The New Order

Despite all the times we've talked about how Proleague's Best of 5-format caters to the weaker teams and makes the league more volatile than it would be in a Best of 7-format favoring depth over ace numbers, the Proleague teams keep insisting that consistency can be maintained regardless. It may be true that such consistency is reached through a chain of convoluted and puzzling decisions from players and coaches, but it seems we shall have consistency nonetheless.

With Life leaving Startale and ST-yoe finding no even remotely suitable replacement in the round break, we are now at the stage where the league is very clearly tiered. Five teams are likely to be in contention for the season playoffs, while the remaining three seem to harken to the old days of Airforce ACE.

Here is Round 2, Week 1 in a few simple bullet points:

• Though it is up to you if you want to consider it an upset or not, both Flash and Solar won their respective games in Week 1. For Flash, that's as many games as he won through the entirety of Round 1. For Solar... Well, let's not say any more about it. Congratulations!
  
• MVP beat the weakened and ace-less ST-yoe, SKT beat Prime, Jin Air beat Samsung and CJ beat KT. Look at the results table from Round 1 and swap the now-Lifeless ST-yoe with MVP. Extrapolating too much information from too little data, it looks like Round 2 will be very similar to Round 1.
  
• Life lost his debut game on KT Rolster. Given the fact that he was facing Bbyong – mech pusher extraordinaire – I would recommend not reading too much into this.
  
• Sora and Shine, rare appearances on their respective rosters, both lost their games. Although neither Stats nor Rogue are opponents to scoff at, it's hard to believe we'll be seeing them soon.
  
• KeeN played his first game for Prime against Dream and lost.
  
• Trap pulled his weight against Samsung five times over, winning both his initial match against Hurricane and the ace match against Dear. For those of you who picked Trap for your FPL, congratulations.

In this week's article, TL Strategy grace us with their inconsistent but very welcome presence as they grade the most important players per race from last round. We also try out a different recap format from last round's weekly progress report. Please let us know what you prefer in the comments.

Monday, Mar 09 9:30am GMT (GMT+00:00)

The Most Valuable Players

by TL Strategy

Many players have been able to make a name for themselves through proleague. Some players perform spectacularly, while others are much the opposite – tanking in performance, and even giving anti-teams + points. And most of all, should an ace match occur, being fielded not only shows a team’s confidence in a player, but can also give them the much needed match wins to qualify for round playoffs. With the conclusion of round 1, we have selected one player from each race who has shown supreme individual qualities in elevating their team’s score; without them, their team could have ended up in a disastrous state.


Terran: INnoVation

Runner up: Bbyong


Without a doubt the best Terran player of the round, INnoVation demolished the competition with a supreme record of 6-0. Showing resilience in both the TvT and TvP matchups, he brought his flawless mechanics and diverse builds to the table to take out each opponent, and looked almost unbeatable doing so. With such depth in SKT, it’s no surprise that he was never fielded for an ace match, but if he had things would go as they would; INnoVation would roll over any opposition. Bbyong does deserve an honorable mention for going 2-0 in aces matches, but the undefeated record of INnoVation definitely trumps any success other Terrans had in round 1.



At this point in proleague, Protoss have figured out INnoVations style of TvP: early drops with widow mines and marine pokes, followed by a stim timing. With this in mind, they have started to play with snipe builds, specifically to counter this drop style and hit hard while INnoVation is weak.


INnoVation opens up with his predictable reaper into reactor, and follows it up with the starport so that he can get the widow mine drops out. Knowing this will probably happen, Hurricane goes for a quick expansion build into 4 gate blink, which is perfect to fend off any drops and apply counter pressure in multiple locations. An unsuccessful reaper scout sees nothing, and the first sign of aggression out of Hurricane comes just after the seven minute mark, when INnoVation sees a proxy pylon at his third base with stalkers being warped in, and the mothership core and a couple of other stalkers there as well. This leaves INnoVation with two options. He can either continue with his marine and mine drop, and try to defend with only a bunker and a handful of marines with SCV support, or he can keep his drop at home and have an easier time holding the aggression, but potentially leave him behind in the economy due to investments in defense and Hurricane’s own expansion. Bogus being Bogus, he goes for the drop and gambles with his defense. In the end it pays off huge, with Hurricane making a big micro mistake in losing the mothership core to a widow mine, essentially ending his early blink harass until he gets an observer out. Meanwhile, his drop makes its way across the map, but with the early gateway count coupled with stalkers, gets next to nothing done.

