Here We Go Again

It's funny how accustomed we grow to watching Proleague every week. In the two-and-spare week break between the Round 1 Finals and this article, Starcraft has certain seemed a little emptier. Fortunately, our craving for top-level team league games will soon be sated, as Proleague returns for its second 7-week round of the season.

The break between rounds has been eventful and brought about a fair number of changes. A shortlist:

• In one of the biggest transfers ever in Starcraft 2, Former Startale-yoe Flash Wolves ace Life has joined KT Rolster. Bolstering the traditionally weak Zerg lineup of last season's winning team, Life wants to carry KT to their second consecutive Proleague championship.
  
• Overshadowed by the arrival of Life, First has also joined KT Rolster. With the arrival of the aforementioned two champions giving KT's bench a lot of additional depth, Miso and Believe have left KT Rolster.
  
• Reality (of extreme late-game fame) has re-joined Samsung Galaxy after a short stint as a free agent.
  
• Ragnarok, who joined CJ Entus in late January, will be eligible for play in Round 2.
  
• KeeN has joined Prime while Daisy has joined Startale.
  
• Parting is still barred from competing in Proleague. At this point, it seems unlikely that the restriction will be cut short, which leaves ST-yoe without a reliable ace.
  
• KTV Foxtrot Labs has been replaced by Vaani Research Station, while Catallena has been replaced by Expedition Lost. Somewhat surprisingly, Overgrowth remains in the map pool.

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+ Show Spoiler [Full Rosters] +

Monday, Mar 02 9:30am GMT (GMT+00:00)

House of Cards

by banjoetheredskin

Round 1 featured enough aces to build a house of cards. With 13 ace matches in seven weeks of play, Proleague saw an average of almost two per week, with each team averaging over three ace matches played in the entire round. Whether it was due to a nice spectrum of experimentation on some teams (Samsung on that end) and stubbornness on others (Jin Air on that end), an anomalous quantity of upsets, overall parity between teams' top players, or most probably, a deal between KeSPA and Team Liquid to earn everyone more FPL points, we saw an inordinate number of situations arise that caused fans to pull their hair out in anticipation.

It would be unfair not to at least mention the fact that every team bar SKT suffered from consistency issues that seemed, to varying extents, inexplicable. CJ may have beaten SKT into the ground with the full strength of their three-man core, but they also got down to the wire with Samsung and Prime -- teams that, if we're being completely honest, showed an alarming inability to close out series in Round 1. Startale-yoe may have won two matches almost solely on the back of Life's double victories, but they also fell completely flat against both SKT and CJ when Life couldn't secure a win.

Depending on how one wishes to look at it, it could either be argued that most teams are approaching an equilibrium where they are all capable of beating each other, or that the format does not present enough opportunity for teams to rise above the competition through depth. If one argues the former, Prime makes a good example: despite going 0-4 in the first four weeks, they landed a surprising one-two punch in Week 5 and Week 6, defeating both KT and Jin Air (before losing to MVP in Week 7). When arguing the latter, Startale-yoe's final 5-2 record best exemplifies this. If all matches were Best of 7, it is unlikely that they would have beaten Jin Air or KT.

This isn't to take anything away from the teams that thrive in the Bo5 format. The 2nd and 3rd place teams, respectively, CJ Entus and ST-yoe exhibited perfection in the final set, both finishing 3-0. Coincidentally, they both received contributions from two different players: Bbyong and ByuL for CJ, and Life and San for ST-yoe. Life's two appearances were also probably the two most one-sided ace matches in recent memory, as he reacted perfectly to Cure's aggression and Seed's sly triple stargate phoenix play. Bbyong's game against Solar was entertaining, but his thrashing of MarineKing could only either have been painful or glorious, and nowhere in between.

