Prime : future GSTL champions

Prime : future GSTL Champions



Before the last GSTL, people would have laughed after seeing that sentence.
Even now, some may still find that it's a ridiculous idea. After all, when the GSTL format was still a simple elimination bracket, Prime was the only team that didn't advance even once. Even with high caliber players such as MarineKing, a several times runner-up, Polt, a GSL champion, and HongUn, at that time code S, they had a lot of troubles even qualifying in the playoffs of the last GSTL.
In fact, they were qualified solely because oGs lost to an already eliminated, and supposedly less strong, F.United team which consists almost exclusively of warcraft 3 players, foreign or koreans, and Fenix.
Then they stepped it up, and despite the loss of one of their key players, Poltimus, they surprised everyone and qualified for the final.
And they will not stop here. They lost many of their known players, Check, HongUn, Polt, Maka, almost every « old school » open season Prime player is not part of Prime anymore. But Prime is as strong as ever, and I will explain you why they are gonna win the first, and the biggest as of yet, GSL Team League of the year.




Prime's Secret Weapon...



Some of you may have, as I did, put Creator on their fantasy team after seeing him play against Mvp. And, like me, you were disappointed that Prime didn't even use him. I wondered why. And when I saw them use him in the playoffs, I knew. Creator was such a powerful weapon in teamleague that they did not want to reveal him until the real deal, the playoffs. What if they showed everyone how capable he was, before it was an elimination bracket? People would know that they had to snipe him, and they would have been able to study him really well since there were a lot of matches in pool play. Therefore, Prime did not use him until the playoffs. And what a blast was that! After a respectable 2 kills against StarTale, losing to a future code A champion, Curious, Creator showed how strong his PvT was, (even before the 1,4,2 patch and the new mappool) by scoring 4 kills against TSL, the team which was 5-0 in poolplay, dismantling terrans such as Clide, aLive and Heart. Oh, I almost forgot. It was 4-1 for TSL, it was the ace match for them, and despite his young age and the pressure, Creator did not fail to deliver. Whereas a lot of protoss were gimmicky and so on, Creator was just crushing code S players with safe, solid, standart play. The Prime secret weapon was revealed, and one of the favorite teams for this GSTL season got shredded into pieces by this young boy. But now, Creator will be even more scary. Protosses at that time were still struggling, whereas now they are as strong as ever, almost every protoss in code S ended up qualifying for the ro16, and the mappool is more favored for Protoss than it was before (calm before the storm anyone?). Creator 4-killed FXO, only losing to Leenock, by beating a player of each race, in the KSL team league. Known as the player who practiced the most for GSTL in the Prime team, he is not gonna fail to deliver this season, believe me.

