Table of Contents

Week 2 Lookback
Short Recaps


Strategy Spotlight
Neo Arkanoid


Week 3 Matches
Starters and maps


Fantasy Spotlight
Hope you had Hydra


SK Planet Proleague table and results at Liquipedia

By: Pokebunny and Zealously

The second week of the all-kill round seemed to be the week of upsets as supposedly great teams such as KT, SKT, and EG-TL fell and supposedly weak teams such as Team 8, and Samsung rose in the ranks. Not only that, it was the middle class leading their teams to victory this week, rather than the elites. Teams found stars not in the likes of Rain, Flash, or Taeja, but in the supporting staff consisting of Hydra, Cure, free, Argo, and Jangbi. But such is the volatility of this all-kill round, a round that was guaranteed to be full of surprises.

The week also marked the debut of Stephano, perhaps the most anticipated arrival Proleague had ever seen. Did he once again bring drama to everywhere he goes? Yes. And did he live up to everyone's expectations? That's a more complicated answer. All that and more in this week's Proleague Review.

Cue intro theme.

January 12th - 13th

With Team 8 vaulting themselves upwards in convincing fashion during the first two weeks of Round 2, STX and Samsung were left to fight for scraps at the bottom of the Proleague. The match started on a bright note for Samsung with Stork eventually winning a macro game after opening with some interesting mass probe rush shenanigans. Unfortunately, STX's hyvaa was able to turn it right around and down the pair of Samsung's Protoss aces, Stork and JangBi, who have unfortunately not quite lived up to their talent in the original StarCraft yet (well, there will be more on JangBi later). Against hyvaa, Stork fell quickly to a one base roach-ling allin on Arkanoid and JangBi fell to roach-infestor aggression. RorO then defeated both hyvaa and Innovation (Bogus) in very standard games, leaving only Trap left for STX. Trap came back to defeat RorO though in a macro game with very nice harass and map control, but unfortunately he fell on the final map to Shine, who redeemed his poor round one performance with a victory.

Both of Stork's games featured interesting early cheese tactics, but other than that, the games were fairly uninteresting on the whole. Samsung was able to take the match and contribute to STX's terrible woes in Round 2, and RorO finally coming through was a big bonus as well. Still, neither team looked particularly strong and will definitely need to step their game up if they hope to move into contention for a playoff spot.




RevivaL began by continuing his solid team league performance with a win over CJ's Zerg ace, EffOrt, pulling through after some back and forth roach infestor play on Planet S. CJ immediately risked their other ace, the Protoss herO, but fortunately he was able to take out both RevivaL and HuK to bring the match back in CJ's favor. RevivaL's one base roach/ling all-in was hard countered by herO's own one base build, while HuK fell quickly after missing vital forcefields. Then, this happened:

Only a few seconds into his first game in Korea and Stephano had already caused a stir. After a bit of animated discussion with referees which seemed to greatly amuse Stephano, the game continued with Stephano only receiving a warning. (#Foreigneradvantage!) Still, he appeared unfazed as he casually crushed herO's DT into blink all-in play. In the fifth set, Stephano put EG-Liquid ahead once more by defeating Bbyong with some roach pressure into his patented roach-hydra composition in ZvT. However, CJ was able to find an unexpected savior in Hydra, whose excellent performance last week certainly left many fantasy managers feeling either crushed or ecstatic. Hydra's aggressive roach play downed Stephano after some back and forth, and he also clinched the ace match vs JYP after taking a huge early game lead with zergling attacks, preventing JYP from ever expanding past his natural.

EG-TL once again disappointed, although Stephano made his presence felt in his first Proleague appearance. He went to the verge of disqualication in his first game and employed unique tactics in his second. Hydra became the story of the week with this performance along with his next, and Stephano's efforts were not quite enough to finish it off. For CJ, it was a key win, moving back into contention for the top spots.




Alright, hold on a minute guys. Looking at the results alone, not even considering anything else, we gotta talk about something.

This Cure guy is pretty good.

With an impressive three-kill against Proleague's top team, Cure breifly vaulted himself past Flash to the top of the Proleague wins list with an impressive 10-4 record. While other players would overtake him later in the week, it was milestone in a string of amazingly consistent performances for Cure. Not bad for a guy considered to be BaBy's back-up before the season!

