GSL Season Three
Code S

A different kind of Elephant
Solar vs Cure

The Man Against The Machine
DRG vs INnoVation

Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

by Zealously

The basis of the now-infamous Elephant in the Room article was that there are a great number of players of immense talent and dedication that could, at any time of their choosing, dominate Starcraft II. A good two years have passed since KeSPA fully switched to Starcraft II, and that hasn't quite become a reality. The KeSPA teams do for the most part dominate Korean Starcraft, make no mistake, but it isn't the Jangbis and the Bisus and the Storks that stand at the forefront of Starcraft II. On the contrary, the players that truly look like the future greats are the players that were nobodies in Brood War, players with potential yet to be fulfilled.

Young players, statistically, more often break out than players at or above the age of twenty. Players like Nestea, Bomber and MMA are the "old men" of Starcraft, and their championships are exceptions rather than the norm. Where the older players oftentimes rely more on trickery and innovation than the brute force of pure mechanics, players like Life, Maru, Taeja and Creator still have the power of youth catapulting them into the spotlight. One and all they have had their moments of absolute dominance, where they look absolutely unbeatable in simply playing like they have been for months. Life had his trademark zergling aggression, Maru his uncanny knack for making 2raxes work when they shouldn't. These players are the personification of talent, belonging to a group of young players that seem bound to dominate the game they play, be it Starcraft: Brood War or Starcraft II.

Both of the players in the first quarterfinals match belong to this group. They are players of immense potential but no great breakout moments to call their own. Both of these players, although predicted by many to become stars, ended up performing below expectations in Proleague, where they ended up as #25 and #26 in the final rankings. Beyond online cups and qualifier streaks, where both of these players excel, Speed and BBatta are the two least accomplished players remaining in the GSL, but are united in that both are players looking to climb to the top of Starcraft.

The Anomaly

Samsung is a unique team, even in the "modern" KeSPA. While other teams viciously protect their players' interests to the point where they arguably hurt more than they help. KeSPA's obsession with keeping their players exclusive and maintaining the shroud of secrecy that characterized them in the Brood War era is fascinating, and Samsung's ability to act completely contrary to standard KeSPA fare even more so. Globetrotters like MC and Jaedong simply do not exist within the KeSPA system, because the system was built with another goal in mind If we were to count the appearances of KeSPA players outside "official" qualifiers to tournaments like IEM and Red Bull, the Samsung players probably have as many as the rest of KeSPA combined. Particularly three players are guilty of stealing riches from various online cups, all of them from Samsung. If we were to measure success in offline tournaments, only one.

Although Solar has been hailed as the next big thing for quite some time (especially by the fans taking interest in the online scene), he remains somewhat of an unknown quantity. Making the finals of Red Bull Global but losing to DongRaeGu and making the quarterfinals of GSL before getting completely shut down by soO, Solar has been just as impressive in ZvP and ZvT as he has been disappointing in ZvZ. Like all players that suffer from a weakness in one match-up (soO vs finals, for example), it's easy to forget that Solar often looks nearly unbeatable in the other two.

As one of the few KeSPA players that get to travel the world both on their own merit via qualifiers and by the goodwill of their teams, Solar is no stranger to the big stage. Unlike his opponent, Solar has been to the quarterfinals before and played in finals overseas. However, the Zerg throne is still vacant. soO gets close every season, and falls just short every time. A championship, however distant that may seem right now, would give Solar a legit claim to the title of "Best Zerg in the world". In Korea, where standing out from your peers is a daily struggle, that is a powerful incentive.

From the Shadows

One of the greatest agonies a Starcraft player can suffer is the knowledge that you are good, that you have what it takes to be a star player in many situations, but that fans simply will not pay attention to you. Life-Curious is one such relationship, where Curious was notable only because of his uncanny knack for crumbling in the Ro16 while Life went on to win championships. Marineking-Maru is one, Zest-Stats another. JinAir_Cure suffers from a similar fate, eemingly doomed to live in the shadow of Maru without ever stepping out.