+ Show Spoiler +

Prime's Ace


Everybody knows who he is, and I'm not gonna lie, even as a MarineKing fan, he has been the most disappointing ace in the GSTL history thus far, at least, from the first GSTL to the last GSTL in pool-play. Even when he was not an ace, he just lost almost every game he played in the various GSTL. For a player of his caliber, his stats were probably the worst of any player in the GSTL, along with Polt. The reasons can be multiple, and nobody outside korea can really know why MarineKing was struggling so much in the GSTL. Maybe it's the nerves of being sent out as ace?
GerrardPrime stopped sending him as an ace, without success. However, MarineKing was kinda in a slump, being sent in code A because of his TvT, so his confidence was probably not high enough to perform well in GSTL.
He played better in the playoffs, thanks to the patch (yeah remember, the blue flame nerf, allowing bio to become a valid strat again in TvT, and the death of all these gimmicky blue flame openings in every TvT) and the fact that the whole team played better in the playoffs.
Despite all of this, I think that MarineKing will be a powerful and scary ace this season.
Let me explain why : MarineKing has not always been a « big name that fails in GSTL ». In fact, he was a « big name that kick asses in team leagues ». Yeah, team leagues, not GSTL. Long ago, he reverse all-killed oGs, MC included (soon after his GSL season 3 win), and 3-killed Slayers (who were obviously not as strong as they are now, but that's still good). This was when MarineKing was along with Mvp, at the top of the top, in december/january of 2011. As we have seen in his multiple final / series against Mvp, MarineKing's performance depends heavily of his confidence and how he sees his opponent. And right now I say it to you, MarineKing's confidence is really high for this new year, and will litteraly be off the charts if he gets out alive of his GSL group. His play has not been as good (comparetively to the other players) as it was in his ro32 group since the super tournament. He was playing smartly and patiently, and his timings were... deadly. Go watch his ro32 GSL matches if you haven't yet. It was only some TvT you say? Oh, wanna talk about MarineKing's TvP? http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/sc2-korean/players/959_MarineKing/games/vs/P#tblt-3042-1-1-DESC That's MarineKing's Korean TLPD page with special leagues accounted. Yeah, your eyes don't lie, MarineKing is currently at 31-9 in TvP in these last six months in korea. The last bo3 he lost in TvP in korea is 7 months old. Along with Polt and Jjakji (TaeJa has a promising TvP as well but is kinda unproven in GSL), MarineKing has probably the best TvP. He is very confident in TvZ and we will see his shape in his code S group. By the way, as we have seen in the KSL : Team League and the playoffs GSTL, MarineKing is more confident as an ace when it's not a tied score, he beat Leenock and Bomber rather easily when Prime was winning by quite a margin (in the KSL & GSL respectively). And with CreatorPrime and the other Prime members, Prime winning by a good margin will happen more often, and MarineKing will be scarier and scarier in the team league as well as in the individual league.

+ Show Spoiler +

Prime's zergs :

BBoongBBoong, aka Pizza Boy or Fart Zerg, Terious, known now as Bumblebee, and AnnYeong, the guy who knocked DongRaeGu out of the WCG korea qualifiers. These three are the most renown zerg players of Prime. Everybody knows who BboongBBoong is, and aknowledge him as a good player, since he performed really well in GSTL, and made a lot of good showings in the KSL and ESV Korean Weeklies as well. But do you know who AnnYeong is? And Bumblebee? Let me show you why these two should not be underestimated, and why these three are gonna kick some asses in the GSTL.

Bumblebee (aka TeriousPrime) :


Bumblebee (damn I'm not gonna get used to his new nickname, TeriousPrime just sound more... natural?) is a former fOu player. He was relatively unknown despite two qualifications for the GSL, in the open season 2 and the GSL January. He did not perform well, even though he beat Polt, who was as we all know, not as good back then, except against MC. But, recently, he qualified for code A. His bracket was not the hardest, I must concede, but it's still an amazing feat to qualify these days. And, he beat True one month ago. Why is this promising? Because True showed really amazing ZvZ in the KSL opening, 2-0ing Leenock, 3-0ing Line. Bumblebee is not the deadliest weapon that Prime has, but he is a strong asset that Prime can use to defeat various opponents, and his qualification in code A will give him more confidence, I'm certain.

AnnYeong :


AnnYeong who? Some of you may say. And you would be right to ask if you only watch GSL. But for those who watch the online korean weeklies cups, you may have heard of him (!). Or if you are a DongRaeGu fan, but then you hate him, because AnnYeong is the zerg who knocked DRG out of the WCG Korea pre-qualifications. He lost to Mvp in the end (who would not anyways?) but had a good showing. Oh, and he also beat fOrGG in a korean weekly. Even if fOrGG displayed better games in the GSL than in the ESV weekly, AnnYeong is capable of beating the most hyped up players in ZvZ and ZvT. His only real weakness is ZvP, but he can score some kills against a lot of players. He qualified for code A too of course.

BboongBBoong :


BboongBBong is the most known Prime zerg, and I must say, the strongest and scariest zerg that Prime has. Without him, Prime would have not qualified for the GSTL playoffs. He has always been used as a key player by Prime's coach, and right now he is becoming really scary. 12-0. What's that? His last 12 ZvZ. 12-0, hey everyone can have these stats against lesser good players! Well, some of these wins are against his teammate AnnYeong, and he dismantled Sirius who is a rather unknown player 4-0. CoCa, Life, NesTea. BboongBBoong 2-0ed NesTea, you may say : « online! NesTea slumping! Meaningless games! », it's still an impressive feat to beat NesTea in a ZvZ without him being possibly jetlagged and him knowing his opponents in advance. Along with TSL.Symbol and IMTrue, BboongBBoong is one of the scarier up & coming zergs in ZvZ. He used to have a very good ZvP but at that time the protoss were really struggling, and he hasn't played enough ZvP recently to judge.

