EPTIEM Fallout:
Code S Quarterfinals Day 1
Just two days after playing for $100,000 in the finals of the IEM Season VIII World Championship,
sOs and and herO return to Korea to play in the Code S quarterfinals. With his second $100,000 prize in four months, sOs has confirmed his position as the best player in the world, and one who plays his best when the stakes are high. herO, despite returning home with winnings of $0, has further enhanced his reputation. Two IEM Season 8 circuit wins and multiple clutch performances at the World Championship have proved him to be one of the top contenders for the Code S title. An IEM rematch in the Code S semifinals is a tantalizing possibility.Unfortunately for sOs and herO, they will be playing on barely a day's rest while their opponents have been preparing in Korea all along. Rain and Zest may not have received as much of the international spotlight as of late, but they have be excellent in domestic competition. Having come back to Korea with $100,000 in hand, sOs might consider Code S elimination an acceptable price to pay. But herO? After returning from Poland as IEM's biggest loser, getting eliminated from Code S on top of that would be a cruel blow to take.
Quarterfinal 1: JinAir_sOs vs KT_Zest
by lichterAnother weekend, another giant check for $100,000. In a strange way, we knew this could, and would, happen: for all of
sOs' ups and downs, he knows how to play his best when the big bucks are on the line. After his disastrous start to Proleague 2014, everyone thought that it was going to be another one of sOs' descents down to decent, but his subsequent demolition of both his Code S groups to get to the Round of 8 showed that it would only be a temporary trough. His improvement in Round 2 of ProLeague confirmed this. The big question on everyone's minds on the way to IEM WC was exactly which part of The sOs Cycle he was on now? Was he still in the ascendancy, peaking at the right time to conquer Katowice, or did he just expend his seemingly limited winning formula on the wrong tournament?The same questions plagued him on the way to Blizzcon. After 2 ignominious seasons using Code S as his personal build tester and failing at the first hurdle, everyone had written him off as a one hit wonder. After displaying his lack of understanding (or, perhaps, too advanced an understanding) of PvT all year long, a field half full of Terrans looked too daunting to overcome even for the famed mad scientist. That he would rise to the challenge by dismantling both Polt and Bomber to reach his second big final of the year is now the stuff of legend. Unfortunately, what most will remember is his sobering extermination of Jaedong using cheeses and timing attacks. All the hype of his ingenious play was undone by the ruthlessness with which he dispatched of a fan favorite in a final.
It turns out our concerns were once again unfounded as sOs repeated history in more ways than just having won. Not only did he rise to the challenge with another big payday on the line, but the way in which he achieved it looked strikingly similar. He entered the tournament with questionable form and only an outside shot of claiming the title. His victory at the WCS Global Finals had made him a celebrity in 100k events, but every keen observer was wary of his chances. In the second round, he had to face the wild and irrepressible jjakji, while Captain America stood in his way at the Semi Finals. There he would meet herO--who was starting to become a world favorite due to his exploits at IEM events--who he promptly proxy 2gated in two straight games. That the grand finals of such a high profile event wound up being a cheesy slaughter has once again tarnished sOs' accomplishments in the eyes of many, but it was just another calculated step in winning him more money, a scheme that went beyond the walls of the Spodek Arena.
His builds in the final revealed little about his PvP plans, slimming his disadvantage in Code S. By using mostly cheese and risky builds, his mind game has extended from Poland to Korea, giving his opponents in his side of the bracket much to consider. Is this sOs' new PvP? Was he hiding builds? Will he 2gate again? sOs' ability not only to formulate a plan for his opponent, but to look far ahead into the future, is one of the reasons he has a 75% win rate in BoX matches, and it is for all of us to marvel how he maps out his trajectory. Whether this really was a matter of foresight rather than luck, there will be doubters of course, but after seeing sOs navigate the maze of expectations in his own colorful way, I'd like to believe that this is all part of his plan.
History Repeats Itself?
