It's Playoffs!

The first round of the '14-15 Proleague is now in the bag, and four teams have been eliminated from contention. Remaining alive are, in order of seeding:

• Last season's runner-ups SK Telecom T1, now almost completely revamped
  
• CJ Entus, overcoming the loss of both Habitation Station and two of last season's core players
  
• Newcomers Startale-yoe Flash Wolves, led by World Champion Life
  
• Jin Air Green Wings, led by Cure and Maru

The first match of the round playoffs will put the newcomers through a trial by fire against Jin Air. Both teams have very distinct strengths and weaknesses, meaning that the match will be decided by a balance of wit and simple skill. The round has provided us with a great number of surprises and dumb-founding moments, and there's no telling exactly how the first match in the playoffs will go down. If you were unable to catch much of the round, banjoetheredskin is here to help you catch up in his Progress Report, while Zealously and Destructicon preview the match at hand.

10:00 GMT (+00:00)

Progress Report: Round 1

by banjoetheredskin

A - SK Telecom T1

Surprising few, SKT finished Round 1 atop the rankings with a sizable map margin. INnoVation impressed with a perfect 6-0 record, while Dark provided a strong support at 5-3. Aside from the one-two punch, multiple players hover at or above 50%, each one contributing to the depth for which SKT has been praised for a while now. The strength of the roster is best described by the impressive feat of racking up four 3-0 victories while never losing 0-3. Furthermore, their only two losses were an ace match to KT and a 1-3 to second-place CJ. For this success SKT have earned a direct seed into the gold match of Round 1, and they look equally poised to stay number one.

Comments
All-kill format should favor SKT more than any other team, and they only need to win one match to take first place. With INnoVation's current indomitable form and Dark's actualization of his potential, SKT might not need much more to take home the gold.

A- - CJ Entus

Coach Park managed to work enough magic to keep CJ afloat in second place after what appears on the surface to be a mediocre round. Against the three weakest teams they were pushed to an ace match before pulling out the win, and looked to be doomed against the stronger teams. Despite falling 3-1 to Jin Air and KT, CJ turned it around and beat SKT by the same score. Unexpectedly, ByuL and Bbyong have been the biggest players for CJ this round, with decent support from herO. Between sKyHigh and Hush, their rotating fourth-men, CJ seem to be able to find enough consistency to keep themselves near the top of the rankings. Most importantly, their flexibility has proven to be an advantage they should carry with them to the playoffs: Bbyong and ByuL are 3-0 in ace matches, while herO hasn't played one yet.

Comments
CJ need to be extremely careful with how they play out their lineup. sKyHigh has demonstrated potency in both the TvT and TvP matchups, but rather inconsistently so. Hush looks like primarily a PvP expert, and herO the opposite. Picking the wrong player could easily create a downward spiral.

B+ - Startale-yoe Flash Wolves

Probably the least expected story of success this round, ST-yoe found themselves as the third team with a 5-2 record. What's more, their only two losses were to the first and second place teams. However, both those losses were 0-3 routs. They have found enough stability in their lineup to be able to rely on Life, Curious, Leenock, and San to be the core four. Life is performing better than he has in team leagues before, while the other three are just barely consistent enough to scrape out a win between the three of them. Unfortunately, none of them have been particularly good either, and save the big question mark in Captain Coach Bomber, the roster looks as a whole pretty shaky except for Life.

Comments
Curious sticks out as the key player for ST-yoe. If he plays well, they have the assets available to beat pretty much everyone. But if he doesn't, as long as we have no idea how much Bomber will play, Leenock and San will have to be flexible outside of their specialty matchups if they don't want Life to carry the whole way. Then again, that might not be a bad plan

B - Jin Air Green Wings

Jin Air have wavered between scary good and only decent. On the one hand, Cure is 5-2, Rogue 4-2, Maru 4-3, and sOs a middling 3-4, and they beat CJ, KT, and MVP convincingly. On the other hand, they gave Prime their first win, and dropped the ball against SKT and ST-yoe in the ace. Maru, Cure, and Rogue all look insanely good right now, coming off individual league successes and stellar showings in Proleague, but Jin Air have difficulty getting them all to play well on the same night, with sOs inconsistently contributing as well. The fourth place team are by no means as weak as their record and standing suggest, but that doesn't mean they are incapable of playing like they are even weaker.