+ Show Spoiler +

Which teams will most likely be the hardest to win for Prime?

This season the competition will be even fiercer than it has been in the past, the teams will be more eager to win the GSTL trophy. We will analyze every team :

Top 3 contenders for the title : (Prime not included)

MVP : the current champions, as well as the former runner-ups, beat Prime in the last GSTL. Their strongest weapon is DongRaeGu, who, if you aren't prepared, can all-kill, reverse all-kill, dismantle an entire team. But DongRaeGu did not even play against Prime. The terrans hurted the most Prime, with a Noblesse 3-kill and Keen 2 kill. Why is that? Because at that time, Prime anti-terran weapon was only Creator. As strong as he is nobody can win 100% of his matches, and as soon as he got killed, there was no real hope. But now, MarineKing is becoming scary in TvT again. After promising showings in WCG Korea, he said in an interview that he was gonna practice his TvT really hard. He did not fail to deliver as I already said, and now if he can beat aLive and Happy almost easily, I don't think that the slumping MVP terrans can beat both Creator and MKP. What about DongRaeGu? Here is the thing, DongRaeGu dismantled Prime in the past, but lost to AnnYeong and MarineKing in bo3 and bo7. He later beat MarineKing 3-1 in the King of Kongs tournament, but MarineKing played these games from Germany, on the KR server, so I don't think that they have real meaning. If MarineKing can beat DongRaeGu in code S, Prime will be able to come out ahead against MVP. If MarineKing loses, it will be very hard for Prime but MarineKing will want to redeem himself so they should be able to make it. However, during the last GSTL, Genius was not special. He was an average code S protoss. Like Clide or Zenio, you don't see him drop in code A but they don't do anything past the ro16 (Clide did once, but the majority of the year he did not). But right now, Genius is being hyped up like shit and is looking really scary. His performance will probably depend of this epic groupe D of death, because MarineKing is Prime's main protoss killer, along with Creator and BboongBBoong.

SlayerS : Prime beat them easily in the last GSTL, because of HongUn, but now it's different. It will be harder. SlayerS main force is their terran line-up, as well as Cella, Jessica and BoxeR. And here is the scary thing : if Creator loses without doing enough kills, Prime will have a really hard time because MMA will be really hard to stop, since cOre is protoss he can probably snipe him but he will be stopped after that. GanZi is one of the best TvTers, and very good vZ. SlayerS protoss and zergs are not strong enough to beat the likes of Creator, BboongBBoong and MarineKing, but it will be almost impossible for Prime if Creator doesn't get enough kills. Core, Classic or Daisy will probably be used here. It can be the easiest match for Prime, or the hardest, depending of their protoss performance.

TSL : I hesitated a lot between NSHoSeo and TSL, but I will trust TSL's experience, even if they lost quite a lot of players. TSL beat Prime easily with PuMa, but PuMa isn't on TSL anymore and Prime is stronger against terran than they were back then. Thus I will look at TSL current roster : Polt & Ultimate as terrans, Cyrano and Dream as protosses, and RevivaL, Symbol, Hyun, Ragnarok and Shine. Their scariest zerg is probably Symbol, who has monstruous stats against various opponents in korean weeklies, and just qualified for the Iron Squid, beating his teammates Polt & Shine, Shine who by the way beat BboongBBoong. They have a lot of promising zergs, but in the end, they are zergs. You don't want to send a zerg against MarineKing, if his nickname is not DongRaeGu. Prime and TSL zergs are all good at ZvZ so it can be tricky depending of the map. Polt can beat MarineKing and MarineKing can beat him. If TSL can get rid of MKP before he kills too many zergs, they may have a chance. But if Creator beat Polt in the individual league, it's definitively over for TSL. MarineKing will be Prime's best asset in this match if it happens.



You are warned. This GSTL, will be Prime GSTL.