EPTGSL Season One
Code S
A Tale of Two Robots
Ro16 Group 1:
INnoVation, Terminator, Dark, MMA
Brackets and standings on Liquipedia
A Tale of Two Robots
by TameNaken
Wednesday, Feb 11 9:30am GMT (GMT+00:00)
The first group of the Ro16 consists of two former champions and two challengers that have yet to taste the quarterfinals. Will
INnoVation, the defending champion, get one step closer to taking consecutive titles? Will the older former champion MMA reclaim former glory against the evil 
Dark live up to expectations or will the wheels finally fall off the bandwagon? Can 
Terminator, the apparent "dark horse" of this tournament, devise one more upset?If it hadn't been for a Cinderella run at the end of 2014, INnoVation's year would have been extremely underwhelming. Although he was late to the competition, the new SKT recruit found his old form just in time to win the last GSL of the year and catch a red-eyed flight to BlizzCon. Now that INnoVation is reinstated in KeSPA's good graces, he appears less often and looks more prepared in every showing. Getting out first in GSL Ro32 was standard fare; losing to
Stats in NSSL Challenger surprised many people, but served more to highlight Stats' excellence than anything else. His perfect 6-0 record in Proleague is stellar but didn't come easily, as he relied on lategame ghost/viking control for a couple of hard-fought comebacks.A few odd games won't break INnoVation's reputation as the best Terran in the world. Due to neither
soO or Zest qualifying for GSL, INnoVation had the highest 2014 GSL ranking and first pick in the group selection. His choice of Terminator was exactly what keen fans expected, a Protoss player who ranked low on the totem pole among the available competition. INnoVation had no desire to shake things up with his surprise powers either, preferring to not mess around with his chances. Like most avalanches, it started fairly innocuously. Terminator made it through the NSSL qualifiers over a respectable bunch consisting of
BBoongBBoong, Stork, TerrOr and sKyHigh. With some bracket luck, Terminator defeated ByuL twice 4 days later to advance in the GSL. These results were mildly perplexing only due to their apparent synchronicity, as both results were well within the Jin Air captain's ability. Yet facingTaeJa in NSSL along with herO and Curious in GSL, Terminator's run would almost certainly come to an end. But Terminator was able to smother TaeJa, Curious and herO within the crashing snow. He stunned viewers with a 3-2 reverse sweep of TaeJa, then beat Curious 2-1 and herO 2-0 to advance to the GSL Ro16. Unfortunately for Terminator, the latter is where dreams come to die. When comparing the players side by side, Terminator shouldn't have the raw skill to take on the competition in a straight up game. Instead he ought to rely on his strong early game aggression or some creative long term strategies, like the phoenix/colossi composition he used against TaeJa in NSSL.Despite being the current WCS Europe champion and Blizzcon runner up, MMA's name doesn't quite pack the same punch as his former teammate INnoVation's. So far MMA's return to Korea has been discouraging. Without a team league to worry about, MMA's life in his home country revolves around the two focal points of NSSL and GSL. Yet even with a supposedly lighter burden, MMA nearly didn't qualify for either league.
The Acer Terran's NSSL run was stopped early with a 2-1 loss to
TerrOr in the qualifiers. In the GSL qualifiers MMA was one game away from being eliminated by Apocalypse, a player that most people didn't realize was even in Korea. The close calls continued in the Ro32, where MMA survived with the lowest possible winning score of 4-4, which included a 0-2 loss to Dark. MMA's play style consists of twisting his opponent into unnatural contortions with constant drops, a reliable way of beating slightly worse opponents. But it's a style that may fail terribly if MMA plays the way he has been since moving back to Korea.If you've read Dark's most recent interview, you know Dark is either the most ambitious player in the world or the best. Dark said that his goal as a progamer was to win 10 individual tournaments, a feat still unclaimed in SC2 history. In Dark's defense, he is constantly getting deeper and deeper in events. By current calculations, he would achieve his goal somewhere around the summer of 2031.
That being said, this is the best chance he's ever had to reach the quarterfinals. Rumors of him being SKT's top in-house player have finally resulted in SPL ace match appearances, which he has handled admirably. Within the last two months, Dark has gone 8-2 in matches against Protoss, and his ZvT expertise easily overwhelmed MMA in the round of 32. So in the group selections, Dark nominated himself to be in a group with Terminator and MMA: the motivation was transparent enough. The SKT Zerg was quick to provoke his potential victims but curiously yielded to INnoVation. Fortunately this saved him some future embarrassment as the very next day Dark fell out of the NSSL. Even if he felt that he could handle MMA without a problem, he still proved mortal against Terrans on the caliber of Maru and Dream.
Thoughts and Predictions:
It's hard to refute the idea that INnoVation will clean this group up, leaving the scraps for his teammate Dark. From his 6-0 record in Proleague, Inno has showed a level of play that the other players in this group can't imitate. At the same time Inno's slightly suspect TvT (and whose TvT isn't these days?) will be nevertheless favored against MMA. Dark's chances of advancing are a lot more vague than INnoVation's near guarantee. In recent games Dark's ZvT has only been surpassed by Life, relying heavily on his mechanics to bolster an impenetrable defense while raising a drone count that can reach three digits. It will be plenty good enough to triumph against MMA, but the odds are gloomy in a possible winners' match with INnoVation.
If anyone can able to upset the SKT empire it will probably be Terminator. Facing Inno in the first match is the hardest uphill battle imaginable, but the Jin Air captain's use of phoenix/colossi plays to an old weakness of INnoVation;s; it will also be useful against MMA's drop-heavy style. In a possible match against Dark, a few well hidden cheeses would be the best way to secure a painless win. As for the European prince, if MMA can play the way he did in Blizzcon then he would be the favorite to get out of the group. Currently he faces an uphill battle in each possible match-up.
INnoVation>Terminator
Dark> MMA
INnoVation>Dark
Terminator>MMA
Dark>Terminator
INnoVation and Dark to advance.
