EPTCode S Ro8 Day 2 Preview
Quarterfinal 3: JinAir_Maru vs ST_Life
by CosmicSpiralThe logistics of a rivalry are simple enough. Two players, driven by motivations strong enough to carry them through paltry payouts and years of unsatisfying progress, find themselves constantly pitted against each other. At first their encounters barely raise an eyebrow. After all, good players inevitably meet their ilk in the later parts of a tournament. And while brackets can create some bizarre coincidences and recurring patterns, no one is obliged to care (there’s a reason Mvp/MarineKing was only considered a thrashing).
But like a mirage, a rivalry inevitably comes into existence due to the people who watch it rather than the people who participate in it. It’s not like there isn’t enough tension to create a little drama here and there. There’s enough egotism and self-righteousness in the scene to fuel a few wars. But rarely do you find players who view each other's success as a mutual threat, especially in such a small environment like Korea. Players there often turn out to be friends, acquaintances, training partners, or people too nice to call someone else out in public. Even the most celebrated rivalries in Korea were based on symbolic projection rather than personal animosity. Soulkey and Innovation never expected their games to succinctly capture the core frustrations of ZvT during that period. Mvp and Nestea were the most polite foes in history. The only meaningful struggle between Polt and Stephano was for the hearts of the viewers.
Yet, under the lens of rivalry every encounter becomes an event in itself, an emotional rollercoaster that begins its ascent long before the actual match starts. Losses turn into possible motives for (what we desperately hope will be) vengeful feelings. Gestures are fraught with undisclosed meaning. Games turn into an off-kilter version of a Spanish soap opera.
ST_Life vs 
JinAir_Maru has not reached that level of notoriety… ...yet. At the beginning of WoL it only seemed a matter of time before they would usurp their elders and become the new faces of SC2. Maru started his ascent early, infamously debuting at the age of 14; Life inched into the spotlight six months later, making his name with the oddest builds and timing attacks. Together with Creator they formed the Junior Triumvirate, the heirs apparent for their respective races. Although none of them made a noteworthy splash until summer 2012, all three players hit the typical notes for future stars. They excelled in team leagues, routinely upset more famous players, added new tricks and builds to their approach, and showed consistent progress in each new performance. Through all their peaks and troughs, they've remained the iconic players of Korea's new generation.Despite sharing a combined total of 7 premier championships and 8 placements within the top, tonight will be the first official BoX match between Maru and Life. Due to a combination of bad timing and travel disparities, Life and Maru have successfully managed to dodge each other for over three years. When Life took the world by storm at the end of 2012 Maru was ping-ponging between Code S and Code A; as Maru bulldozed his way to an OSL victory, the StarTale zerg struggled with a crisis in form that has yet to be resolved. Additionally Life spent much of 2013 globe hopping in search of additional trophies while Maru stayed at home. Who had the better approach is definitely arguable: the former scrapped together a nice pile of foreign winnings while the latter was rewarded with the prestige of excellent finishes in WCS Korea.
Life fans can take comfort in knowing their champion has more than a fighting chance. For the first time since MLG Winter, it looks like he has a strong handle on his gameplay. Gone are the goofy proxy hatch shenanigans and suicidal roach missions back when he was lost in ZvT and ZvZ respectively. Now he displays renewed confidence in his midgame tactics and a willingness to let games go late. However, his recent series against Taeja showed a continued trend of losing composure in important games. Previously Life was infamous for being calm and collected in the most nerve-racking situations, the crucial trait that led to his unforgettable runs. At IEM WC he showed an uncanny willingness to throw leads by any means possible. Hotkey errors, sacrificing waves of units in the pursuit of guerrilla warfare, losing all his mutas with disastrous move commands...they were the mistakes of a greenhorn, not a GSL champion.
