Telecom Wars

The second round of the '14-15 SK Telecom Proleague is now behind us, and four teams have been eliminated from contention. Remaining alive are, in order of seeding:

• CJ Entus (6-1), rampaging through Round 2 with seldom seen ferocity.
  
• Jin Air Green Wings (6-1), finishing the round robin with a 3-0 sweep of CJ Entus.
  
• SK Telecom (5-2), led by soO and Classic.
  
• KT Rolster(4-3), limping along through the round with no truly reliable player to speak of.

The first match of the round playoffs pits SK Telecom against KT Rolster in a repeat of last season's finals. Both teams have gone through changes since then and have very different sets of strenghts than they did then, but things appear to be leaning in SKT's favor today just as they were when they played for the championship. KT's newest acquisition Life could either make or break KT's run. Who will move on to face Jin Air Green Wings on Tuesday?

[E/N: A full recap of Round 2 will be forthcoming after the conclusion of the Round 2 playoffs.]


09:30 GMT (+00:00)

Preview: SK Telecom(#3) vs KT Rolster(#4)

by Zealously

The Telecom derbies are always special. Even though we have grown accustomed to watching them square off for championships and round victories instead of in matches that decide what team will be the round's measly fourth, the excitement the match-up invokes feels almost undiminished.

In stark contrast to the Round 1 playoffs – in which KT did not even participate due to their limping start to the round – the Telecoms now meet as equals. Their match scores, 5-2 for SKT and 4-3 for KT, are separated by the thinnest of margins. Both teams' win/loss differentials are +6 and their game scores – 16-10 – are identical. Interestingly, the match that decided seeding for this match was their round robin match in Week 3 of the round, where SKT walked out the victors after a clean 3-0 sweep. That fact – that SKT managed to not only beat KT but absolutely dominate their rival team – could be the first sign of a paradigm shift. The Telecom rivalry has been in KT Rolster's court for a long time, will this match be the one that really turns the tide?

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The Telecoms spent much of last season in a state of veritable roster stasis. After all, what else did they really need to do? SKT's roster was so stacked with star players that the very notion of experimentation was foreign to them. After all, to field Parting instead of Rain or Soulkey instead of soO could hardly be referred to as experimentation, and it's reasonable to say that they grew periodically complacent to a point where they performed below the level they should have been able to maintain. By contrast, KT's thin-but-reliable roster essentially crawled through parts of the season to eventually arrive at the site of their triumph.

This season and particularly this round has changed the two teams. First, let's take a look at KT's roster and the performances of their players this round:



Stats leads the charge at 6-1, the second best score of the round (behind only herO's miraculous 7-1). Undefeated against Terran and Zerg, carrying on with the role as KT's most reliable player. One might construe his 2-1 record versus Protoss this round as a weakness, but the sample size (0-0 in Round 1) is too small to properly determine where Stats's weaknesses may lie.

Flash trails his Protoss teammate with a 3-2 record, breaking free from his embarrassing performance last round but nevertheless remaining somewhat of a wild card. Occasionally he'll look good, but very rarely will he look like an ace player. Flash might actually be KT's shackle in the round playoffs, as they have shown an almost suicidal willingness to field Flash in spite of match-ups, maps and form. Given that we already know that Flash will be coming out against SKT, we can assume one of two things:

• He performs well enough in practice that a starter position is warranted
  
• A starter position is the position where fielding Flash causes the least potential harm to KT.
  

Neither option is particularly comforting to a KT fan given how he has performed in televised matches this year, but counting Flash out permanently has also proven unwise in the past.

Zest is, by far, the biggest enigma on KT. On one hand, he produced a helpful 3-1 record in regular matches during the round robin. On the other, his ace match record of 0-2 (in conjunction with the weak field of players he actually beat) makes his reliability questionable at the very best. One would be a fool to doubt Zest's PvP prowess, but the once Protoss-heavy SK Telecom has now regressed to its natural state: a team dominated by Terrans. With Innovation and Dream – championship contenders both – waiting on the bench alongside soO and the player with the best record versus KT in Starcraft II, Billowy, fielding Zest is associated with great danger.

Having put TY on the bench, KT's newest acquisition might be the key to success in the playoffs. Life has never been a team league star, at best providing a few short bursts of brilliance in all-kill formats to balance out his mediocrity in round robin. But only someone with no knowledge of Life would go as far as to claim that he isn't extremely streaky by nature. His inconsistency has been ironed out as of late, but the Ling King is, by nature, exactly the kind of player you want on your side in a match that can be decided by a single player. With Dark starting and soO available as backup, Life's ZvZ might be KT's most important asset. Depending on when he is fielded, Life might end the match in either team's favor.

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On the other side, a thinned out, revitalized and drastically different SK Telecom:



Although they were fielded only rarely during SKT's run to the finals last season, soO and Classic have both been invaluable to SKT's effort this round. Given the adamant refusal to award the 4-time GSL finalist with a regular slot in the lineup season, one might have assumed that soO had expressed a lack of confidence in the Bo1 format or that his strengths were much more numerous in longer series. But, judging by what we have seen this round, neither is anywhere near the truth. Together, soO and Classic won 50% of SKT's games this round.

This highlights SKT's primary strength. Unlike KT, who essentially rely on most if not all of their key players performing as necessary, SKT seem to have a greater margin of error. INnoVation was SKT's most valuable player last round, and when he failed to perform this round (ending with a modest 2-3 record), soO and Classic both stepped in to fill the hole left by last round's undefeated best player. It's impossible to know exactly what shape INnoVation is in (history tells us that his beloved all-kill format will suit him as well as it ever has), but he isn't the integral part to SKT's success. There is no such part.

On the topic of integral parts, one cannot talk about SKT without mentioning Dark and Dream. While a glance at the statistics of this round will tell you that KT need to watch out for soO and Classic, I would caution against underestimating these two. Alongside INnoVation, Dream is one of extremely few players in Korea capable of not only pushing Life to his limit, but going beyond what the KT Zerg is capable of handling. Given the role Life will most likely come to play in this match – that of a Zerg sniper – Dream should be SKT's weapon of choice. There is no better player to stop a Life rampage in its tracks than Dream, and no better player to crush Flash than Dark. Their record this season is modest in comparison to much of SKT's roster, but I believe they are the most important assets SKT have against KT. If they use them properly, they should be the ones that move on to face Jin Air Green Wings on Tuesday.

Overall thoughts and prediction

There are many factors that might come to decide how this match ends. Neither team is renowned for always making picks that make sense when in a pinch, and fielding the wrong player at the wrong time can and most likely will cause irreparable damage to the team's playoffs effort. Life and Dream respectively are the players I believe will be the most important contributors in this match. If either is taken out before they can perform the function they need to fill, the other team walks out the victor. And right now, that task seems much simpler for SK Telecom than for KT Rolster.

Finally, I cannot conclude this article without mentioning Billowy. He absolutely stomped KT Rolster into the ground when MVP faced KT in the R2 Playoffs of last season. That means that this match could potentially pit Billowy - the slayer of KT - against Zest - the man covered in SKT's blood. If that happens, all my predictions go out the window. If that happens, whoever 2gates first wins the match.

Zealously: SKT 4-3 KT
banjoetheredskin: SKT 4-1 KT
Destructicon: SKT 4-0 KT
The_Templar: SKT 2-4 KT