It is part of human nature to notice patterns and repetitious coincidences, and in many ways it informs the cultures that we develop. In Starcraft, these patterns that we've threaded into our history are many, from the Kong Curse to Bisu vs Shine, from the GSL Finalist Curse to FanTaSy vs TRUE. These narratives color our experiences with the game, reminding us of our past when they continue and surprising us with the future when we have exceptions. Best of all, it is an endless source for jokes, bad puns, and insults to throw at each other whenever we have a rivalry match on our hands.
Tonight, we have another such part of our culture on our hands, that of the KT Sidekick. Despite KT's fame as one of the traditional powerhouses of Starcraft, only one of their players has achieved anything significant in individual leagues since 2008. That, of course, is
Flash, the symbol of KT Rolster if not KeSPA as a whole. Through his dominance in Proleague and solo leagues, KT began to rely on him so much that they were nicknamed KTFlash (KT Rolster was formerly known as KTF MagicNS), as if to suggest that no one else was deemed worthy of recognition. Throughout that time, he had cycled through a roster of Robins, and, despite having every chance to prove otherwise, his sidekicks did little to dispel the idea that KT began and ended with the Ultimate Weapon. With their careers basically limited to Proleague and middling appearances in an odd OSL or MSL, KT's Roster became footnotes in God's history of greatness. Yes, KT Rolster fans fully appreciated how vital the efforts of players like Stats, Violet (rest in peace), and Wooki were to the team's championship campaigns. But to the progaming world at large, none of them would have been able to shine if not for the residual light of Flash's gold medals.The advent of SC2 provided another opportunity for the KT cohorts to achieve more in their careers, but it would once again be Flash that reigned as the team's source of success. His early achievements (Ro8 in OSL 2012, 3/4 in MLG Winter 2012) suggested that history would repeat itself in the new game, but as time passed, more questions arose regarding Flash's place as a legitimate contender. His repeated struggles to replicate his former glory (3 Ro16's last year) have opened the door for others to be KT's beacon of hope. This season, Flash would finally fall to the depths of Code B, while Stats, MyuNgSiK, and Zest all found the mettle to scale the wall of Code A. And while both Stats and MyuNgSiK failed in the Ro32,
Zest advanced from his Ro32 group in 1st place, while narrowly escaping the Group of Death in 2nd with an acrobatic performance. His first day on the job was a success, as he crushed both Trap and Leenock on his Code S debut. While neither player that Zest faced had shown threatening vP in the past, many other talented players have succumbed to the nerves and stagefright associated with Code S to fall immediately back down to Code B. But years of service on KT in the bright lights and pressure of ProLeague have steeled him, as even the Group of Death could not unsettle Zest. His victory over two past Code S Champions in Soulkey and Dear have elevated him from fortunate to phenom (though he did get trampled by Maru).
This is an audition to be more than just Flash's right hand man. This is an audition to be legitimately called KT's best player. This is Zest's chance to finally make a name for himself, to ditch the cape of Boy Wonder and create his own identity. With his senior and all the pretenders to his cowl out of the running, this is his chance to be the hero for KT and achieve something great. At the very least, his liquipedia entry won't be empty for much longer.
The Rise of the Mirror Master
In a bracket of PvPs, this will be both players' first test to see who will be crowned the Mirror Master. sOs and Zest have supreme PvPs, as they are ranked 2nd and 5th on Aligulac respectively, but as we all know, predicting PvPs solely on winrates is folly. Instead, the player who has shown better preparation and has studied his opponent the best often has the edge in a mirror full of mind games.
On paper that looks like a big advantage for sOs. However, he has just played 2 high profile PvPs at IEM WC, giving Zest something to study for this Round of 8 clash. On the other hand, the KT Protoss will gain very little from watching the final as sOs mostly relied on cheese and risky play, hiding what could be a well prepared plan for Code S.
What Zest should have learned in that series though, is that sOs seems almost immune to his own medicine, discouraging both cheese and unprepared aggression. Zest often shows an assertive early and mid game aiming to dictate the pace, which often leaves holes behind him so scouting will be the key to victory as anyone who has ever played sOs will know. Survival into the late game will be Zest's best chance at beating sOs, whose late game PvP has been less than astonishing. While Zest has also shown some weakness in late game situations, control has always been one of his strong points. If he can see through sOs's mindgames and avoid the pitfalls that sOs sets up in the early and mid game, Zest will have a good chance of reaching the quarter finals on his first try. Unless, of course, sOs changes things up again. What an infuriating yet fascinating player to watch.