Even now, when I attempt to write an article that will do Cure justice, I immediately think of Maru. In a lot of ways, Cure is a form of mini-Maru, sharing many gameplay traits with the Jin Air ace but lacking the crispness of execution that makes Maru a master. When I attempt to describe Cure's playstyle, I immediately put it in relation to Maru's. How they both favor aggression to the point of absurdity and love pulling their opponents apart with runbys and drops. But the truth is, there are things Cure does better. In his qualifier runs, I would argue that Cure has displayed a wider range of abilities than Maru, who often gets stuck in his favored way of playing the game to the point where it becomes a weakness. Cure, on the other hand, rarely falls into that trap, switching styles and changing up his builds with greater frequency than the

Objectively, Cure has fared much better than Maru since the end of Proleague. While Maru has been living off old merits and performing decently at best, Cure has been on the rise. In qualifying for Red Bull DC, he put on the following display:
+ Show Spoiler +
Even with the measuring stick we use to tell Maru that he's currently in a slump, that's an impressive list of players. Further, it highlights the problem Cure is facing. Until he can achieve that one result that can get him recognition regardless of anything else (essentially only a GSL championship, and sometimes not even that), he will automatically be associated with Maru. The fact that he has made the GSL quarterfinals makes him worthy of respect, and by winning this match he takes one step toward individualizing himself and stepping out of his teammate's shadow.

Overall thoughts and prediction

More than anything, this match is a representation of the hopes and dreams of young gamers everywhere. In a scene as crowded as Korea's, making a name for yourself is a daunting and almost impossible task. Both Solar and Cure have made it here, to the cusp of greatness, after being largely irrelevant for years. A quarterfinals appearance is good, but not enough to give you lasting recognition. For Cure especially, this is a match that could make or break a career.

Starcraft II is a fickle beast. Momentum ever swings back and forth in favor of one player or another, and online results are only sometimes indicative of future offline success. Both Solar and Cure look like players that could realistically be GSL champions, but only one of them can be. With how both of their forms seem to bounce up and down, predicting a result in this match becomes even more difficult. If Cure can bring the kind of punch he has been packing online over the last few weeks, I see him taking this match. However, Solar has been consistently good for much longer than Cure, and the question of experience also comes into play.

In the end, I'm going with Cure advancing over Solar. Strange things happen once we hit this stage of the GSL, but the story of Cure finally emerging from Maru's giant shadow and keeping his remote chances of making Blizzcon (currently <1%) alive is too good to pass up on.

Cure 3-1 Solar

by stuchiu

Most matches are fairly straightforward. Two players meet on their way to the finals. The winner advances to the next round while the loser is eliminated (or sent to the losers bracket). Sometimes a match becomes more than the sum of its parts. It can turn into a landmark, an important point in time that marks the point when a player’s career died (Polt vs Idra, Polt vs Naniwa, Seed vs Byun). Sometimes it is the start of a revolution, a change in the very way we consider a matchup or a person (Mvp vs Squirtle, Nestea vs sC, Parting vs Jjakji).

This feels like such a match. Both INnoVation and DongRaeGu are at an important crossroads in their careers. Both players are transitioning away from their old teams. After spending a year on a foreign team, INnoVation is going home to join a Kespa team to try to regain his form as a champion. After spending years on MVP, DongRaeGu has finally decided to leave the team and try his luck abroad. Both of these players are looking the best they ever have since last year in WCS KR Season 3 when they faced off against each other in one of the best series of 2013. This is a battle for Blizzcon, this is a battle for revenge, a battle for redemption, a battle for themselves.

The Machine

At the beginning of Heart of the Swarm INnoVation was a monster, an efficient machine of death that swallowed the competition like a tidal wave. Some were able to stem the tide. During the GSL finals, Soulkey proved he had superior mental fortitude. Others like Maru and Naniwa proved INnoVation could be tricked. Taeja grinded him down in a long hard fought battle of the ages on Newkirk. The message was clear through: defeating INnoVation to beat INnoVation, you either had to trick him, make him choke or be Taeja. If you let INnoVation play his game, he’d run you over and destroy you. But that all changed the day he met DongRaeGu in WCS KR Season 3 of last year.

In one of the greatest series played last year, DongRaeGu played INnoVation’s game. He played against INnoVation at the height of his powers in his best matchup in INnoVation’s preferred play style with no tricks. DongRaeGu won. He broke INnoVation’s immortality. Before they had played, INnoVation was a ZvT God. You could trick him. You could make him choke. But you could not make him bleed. The day after DongRaeGu, he was just another mortal, brought low by DongRaeGu.

Since then it has been one year. One year since Innovation joined team Acer. One year of disappointment for INnoVation. Yes, he nearly single handedly won Acer 2 ATCs and was an instrumental part of Axiom in their one GSTL title. But beyond that his overall performances dropped. He came to realize he could not dominate the foreign scene like Taeja. At the same time, his performances in the Korean individual league dropped down dramatically.

