How Low Can You Go

While teams like CJ Entus and Jin Air continue to rise, at the opposite end of the spectrum we have ST-Yoe and Prime. With a combined record of 0-10, both teams are primed to continue their losing streak this week, with the former facing off against Protoss powerhouse KT Rolster, and the latter against second place Jin Air Green Wings. Curiously, both San and Curious are benched this week as ST-Yoe continue to give their other players opportunities in the form of Pet and Daisy. While not the worst idea, they are up against the combined roster of Life, Zest, Stats and Flash, who are themselves looking to stay in the playoff race. On the Prime side of things, they are looking outclassed as well with only two map wins overall, and with neither of those two in the lineup this week. The legendary TANGTANG makes his return this round, but unfortunately has to face the titan Rogue and his wardrobe of cheeses and aggression. Both ST-Yoe and Prime far from the playoff race as they have already been mathematically eliminated, and as of now it’s who can embarrass themselves less. Here is a brief summary of last weeks highlights:

• herO picked up a double kill over San and led CJ to victory in the only match to go five sets.
  
• Zoun picked up Prime’s second map win this round, but that wasn’t enough to stop MVP from winning 3-1.
  
• Depending on whom you ask, Jin Air surprisingly took down SKT 3-1, as Maru, Cure, and sOs all took convincing wins.
  
• KT’s trio of Life, Flash, and Stats swept Samsung and put an end to their three week win streak.

Round 2 Week 5 Recap

by banjoetheredskin

The Good


At this point it's a very well-known tendency of the CJ Terrans to play mech against Zerg. While it seems foolish to laud the StarTale-yoe Zergs' counters to sKyHigh's and Bbyong's anticipated strategies, one has to realize how well they dealt with their disadvantages from the start. sKyHigh is essentially nydus-proof, and his damage control was admirable. Even down to two and a half bases against Leenock's five, sKyHigh held on extremely well. Leenock just never made the wrong choice, fully utilizing the lead he had gained to whittle sKyHigh down, even when it looked like the Terran might make a comeback. Similarly, Pet dealt heavy early damage to Bbyong's greedy opening. Bbyong was one foot in the grave when he finally "held", similar to some of his other insane holds in the past, but knew exactly what to do to recover. Yet Pet compounded his lead flawlessly, and swatted easily Bbyong's attempts to claw back before finally succumbing to a flock of mutas. Perhaps it falls on CJ for letting their players be too predictable, or growing complacent with their bread and butter builds, but the stellar preparation of Leenock and Pet should not be overlooked.



The Protoss mirror has been for a while now the one great weakness in herO's overall form. He has fairly recognizable play in the other two matchups, and even in PvP he shows his favored tech openers. But he has no identity or flair in the mid-to-late game, often flipping back and forth between immortal archon-based compositions and colossus compositions, sometimes throwing in storm drops or dark templars. He has even been known to lose to a certain style, then lose with it while imitating it. So it seems that, at least for the Bo1 format of Proleague, herO has circumvented his dilemma with PartinG's approach to Brood Lord/Infestor: avoid it altogether. In his weakest matchup, herO improved to 4-0 this round with rather uncharacteristically aggressive strategies and decisions. He has become almost MC-like in his approach to PvP, and it has now led him to two double-kills. After killing a number of probes with his proxy oracle, herO finished San off in their first game with his follow-up blink timing. For the rematch in the ace, herO recalled the nickname MC claimed he has had in Korea—Blink Man. With a safe but flexibly aggressive 3gate blink robo, herO stifled San's oracle into dark templar build, and the CJ Protoss collected his FPL points.



The Original Chintoss has been pretty impressive since the end of 2014, climbing his way up from the 4th/5th best player on KT to the 3rd best behind Life and Zest. After pulling out a bizarre but hilarious one base proxy colossus allin last week, Stats toned it down and opted for a normal strategy against Solar. However, Solar took the gold base on Stats' side of the map, sending the game into an odd spiral that left Stats with the pocket third base below his main, fending off hydra ling attacks for the majority of the game. His resilience was remarkable, even with some sentry blunders. Stats' blink micro, counterattacks with zealots, and force fields combined for outstanding defense and severe economic damage because of Solar's sprawling base pattern.

After a grueling 20 minutes, many of which were spent clinging on to his third base, Stats finally lost it, but in the process gutted Solar's economy and reduced the hydra count to a critically low point where the Samsung Zerg could no longer hope to contest with two colossi.