Predictions: sOs has momentum, but for sOs that's just another chance for a precipitous fall. You have to be reminded of his lackluster performance at Red Bull NYC immediately after his BlizzCon win and wonder if he hasn't checked out again. Zest on the other hand has a chance to finally be a man worthy to be written about without mentioning Flash, and he will have the advantage of practice time and observation. He will likely try to be the aggressor and keep sOs' mental maneuvers to a minimum, but over all this is a difficult match to predict. All I know is, sOs will probably not proxy 2gate.
Zest 3 - 2 sOs
Quarterfinal 2: SKT_Rain vs CJ_herO
by DarkLordOlliCJ_herO has returned home with empty hands and a ton of a jet lag to boot. After an astonishing tournament run at IEM Katowice, overcoming Hyun, San and Polt to earn himself a grand total of 0$ for his second place finish, it's unlikely that CJ's herO had enough time to recover from mental and physical tole he took at IEM.herO's grand final loss against the reinvigorated sOs may have been the harshest anyone has ever experienced as sOs not only walked away with the entirety of the prize money, he also won it in a way that would leave his opponent devastated. I don't even want to imagine how herO must have felt, nor do I want to imagine how someone else named hero would have reacted if this had happened to him. sOs started the series off with two consecutive in base proxy gates to get into herO's head, finishing him off with a nexus first on Alterzim and a hold against herO's own proxy gate. Forgetting about dancing stalkers may be key to putting Katowice behind him. We wouldn't be surprised if sOs' proxy gates made him suffer an existential crisis, sending him into a deep spiral of nihilism where he believes life is a pointless series of coinflips. Then again, he did seem rather cheery afterward...
If there's one thing that could restore herO's confidence before his Ro8 match, it's thefact that Rain is the polar protoss opposite of sOs. The types of strategies, mindgames, insane risks that sOs was willing to employ are rarely part of Rain's profile. He is a player who enjoys safe, solid play in every match-up, with all-ins only reluctantly included to prevent his style from becoming entirely predictable. herO has out played opponent after elite opponent in "normal" PvPs, and he can go into this match hoping he will be able to play to his strengths.
The Clouds Have Gathered
... for the storm. At this point it's hard not to sound repetitive when talking about
SKT_Rain who's been a staple of rock solid Protoss play ever since he switched over to SC2. He fell under the radar for a while after the previous Proleague season with disappointing results in individual tournaments (for his standards). Ever since though Rain has been uprising again. He gutted everyone at the IEM Cologne qualifier and made it all the way to the semifinals dropping only a single map before he was narrowly edged out by Polt and his superb drop play.His results in Proleague have been so-so. Rain most notably beat Marineking in the ace match against Prime and lost to Flash as SKT1 continued its most recent losing streak in the derby against KT. But perhaps his most relevant games for his clash with herO come from Rain's Ro16 group which featured an all star lineup of Protoss in Classic, Parting and Squirtle. Rain dismantled the group with 2-0 and 2-1 wins over mates and practice partners Parting and Classic respectively. You'd be hard pressed to find a group of more talented PvPers than this in GSL's history and Rain looked the best of all of them. With his other two matchups looking dominantly powerful as well, this might finally be the breakout GSL for Rain.
He's always been capable of winning any tournament he shows up for and his recent overall form shows that maybe he's had enough of not living up to the name he's made for himself as one of - if not the best - Protoss in the world.
Predictions: herO has had to display a lot of his PvP in IEM tournaments and Proleague recently while Rain attended IEM Cologne and had to bring his best PvP to advance into the Ro8. Both players will have ample material to study their opponents but with herO being at Katowice this shortly before the clash against Rain, one has to wonder how much time he was able to put towards coming up with strategies against the SKT ace. All things considered, I have to give an advantage to Rain.
Rain 3 - 1 herO