The next stage of the game involves INnoVation taking the initiative in being aggressive, with his trademark two-pronged marine/widow mine drops. His take on early game Terran is continue being aggressive so that Protoss is forced to stay in their base, which results in Terran not needing any defense and can follow up with many different options. Normally with these drops and his level of control, INnoVation is able to pick a part Protoss players and gain a huge lead going into the mid game. Hurricane predicts this though, and with his blink stalkers he stays at home to prepare for the aggression, drops a third base, and begins to transition into upgrades and colossus tech. INnoVation tries to drop, but drops directly into five stalkers in the main base, and his drop in the natural gets entirely picked off as well without getting any damage done. This prompts Hurricane to go for blink stalker aggression, killing off over 26 SCVs and putting him in a huge lead over INnoVation.





Going into the mid game, Hurricane is ahead in all regards. He’s always ahead on bases, his upgrades are faster and his army is bigger. He’s got a warp prism around the map, and proxy pylons scattered all over the place. This isn’t a situation INnoVation has been in this round, being this far behind in a game. How can he make his comeback in the game? There’s a few ways he can manage this:

• Taking a favorable army engagement
  
• Dealing economic damage/establishing a superior economy
  
• Pull ahead on upgrades/tech

With the latter being nearly impossible due to Hurricane already being ahead in upgrades and chrono boost, INnoVation is forced into the first two options. The first way, taking a favorable army engagement, will be difficult considering how far ahead Hurricane is in the upgrades and tech. There are colossus, storm, and even a warp prism ready to harass the base of INnoVation, potentially spreading him too thin and dealing a huge blow to the economy of INnoVation. The first step to coming back into the game comes when Hurricane goes for a push, lining it up with 2/2 and storm tech. He’s got Colossus, proxy pylons, storm, and a warp prism ready to do damage. Hoping to pull INnoVation apart, he sends in the warp prism and unloads zealots in the natural of INnoVation while warping in zealots in the main. While this is going on, Hurricane is ready to attack INnoVation at the front, either at the pocket third base, or into the natural. He decides on the natural, which is barricaded by barracks, and ends up being a costly decision. INnoVation correctly identifies the warp prism harass and sends an appropriate amount of bio to defend it, while keeping the bulk of his army between his natural base and third base in preparation of the attack. On paper, Hurricane did everything correctly; attacking the main, natural and third base simultaneously, while his army threatens outside of INnoVations base. INnoVations superior decision making and army control allows him to win the fight. The storms don’t hit anything while the high templar get sniped off, the Vikings are in position to take out the colossus, and INnoVation waits to engage the ground army until all of the storms are gone. Taking this favorable army engagement was the first step for INnoVation to come back into this game. This prompts him to launch a counter attack.


With taking a slight army advantage, INnoVation can now press the issue and trade off some of his army for economic damage. The second step in winning the game comes with INnoVation dealing economic damage while establishing his own back at home. He snipes the fourth base of Hurricane, while dropping his own, and starts his next upgrades to eventually even them up. He continues to drop around the map, picking off nexus after nexus to stay ahead in economy. Eventually, INnoVation floats his main orbital command center over to the fifth base location, and continues to keep his four base economy strong.



The final step in winning the game for INnoVation is to take efficient army trades. INnoVations superior army control allows him to take engagement after engagement, picking off colossus before they get damage done, dodging storms, and chasing the Protoss army while it retreats to pick off as many units as possible. His upgrades are caught up, his ghosts are out for EMPs/snipes, and his infrastructure is set up so he can churn out the ideal Terran army. After continuous drops to put his economy ahead, his even upgrades, and superior army, INnoVation finally pushes into Hurricanes hollow core and wins the game.




Zerg: Life

Runner up: Losira

A little less obvious at first glance, Life takes the Zerg MVP award for round 1 over Losira. While Losira almost mirrored INnoVation in the score department, he didn’t play in any ace matches while maintaining a record of 5-1. Life on the other hand, ended up with a worse record at 5-4, but his 2-0 record in ace matches – essentially qualifying his team for the playoffs – is simply worth more than the previous. The importance of ace matches cannot be overstated, winning these matches are worth much much more than regular matches. And for that reason, Life has earned the Zerg MVP award.





