HOT6 GSL
Season 3 Code A

A Stork Sighting
Sorry vs Dear
YoDa vs sKyHigh
RagnaroK vs Stork

Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

by munch and lichter

Sorry vs Dear

It’s a harsh reality of life on the SKT squad that opportunities are going to be few and far between. Sorry’s been working away for his chance for over two and a half years now, but it seems the endless grind has paid off. A breakthrough series against TaeJa last season sent him to Code S for the first time in his career, while he’s been trusted with a handful of appearances in Proleague when the big guns needed a rest. However, he’s perhaps been unfortunate in drawing a Protoss here—it’s his worst matchup, with a 40% offline winrate for the year. Moreover, the three players that he’s beaten—Alicia, Stork and Kan—are hardly particularly challenging opponents at the moment, and the rest of his matches make grim reading.



One astonishing fact from last Sunday's Leifeng Cup was that four out of the top six finishers was an SKT player. While there are extenuating circumstances—Jin Air's mid-tournament forfeits, for one—it's still a sign of just how stacked their roster is. Outside of performing like a monster in the teamhouse, the best way to gain recognition for Sorry then is to progress in the individual leagues, and with the finale to Proleague around the corner, he needs to make an impact this season if he wants to stake his claim in oov's plans.

While we’re yet to see enough of Sorry to really identify how good he actually is, the same could almost be said of Dear. The Samsung Protoss has had far more exposure so far this year, qualifying for 3 of the 4 starleagues so far, but his form has oscillated so wildly that it’s become increasingly coin-flippy to try and guess which Dear will turn up on the day. He’s had moments that reminded us of the unstoppable dual champion that emerged in late 2013—he’s the only non-zerg to take a map off Maru in Proleague this year, for instance—but also others that make us question how the hell he’s got so far in the first place.

His Leifeng Cup run was mighty impressive, securing a 3rd place finish off the back of some great PvP, but it’s notable that he was eliminated by two crushing 2-0s from Dream and INnoVation. It’ll be interesting to see what Sorry’s picked up from his more established teammates in his efforts to make it a clean SKT sweep.

Predictions

Sorry to do an INnoVation-lite, dying to proxies and failed SCV pulls

Sorry 1 – 3 Dear

YoDa vs sKyHigh

It’s perhaps unfortunate that we didn’t get this match earlier in the year, when both players were looking great in the terran mirror matchup. It’s difficult to imagine now following the catastrophic hell their Proleague campaign has become, but for the first few weeks of Proleague 2015, it seemed that YoDa had the potential to help push Prime off the bottom rung of the ladder, anchored by his 4-0 record in TvT. Since then, though, things have only got worse for him—his failures in the two non-mirrors have added up to a miserable 1-12 record, while his TvT has regressed, with three losses on the trot.

sKyHigh’s TvT prowess, on the other hand, seems to have been hyped up solely on the basis of his shock top four spot at Hot6ix Cup at the end of 2014, when his run took him past Flash and Bbyong. His victory over the KT star in particular was eyeopening—it’s one thing to beat Flash in SC2, but it’s quite another to outmaneuver him with consummate ease in the positionally focused late game of TvT. Since then, we haven’t seen the same dominance and control that was hinted at. While he actually has a spotless record in qualifiers against fellow terrans, he’s lost multiple times now when it counts in Proleague and the SSL.

With both players then, we’re still waiting for signs of their true status in the scene. With any player, the first sign of form is how well they’re playing in their best matchup, and so both YoDa and sKyHigh have an opportunity here to set down a marker going forwards. Otherwise, with neither player likely to light up the foreign circuit, and with Blizzcon hopes essentially nonexistent, the offseason is starting to look dauntingly long.

Predictions

It's been a while since we've had a great TvT series, but if both players turn up on form, this match has all the potential to be one of the best of Code A this season.

YoDa 2 – 3 sKyHigh

RagnaroK vs Stork

RagnaroK is one of those players that's impossible to rate. Sometimes he makes Code S, but he never accomplishes anything with those opportunities. He never qualifies for much else, and rarely do those games get streamed. Stuck on a CJ bench with many diverse weapons, he's another fringe player that fill out the brackets while providing an occasional surprise. For some reason, CJ had enough faith to send him out against sOs in the Proleague Round 3 playoffs, but he was duly dealt with on the way to sOs' all kill. He's played only twice in the entire season (0-2), suggesting he hasn't done enough to climb the house rankings. It will take more than a few red shirt cameos in Code S to convince his coach, as well as the fans, that he's still a player we should be watching out for.

Meanwhile old man Byung Gu is semi-retired and now Samsung's coach, and he's never fielded himself in Proleague. He doesn't appear in much, yet we still watch the brackets with interest to see if he's playing. Fortunately, it looks like he's doing well. Recently Stork played one of the best PvZ series of the year against Leenock in the SSL qualifiers. It was very different from the current state of PvZ plagued by blink/sentry and roach/hydra slamming into each other; instead they played like the old days, with Leenock teching to broodlord/infestor and Stork relying on a traditional death ball. It sounds bizarre to call a game like that refreshing but it was a strategic slugfest, and all three games came down to a tight final battle. Though neither player advanced to Challenger, Stork did manage to PvP his way into Code A. He defeated Sora and Stats, two solid mirror players, in order to make it back to Code A as the first playing coach since... I don't even know who. Choya?

Even though Stork has never had a prolonged string of good play, his streamed games from recent qualifiers suggests a renewed Commander. He isn't great at PvZ based on what we remember from him, but if he plays like he did against Leenock, he just might make it to Code S.

Predictions:

Stork plays the series of his life, and it ends up being a lousy series regardless.

RagnaroK 1 - 3 Stork

Writers: lichter, munch.
Editors: lichter
Graphics: shiroiusagi.
Photo: GOMeXP.
Stats: Aligulac