In the first game, Cure pulled through in an exciting back-and-forth macro game ending in a low-economy situation vs Crazy(Crazy-Hydra) on Arkanoid, definitely a game worth watching. Cure continued to show his versatility in the second game, showcasing his excellent mech play once again as he rolled through Action. In game three, Cure downed The Man Called God's mech after gaining an early lead with cloaked banshee play. Cure's excellent tactics and engagements pulled him through despite Flash's tenacity, and it was certainly a huge win for Team 8. Stats then threatened but was unable to pull off the reverse all kill by taking down both Cure and Jaehoon before falling himself. He also looked to be in a decent position in his final game against Alone (aka True), but Stats was unable to break through with a three base colossus timing against Alone's flood of reinforcements, and the Team 8 Zerg powered through to victory.

It was a shock loss for front runners KT, while Team 8 continued their surprising rise. Cure is continuing to impress every time he is sent out with stellar macro play, and he did it again versus KT. Meanwhile, Stats suffered his first loss of the season despite being KT's only positive contributor in this match. For KT, it was a disappointment, but they can't be too upset - they're still having an excellent season with every member of the team stepping up in a big way.




This battle between two of the top ranking teams in the 2013 Proleague season was sure to be an interesting one, and it didn't disappoint, going down to the wire with a surprising finish. Both teams' big three slugged it out in this match, with the Protosses Rain and sOs making the biggest contributions towards the win tallies. Rain looked to be in a scary spot vs. ZerO's early slow ling attack, but a clutch building block put him far in the lead. He continued to wreak havoc on Soulkey on Antiga Shipyard with, you guessed it, an immortal all-in. sOs won the PvP ace coin-flip war with a one base colossus all-in and took out sSak after a proxy gateway on Bifrost, but fell to Fantasy's harass-heavy TvP. However, it was Light who came through in the clutch with a surprise victory over Fantasy in the final, deciding match. Light employed a mass-hellion + tank + banshee 2 base mech push, gaining an unbreakable position on Fantasy's natural and managing to finish out the game.

Despite SKT being a popular pick to dominate in Winner's League, they fell once again to a team many would expect Rain and Fantasy to triumph over. Woongjin moved into second place with the victory over SKT, and a later win would push them all the way to first. However, their lack of star power makes them underrated despite their excellent depth. Their depth would seem to favor them more in the normal Proleague format, but a perfect record in the Winners League thus far shows they are a huge overall threat.

January 14th - 15th

There seems to be no end to STX SouL’s troubles. On paper, they have a strong team, starting off with the winner of last season’s Best Rookie player award in Trap. They have a player with actual achievements in SC2 who is known for his utterly insane unit control in Innovation. And they have one of the top MvP-performers in hyvaa and an OSL semi-finalist in Last. But when these players gather together in Proleague, nothing seems to go quite right for them.

Their match against CJ Entus ended up being a very one-sided slaughter as Hydra opened up the match by completely outplaying hyvaa, being on point and blocking all of the STX Zerg's moves. Superior production from an earlier third soon kicked in for Hydra, as he rolled over hyvaa with a much larger roach force. STX saw the danger and immediately sent out their top gun and ace, Innovation, looking to stop Hydra before he could get real momentum going. Hydra then proceeded to prove that he had a firm grasp of the ZvT match-up, killing over twenty SCV’s with early nydus worms that Innovation could not stop fast enough. Hydra's next victim, Trap, didn’t look as helpless but eventually fell behind after his phoenixes didn't deal as much damage as he would have needed, and Hydra happily sealed the deal after a money fungal into a devastating surround that put the STX Protoss 100 supply down. The last player to be sent out for STX was fittingly name Last who decided to macro safely behind tight defenses. That is until Hydra made 70 banelings and 100 lings and just ran through everything, securing the 4-0 for CJ Entus.



Saturday and Sunday's matches were all about upsetting the foundation of established Proleague order. EG-TL vs. Samsung KHAN certainly did nothing to break this trend. The heralded foreign superstar, Stephano, found himself immediately knocked out without taking a single game by the completely unheralded Sola, whose clever use of mutalisks denied Stephano crucial map vision. Sola then prepared mass roach timing that straight-up killed Stephano, handing the Frenchman his second ZvZ loss in as many Proleague matches. Hero was sent out to stop the unexpected threat from the KHAN B-teamer, but managed to do much more than that as he achieved a 3-kill, taking down both Stork and RorO along with the aforementioned Sola. It appeared as if HerO had the all-kill in his hand.