This game started with a fairly unique opening considering the map, with Cure opting to go for a CC first on a map known for its reaper play. Luckily for Life, his overlord was able to scout Cure first and he was able to cancel his building extractor in favor of going three hatch before pool to counter Cure’s greedy CC first play. To even further push his greed, Life went with an extractor before his spawning pool in order to get his speed out quickly while still going for three hatcheries. From here the game played out as normal; Life got extra queens and drones while Cure grabbed his factory and began hellion production. At 5:30, the game took an interesting turn; instead of throwing down a third command center like normal, Cure threw down two extra barracks in the corner of his main.

At 7:00, Life’s overlord was finally able to get into position in order to sacrifice itself for a scout, however unfortunately for Life, he was unable to see the extra barracks in Cure’s main. Importantly, he saw the lack of a starport, lack of a third command center in the main, and already knowing that there wasn't a third command center in the natural, Life was able to deduce the type of build he was facing even though he wasn't able to get the scout off. Cure continued with his build, slowly adding the starport while going up to eight hellions and continuing the three barracks marine production. Knowing the type of build that was likely to come from his opponent, Life played very safely and got his 1-1 and baneling nest before Lair and stayed in the 55 drone range and did not take all of his gas geysers. Even while eight hellions were patrolling the map and maintaining map control, Life was able to sneak multiple scouting zerglings out onto the map and scouted Cure’s 20 marines and two medivacs the moment they were moving out, at 9:10. In order to catch any reinforcements, Life sent 20 of this zerglings towards Cure’s base, while morphing banelings at home to stop the marine/medivac/hellbat attack of Cure.



After feeling pressured by Life’s zergling counter attack, Cure reacted by attacking deep onto creep before his combat shield was done, and Life was able to clean it up with just zergling and slow banelings. Knowing another wave was going to come soon, Life again sent another wave of Life lings to counter while replacing creep and morphing more banelings. After killing the bunker with his last runby, Cure’s wall remained incomplete and Life’s lings were free to wreck havoc in the natural of Cure. Again, this pressured Cure into doing damage with his main force of units, but Life was able to overwhelm the Terran army on creep once again while Cure was distracted with the ling runby. As a back-up plan to his marine/medivac/hellbat timing, at 11:00 Cure started his 1-1 upgrades as well as his third command center. Life on the other hand, had delayed his mutalisks in favor of much earlier banelings to deflect the early timings from Cure, and has to rely on purely zergling/baneling to defend the drop pressure. With the mobility of medivacs and efficiency of marines and hellbats, Cure slowly crawled back into the game. By the time that Life’s mutas hatched, at 14:00, Cure was forced to retreat with all of his medivacs, while having an upgrade and 20 supply deficit.



With Cure’s late third and late upgrades, Life from here decided to stop workers at just over 60, stayed on 3 base and pumped pure zergling/baneling/muta, committing to a huge timing. Right as his 2/2 completed at 17 minutes Life executed an attack on Cures third base with his large ling bane muta army and was able crush Cure’s poorly upgraded 4M force. This win displayed Life’s ability to play with complete flexibility and adaptability, and defend any sniper or unique builds his opponents may have prepared for him. This kind of reliability is what is most important for a team’s ace player and is what allowed Life to win both of his ace match appearances and propel his team into the round 1 playoffs.



Protoss: YongHwa


Runner up: no one

Yet another undefeated record, YongHwa quietly finished with a record of 4-0. There were really no other impressive Protoss this round, most notably Zest, who went 2-2 in ace matches, and finished with a modest 6-5 record. While MVP ended up not qualifying for the playoffs in round 1, YongHwa, coupled with Losira, are forces to be reckoned with, and should they continue their tear in proleague, will get their team qualifying for succeeding playoff rounds. No other Protoss showed exemplary play or records, and for that reason no one has earned the runner up spot.






The early game opened as standard as a Korean PvP could. MyuNgSiK opened up with a quick gateway into stargate, while YongHwa opted to go for a blink build. YongHwa opted to drop the twilight council immediately after starting his MSC because of the large map size, and with this he sacrificed his ability to fend off any probe scouts while gaining an earlier blink timing. Both players kept their mothership core local, only scouting for common close proxy locations and returning it to the main nexus, keeping it safe from phoenix or stalkers.