Comments
The most important thing to remember, once again, is the all-kill format. Jin Air were the only team to win two round playoffs last year because of their brutal depth. They may have lost TRUE, but Cure and Rogue are both playing better than last year, and Trap and Terminator provide a great supporting cast to them along with Maru and sOs in the forefront.

C - KT Rolster

The defending champions of Proleague put out a round much worse than any they had last year. Flash was awful. He earned tallied one win the entire round, and it was against BBoongBBoong. And KT still lost to Prime. Zest may have six wins, but he also has five losses, and is only 2-2 in ace matches. They have beaten two good teams in CJ and SKT, which redeems perhaps one of their egregious losses to MVP or Prime, but they have only won three matches in total. Despite missing the cut for the playoffs, they are at the core still not a bad team. Stats is a very good player, and Zest's underwhelming performance does not spell disaster. Yet.

Comments
Flash really needs to turn things around for KT to have any solid chance at making the playoffs at all next round. Zest, if he is going to carry the team, has to do better than he has been. TY seems to be regaining form with his recent success in individual leagues, so KT could easily pick things back up in no time.

C- - MVP

The Choyas are perhaps the definition of just below average. They are in fifth place because they beat the three worst (statistically) teams as their only three wins. YongHwa and Losira had excellent rounds, but the rest of the team was either just okay or worse. MarineKing is 2-7, with an atrocious 0-5 record in TvT. Mercenaries HerO and Seed have combined for a disappointing 0-5, and the rest of the bench is 2-3. Questionable decisions from Satan himself leave us wondering if MVP could have done better, or if they probably should have done even worse than losing half of their matches in the ace.

Comments
With as well as YongHwa and Losira are playing, the critical one-two punch criterion is met for contending in this league. However, they need to be fully utilized as ace players over anyone else, because 9-1 is just damn hard to argue against. And for the love of God, don't let MarineKing get another TvT.

D - Prime

The resemblance 2015 Prime bear to 2014 Prime is striking. Win one or two matches at most, usually including one random good team, with Creator coming through in the ace while staying around 50% overall. Nothing really seems to be working for Prime, unfortunately, except for YoDa's TvT and Creator's PvP. Yet, their TvP and PvZ matchups, respectively, are equally bad. Sometimes MyuNgSiK's bizarre shit worked, but he ended 3-5. Wins against KT and Jin Air do redeem their loss against the absolute worst team, Samsung, but are not enough to indicate any substantial hope for future rounds.

Comments
Since MyuNgSiK's only wins come in PvZ, he should probably continue to get that matchup as much as possible, and not Creator. Creator himself needs more PvP, as he has been quite clutch in it, and YoDa has been fantastic in TvT. Somewhere in there is a formula for success, it's just largely dependent on the opponents.

F - Samsung Galaxy

We might like to talk about the Samsung Shuffle as Stork's special strategy for giving all players an equal opportunity to test their talent, but it couldn't have backfired much harder. Their only win of the round was against Prime. Solar is far and away the worst player in Proleague at 0-6 and 0-3 in ace matches. Dear is sometimes really good and sometimes not good, and he's their best player at 3-3. Shine, BrAvO, Guilty, and Hurricane are all capable of getting Samsung out of the mud, but none of them can deliver with enough frequency to make up for Dear's inconsistency and Solar's inexplicable crash and burn.

Comments
What cannot be said must be passed over in silence.

Match 1 Preview: Startale-yoe Flash Wolves

by Zealously

After the EG-TL debacle of the 12-13 season and the trio of disappointments presented by the ex-eSF teams last season, expectations were understandably low as Startale-yoe Flash Wolves announced that they would be participating in the league. Although a core of Life, Parting, Bomber with a supporting cast consisting of players like San, Curious and Hack does sound like a strong line-up on paper, things don't always pan out like past results say they should. Parting was barred from participating by mysterious KeSPA clause #66 (also known as "Attempt to kill ST's chances at winning Proleague"), leaving Life as the sole S-class player on the team. One known for his inconsistency in team leagues, at that.