But then Jangbi happened.

Jangbi has most certainly taken RorO’s place as Samsung’s ace after the latter’s lackluster Proleague performances so far, and he proved that head coach Janaury had made the correct call in sending him out. Jangbi wasted no time as he disposed of Hero with a blast from the past: a rock-breaking, ground-only 4-gate on Arkanoid. Next on the chopping block was Puma, who promptly died after a downright terrible "doom" drop where he donated two full medivacs of units. Revival, who had come through with an ace match win for EG-TL last week, looked no better as he was rolled over by the two-time OSL champion’s superior forces.

Combined with STX Soul's loss, Samsung dragged themselves out of last place and into seventh. Jangbi is quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with, which is great news for KHAN as they look to keep climbing up the ranks. For EG-Liquid, they must hope that more than one player can perform well on a given day, or they will be in a lot of trouble. Despite getting good contributions from HerO and Stephano in week 2, the inability to close matches out cost EG-Liquid dearly.




Woongjin Stars vs. KT Rolster certainly takes the award for fastest Proleague series, with Woongjin’s free completing his first starter all-kill in his career, leaving the other Proleague top dog in KT looking completely dumbfounded. The first game was a mostly standard immortal all-in on Planet S, where Action made stuff, free made immortals, and Action died. KT sent out the Ultimate Weapon next on Arkanoid, but it was to no avail. Flash ended up being just as easy a victim as free effortlessly denied a hellion drop and then went for an immortal/gateway drop into the Terran’s main to force a quick GG.

With a victory over a Zerg and a Terran, free hungered for Protoss blood next. Already down 0-2, KT could do nothing but send out P7GAB(Wooki), hoping that the rising Protoss player could repeat his performance from last week. But free would have none of that, easily taking down P7GAB with perfect reactions to his perfect scouting against P7GAB's imperfect scouting. Stats was sent out as ace in the final game on Cloud Kingdom, which ended up going in free’s favor on the balance of a single particle disruptor shot. free was able to snipe a key warp prism full of immortals and then easily took the game with a colossus push using this insurmountable advantage. And with this win, free, the Proleague veteran, obtained his long-awaited all-kill. The win clinched the #1 spot for Woongjin, with KT dropping to second place after a very unconvincing Week 2.




After a string of upsets in the week, the game between SK Telecom and Team 8 was no different, though the upsets may not have been of the same magnitude. SKT' s2 started off the series by taking the win after a drawn-out macro game against Team 8’s ace in TY(BaBy). TY multitasked well, attacking on multiple spots on the map simultaneously but he was eventually unable to take the fight against s2’s infestor + brood lord combination and tapped out. Terminator was sent out to stop s2 on Arkanoid and managed to do so with relative ease after nice use of void rays and phoenixes that took out workers and queens, along with a nydus network and extractors, stalling the SKT Zerg until Terminator could kill him off with his desired ball of colossi and gateway units. Fantasy was sent out next, eventually emerging victorious after a 30-minute game on Bifrost that featured heavy harassment into mass medivacs. Terminator held on with well-upgraded gateway units with templar and colossus support, but he eventually had no choice but to tap out against Fantasy’s superior battle micro and composition. Against Cure, a standard TvT with a single lucky run-by was all that Fantasy needed to put himself far ahead, cleaning up every worker in Cure’s natural.

What came next was probably one of the most impressive performances this season, with Argo(previously known as Jaehoon, Slayer of FPL Teams and Defier of Teleportation) shaping up and destroying the strongest three-man squad of any team in Fantasy, Rain and soO. Argo’s development this season has been nothing short of stellar, and he has now cemented himself among the absolute best in the league. In contrast to his nickname of Failhoon in Brood War, Argo now seems to be able to perform under pressure. Add to this the fact that the T8 Protoss seems to grow stronger the more you root against him, and he’s bound to become a force to be truly afraid of, especially for the remainder of Winners’ League. As for SKT, their three aces were taken out by a player most considered decent but not near super-ace material. Needless to say, this is not good news for them and they will have to come back with stronger performances next week or risk dropping to the lower half of the rankings.

Round 2, Week 2 Standings

Writers: monk, Pokebunny, Waxangel, and Zealously.
Graphics: HawaiianPig, shiroiusagi.
Editors: monk and Waxangel.