Immediately following MyuNgSiK’s scout, the PvP metagaming begins. YongHwa, knowing he got his blink tech scouted early on, decided to follow it up with a quick nexus before any other infrastructure or units, while MyuNgSiK droped an additional gateway and robotics bay in preparation for a blink attack, and upon scouting a quick nexus out of YongHwa, drops his own expansion without making any additional units to defend the feigned blink attack. With his scouting probe, YongHwa took the watchtower closest to MyuNgSiK, gaining vision of any potential army movement and dropped a pylon next to it for follow up blink pressure.


With MyuNgSiK opening up with phoenix, he has essentially controlled the pace of the game and maintained map control up until blink finished for YongHwa. MyuNgSiK stopped at three phoenix, a modest amount in reaction to blink, and started his immortal production in anticipation for the blink stalkers. With the phoenix patrolling the outskirts of his base, YongHwa is forced to sit at home with his blink stalkers until more warp in rounds are available, and only after that, he can finally move out and start to pressure while keeping adequate defense at home. He kept two stalkers and a sentry in his natural base, and the photon overcharge in the main base, while sending the rest of his blink stalkers across the map to start his harass.

With the proxy pylon at the watchtower ready to warp in, YongHwa started to aggressively warp in stalkers and moves into the natural of MyuNgSiK with six of them, and forced a photon overcharge out of MyuNgSiK while scouting the immortal count and gateway units. Behind this YongHwa dropped his own forge back at home to start his transition out of blink stalkers and into a more conventional PvP army. Unfortunately for YongHwa, he’s drawn the short end of the stick with his build, being behind by a huge amount in the immortal count, and if he decided to stop being aggressive with his blink stalkers, he risked opening himself up to a counterattack which could end the game, so he continued to look for holes in the base of MyuNgSiK. A critical mistake costed YongHwa a large amount of stalkers, when he blinked into immortals, and is forced back to the watchtower. This prompted MyuNgSiK to launch his counter attack.

What MyuNgSiK did not expect was the massive amount of stalkers that intercepted his force mid map. YongHwa, behind his relatively small blink stalker aggression, continued warping in stalkers back at home and at every available moment, while delaying his colossus production drastically. With all of his stalker losses, he still had an extremely high amount left over, catching MyuNgSiK completely flat footed with his immortals and was able to snipe off everything save MyuNgSiK’s own blink stalkers. Throughout this, YongHwa started his own colossus tech with thermal lance and a colossus, and has a slight lead in other upgrades.





A secondary effect to the continued warp-ins for stalkers by YongHwa was the delayed gateway count. The earlier stalkers take away the minerals available for dropping gateways, and going into the mid game he had a much lower count than normal.

Even with the pick offs in the middle of the map, YongHwa had to continuously be aggressive and active with his blink stalker force. They are not good at all in an army vs army engagement, so trading them off at any opportunity is welcomed. He used them to pick off pylons, delay a third base from MyuNgSiK, and maintain his own map control until MyuNgSiK had a large enough force to ward off the stalkers and establish his third base. This information allowed YongHwa to freely tech and make units as needed. The stalkers scouted the move out from MyuNgSiK, who launched an attack on YongHwa’s third base, but even with a free MSC pickoff, MyuNgSiK was too far behind in his army and ultimately lost the game.

This all comes back to the uncanny play from YongHwa in the middle of the game. The presence of mind to delay his tech just enough, while correctly predicting the play that MyuNgSiK would make requires extreme practice and patience, and any slip ups could have easily cost him the game. Generally speaking, blink stalkers pretty much lose their value once there are around three immortals out. Most Protoss players would give up with the blink stalker harass as soon as they see a high immortal count and transition into the standard colossus/archon/chargelot composition, but YongHwa would have been behind in this regard. He found a way to gain a lead and maintain it with the versatility of the blink stalker.

Round Two, Week One Recap

by banjoetheredskin

After a two week hiatus, Proleague returned in full swing with the onset of the Year of the Sheep. Although we are in a new lunar year, the Year of the Ace picked up right where it left off.

Among the expected outcomes were the decent lineup for MVP proving to be just barely too much for the now Lifeless ST-yoe, Samsung losing yet another ace match, and SKT beating Prime. However, the first week back was not without its surprises, as aLive came alive to play both his normal match and an ace, Solar and Flash won their games, and CJ pulled through to stifle the anticipated resurgence of KT with its acquisition of Life.

