The Thick of Things 2

Please let MVP Win - editor who shall stay anonymous

Déjà Vu

by banjoetheredskin

In a repeat of Week 3's scorelines, there was one 3-2 and three 3-0s in Week 4. To nobody's surprise, ST-yoe and Prime were on the losing end of two of those sweeps; in another trend, CJ's opponents were the third team to put up a goose egg. Despite the anticipated shift in rankings due to the relative parity, all teams held strong. ST-yoe and Prime are still the bottom two by a large margin. The slumping KT and the middling MVP remain outside the playoff bubble with slight negative map margins. Second through fourth place are all tied in match score but vary in map scores, as Samsung, SKT, and Jin Air are separated by a total of 5 maps. CJ sit comfortably atop the standings with a +10 overall differential.

Prime and Samsung kicked off the week with another rout of the team that just can't seem to win. But it is not just a matter of Prime losing their matches, convincingly at that. They have failed to win a single map in three weeks, and a single map is all they have. YoDa has Prime's only victory to his name, and his loss to Shine in a very winnable situation spelled disaster for the rest of the series. BBoongBBoong overdroned against Dear's allin, making his death quick and inglorious. Creator's was even worse, as Armani pulled a page from Losira's book and did a speedling flood against Creator's nexus first. The Designer Zerg has now earned both of his wins off Prime Protosses, and Creator's PvZ record drops to 0-4 on the season.

In the closest match of the day, Zest once again faltered in the ace match as KT fell to Jin Air 3-2. Rogue displayed a refreshing and neat style of ZvZ with swarm hosts and completely outclassed Life. sOs' mind games didn't faze Flash, but a critical blunder lost him his natural orbital command center. Despite dealing decent damage with drops, Flash couldn't find himself an edge, and his scv pull into eight colossi went as poorly as it sounds. Zest once again proved to be the superior PvP player to Trap, deflecting a dark templar opening adroitly and cleaning up in the ensuing macro game. Stats took the most hilarious win of the week with a one base proxy colossus allin over Cure, who still probably doesn't quite know what the hell happened. Maru was called upon for the ace against Zest, and once again took the win over the KT Protoss with suffocating mine drop harass and subsequent bio tactics.

CJ vs MVP was by far the longest 3-0 of the week, opening up with sKyHigh's mech against Losria on Deadwing. Despite the game reaching the 40 minute mark, sKyHigh was in control the entire time, displaying brilliant decision making and army movement, as well as an adept stop of Losira's attempt at a five nydus backstab. The second game on Expedition Lost stirred a lot of controversy and revitalized the hullabaloo surrounding match fixing. Regardless of the reasons why the game might have played out the way it did, MarineKing scouted ByuL's proxy hatchery but continued with his greedy 3 CC build, and died a horrendous death to the spines and speedlings once the backdoor rocks came down. herO tried to close out the day with another quick game as he put a proxy stargate just outside of Center's natural. Center defended, but herO's follow up macro game was too good, as his stalling on Center's scv pull gave him more than enough wiggle room to finish off the MVP Terran.

After CJ won their match I went to get a glass of water and thaw some frozen pancakes. When I came back SKT had already won their match 3-0 as well. INnoVation dealt significant damage with his widow mine drops, so San's weakened economy just couldn't produce enough to make the desperation colossus allin work, especially without blink. Dark killed aLive with a roach baneling bust after recognizing the same 3 CC greed all the ST Terrans seem to like. Sorry then did a proxy reaper strategy on Expedition Lost, floating the barracks into Curious' main and building a bunker. Hatch gas pool just dies to that, so Curious' fate was no different.

Now that we are more than halfway through Round 2, some obvious trends have developed that we ought to look out for.
1) Will ST-yoe lose 0-3 or 2-3? (They have lost two of each)
2) Will CJ win 3-0 again? (They have done so three consecutive times)
3) Prime will lose, but will it be 0-3 again? (They have done so three consecutive times)
4) Will Jin Air have to play an ace match? (They have done so four consecutive times)
5) Will Samsung continue to beat inferior teams? (They have done so three consecutive times)

Focus Match

by Destructicon

SK Telecom T1 vs Jin Air Green Wings

INnoVation < Vaani Research Station > Maru

As luck would have it this battle of the titans starts with the grudge match between the best terran in the world and the 3rd best right now. While everything seems to be going Maru's way, he is riding a wave of momentum from his NSSL final and it was a TvT where he displayed great performance. However while his form is excellent a lot of his style has been exposed and it gives INnoVation ample research material to dissect and formulate a counter strategy. In terms of overall TvT prowess, INnoVation is sitting at 66% with Maru at 63%, both have had great TvT recently with the only blemishes on their records being losses to MMA and Dream respectively. However the historic head to head is still 4-0 in Maru's favor given that INnoVation hasn't had an opportunity to get revenge, until now. Both are in great shape, Maru has the head to head but INnoVation has the research advantage, thus I'd say this could be a very close game.

Dark < Overgrowth LE > Cure
This is another exciting revenge match. For the first month of 2015 the Dark hype train was steaming ahead at full speed only to inevitably and painfully crash later. One of the people that was there to throw a wrench into the gears of Dark was Cure, who did what his team mate, Maru could not, and defeated Dark in their Proleague match. Despite all this Dark has still shown excellent games and form against whomever he has played and it's clear that what is holding him back at this point is the lack of experience in the later stages of tournaments, his most impressive results recently being the annihilation of Taeja and Maru back to back at IEM Katowice, followed by GuMiho in the NSSL qualifier. Not to be outdone Cure has also displayed great form with his insane qualifier runs for IEM Katowice, his showing at the 2015 Season 1 Kungfu Cup and his ability to qualify for GSL. The two of them seem very close in skill and form right now, so this clash could be another memorable one.

soO < Expedition Lost > Symbol
Despite his awful showing in his first televised Proleague game Symbol has managed to soften the hearts of the Jin Air Coaches with his brilliant showing in the NSSL qualifier, especially his memorable game against SuperNova on Expedition Lost. soO's results have been equally mercurial, he did manage to requalify for the GSL, but his most recent Proleague matches have been very odd. The worst part of is that against skyHigh and YoDa he look in control of the situation up until the point where he hit a wall and just lost. However this is ZvZ, historically soO's ZvZ has been fantastic and he has won his most recent Proleague game vs Action. Despite a couple of hickups from soO and some sparkles of former brilliance from Symbol I still have a hard time seeing the Tunneler defeating the most recent Kong, but its not out of the realm of possibility.

Dream < King Sejong Station LE > sOs
Last but certainly not least we have a potential explosive game in Dream vs sOs. The Mad Scientist of Proleague's results still seem to fluctuate more than a Geiger counter in a radiation zone. One the one hand he suffered a early exit in the KungFu cup and then he went and qualified for the GSL, he wins his initial match vs Losira only to then lose the ace against HerO. Against terran's he's been so and so with wins against jjakji, KeeN, Ryung and Flash but with losses to INnoVation and Bbyong. Most notably he did take out Dream 2-1 in his IEM Katowice qualifying run and his PvT is statistically his best match up, so he has that going for him. Dream would be the order to sOs' chaos, with much more consistent and overall good results lately: a NSSL silver, GSL RO16, several wins in proleague and a decent IEM qualifying run. In terms of styles both players love taking control of the game early via aggression, with sOs probably better at series planning and mind games, but with Dream having the strongest form right now. Ultimately I think who will win this one will come down to where the needle will land for sOs on Tuesday.