After an unlucky first week, FXO pummeled ZeNEX in the consolation round for a spot in the main branch of the tournament. Their reward for destroying the hopes and dreams of the near-death team is facing off against last year's champions.

MvP took a lot of flak last season for being a one dimensional roster of DongRaeGu and Genius, with little depth to their roster past their two stars. While not much has changed in regards to the quality of play past their aces, the current GSL Code-S season has shown both of them have improved drastically since the conclusion of last year's GSTL. As a whole it appears the team is at least as strong as before, and though Keen and sC have fallen from Code-S they should still be relevant in this format.

However, despite finding themselves near elimination in the first stage of the GSTL, FXO still has more than a chance. GuMiHo has recently demonstrated that he is not only one of the most fun Terrans to watch, he is currently playing the best Starcraft of his life. Should he be too busy preparing for his next match in GSL, against DongRaeGu of all people, Oz can be counted on for strong games in addition to Leenock and Lucky. It's a scary lineup on both sides.

I still think MVP has the edge, but with the three most notable players in this match playing in GSL next week anything can happen.

Last season Prime was the Cinderella story of the GSTL, almost. After a mediocre season they found themselves catapulted to to the playoffs thanks to a last-match F.United win after a three-kill from Fenix. From there they kept winning, and before long they were in the finals where MVP stopped their dreams cold. Their good luck in a past life puts them in position to play HoSeo, who have started their season with two matches only worth noting for being on the wrong end of a Bomber all-kill.

The Prime of today is largely the same line-up as days gone by, although technically they're now without Polt from the get-go instead of halfway through. They're a team more known for their identity, for their colorfulness and heart rather than raw skill, and with MarineKing out of Code-S they are comprised entirely of Code-A material.

Still, their roster is filled with players that are all slightly better than the version of them we saw last year. BBoongBBoong, Terious, cOre, Creator, and Maru look improved in the last few months and have solidified their places as middle of the road Code-A men.

HoSeo as a team is in largely the same place. They are full of players that are good, but not great. Most of their team has the same story as Prime, but with occasionally wilder or more crazy builds. HoSeo's advantage comes in the form of their ace, Jjakji, who won a GSL gold just months ago and is still capable of tearing it up when need be. This match is likely to come down to the wire, and Jjakji is what HoSeo needs to tip things in their favor.

Last season, the GSTL ended with a pretty balanced winrate overall:



Pretty solid overall, but...

Let's look at something - or someone - that ignores and defies race-stats when it comes to a team league setting, DongRaeGu. Is he a human-dragon hybrid? An abstract construct designed to laugh in the face of the format? Merely one man that can crush a whole team? It is no doubt that DRG within a team league is an anomaly, while in normal play he’s a superstar, in this last team league he essentially broke the system. Reverse all killing nearly every time to carry them to the finals is something not many can compare to. I don’t know if he has some special juice he drinks before team matches only, or if he thrives off the momentum with his roll out technique. Either way, DRG is a team league monster, even long before his qualification for Code-A. Since I’m going to be looking at numbers (as abstractly as possible) lets look at what DRG alone did for the winrate numbers in last year's league:



Now if we take out DRG we are removing a 7-2 ZvT record and a 3-0 ZvP record bringing us to



Clearly DRG breaks the team league, boasting a +11 score differential, nearly 3 times that of anyone else behind him, and crushing the significance of the rest.




Perhaps we can thus claim DRG to be the king of adaptation, thriving in an environment that is difficult to prepare for. All of these extremely talented teams throw their best snipers or high pressure players at him and he steam rolls through them regardless of the map or the build situation. Since this team league massacre ended last fall he’s been crushing nerds very handsomely in individual leagues as well.

Thus we must ask, is the team league just a good place to foster Zerg talent? Can everyone transfer over so easily between situations of preparation and ones of adaptation? Will further kings of their races rise up in the team leagues?

With DRG in mind we can take a look at the team league holistically, with this pretty little chart for reference. Remember these are purely 2011 Season 1 numbers.



There’s no coincidence that chart is primarily blue, if there’s one thing that was true about this past team league it’s that it was cool to be Terran. Of the 361 games played we see a break down like this:



This was also true of the mirror match ups, of the 55 mirrors that took place we had:



Another over-representation of Terran. Though, to be frank, I find it the most enjoyable mirror to watch because of how variable the openers can be, and how long and interesting the games can go. Ultimately an abundance of Terran is probably good for DRG, as back before his ZvP had become the force it is today ZvT was what made him known.

Looking back to the chart above, out in front with two match ups is Tal’Darim Altar LE. Judging purely on numbers, it appears Zerg had a rough time here. Not counting mirror match ups Zergs accumulated 12 losses on this map, which means:

Total Zerg losses: 46
Losses on Tal’Darim altar LE: 12 (26%!)

Over a quarter of all games lost for Zerg in this GSTL were on Tal’Darim. To add a cherry on this little sundae, DRG lost 2 games in this GSTL. One was to MVP which is understandable regardless of circumstance. The other was to Clide, and you may ask how does a beast such as DRG lose to Clide? Well he played him on Tal’Darim, perhaps that is relevant.

Of course these results cannot be generalized beyond the team league, it's a small sample size and many influences effect results, especially in this format. That's what is so cool with looking at these results, there are a million things that can factor into when/if/and how a player wins. Did a great player keep losing because he ran into snipers? Are some players only strong with practice? Was the map just fortunate? Is momentum really that powerful? Numbers like this provide a base to look at all the reasons for why things happened the way the did and how they might have gone differently.

Things to take away from this team league: Terrans get TV time, and DRG is a force so strong he breaks the numbers.

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Remember if you're having tough times as a zerg player on ladder, in practice, or holistically, always put all blame on the fact that you aren't DRG.