Countdown:

by Waxangel

With RorO forfeiting his Global Tournament participation to compete in DreamHack Bucharest instead, Group B has been left as a four man contest. Conveniently, it also lets us divide the players of Group B into two neat categories. On one hand, we have the extremely accomplished, awe-inspiring super-juggernauts. And on the other hand, we have those poor kids who have to go up against them.

Leading the way as the heavy favorite in the group is JinAir_Maru, who many would call the best Terran player in the world. His play in Proleague has been magnificent, putting up a league best 15-8 record while winning back-to-back MVP awards in Round 1 and 2. Even though JinAir also has $200,000 man sOs on the roster, there's no doubting that it is Maru's team to carry.

The only blemish on Maru's recent record is his 2-3 loss to Life in the GSL quarterfinals. Almost anyone else in the world would be happy to reach the Code S quarters, but for a player at Maru's level, anything less than a top four finish feels like a disappointment.

That loss does suggest this might be a trickier group for Maru than it first appears. Though there's no questioning that Maru's TvP is unmatched in all of professional StarCraft 2, his TvZ is weaker in comparison. Impact has looked solid in recent games against jjakji and Bbyong (he still lost more games than he won), while Action was able to defeat Keen and Center in unstreamed Code A qualifiers matches. Who knows? A bungled two-rax proxy from Maru (a strat he's almost guaranteed to use) combined with one perfect game from either Zerg would be enough for them to steal a series win.

The Brood War legend KT_Flash is the other giant who looms over the challenging hopefuls in Group B. Yet, oddly enough, Flash seems to be the one with the most pressure on his shoulders despite being by far the most successful player in the group.

Flash's incredible accomplishments in Brood War earned him the nickname of "God," and such a weighty title has been accompanied by equally heavy expectations. Unfortunately, Flash has been unable to live up to his BW reputation so far in StarCraft 2, and each of his tournament games is heavily scrutinized. "Is Flash slumping? Can he ever be as good in StarCraft 2 as in Brood War? Should he just retire and stream on Afreeca?" Those are the kind of questions that will be permanently attached to Flash until he finally wins a championship in StarCraft 2.

With two consecutive eliminations in Code A, things have only gotten worse for Flash as of late. However, he still has an impressive Proleague record of 12-8, and didn't seem to break a sweat in the GSL Global Tournament qualifiers as he went a perfect 8-0 to make it into this group. Good, but not great is probably a fair assessment of Flash at the present.

Like Maru, Flash may also find this to be a surprisingly difficult group due to the TvZ match-up. Flash looked rather poor when he faced Hydra and Shine in Code A, recording a combined 1-4 against them as he went down in flames to Code B. He looked vulnerable against both early cheese rushes and against super late game compositions, and even his specialty mech builds were unable to give him a win. There's plenty of upset potential here.

The first of our two underdogs is AX.Impact, a player Axiom surprised everyone by signing in 2013 to replace the outgoing Miya. A rarely used benchwarmer for Woongjin Stars, Impact hasn't exactly skyrocketed since joining a foreign team. Even so, he's been a solid performer for Axiom in team tournaments (after getting over a jittery first few weeks in GSTL), and notably scored an all-kill over Team Liquid in the ATC2 playoffs.

Impact has not had any notable individual league success so far, with Code A being the highest finish in his career. However, he did have one of the better runs in the Global Tournament qualifiers, defeating MarineKing, Seed, and Sora to make it this far. This is the biggest individual league stage he'll be playing on, and the best opportunity he's ever had to win some glory for himself.

As mentioned above, Impact has looked decent in recent ZvT games against tough opponents such as jjakji and Bbyong. His defensive multitasking was somewhat suspect, but he was proficient in straight on muta-ling-bane vs. bio engagements. Though Impact is in for an uphill battle against Maru and Flash, he can definitely win in straight up games if things break his way.

Finally, rounding out the group is Flash's teammate KT_Action. Though Action didn't come into StarCraft 2 with the same kind of popularity as KeSPA's star players, he was still something of a hipster favorite in Brood War days. Starting off on team Estro (the BW equivalent of Prime), Action came out of nowhere in 2010 to impress everyone with his spectacular late-game ZvT play. In a career defining moment, he played an incredible 35 minute game against God-mode Flash in Proleague, where Flash was famously lip-read as saying "How is he so damn good?" after taking a hard earned victory. In my heart of hearts, I like to believe that's why KT Rolster picked up Action when Estro disbanded.

For all his late game genius, Action was tragically poor at actually surviving until the late game and concluded his Brood War career as a mid-tier player. The switch to StarCraft 2 did not give Action any sort of boost; rather it forced him to start all over from the bottom. With a 9-15 record in the first SC2 Proleague and zero Code A appearances, Action once even seemed like a player destined to join the growing ranks of Afreeca streamers.

However, Action is finally starting to show some signs of life. He finally made it into his first Code A tournament, and came within one map victory of qualifying for Code S. KT Rolster are starting to slip him into their Proleague line-ups after benching him for most of the 2014 season. Perhaps most impressive of all, Action made it through a very tough GSL Global Tournament qualifier bracket, defeating Hurricane, Soulkey, State, and Super.

With barely any streamed ZvT games to reference, it's hard to really say how much of a chance Action has in this group. But he's a player on the rise, and it will be intriguing to see what kind of play he can bring without the pressure of playing in a live studio booth.


Prediction: Maru advances.