EPTSBENU GSL
Season 2 Code S
Standard Meets Strange
INnoVation, Rain, sOs, Bbyong
Brackets and standings on Liquipedia
Standard meets Strange
by Destructicon
We've had plenty of two-race groups, but never as strangely split and matched as this. Through some weird machinations of destiny, Group B has the most different and opposing representatives of each race. Here representatives of order face the harbingers of chaos, and whoever makes it out in this clash of primal forces is anybody's guess.
Our first competitor is the first new era Terran, the man that set the initial standard for macro in HoTS,
INnoVation. Even before his name change, signs of the robot's style became apparent in the last two WoL GSLs. At the time Bogus avoided cheese with religious fervor, choosing to refine his mechanics and macro builds. Back then, as now, he struggled when people threw curveballs at him and forced him to play on their terms. Such weakness hasn't always prevailed in his career: after his return to Korea, it looked like his mechanical prowess would trump any level of predictability. Soon after a monster rampage in Proleague his cracks were uncovered to more worrisome effect than before; since that point he only reached the playoff rounds once this year and has been eclipsed by his younger, better teammate Dream. If INnoVation wants to advance today, and possibly win the GSL, he'll need to expand on other facets of his gameplay. Otherwise he'll be an old piece of junk stuck in the same looping pattern.
Rain and INnoVation share many similarities, some of them bordering on the eerie: a preference for straight-up macro games, uncanny synchronicity in terms of reaching their peaks, and catalysts that revolutionized the game. The parallels run deeper than their accomplishments in Korea though. Both players nurtured a curiosity of the international scene and eventually left their teams. And just as INoVation's results diminished during his time abroad, so have Rain's. Heck, if you look at their results over the past 20 months they even mirror each other to a certain extent. Both have won a tournament close to the end of the year, both have 2 Ro4 appearances, 3 Ro16 appearances and several Ro8 and Ro32 results. Thus it makes sense that INnoVation, as if guided by some divine hand, drew Rain into his group to setup a fated confrontation. To break free of this case of quantum entanglement, Rain needs to prove that his power didn't lie solely in Korea and the KeSPA training regime.While order seems to follow a standardized pattern, chaos naturally takes on many different shapes.
sOs is clear proof of this law of nature. Like Rain sOs also revolutionized protoss play, but sOs thrives in the exact environments and scenarios where his contemporary struggles. Where Rain chooses to control the game sOs wishes to reduce it to anarchy; while Rain ideally comes in with a plan for every scenario, sOs adapts on the fly. Famous for using a wide array of cheeses and timings, sOs has a corrupting effect even on macro games, making even standard games look like cheeses. In many ways, sOs doesn't seek to control the battlefield but the mind of his opponent, twisting and warping the reality of his victims before shattering it into millions of pieces. And just as his style can bring him great success, including taking two 100K tournaments, it can drive him to the lowest slumps. Such is the way of chaos, and it is why sOs is a particularly dangerous opponent. He is unpredictable and it makes him frightening to face. Do you prepare for all-ins or standard play? And if so, what all-ins? Aggro cheese or eco cheese? The only principle sOs follows is that of uncertainty. Trying to predict his shape and momentum at any time is virtually impossible.Real recognizing real, sOs drew in
Bbyong the living spirit of cheesy and strange Terran. Due to small maps and the relative immaturity of the scene, many of Terran's cheeses were repeatedly nerfed in the early days of WoL, to the point that standard macro play became the norm. Certain Terrans stuck to their guns and continued to amaze and disgust us, and while they eventually fell one by one their legacy continued to be passed on. PuMa and Virus were such players, followed by the loony antics of Heart. When he started to embrace macro the spirit sought a new host, and has found it in Bbyong. While he hasn't revolutionize the way Terran plays, he created his own meta-game on Habitation Station and gave birth to the new famous Gangnam Terran. Bbyong mixes cheese and macro the same way he mixes standard and strange; he can go from doing an obvious normal macro build to meching against Protoss, or float his main CC to the gold against Zerg. He has yet to claim the success of sOs but his results have been appropriately all over the place, ranging from being knocked out at IEM Sao Paulo by Major and ABomb, to defeating herO at IEM Katowice 2015. Judging by his past results you'd be tempted to say Bbyong will go out in last place, but one can never underestimate the unspoken legacy he carries.Predictions
INnoVation and Rain will play a mostly standard and boring series, involving at least 1 SCV pull and several mine drops. Bbyong vs sOs will puzzle us for months to come and mech will be played at least once in the group, and it won't be in TvT.
INnoVation < RainsOs < BbyongRain < BbyongINnoVation < sOsRain > sOsBbyong and Rain advance! (at least in one reality they do)
Rain is much easier to study and play than sOs
And those mad genius type of games are the best 
