Table of Contents

Week 3 Lookback
Bringing the holiday cheer


Featured Game
Soulkey vs. Dear


Week 4 Previews
Round 1's final week


Fantasy Spotlight
The winners and losers of week 3


SK Planet Proleague table and results at Liquipedia

by Waxangel

Was it all just a dream? Last season, the Proleague royalty of SK Telecom T1 and KT Rolster were overthrown, with the middle-class rising up in a rapidly changing world. It looked like the revolution still had some fire left in it during the first few weeks of the new Proleague, with CJ Entus keeping its newly won position on top of the pack. However, week three might have signaled a harsh crash back to reality. In an instant, the old nobility of SKT and KT Rolster rose back to the top of the table, tied for first place with 4 - 1 records. Their superstars are hitting their stride, while their benches are some of the deepest in the league. The new world is looking a lot like the old.

Though this is just the first of six long rounds, it may very well portent what will come down the line. Week four is the final week of round one, the last chance to set the agenda for the season to come. For some, it will be to change the future - others, to preserve the past.

December 22nd - 23rd

The first match of the week saw 1st and 2nd place change places, with SKT barely nosing ahead of defending Proleague champs CJ Entus with a 4 - 3 victory. None of either team's big guns were matched up against each other on the initial six maps, and thus the two sides traded games evenly as the big names rolled through. (Paralyze came the closest to causing an upset, but ended up losing the colossus laser show to hero[join])

It all came down to the ace match on a still less-than-figured-out Arkanoid, and it was no surprise to see both teams pick players suited to the map instead of their best overall players. Fantasy proved to be the superior to Hydra on the night, using drops to cut off his opponent's economy while goading him into poor engagements as well. Though Hydra was able to survive until brood lords, a lack of proper infestor cover allowed Fantasy's upgraded marines to overwhelm them and take the series.




KT Rolster piled on the misery for last place Samsung, crushing them in a 4 - 1 rout. While everyone knew Flash and RorO were excellent players before the new PL season even started, there's a stark contrast in how their supporting casts have turned out. Stats, Action, and Wooki look like they're solid additions to the starting six, while on the other hand, Samsung are having the hardest time finding people to back RorO on a consistent basis (their X-mas eve game showed they have a problem with the reverse as well, more on that later). It was a particularly listless performance from Khan, as only Reality really made a fight of things (a race against the brood lord clock with mech) while the rest of the bench failed to acquit themselves.




On paper, it looked like it would be smooth sailing for EG-TL's second all-foreigner line-up of the season, but some bizarre choices in and out of the game led to yet another loss for the international coalition. The core trio of Jaedong TaeJa, and HerO all picked up their wins as expected, but a downright suicidal proxy 2-rax float strategy from PuMa in game six sent the series to an ace match.

There, EG-TL fell to the famous Proleague syndrome, deciding to field JYP as their ace while fans looked on dumbfounded. It was a move that could have been hailed as a stroke of brilliance had JYP triumphed (as it was for STX later in the the week), but unfortunately, he fell to Woongjin's own strange choice of ace in sOs (aka Shy). JYP went for a one base all-in against sOs's more conservative expansion build, but was forced to GG out after failing to penetrate the defenses.



With scrappy victory against STX Soul, the Eighth Team is starting to show the formula through which they might escape the bottom half of the table. Jaehoon - one of the biggest surprises of the first round - delivered once more with his best victory yet, crushing GSL semi-finalist Innovation in a macro game. Baby finally played up to expectations, winning a regular match and going on to take the ace match as well. And from the bench, Terminator stepped up to provide that crucial fourth win, allowing Team Eight to take the series. It's not a guaranteed formula for a victory, but it's the most likely one when you look at the Eight's roster, and they'll want to replicate it many times in the future.

December 24th - 25th

Unlike their earlier loss to KT Rolster, Samsung faced a different problem against SKT, with ace RorO flubbing his lines and wasting good performances from inconsistent BW stars Jangbi and Stork. Stork's DT drop open gave him an early lead against his old rival Fantasy, which he patiently rolled into a late game win. Meanwhile, Jangbi took out Best, taking advantage of his opponent's weakness during a 2-stargate phoenix transition. On the other hand, RorO lost to one of the BW stars who made a slow SC2 transitions in Bisu. Once known for his comically bad force-fields, Bisu showed that he had turned a new leaf by using an immortal sentry attack to deal severe damage to his opponent before winning with a colossus deathball.

With the loss, Samsung dropped to 0 - 5. It's a deceiving stat, considering Samsung's players have showed they can play well (if inconsistently), and they've just had trouble firing on all cylinders at once. While Samsung might not be a championship candidate, they're definitely not 0 - 5 bad, and it would be hard not to improve from this point.




A 3 - 4 loss to KT Rolster ended a depressing week for the upstart CJ Entus, where the two traditional PL superpowers of KT and SKT went a long way toward stomping out their rebellion. The fact that both losses came in seven game series was particularly painful, with both ace matches lost disappointingly easily. Hydra's poor muta-ling-bane engagements led to defeat against SKT, and against KT Rolster, hero[join] looked helpless as Flash trampled him with infantry and medivacs.

It was also the end of a spectacular run from hero[join] who took two losses on the night after going undefeated in five prior games. Before falling to Flash, hero[join] also dropped an important game to Stats, Flash's lieutenant since the BW days. Hero's blink stalker rush failed to achieve anything, and Stats' faster robotics tech allowed him to take the victory.




Even as they picked up their second win, EG-TL showed some of the weaknesses that have led to a disappointing campaign thus far. Jaedong reaffirmed that he's still a liability when not deployed as a ZvZ specialist, while ThorZaIN and PuMa failed to produce yet again. HerO and TaeJa picked up wins as expected against outmatched opponents, but it took a win from the important but inconsistent JYP to send it to an ace match (TaeJa won easily after opening greedily and defending an early drop from Baby).

On the whole, EG-TL has done decent damage control after a slow start, and can look forward to adding Revival and Stephano to their roster in round two. EG-TL will now face some serious tests in the final week, facing the traditional powerhouse SK Telecom and a dangerously top heavy STX Soul roster.




As if to prove a point about counter-intuitive ace choices, STX Soul took their second win of the round by playing the unheralded Dear as their ace. While it seemed like insanity considering the presence of GSL semi-finalist Innovation (aka Bogus) on the roster, it paid off as Dear triumphed over Woongjin's Soulkey in a huge upset victory. It was all the more incomprehensible considering Dear had just lost to Soulkey in the previous set, but there could be no arguing with the final result: Soulkey couldn't deal with Dear's blink stalker all-in and surrendered the series.

On a positive note for the Stars, Light made a successful debut in the new season by defeating Hyvaa on Arkanoid. As Woongjin's Terran ace during the latter Brood War years, Light was conspicuously missing from the first few weeks of games. Though Woongjin lacks a super-ace on par with some of the other teams, a productive Light would make them one of the deeper teams from one to six.

Week 3 Standings

Writers: monk. Teoita. and Waxangel.
Graphics: HawaiianPig.
Editors: monk., TheEmulator, and Waxangel.