Luckily for the Korean-Taiwanese alliance, Life's relative mediocrity (3-4 in normal games) is offset by his incredible clutch factor. Going 2-0 in ace matches and thus carrying ST-yoe through some of their toughest matches of the season, Life ensured that the newcomers could make it all the way to the round playoffs. However, the playoffs present a completely different challenge from the round robin.

The Ace: Life is doubtlessly the most important tool in the Startale-yoe toolbox. At this point, the only player in the league Life seems incapable of beating is Stats, and since KT are absent from the playoffs he stands tall as the most dangerous player in the playoffs*. He is simultaneously streaky and stable, capable of producing monstrous streaks while rarely dropping to a level where he isn't still capable of edging out a win against most opponents. This arguably makes him the most important player in this match, and as long as he shows up to perform a victory for ST-yoe seems likely. However, if he is to be taken out by Maru or a chosen Jin Air sniper, it will put his team in a very precarious position. Therefore, it is in ST-yoe's best interests to send him out as late in the match as possible.

Most likely to be fielded in: Deciding match, ZvT.
Weaknesses: Late-game ZvP, the ZvZ build order-game.

The Core: Leenock, San It's a rather strange world we live in when Leenock and San play on the same (Taiwanese) team, in Proleague, and are two of the team's top performers. Unfortunately, "top performers" doesn't say a whole lot for ST-yoe. Leenock finished the round with a surprising but highly respectable 4-2 record, but San's 2-2 is average at best. Both have have made important contributions when they were really needed, but only Leenock strikes me as a reliable prospect going into the playoffs.

Most likely to be fielded in: 2nd through 6th games, prepared scenarios
Weaknesses: Ace-caliber players.

With Maru, Cure and Rogue all waiting on Jin Air's bench, ST-yoe's best shot is preparing Leenock and San for one player (or perhaps race each) and use them as dedicated snipers. If all goes according to plan, Life, Leenock or Curious can take out Maru, leaving San and others to finish off the wounded beast. Given how reliable ST-yoe have been during the round robin, this is not going to be as simple as it sounds.

The Bench: aLive, Bomber, Curious, Hack, Pet In a bygone age, having a bench looking like this would make you an immediate contestant for the championship. And while it is true that ST-yoe have have a highly diverse and (occasionally) solid bench, they utterly and completely lack the consistency and ability to perform in Proleague needed to ensure a relatively safe match against Jin Air. Of the five, Pet surprised the most in taking a win and Curious lived out his reputation as the pinnacle of average with a 3-4 score. The latter is being fielded first against sOs -- a player whom he has played very well against recently -- which indicates some confidence in his strength, but I really cannot stress enough how lackluster the ST-yoe bench has been. If even one player of the aforementioned five could bring his play to the level where most of them have performed at some point in their careers, it should be smooth sailing past Jin Air, but... I'm not confident that is going to happen in the near future.
However, a Curious all-kill seems in line with what Billowy did to KT last year, so all hope isn't gone

Most likely to be fielded in: Bouts of insanity, prepared scenarios, response to Terminator being fielded as Jin Air's last player
Weaknesses: The fact that they are neither Leenock nor Life.

Match 1 Preview: Jin Air Green Wings

by Destructicon

With the round robin section of PL concluded, Jin Air find themselves at the rear end of the playoff cutoff, having lost the dogfight to StarTale-Yoe. Despite some favorable trades in the off-season and getting off to a nice start in Round 1, Jin Air have struggled a bit with inconsistency. All of their key players have lost key games at the wrong times, putting Jin Air in a tougher position than they needed to be in. Still, the boys in green have put up enough good result to remind us that they are still a force to be reckoned with, but they can't afford any more slip ups.

The Roster

Jin Air has good depth too, it they possess a lot of players but oddly have chosen to not experiment very much in round one. They don't lean too heavily on one race or another, possessing a strong balanced core of sOs, Rogue and Cure, a powerful terran ace in Maru and a huge slew of stealthy supports like Symbol, PigBaby, Trap and Terminator. Their depth and versatility makes them dangerous and extremely hard to prepare for, but it has also backfired when their top guns are cooling down.