And because it is a new year, we're going to try something a little different. Rather than arbitrarily grade each team's performance with snark and bias, a new approach is in store. Week 2's matches had a nice distribution of game quality, from triumphs to trumps to tragedies. Highlighted for you are the most noteworthy of each category.

The Ace Matches

Losira aLive
A rematch of the second set on Merry Go Round, aLive returned to try to duplicate his victory over Losira earlier in the match. However, Losira displayed superior decision making as he identified and punished the same greed aLlive exploited in their first meeting. A ling baneling bust off a two base economy made quick and bloody work of aLive's three CC build order, and The Cat Zerg vindicated his previous failure.

Trap Dear
Jin Air expressed their confidence in Trap's PvP as he was expected to face Dear in the final set against Samsung. Although not as much of a straight build order victory as the first game, Trap took the early lead with a stargate expand against a robo expand. His phoenixes hurt Dear's economy enough for Trap to take a sizable tech lead. A misread from Dear then allowed Trap to hit with a powerful attack off an empty third while the former was focusing on starting up his third and cutting on army. With the win Trap took his second on the night and handed Samsung their fifth ace loss of the season.

Zest herO
In another rematch, Zest looked to improve not only his PvP record in aces, but his PvP form overall. Unfortunately for him, the woes continued. herO's aggressive stargate opener put him in the lead against Zest's early expand into dark shrine, as he destroyed the former and forced a cancel on the latter. Zest's counter blink contain was not quite good enough to stop herO's potent counterattack behind his own expansion, and a zealot warp prism backstab sniping his main nexus added insult to injury. CJ continued their perfection in the fifth set this season as herO get his first taste of the FPL bonus.

The Quality Wins

Dear Maru
Pitted against Maru's often terrifying TvP, Dear faced the daunting task of preparing not only for myriad aggressive openings, but a hell of a defensive struggle in the mid and late game, if he were to survive that long. Yet Dear chose an excellent strategy to eliminate a good number of those possibilities, with a simple robo expand into proxy oracle. The oracles accounted for decent economic damage, but more importantly, enough of a stall for Dear to build up the ideal PvT composition. By the time Maru tried to jump start his delayed mid-game hyper-aggression, Dear was ready with a sound blink stalker and colossus army and storm not long after. After a few convincing defenses, Dear marched across the map and stormed Maru out.

Flash ByuL
ByuL seems to be sent out a lot on Merry Go Round for ZvT, but has not quite been able demonstrate exactly why. He never looks quite good enough to beat the top level Terrans, even though it does seem like a stretch to call Flash a top Terran in anything right now. It was a normal macro game, and Flash had his moments where he looked in commanding position. Yet ByuL defended well enough to build a bank that allowed him to tech up to ultralisks and brood lords. However, he could not slow down Flash's economy enough to win with extended counterattacks creep, and Flash tore him apart because of the immobility of his composition.

The Painful Losses

Rogue Shine
Despite Shine's penchant for deploying dirty cheeses in all matchups, he decided to play a fairly normal game against the GSL semifinalist Rogue. Shine was the first player to deviate from the monotony of a standard ZvZ when he took the gold base in the middle of the map for his third. As Rogue established his normally placed third base, he went on the offensive to try to halt the economic lead Shine had taken. Shine stood resilient, however, and caught Rogue out of position to snipe his third. Recognizing his increasing economic and army deficit, Rogue forced a full-blown base trade. Down to just a constructing hatchery, Shine postured to both defend his last building and attempt to eliminate Rogue's remaining few. Yet his army advantage did him no good as Rogue threw everything at the hatchery, a suicide that ended the game like this





soO YoDa
Although pretty much every game from SKT vs Prime could fall under this category, soO's tragedy was of particular note. YoDa never moved his army across the map unless it was a small squadron to harass. soO was able to establish seven bases at one point, which included one on YoDa's side of the map. He hit 10k gas a couple times before re-max waves. He made the ultimate army to combat Sky Terran with 74 corruptors...except no infestors or vipers. Although he won the air fight convincingly, YoDa's transition to supplemental thor production and a wall of turrets was too much for soO's almost non-existent anti-ground army. After losing every drone to hellion harass and spending his bank on corruptors that would die in vain, soO was forced to tap out of the first mech vs swarm host snoozefest of the season.

Writers: Zealously, banjoetheredskin, Jer99, moosegills, shocksc2
Graphics: shiroiusagi
Photo Credit: Thedailydot
Editor(s): Zealously