While Life dropped these gifts into Taeja’s lap, Maru will be doing everything to force these boneheaded mistakes out. Unlike TaeJa, whose worsening wrists have burdened him with a passive play style, Maru is an expert at needling opponents with relentless pressure. It is a hallmark of his play dating from the beginning of his career – he’ll whip out the Prime Double Proxy Rax™ on the biggest maps just to screw with your mind, soon followed by mass hellions with two cloaked banshees. When he’s not attacking he’s dropping, when he’s not dropping he’s rallying units towards your third, and when he’s not rallying units towards your third he’s dropping.
All of this action comes at the expense of stability. Maru’s opening build for macro games largely stays the same. He rarely lets greed take over with an early third but he almost never plays it safe with additional barracks either. Instead, he routinely techs up to starport to produce cloaked banshees. Hydra perfectly exploited it during Ro32 group stages with a baneling bust on Yeonsu and zergling runbys on Heavy Rain. If Hydra followed up his advantage on Heavy Rain with an established fourth instead of throwing his army away, he may have been able to send Maru down to purgatory. Nevertheless the series showed a major weakness Life could use to his advantage: to a large extent Maru’s TvZ games are determined by whether or not he can take an early advantage before he starts mass barracks production.
Prediction:
The series will come down to whether Maru can keep Life on tilt. Despite my emphasis on Maru’s aggression, he doesn’t have many variations in terms of builds. His TvZ games over the last few months boil down to a quite predictable pattern:
For macro games Maru will open barracks first -> 3 reapers -> expansion -> 10-12 hellions with 2 cloaked banshees -> third OC -> continuous marine/thor/medivac/widow mine pushes.
If Maru faces a series loss and the possible deciding map doesn’t have fixed spawn locations, he will proxy at least one barracks near the zerg’s third.
If Maru faces a series loss and the possible deciding map has fixed spawn locations, he will proxy two barracks near the zerg’s third and attempt a bunker rush at the natural.
Maru did dabble in mech play while it was in fashion earlier this winter, but he has cycled it out of his repertoire.
Assuming Maru uses the same logic tonight, he may be hard pressed to keep the swarm occupied. His approach to the matchup is so systematic that Life could easily memorize the reaper and banshee timings. Life has already demonstrated builds starting with 15 pool to counter reaper harass and he often gets a faster lair than other Zergs for the midgame.
On the other hand, Life’s insistence on sticking with 15-20 mutas plays into Maru’s hands. Against the average Terran, this allows him to get a faster infestation pit and transition to hive tech; he depends more on using ling counterattacks in conjunction with muta harass to keep the enemy occupied. However, Maru frequently skimps on widow mines in exchange for pure marine/thor. If Life plays as sloppily as he did at IEM, he could lose map control to a couple of Thor volleys. Maru’s dedication to in-your-face drops can easily compensate for any failures in the early game as well. It could go either way and should prove to be a highly entertaining match.
Maru 3 - 2 Life
Quarterfinal 4: The Mandatory Team-kill
SKT_soO vs SKT_PartinG
by stuchiuTeam-kills are usually a sad affair for a team. Two friends who have lived and practiced together to reach a common goal must suddenly face each other as enemies. You need look no further than Group C in the Ro16 of this very tournament, where three SKT Protosses had a fight to the death, to see the tragedy a team-kill can bring. Even though Rain and Parting moved on, you had to feel sorry for Classic, whose good form and clutch Proleague play was rewarded by elimination at the hands of his teammates.
