The Clouds of Doubt

The curse is broken, the zerg race saved—at least for now. Last week finally saw our first zerg player advance to the Round of 16. None other than the Gatekeeper Curious himself was able to give his remaining colleagues some hope for the second half of the opening group stage. Things looked bleak on the day before Curious’ advancement, as both Soulkey and Symbol were eliminated by a dominant MyuNgSiK and a surprisingly strong Bunny, leaving only the Afreeca player to take up the banner. Even though Curious couldn’t withstand the force of nature that was Jin Air’s Cure on that day, he did beat a strong Forte and the evergreen dragon Stork, who wasn’t able to show the same strength in his PvZ as he did in his PvT.

The third week of Code S starts us off with a bit of a curious group. There’s certainly one overwhelming favourite to make it out in first, but the rest of the field is disputable. Of course the big name everyone is waiting for is KT Rolster’s TY, who in the last few weeks has become nothing less than an unstoppable steamroller, mashing his way through powerful opponents of every race. His multitasking has always been talked of highly, but never has it been more impressive than at this moment. Even though TY has had phases of greatness in the past, this time around things seem to be different. TY doesn’t only play out of his mind, his mind indeed seems to have changed for the better. Nerves have been a huge issue for the terran before, hindering him from unfurling all of his potential. Now however TY seems to have matured, his mind is protected by a mental wall, so that no doubts may cloud his decision-making mid-battle. The brakes are off and the TY train is accelerating to top speed.

It’s up to the three other players of the group to put this train to a halt, and first up is MVP’s Code S debutant DeParture. The young zerg has shown real merit in longer macro games, but his real strength so far however has been his ability to tailor and execute well-thought-out builds, which hit weaknesses in the enemy’s build order and exploit gaps in his adversary’s defences. It’s definitely something that even the mighty TY could trip over, if he isn’t careful. DeParture probably looks like the weakest player in the group on paper in terms of past results, but his development over the course of last year has been astonishing—and it could very well be that he finally collects the fruits of this labour.

The next stop for the TY train will be one of Trap and Super. Trap hasn’t looked very impressive in the last few weeks, failing to achieve anything particularly noteworthy since his easy 3-0 of GSL’s observer Shine in Code A. Dropping two maps in Proleague against Curious and TY is perhaps an indication that he sits a clear tier below the top players right now, even if he did look quite sharp and impressive against RagnaroK on Monday. That was more akin to the Trap we’re used to seeing, and he seems to have retained his love of stargate units, albeit showing good phoenix usage rather than his more traditional oracles. There’s only so much that three isolated best of ones can tell you though, and in a group where he may have to face all three races, we should get a much better indication of his actual level after tonight.

Super belongs into the same corner, although he definitely looked better than his Jin Air counterpart. For example the Afreeca protoss just recently was able to bring a best of 7 series in the Cybbet Race Wars against terran powerhouse aLive to the last set, only narrowly losing in the end. He’s also been deployed for Afrreeca in Proleague in all four matches so far, despite the wide variety of options sitting on the bench. His 1-3 record isn’t ideal, but the losses have come against three of the best players in the game—Dark, ByuL and TY—while it’s particularly noteworthy that both the zergs cheesed him out on Ulrena. Sure, a loss is a loss, but it doesn’t tell us anything about Super’s form in the mid to late game. His form is still a question mark, but with such strong support from his coach backing him up, it’s possible that he’s capable of a surprise here.

Predictions

TY recently beat both Trap and Super in Proleague—and the same goes for DeParture! The zerg eliminated both of them from the Kung Fu Cup Season 1 qualifiers in bo3’s, clearly making the first match between TY and DeParture the duel between the favourites. That said, never underestimate a protoss player. They have a whole book full of bullshit dedicated to upset their opponents, which even grew with the release of Legacy of the Void. TY and DeParture should come out ahead here, but with players still feeling out their opponents in these opening months, every group is unpredictable and dangerous in Korea at the moment.

TY > DeParture
Trap < Super
TY > Super
DeParture > Trap
DeParture > Super

TY and DeParture to advance to the Round of 16.

---

Writers' Draft

Week 2 Report Card

Time for our weekly report on our Writers’ Draft standings! For an overview of the initial drafting process, click here. Here’s a quick reminder of the teams:


Destructicon - 5 points - B
Curious +5

5 points for Destructicon’s fourth pick. Solid stuff, especially considering that Curious / Stork / Forte / Cure was a wildcard stacked group containing three other players with plenty of ups and downs. Curious’ solidity and invincibility in the Ro.32 was enough to see him through to the next round.


Soularion - 11 points - D
MyuNgSiK +10
Soulkey +1
Forte +0

Eesh. Group C was going perfectly, with MyuNgSiK taking 1st place, and Soulkey only needing a win against Bunny to seal a 1-2 finish for Soularion's picks. The CJ terran has never been to Code S before, let alone beaten a former GSL champ to make the round of 16, and so a shocking upset means that Soularion’s 2nd pick (and the 7th pick overall) crashes out of the competition with a mere single point earned. To make matters worse, 5th pick Forte went out in last place, albeit not looking too bad in a pair of 1-2 defeats.

TheOneAboveU - A
Bunny +5
Cure +15

Picking up 20 points from your 6th and 7th picks was either a bold gambit from TheOneAboveU, purposely leaving it late to grab a couple of unfancied players, or a shameful reflection on the quality of precognition so far (we’ll leave it to you to decide). In any case, this was as good a week as you could hope for really, especially taking into account Cure banking the first positive bonus points of the round for his 4-0 sweep.


hexhaven - E
Symbol -5
Stork +1

+1 for Stork is arguably par for the course for a 5th round pick, and hexhaven was perhaps unfortunate that the Samsung coach just failed to make it over the finish line. -5 for Symbol though was just a slap in the face from what I personally would rank as the second worst player in the competition behind Creator. hexhaven probably wasn’t hoping for much this week, but to end it four points worse off than you started it can’t ever be described as a good thing. To quote from hexhaven himself from our initial draft:



Yeah, that didn’t go well.


Current standings

TheOneAboveU - 26 points (4 to play this round)
Destructicon - 20 points (4)
Soularion - 12 points (4)
hexhaven - 1 points (4)