It was during that time that INnoVation realized what he wanted more than anything else. To be a champion. To kick start another era of dominance where he was indisputably the best player in the world. During an age where Korean players are scrambling to try to get free of the Kespa Korean regime to travel the world, INnoVation has willingly given up his spot so that he can rejoin the regime that had made him great. Whether it was that change of attitude, the patch or the new maps, it has given INnoVation new form and for the first time all year he has made it to the GSL ro8. And there he will fight the man who made him mortal. Who ended his reign of terror. DongRaeGu. For INnoVation, this is more than just a quarter-final. This is more than just a chance at Blizzcon. This is about revenge against the man who ended him and with it the chance to once more become a champion.

The Man

SlayersBoxer always had an eye for talent. Picked as one of the two great crown jewels (the other was MMA), DongRaeGu initially refused the call as going a full time pro-gamer would be an all or nothing gamble. He was then convinced by the Yoon-Sang Choi (coach of MVP) who swore to DongRaeGu that if DongRaeGu failed, he would pay for private tutors to get DongRaeGu into university himself. And with that fateful meeting, the entire history of SC2 was changed as DongRaeGu rose up to become one of the greatest players in the history of SC2.

But in the last two years, it has been nothing but mediocrity and frustrated disappointments for DongRaeGu. After losing to Life in the first ever reverse sweep in a finals, DongRaeGu was broken. Despite being eclipsed by zerg players like Life or Leenock, he was still a championship caliber player and one that had challenged for the tile multiple times throughout 2012. After that loss he was never quite the same player. He was only just able to qualify for the ro32 each season before being knocked out and was never able to win another foreign event.

His team situation wasn't much better. MVP no longer had the sponsorship money to send the team abroad as much as they used to. His old Coach had left to join league of legends. It eventually all came to a head as the entire MVP team left and was replaced by Choya’s new proleague roster.

So just as he had started, DongRaeGu was once again alone and teamless. Yet despite that, he seemed to thrive stronger than ever. He won Red Bull Battle Grounds: Online. He then got on a plane and eliminated Trust and Stork from the ro32. DongRaeGu hadn’t been in this kind of shape since his fateful encounter with INnoVation nearly an year ago.

Even then DongRaeGu was predicted doomed to fail as he would have to play Flash in order to move on to the ro8. Every way you looked at it, it was a monumental mismatch. Flash had only lost one TvZ series in the last two months. And it was to soO, who had played so beyond impeccable that even the Flash fans were awed by his skill. Before that he had a 79.27% winrate, the ladder maps were Terran favored and he had just come off of winning IEM Toronto. The nickname God had never been so apt. No one had looked that good in their TvZ games since INnoVation nearly an year prior.

And once again, it was left to DongRaeGu to break the aura of invincibility. To bring God down. soO may have been the first to take out Flash, but it was DongRaeGu who delivered the finishing blow to Flash. Yet the most remarkable thing about all of this isn’t how DongRaeGu defied the odds to beat the hottest player in the world. It isn’t how he forced his way back into the spotlight nearly 2 years after his prime.

It is that DongRaeGu is doing it alone. DongRaeGu has no team, no support, no sponsorship. All he has is the clothes on his back, his old ex-MVP teammates and Catz to help him fight against the entire world.

INnoVation left Acer because he realized he could not be a champion without the Kespa training regime. There is a belief that in order to be the best in the world, you must join a Kespa team with their regimented training schedules, coaches and support staff. It is more than a belief, it is the truth. It is the best system in the world at making pro-players the best in their games.

Right now, DongRaeGu has even less than INnoVation did when the latter was on Acer. DongRaeGu didn’t just beat Flash. He didn’t just beat Trust, Stork, Hydra and Solar. And he isn’t just fighting INnoVation. He is fighting the entire Kespa regime. He is winning.

In 2012 DongRaeGu took Nestea off the altar of Godhood and killed him to take his place as the best Zerg. Last year he beat INnoVation’s ZvT and proved he was mortal. Two weeks ago he killed God. Tonight he once more faces INnoVation in a battle that is more than just any regular ro8 match. It is a rematch of when DongRaeGu turned INnoVation mortal. It is about DongRaeGu’s redemption as much as it is about INnoVation’s revenge. It is DongRaeGu’s one man battle against an entire system, his will to test his mettle against not just one player, but an entire ideology and come out victorious.

DongRaeGu 3 - 2 INnoVation

Writers: Zealously, stuchiu
Editors: CosmicSpiral, DarkLordOlli
Graphics: Meru.
Photo: GOMeXP.