Among other bops was Dark's over Maru, of all players. The SKT Zerg received his first of two ace selections against Jin Air and went on to slaughter 38 SCVs with one brilliant attack, and the rest was a foregone conclusion. However, he faltered miserably against Zest's immortal allin. More surprisingly, Zest's only other ace win in four appearances was against the drowning Solar. The KT Protoss fell twice in his most acclaimed matchup, PvP: once to YongHwa's 3gate pressure and once outplayed by Creator (while doing the same build against him for the second time that night). To diminish his success even more, a win over Solar proved to mean absolutely nothing. The Zerg, originally the de facto ace for Samsung, managed to lose all six of his matches in Round 1, including three in the ace. To make matters worse, he was even called on to play in the final set twice after not being sent out in the first four matches, further squandering his chance to redeem some confidence. Stork may have shuffled Samsung's deck thoroughly throughout the round, but he always managed to draw the wrong ace as they lost all four that went to the final set.

Per the relatively recent format changes to Proleague, the tension and building hype can be rather cramped (or extinguished altogether) by a shorter, best-of-five series. Yet 2015 is already on course to thwart that conjecture with a prolific offering of ace matches and unexpected performances.

Here is a list of the top 5 aces (based on various criteria, including but not limited to story, quality of game, and clutch factor) from Round 1:

1. Dark Maru VoD

2. Zest Creator VoD

3. YongHwa Zest VoD

4. Solar Bbyong VoD

5. Cure Life VoD

The Dynamic Duo and Their Challengers

by destructicon

Round 1 of Proleague was full of surprises and upsets, and while we have come to expect such things in the first weeks of a new season, some results were so extreme that they fell well outside the bell curve.

First (and perhaps foremost) we have the underperformance of the ace players. Apart from INnoVation, who went on an absolute tear last round, most of the star players on each team dropped the ball in one way or another, whether it was through losses in key ace matches or all-around average performances in regular games. However, none of them were as extreme as the joint meltdown of Flash and Solar. A fairly recent IEM champion, Flash has been a regular fixture on KT since forever, and despite mainly middling results in individual leagues he has always been dependable in Proleague. Solar was a young rising star, winner of a Dreamhack and the face of Samsung's new generation. Therefore, seeing them go a combined 1-12 was mind blowing. I'll give it a moment and let that sink in. 1-12. One and twelve! A win rate in games just below 8%. With his 6 losses (3 of them in ace matches), Solar became the first player ever to score negatively in FPL after a full round's worth of play. A stark and embarrassing contrast to his performance last season.

Their losses can't be attributed to racial weakness, either. Both players they managed to lose against all races, and it can't be attributed to an unusually high level of competition since they both had games where they put themselves in positions from which they could and should have won. While it's great for Solar that he had a great GSL performance, holding the dubious honor of being the only player in Proleague history to be worth negative points at the end of a round must sting in almost equal measure. Flash's situation might be been worse as he failed to make it in both GSL and NSSL, only slightly offset by his one win against BboongBboong.

However, this round wasn't all doom and gloom, and pleasant surprises sprung up from the most unlikely of places. This round we saw no few than a combined 10 rookies deployed by the 8 teams across a total of 17 games, of which 7 of them won at least a game. Now given that in general these 1 or 2 point B teamers merely serve as fillers or, more likely than not, cannon fodder for the better players, their performance was well above average. And apart from Salvation's kill of TerrOr, there weren't any free wins. We had Pet kill HerO, Sorry defeat BravO and saw Journey defeat MarineKing. The most impressive and noteworthy wins were, from TerrOr, who finally broke his incredible streak of losses by defeating ByuL and Guilty, who played a marvelous TvT against TY by defeating him at his own game.

While we may attribute Solar and Flash's meltdowns and the rise of the rookies to many factors, perhaps the most natural of them that we should look to is just the natural passing of the torch. All players, no matter how good, eventually decline and fade away, eventually replaced by the next generation of players. With the notorious difficulty of making a name for yourself in individual leagues, Proleague has become a breath of fresh air and the stepping stone for the next generation. Whether or not Solar and Flash will bounce back may not be much of a question -- they are still far too good not to -- but will they withstand the natural order?

Writers: Zealously, banjoetheredskin, destructicon
Graphics: shiroiusagi
Photo Credit: Thedailydot
Editor(s): Zealously