innovation had great success with hellbat drops and it must be tempting to assume that the same strategy could work twice. After all, it brought him back from the brink of defeat against Keen and sets up the mech style that Bomber has been favoring in TvT lately. However he has never been a huge proponent of that opening plan so far and has preferred early marine/widow mines pushes that transition into mech. Besides the danger of hellbat drops is that they are uniquely weak to hellbat drops and Bomber would be wise to not put himself into such a dangerous scenario.

Overall there isn’t much evidence that Flash should lose this series. From the controversy surrounding the IEM KeSPA qualifier, it seems Flash is already practicing for SPL playoffs and that could mean that Flash is less prepared for this series than he should be. However KT Rolster’s games start on July 20th so Flash can afford to focus on OSL right now. I’ll give Bomber one game as he is quite good in this matchup and can use some surprising strategies that go against his reputation as a macro player.

Prediction: Flash 2 - 1 Bomber


SKT_FanTaSy vs. STX_hyvaa
by CosmicSpiral

Out of all the KeSPA teams, STX SouL may be the most pleasant surprise of the season. So far they have made their presence felt in HotS with a strong performance in SPL, three players in the Round of 16, and multiple top finishes from players not called Innovation. Even luck falls in their favor as another STX player gets a winnable matchup after going down 0-1 in his group. A few days ago Trap got an easy PvZ victory over Losira and while hyvaa wasn’t as lucky in terms of opponents, ZvT is statistically his best matchup.

I have to emphasize the word ‘statistically’. I’ve never seen a player get a 75% winrate without playing good macro games since oGsInCa but the games don’t lie: hyvaa plays for the very, very short game. He is on a 6 game winning streak and the games look like this (in reverse chronological order).

Versus TY: 6 pool into 2 base roach/bane bust
Versus Neige: unknown
Versus Yoda: 6 pool, 2 base roach drop
Versus Turn: 2 base roach push into 2 base nydus

To be fair hyvaa’s usage of all-ins is cleverer than it sounds. He has beaten the 15 CC + barracks wall-off twice with 6 pool since he knows he can kill the command center before it finishes, and his 2 base roach drop countered Yoda’s siege tank opener which was meant to stop roach pushes at the natural. Against Turn, he forced his way into the main just as Turn’s first banshee came out and the nydus worm follow-up punished Turn’s fast 3rd CC. hyvaa’s ability to anticipate standard builds and responses makes him very dangerous in a Bo1 and in Bo3s against players who are unfamiliar with his approach.

TvZ is also FanTaSy’s best matchup and the one where his multitasking and preparation are most obvious. He uses very clever builds that take advantage of map terrain (e.g. fast 3 CC that functions as a wall-off of the natural). In both SPL and OSL Fantasy has shown that he will play every map in the optimal fashion to the point where he even adapts different unit compositions and styles, which will be a vital for hyvaa to anticipate if he wants to make his various all-ins work. Fantasy almost exclusively plays marine/tank/medivac on Newkirk while opening 15 CC on the high ground for a wall-off; on Whirlwind and Bel’Shir Vestige he uses bio-mine on Whirlwind and Bel’Shir Vestige and starts the command center in the natural. From there he makes great use of multiple drops to kill drones and distract the army while he sets up his own economy for a large 180 supply push.

Considering how meticulous Fantasy is with his planning, he should not lose to hyvaa at all. There are enough games of hyvaa’s shenanigans that Fantasy should know how to deal with them accordingly. Most of hyvaa’s recorded strategies can be dealt with by using a safe opener into 2-3 barracks for defense, then forcing him to play the midgame where hyvaa has little experience. If Fantasy tries to play it out like he would against any ordinary zerg he will be in for a rude surprise.

Prediction: Fantasy 2 - 0 hyvaa