by Stuchiu

Where they Stand

Tonight's match is a study in similarities and contrasts. Both of the competing teams teams are heavily skewed towards one race, for better or for worse. TSL is also known as Team Swarm Life, a Zerg heavy team with a powerful triumvirate in Symbol, Hyun and Shine. In contrast, Prime is invested heavily in Terran players, with their own terrible trio in MarineKing, Byun and Maru. Additionally, both teams have one extremely strong king in their 'off-race.' TSL's most well known player is Polt, the King of Mauraders. On Prime's side, they have an elite Protoss ace in Creator, a rock solid defender and macro player.

Even their weaknesses are mirrored in a strange way. Both teams possess a glaring lack of depth in the remaining race. TSL's Inori and Prime's BBoongBBoong are decent players, but both teams suffer from the fact that they are the only players of their race who are worthy of being GSTL starters.

While the two teams are warped mirror images of each other in terms of roster composition, their team characters and histories are very different. TSL could be said to have been in a state of constant rebuilding for nearly two years before reaching their current status as a Zerg powerhouse, but yet they've still managed to reach the Ro4 four times throughout all of the GSTL seasons (each time losing to the runner-ups of that season). By carefully choosing their lineups and counter-picking intelligently, they overperformed in times of flux. Now with a super-ace in Symbol and a solid starting five, they've emerged as championship contenders.

Prime is a team that rides on its emotions. Even their coaching method follows this philosophy as Coach Gerrard once said if any players asked to be sent out next, he would sent them out and ignore his own strategies or counter picks.

There is no other team that seems to be affected by the current team mood more than Prime, and they've been through some vertigo inducing ups and downs. When everyone is hitting their stride, Prime does extremely well, such as their championship season. MKP was playing the best Starcraft of his life in early 2012, winning both MLG winter arena and MLG winter. The team fed off of his energy and were able to make it all the way and win the finals.

Conversely, when MKP’s results dropped off, it seemed to affect everyone else's performance together, with neither Byun, Maru, or Creator able to produce like they did before. With everyone going through a poor stretch in the individual leagues, they were then knocked out unceremoniously by the underdog FnaticRC and an All-Kill by SlayerS_CoCa last season.


Rosters

The 5th Men: TSL_inori, TSL_RagnaroK vs. BBoongBBoongPrime, ClassicPrime, SalmosaPrime

Both teams have four obvious starters that stand above the rest of the team in terms of skill and results. For TSL that is Shine, Hyun, Symbol and Polt, and for Prime it is MKP, Byun, Maru and Creator. However, each team still need a fifth man to play when the games get close, and often their success hinges on his ability to secure a vital win.

None of these fifth men are good all-around players, and they need to be selected carefully based on some important criteria: who is in the best form, who needs live experience, and sniping potential. TSL's Inori is limited in PvT, but he could be used as a sniper against Bboongbboong. For Prime, they will want to use B4 on a possible sniper for Polt in his best match-up of ZvT. This match isn't an elimination match, so there's a chance that players like Ragnarok, Salmosa, or Classic might get some play here for the sake of building experience.

The overall advantage goes to Prime here. Inori can only be used to snipe B4. But he has a very poor chance at defeating the Prime Terrans or Creator. B4 on the other hand has a decent chance at sniping Polt, and is a fair ZvZ player as well. Even against Inori, it's hard to say that B4 would be the underdog.


Meat and Potatoes: TSL_Shine and TSL_Polt vs MarineKingPrime, ByuNPrime and MaruPrime

Rejoice, viewers! This series should come to down to some hotly contested ZvT matches. While he wasn't too impressive last season, Shine has shown himself to be a very strong ZvT player lately by beating Maru, Alive and Last in individual leagues. His counterparts on the Prime team are Maru and Byun. Maru has just recently shown great games and amazing micro against Effort in Code A, although Effort never test him in a late game. Byun is a bit more mysterious as his last TvZ was his 3 - 0 dismantling of Nestea, but that happened so long ago, and Nestea was already declining then. Since then Byun was was sent down to Code A by Rain, but Inori is no Rain.

Both TSL and Prime will then want to use their Terran aces in Polt and MKP strategically. Prime will want to try to force out Polt early so that MKP or Creator can take him out. Conversely, TSL will want to try to save Polt as their only Terran card to stop any streaky players on the other team or Creator. Both Polt and MKP are very strong all around players and the order of the formation may be a deciding factor in this matchup. Much will also depend on MKP’s mentality. As long as he isn’t shaken by his recent loss to Life in the GSL, he will be a threat to all-kill as always. If not, then they will need to depend on the other players to get them through.


The King of Fighters: TSL_HyuN

TSL has a ticking time bomb in their roster. In many interviews by the coach and his teammates, Hyun is the ace of the house in practice. Online, Hyun is a complete beast and has become the King of Fighters after winning 8 IPL Fight Clubs in a row against: Squirtle, Major, Crank, Tear, Grubby, Alive, Titan, and Gumiho. All that TSL needs to do is keep giving Hyun more experience until he can make everything click and show his full potential in the GomTV booth as well. Despite not showing his best games, Hyun has still been slowly and surely climbing up the ladder of GSL, making it a step farther in each season he’s made an appearance. Hyun could be the card that TSL needs to give them the edge in this team battle.


The Aces: TSL_Symbol vs CreatorPrime

The ace is a player that can ignore everything that has happened in the match. He is the pillar of the team and his strength is so great that even if the team goes down 0 - 4, they believe he will bring them back. Symbol is the ace for TSL as he was the one who carried TSL to the semifinals last time by four-killing Fnatic and reverse all-killing the favorite team LG-IM in the last GSTL. Symbol has no weak matchups, making him very hard to snipe. The big fear for TSL is the fact that Symbol spiraled down to hell the last time he lost in a Code S Ro8. Two days ago, it happened against, this time losing to LG-IM's Mvp instead of Seed. TSL will have to hope that Symbol learned from his previous experience, and won't be as devastated by this loss.

For Prime, they will likely use Creator as their ace. Creator is another extraordinarily solid player with no bad matchups. He beat Rain, Squirtle and Parting to get 1st in WCS Korea. He went undefeated in TSL until he met Life in the finals and still beat him soundly. Both Rain and Life are now semi finalists in Code S and he's beat them both. It's really a mystery how he didn't manage to make it into this Code S season. In some ways, Creator is a counterpart to TSL’s Hyun as Prime is still waiting for Creator to show his full strength in the GSL booth. Outside of the GSL, Creator is an unstoppable beast that lays waste to all of his opponents.


Overall prediction:

This should be a very close series as both teams are extremely close in skill. TSL has one proven all-killer in Symbol, and a tornado waiting to happen in Hyun. Prime has 4 streaky players in Maru, MKP, Byun and Creator. On the other hand, TSL have the players that can stop streaks with ZvT specialist Shine, Polt with his concussive shells and reverse all-killer Symbol. And after that, they can still get lucky if Hyun can get in beast mode and go on a killing spree himself. Prime on the other hand is doing well overall in individual leagues and they ride on momentum. Overall, I’m giving Prime a slight edge here as a battle between aces, Creator has a slight edge and Prime’s players will be carrying the momentum from their individual leagues to here.

Prime 5 - 4 TSL