EPTSPOTV Starleague 2015 Season 2
S2SL Challenger League Day 1
Leenock vs Flash
Rogue vs Hurricane
herO vs Symbol
Brackets andLeenock gs on Liquipedia
Starcraft II Starleague
Seasons Change
by Destructicon, lichter and The_Templar
Leenock vs Flash
The new year seemed to bring for
Leenock the resurgence he had so desperately craved. In Proleague he was being fielded regularly and started to rack up wins, with his most notable ones against 
sOs and Zest, and he even made a RO8 in the S2SL, defeating players such as Zest, Super and Terminator. However his brief surge of power seems to be ending: he has lost his last 2 Proleague matches, he failed to advance from his IEM Taipei group and failed to make it through the qualifiers for Katowice or the GSL. Worse still, his ZvP, which has looked like his best matchup in recent months, won't be of much use and his ZvT in particular has looked weak. However not all is lost for the Leenocktopus. Flash, despite seeing a small resurgence of his own, is still a very predictable opponent, prone to being thrown off if things don't go his way. Leenock is very much adept at mixing in strategies that can unnerve any terran, but he must buck his trend of only having one good month a year.
Flash's 2015 has been the exact opposite of Leenock's: he started by going an abysmal 1-6, in Proleague, his worst record ever. The pain didn't end as he was denied entry into the S2SL Season 1 by Life and GSL by San and ByuL. And just to rub salt in the wound he also lost to Trap at IEM Katowice. However a brief break between rounds seems to have done the trick for Flash who has started racking up victories again in Proleague and managed to qualify for the second season of both GSL and S2SL. Yet upon closer inspection, Flash's TvT is what has done most of the heavy lifting, which contrasts in worrisome fashion with his TvZ. Flash's best bet against Leenock would be to tighten his scout patterns and transitions to never present an exploitable weakness. Second, he needs to be more decisive with his engagements in long macro games. Some of his recent losses can be attributed to him being indecisive, something he cannot afford against an opponent as dangerous as Leenock. Lastly he should not primarily use mech. Leenock has looked adept at fighting mech but much weaker against bio.Overall Thoughts and Predictions:
Form and momentum favor Flash, while Leenock probably has the edge in series planing and clutch factor. Their match ups against the opposing race are pretty bad for both, making this the hardest of series to predict. I'll go with my feelings on this one and say Flash wins, but the other outcome wouldn't surprise me either.
Flash 3 - 2 Leenock
Rogue vs Hurricane
2015 has been a good year for Jin Air Green Wings. Maru just won S2SL, and they've been improving in Proleague after a lackluster Round 1. Coinciding with their scaling form has been the rise of their backbone players, namely Cure and Rogue. The latter zerg was once considered just another roster player that filled out the squad, rotating with TRUE as Jin Air's zerg in the 2014 season. Ever since the departure of his wacky teammate, Rogue has catapulted himself up the charts. He followed up an impressive 3rd place in MSI Beat It with dual Starleague Ro8s—the only other player to achieve such a feat was eventual GSL winner KT.Life. Though he's only just begun knocking on the doors of the zerg elite, Rogue has shown that he has the consistency to linger in the game's upper echelon.
One of the keys to his success has been his versatility. He is just as comfortable using hydralisk styles as swarmhosts, and he knows how to play both defensive and aggressively. He has been praised as a cerebral zerg—his slow ling flood after three bases caught herO unaware in their GSL match—who knows how to utilize the zerg's swiss army knife of compositions. In one game in his GSL quarterfinal, he built just about every unit available in order to throw herO off guard. It may not have worked, but it surely gained him a new group of fans for his imaginative play. While we've yet to see him truly impress in consecutive standard games, it might not matter against his opponent.
If there is one team that has suddenly heated up as much as Jin Air, it must be Samsung Khan. A 0-3 loss to KT aside, Samsung have turned it on in Round 2 after an abysmal start to Proleague 2015. Unfortunately for Hurricane, he has yet to be part of their resurgence. With a meager 1-3 record and without a game since the beginning of March, he appears to have sunk down the Khan ladder. A good performance or an unlikely seed into the SSL main event would go a long way to showing coach Stork that he has what it takes to nail down a spot, but it's difficult to say whether he was unlucky or not with this draw.
Upon a simple inspection, it appears Hurricane is some sort of PvZ savant. With a 70% winrate in 2015 (14-6), Hurricane looks like he has things figured out. However, many of those wins have come against meager opponents. Half of his wins have come against PengWin, Crimson, and Gamja, though he has beaten the likes of Losira and RagnaroK. To add to the conundrum of his form, very few of those games were streamed. Based on his history, Hurricane prefers timing attacks and clever play, and he's one of those protoss that will play as protoss as possible. That sounds like a bizarre description, but considering he's been a rare sight this year, it will have to do for now.
Overall Thoughts and Prediction:
Despite some impressive outings, Rogue has not really made much strides in ZvP in 2015. He is a mere 15-17, though he has been hot in other matchups over the past few months. Expectations are high for the Jin Air player and anything short of a win tonight will interupt his momentum. Hurricane on the other hand hasn't had many opportunities to show us what he's got. Even a good performance will improve his stock, but he should have a few interesting builds planned for this bout. Unfortunately for him, Rogue's pretty good at playing interesting games.
Rogue 3 - 1 Hurricane
herO vs Symbol
The past year for
herO was one of stories and success abroad, and while his Korean results were far less spectacular, herO did manage to prove that he was a player of formidable skill. While he hasn’t been able to live up to his IEM reputation in 2015, having fallen in both Taipei and the World Championship, his Starleague performances are on the rise. After being narrowly eliminated from the bloodiest group in the S2SL’s short history, herO made a excellent run by topping the GSL’s RO16 group of death and defeating Rogue before barely falling to Life. His PvZ during all of this has proven to be increasingly solid and experienced as the game has gone on, with some apparent weaknesses in the early or middle stages of the game. Against a player like Symbol, who has been relatively unseem for over a year, herO is likely going to want to play as safely as possible and work towards the late game instead of trying anything risky. In contrast to his shining and smiling CJ opponent,
Symbol is practically invisible. A career that began with both well-recognized and promising results deteriorated sharply in HotS, and Symbol eventually found himself lurking at the bottom of Code S, teamless, for most of last year. This was not due to inactivity—Symbol actually played nearly 500 games in 2014, including lots of Leifeng cups—but instead an inability to compete with top-level opponents. Although he recently joined Jin Air for Proleague, he has only played two games and lost both, to soO and Center. Although his ZvP has been his best matchup for some time, Symbol’s greatest victory in the matchup is MyuNgSiK; meanwhile, he has lost both of his encounters against Code S players, Rain and Super.Overall Thoughts and Predictions:
Against an opponent like herO, Symbol is likely outmatched. If he attempts aggression, which is uncharacteristic of him, he may be able to grab a victory. Symbol might instead try for a longer game; his late-game ZvP used to be fairly strong and defensive, but he has hardly been seen using it. Ultimately, assuming Symbol proves to be a worthy competitor, the match falls onto herO to correctly react to anything the Jin Air Zerg tries to surprise him with.
herO 3-1 Symbol
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/y1aRJy9.png)
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