The Top Guns: sOs, Rogue, Cure
The reliable trio of Jin Air sport a solid score of 12-7 between each other, and are all capable of being fielded as aces. However, a closer look at the statistics shows that sOs has been struggling a great deal compared to what we expect of him, starting off the season with the same sloppiness that plagued him early last season. Cure, on the other hand, seems to have stepped up his game to bear the additional weight, sporting a 5-2 record and an ace appearance at the end of R1. To compensate for his struggling Protoss teammate, Rogue also picked up some of the slack with his 4-2 record (including an ace appearance). Still, sOs' woes have affected the entire team, and the root cause is hard to determine. He has defeated opponents of each race, but also lost to each race. On top of this, he has played on 4 of the 6 maps. The only conclusion we can draw is that sOs seems to be a transitional period where he is still tinkering with builds only to have them blow up in his face half of the time. Jin Air will be hoping the architect of anguish can get his issues sorted in time for the playoffs, but we should not be expecting him to be fielded regularly in the playoffs.

The Ace: Maru
His 4-3 record in Proleague doesn't do the Marine Prince justice. He is currently one of only 4 players to still be in the running for both a NSSL and a GSL title, and he also had a strong run at IEM Taipei, where he was stopped just short of a title in the finals (by Life, nonetheless). A close look at his games reveals that all of his recent losses have been to zergs, soO, Dark and his most recent IEM loss to Life. That's not to say Maru's TvZ is bad, instead that it might be the weakest of his three strong match-ups*, but it is a weakness that Jin Air either need to fix or work around, as there is no shortage of strong zergs left in PL. If Maru ends up playing in the final game against Life, ST-yoe are in a good spot, but if Life can be taken out before that point then Maru will be able to clean up what remains.
*Relative to the field of players he might come to face in the playoffs

The stealthy supports: Trap, Terminator, Symbol, Pigbaby
Despite round 1 being widely regarded as one of tinkering and testing, Jin Air have been the least inclined of all the teams to experiment with their lineup. Of all their supporting players only Trap has been sent out as a band-aid to counteract sOs' dip in form, and he has the average score of 1-1. It's all the stranger given that Terminator was not only a strong contributor to their efforts in the last PL, but also played well in both NSSL and GSL. Regardless of the strange state of Jin Air's roster, all of the team's B-teamers are dangerous. Trap is an MLG champion and at times criminally underrated, and he has always been a deadly sniper in team leagues. Given the right circumstances,Jin Air could use him again to neutralize a high priority target. As mentioned, Terminator's runs in GSL and NSSL were solid across the board, pitting him against all three races without revealing embarrassing weakness in any of them, and he could potentially be used as a surprise 4th core.

Pigbaby shares a lot of sOs' fondness for the bizarre and throws a mean curveball. When you play against Pigbaby, you either stay on your guard (or lose horribly in the finals of WCS America). But of all the supporting cast, no one player would be more sorely needed then the tunneler, Symbol. While Jin Air have rotated terrans and protoss fairly well, they have sorely lacked a 2nd zerg to support Rogue since the loss of TRUE. Symbol felt like he'd fit right in with his experience as the unrivalled ace of team TSL (first and only player to reverse sweep a team in a BO9), and his collection of roach and nydus based all-ins are deadly weapons just waiting to be unleashed upon the uninitiated KeSPA players. Life was raised in the same chaotic pit Symbol came from and may prove completely immune, but any of Life's less experienced (or greedy -- looking at you, Bomber) teammates could be ripe for the taking.

Conclusion
To sum up, Jin Air are a team with great depth and variety, but they need to pull themselves together and avoid lapsing like they have throughout the round robin. They have shown that not only can they pull together when needed, but they can also go toe-to-toe with any team when they do so. While all eyes will be on their ace and core players, one has could entertain the possibility that Jin Air's refusal to play more of their B-team was somewhat of a strategic choice, a final trump card to be used at the right time. With the diversity of their bench, there are weapons waiting to be unleashed at the right time. All shall be revealed on monday.

Predictions

banjoetheredskin: Jin Air Green Wings 4-2 Startale-yoe Flash Wolves
destructicon: Jin Air Green Wings 3-4 Startale yoe-Flash Wolves
Zealously: Jin Air Green Wings 2-4 Startale-yoe Flash Wolves