The Bad



Technically a 2 base marine tank allin isn't a bad idea on Expedition Lost if you're able to control the rock areas. But ByuL chose to tech up to spire before taking his third, and any small advantage aLive might have had with a tank push was negated by the earlier arrival of mutalisks. Once ByuL recognized what aLive was up to, he persisted with counterattacks to stall the tank push while he stockpiled ling baneling and gradually grew his muta flock. aLive's marine micro could have been much better, and eventually he lost a few key battles. ByuL's counterattacks gnawed away at his parched two bases, and all of aLive's marines exploded to banelings, ending the Wings of Liberty-esque game.



Dark's ZvT is normally very impressive, but some sloppy execution cost him severely against a TvZ expert in Cure. Dark chose a ling pressure into roach pressure attack, delaying the drones at his third a bit to try to snag some SCV kills. Cure held comfortably, though, and his counterattack with hellbats and banshees caught Dark with mostly drones and few units. Once he was down to two base saturation against the three of Cure, Dark had basically no way back into the game. Overall it was a very disappointing showing from the macro monster and Zerg ace of SKT.



With wins over Hack and Maru already this round, Dear's PvT has looked polished and broad-based. He pulled out another solid build against Flash on Vaani, but made one critical error. Normally his pseudo-two base colossus immortal allin would be a strong way to contain his opponent while he takes his own third. However, Flash took an earlier third command center, and Dear's inability to scout due to his only obs having been picked off led him to carry on with the build as planned. Transitioning to twilight and forge before moving out to put on the pressure, Dear needed to commit everything to the attack to kill the greedy Flash. But Flash's quick reaction to the push and solid defense put him in a solid position to return with an SCV pull, not bothering to re-saturate his third base. Dear, on the other hand, had been teching up to storm and chrono boosting probes, so by the time Flash knocked down his front door, he had no zealots to tank and no anti-air to kill the vikings. A few storms meant nothing to the KT Terran, and Dear was dead.



The Ugly



YongHwa had a two base allin planned for Keen, but keenly invested in cannons to pre-empt widow mine harass that Keen loves to utilize. The Prime Terran's drops were shut down completely, and as a result his bio production was a bit delayed, which already bode poorly for him against the impending attack. Even worse, Keen didn't even identify YongHwa's plans until he had begun making his third and ran into a Protoss army in the middle of the map. As if you needed to be told, one bunker was not enough to cut it. Against his former team, Keen came up short and fell to 0-2 on the season in pathetic fashion.




That's all you need to know about this game.

Focus Match

by Destruction


Samsung Galaxy KHAN vs CJ Entus


Despite falling far from the perch he has once occupied, Dear has managed to rebound after joining Samsung, he is one of their most dependable players in Proleague with a 7-5 record and with victories over great players such as herO, Life and Maru. His PvT is still one of his best match ups. sKyHigh has proven he is good in TvT and TvZ where his strong understanding of positioning and use of mech can help him eek out wins, but against protoss he will be unable to use those tools. One thing sKyHigh does have going for him though is the map, but he'll still need to dig deep if he wants to find the strength to beat Dear.


Judging by his interview after qualifying for the S2SL Season 2, Hurricane was on the verge of retiring if he had not made it to a Starleague. He not only qualified but did it beautifully with great wins over players such as San, herO and Rogue, showing that he still has some fight left in him. However he has mostly done so against protoss and zerg. Bbyong will be a tough opponent, he has been slaying world class protoss like MC, sOs and herO lately and he goes on a map that plays to his strengths, allowing him to throw several curve balls at Hurricane.


Potentially the most one sided match of the night. Reality is similar to sKyHigh in that his talents mostly lie in positioning and hunkering down for long games, he is great against Terrans and Zerg but has an abysmal 47% win rate against Protoss, with losses even to rookies like Zoun or foreigners. On the other hand herO is an absolute monster at the matchup, he hold a 63% win rate against world class Terrans such as TY, Dream, Polt, Cure and Maru. And unlike sKyHigh who at least drew a favorable map, Reality is stuck on the most standard map in the pool.


This could be a wild one. Shine is an aggressive and cheesy zerg that can also go greedy off the back of his reputation. Despite being holding a pretty bad record against zerg lately he still played a great ZvZ vs Rogue that could definitely have gone his way. ByuL has been very strong lately, winning his qualifiers for both S2SL and GSL as well as winning all his recent PL games. However he has show vulnerability against Zerg, notoriously being the first player to ever lose to TerrOr in Proleague. Given the nature of the match up, the map and both player's poor record against zergs, I expect a very weird/intriguing game.