WCS Korea Season 3
GSL Code S

Ro16 - Group B Preview
Rain, Keen, Trap, sOs


Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

SKT_Rain, MVP.KeeN ,Soul_Trap, Woongjin_sOs

by stuchiu

On the state of Protoss seven months into Heart of the Swarm

At the end of WoL, the Protoss race was a race known for being both too strong and too weak. Mechanics like warp-in and force-field made Protoss seem overpowered in certain situations, but hopelessly outgunned when not played in the most abusive way possible. It was a race that lived or died on the player’s ability to put down force-fields, build his deathball, and most importantly of all, play mind-games with the opponent.

Whether it was through luck, fate or skill, the 2012 season of WCS crowned a player who epitomized all of Protosses greatest strengths and weaknesses in PartinG. Against Terran, Parting defended every attack in the early-mid games, and crushed his opponents with an unstoppable death-ball late. Against Protoss he had the combination of precise micro and devious mind-games to stand toe-to-toe with all other top players. And of course, in PvZ he mastered the most abusive all-in since the WoL beta, using the Soul Train to kill the Zergs before brood lord-infestor could be reached.

What's the importance of this? That was the first and last time where it was nearly universally agreed upon that one Protoss player had it completely right. Generally speaking, Protoss has been led by players who are stylistically unique. Each player has their own take on how things should play out in order to find victory against their opponents. The release of HotS reset everything again, sending everyone scrambling to once more find the answer to the question: what is the best way to play?

This group in particular is a microcosm of how players have decided to answer.

The first Protoss in the group is SKT_Rain. Known as the most solid Protoss in the world, Rain is the Aegis of the Protoss race. With Creator’s dismal form in HotS, Rain is now the Protoss people talk about when they speak of extremely sturdy, defense-first Protoss play. While he upped his all-in ratio significantly in his last OSL run, he is still by and far known as a player who is willing to take some disadvantages in the early game to minimize risk of dying before he gets to the late game. There, his understanding of late game army compositions, efficient battle micro, and overall decision making is generally superior to his opponents. He is the least likely to use any extreme mindgames in PvP and while he did drop a series against the now rehabilitated Stork, for the most part it is still one of Rain’s stronger matchups.

The second Protoss in the group is Woongjin_sOs. To put it simply, sOs lives in an entirely different universe from all other Protoss players. He marches to the beat of his own drum, and only seems to have one principle: deceive, surprise, and frustrate the opponent. From fake 4-gates into real 7-gates in PvZ, to fast tempests in PvT, sOs is always looking to catch his opponents off guard. In particular, he enjoys seeing how far he can get with skipping robotics tech, living in his own little world of chargelots, void rays, and high templar. While his experiments have been wildly successful in PvZ, sOs has still had trouble finding an effective style in PvT. The best way to win at that match-up seems to be by being boring, which is one thing sOs just refuses to be.

The third Protoss in the group is Soul_Trap. It should come as no surprise that he was one of the last 4 players chosen during group selections. While not the best all-around player in the tournament, Trap is the single most dangerous all-inning Protoss left. He is a hybrid of Parting’s perfect execution and MC’s killer instinct that finds him using the right build at the right times. This is why his PvZ is generally heralded as his best matchup, but even outside of it he has the potential to take out sOs and Rain in PvP. Also, he could match up well against Keen’s late-game focused gameplay. If Rain is a defender and sOs is a genius bruiser, then Trap is an assassin—frail, but extremely deadly. He can kill anyone on a single map, but the longer a series is, the longer the tournament goes on, the less likely it is that he will survive.

And finally, there's our sole Terran of the group in MVP.KeeN. Keen is a player with incredible skill, but is surprisingly overlooked. This is because of two reasons. First is that he has been knocked out in the Ro32 in the last four tournaments, despite showing incredible gameplay in the process. Keen can only blame himself for that, since he lacks the consistency to bring his best in every single game. The second is that he is always matched against monsters in his groups. It is often the case that Tastosis will say Keen left the biggest impression in a group, even as he barely falls out in the last match of the night. This cycle has repeated four times now with Innovation, Roro, Shine (okay, that time Keen f***ed up) and Bomber each taking him out in the ro32. But after finally getting a slightly weaker group than usual, Keen has once more returned to the Ro16. Of course, there's rarely an easy group in the Ro16, and he faces the difficulty task of playing TvP against three very different players.

For most this would be an impossible task, but for Keen his chances are much better than you would think. When he is on his game, Keen plays as if he is infinitely better in multi-tasking, defense, offense and army engagements all throughout the game. In fact Keen is one of the only Terrans to have regularly used EMP drops and it has only been improved with medivac boost. He is one of the few to constantly engage Protosses on multiple fronts to fight for every single edge and scrap he can get and one of the few that can stop Protoss late game harassment when he is in top form. So while it may seem that he is trapped in here with three Protoss killers, it could very well be that the three of them are stuck in this group with him.

Predictions:

Rain > Keen
sOs > Trap
Rain > sOs
Keen > Trap
Keen > sOs

Rain and Keen advance.

Writers: stuchiu.
Graphics: wo1fwood.
Editor: Waxangel.