But this team-kill... The vast majority of fans at home probably don't care about the tragedy of it all because they'd very strongly prefer one player to advance. On one side you have
SKT_PartinG, the extremely arrogant and extremely entertaining conductor of the Soul Train. On the other side you have an SKT Zerg, a member of a group that has symbolized of mediocrity and adequacy for nearly a decade. Of course, SKT will be happy just to have one more guaranteed player in the semifinals. But IF all the coaching staff and front office workers of SKT were secretly rooting for PartinG to go through over soO, we couldn't blame them.PartinG is fun. Parting is exciting. Parting is in many ways the face of SKT. Fantasy might be the veteran who maintains the Brood War legacy, but PartinG is the player who makes SKT an interesting team in the present. He is a top tier player. He is an arrogant and outgoing performer who blurs the line between his real personality and a character scripted for the cameras. Among all the players in SC2 he has the best ceremonies whether it’s eating sun chips, giving a sarcastic thumbs up, or taunting Flash with a ruler. As a natural provocateur, he is always one step away from creating an entertaining feud with any player who wants to talk back.soO is in many ways the polar opposite of PartinG. He's bland. He's vanilla. He's a player we have to remind ourselves to watch because we know he is a skilled StarCraft 2 player, and as the elitist hipster fans we are, we're supposed to care about that kind of thing. PartinG, on the other hand, is someone who is loved for his personality even by those who don't appreciate the intricacies of his play. After transferring to SKT, PartinG quickly became one of SKT's biggest stars. soO, having been on SKT for years of BW and SC2, is still in the background. The occasional quip in an interview or comment via Twitter suggest there's a wry sense of humor waiting to come out (a la Ryung or aLive), but only to the few who can be convinced to look closely.There's no question that soO is a good player. He reached an OSL semifinal in Brood War and the finals of GSL in HotS. But despite all of that success, you just can't remember what exactly he did to get there beyond standard Zerg play. At least Soulkey and Rain are notable for taking safe and solid play to the extreme. soO, while good, is not quite on that level. With so many skilled players and big personalities around him soO's is cursed to keep living in the shadows. That is, unless, he can go all the way and win a GSL championship.
soO knows from experience that reaching the semi-finals or the finals is not enough. He's been there before and it hasn't changed the fact that he is known as an SKT Zerg more than anything else. When he played Dear in the GSL finals, it was for all the marbles. Dear is now remembered as a champion, while soO is (barely) remembered as just another good player.
Different as he is from soO, PartinG does share one problem with him. He needs to win that GSL championship to be taken seriously as a top player. For a player who is unrivalled at talking himself up, PartinG can't talk away his record: just one GSL semifinal appearance in his career. He's the best on the mic, best in ceremonies, and hell, we'll even say he's the best at micro. But best in the game? That, he still needs to prove.
Prediction:
When soO is playing at his best, he has shown he can outplay even the best players. He has good fundamentals, a solid grasp of when to be greedy and when to play safe, and an underrated killer-instinct that lets him end games with waves of attacks when he sees an opportunity. However, he is also an inconsistent player. He's managed to throw some games in truly tragic fashion (his worst baneling bust EVER against Gumiho comes to mind), but on the flip side, rarely manages to steal impossible victories for himself.
Though soO has had some consistency issues, PartinG has been even worse. His micro is fantastic and capable of powering him to a win against any player, but he can collapse for no particular reason. soO has been a beneficiary of this fact: in WCS Korea Season 2 last year, PartinG played the two worst Soul Trains of his life against his teammate. When they met again in WCS Korea 3 where PartinG had been on a hot streak, soO crushed PartinG once more by holding off his early aggression with laughable ease. Though it's not indicative of how their games go in practice, pros know very well that games in the booth are very different from the ones that go on in the team house.
Even when you go back to his ST days, PartinG has always had trouble against his teammates. Life was one of the three players to ever stop his Soul Train in WoL (others being Suppy and Sniper), claiming the 2012 Blizzard Cup over PartinG. Curious had no problem 10-pooling PartinG 3 times to preempt any chances of a Soul Train occurring.
For all the inconsistency in PartinG's game, there's one thing he has done regularly: Failed to make it to the Code S Ro4. Despite multiple quarterfinal trips, PartinG has almost always been stopped before making it to the semis. He's talked about 2013 being an off-year for him and having found new motivation, but I can’t help but think that Parting is a player who just can't bring his best play to the later rounds of the GSL.
soO 3 - 1 Parting (PartinG takes a game with a Yeonsu Soul Train)
