Table of Contents

Week 2 Lookback
Short Recaps


Fantasy Spotlight
Shorter this time


SK Planet Proleague table and results at Liquipedia

By: Pokebunny and Zealously

Round three continues to turn everything on its head as former bottom teams Samsung KHAN and Team 8 have caught up with KT Rolster, showing absolutely stunning form. With the rankings still in flux, the only consistent thing in Proleague seems to be its inherent unpredictability. In the same week, ex-Failhoon Argo briefly became Acehoon, defeating Flash in a deciding match, only to transform back into Failhoon just a few days later as he lost against EG-TL piñata Puma. On the other hand, one might consider Proleague to be consistently inconsistent – and this strange form of consistency certainly showed in week two.

Note that because of the Korean New Year, there will be no matches this week. Matches will resume February 16th.

Feburary 1st, 3rd

KT Rolster vs. Team 8 was perhaps the most predictable match in a long time, with the better players on each team trading games while those with mediocre performances so far fell in, at least somewhat, predictable fashion.
Argo, whose newfound reliability under pressure cannot be mentioned enough times, fell against Flash's superior defenses, but clutch performances from Cure and Terminator allowed him another chance in the ace match against the KT ace.

This time, however, Argo emerged victorious after Flash misread the situation, taking a chance on blind-countering colossi when Argo was in fact going for a gateway-centric army. This allowed the Team 8 Protoss to take the win, grabbing his first ever ace-match win in Starcraft II. Although KT Rolster put up a good fight and got close to winning the series, their troubles will continue as long as they do not have an ace to reliably win that crucial seventh game. Although two (more on that later) ace match losses are only drops in an ocean of wins for Flash, KT seems to lose their edge when Flash is not performing up to expectations, and this could be a sign of trouble for KT Rolster.



Though EG-TL swept Samsung KHAN with a clean 4-0 in Round 1 and just narrowly lost 3-4 against a rampaging Jangbi in Round two, it seems that with the wave of momentum behind Samsung and whatever the opposite of momentum is behind EG-TL, KHAN is currently, by far, the superior team. Friday was a bad day for EG-TL, to put it mildly – with only JYP being able to take a game by out-coinflipping Stork on Akilon Flats. On Samsung KHAN's end, it was Jangbi who sealed the deal after perhaps the strangest game so far this season as a cannon rush went up against a two-gate and hilarity ensued.
Although both Jangbi and HerO inflicted serious damage to the other player which forced them both to slowly rebuild, Jangbi eventually found himself in a better position and killed EG-TL's ace with a bunch of stalkers.

More than anything else, this match put EG-TL's weaknesses for everyone to see. With Taeja, Stephano, Hero, Jaedong, JYP and Revival they have one of the strongest rosters in Proleague on a good day, but they are constantly plagued by an inconsistency that prevents them from realising the team's potential. With Taeja still not playing in Proleague and the dynamic duo of Puma/Zenio's apparent inability to win games, EG-TL looks no better as we head deeper into the season.



”We came, we saw, we conquered” best describes Woongjin Stars in their third match against STX SouL as the highest ranking team in Proleague put on yet another convincing performance, rolling STX 4-0. The closest game of the series might have been InnoVation vs. Aria (NaGi), where InnoVation had several chances to attack and win but played all too passive and eventually lost to the Woongjin rookie. Other than that, the series was riddled with rather lackluster performances from the players that desperately need to perform.

In general, though, the result of this match was nothing but expected. The strongest team in Proleague, with the deepest roster and KeSPA's best GSL performer and several ace-quality players, going up against SouL, the lowest ranking team team in the league, their roster not reliable enough to stand up against Woongjin's almost unfairly deep roster. STX doubtlessly has the players to hang with the middling Proleague teams – but only on a good day. With this performance, along with others this season, they show that while they are capable of great highs, they can also achieve abysmal lows. In defense of STX, we've seen Samsung KHAN and Team 8 almost miraculously shape up recently, so we cannot count out SouL yet.



Coming off their most recent win against arch-rival KT Rolster, things were looking up for SK Telecom T1 as they headed into their match against last season's champions in CJ Entus. The series did not disappoint, as the best players on both teams almost miraculously played to the best of the abilities. And, just like one would expect when some of KeSPA's (mildly inconsistent) best go up against each other, some of the better games of the season were produced. While CJ Entus may have taken the series after herO came through with the ace win people expected of him a while back, the highlight of the night was without even a shred of doubt the third set of the match, with Effort up against Fantasy, rating among the best games if not the best game of the season.

The match started off fairly standard, with Effort deflecting a slightly more economical 12/14 rax from Fantasy before they both went up to their desired three bases. Soon after, Fantasy went for his trademark bio aggression, attacking the CJ Zerg on multiple fronts. Effort defended well and the two players came out essentially dead even. With Fantasy going into marine/tank, Effort went for ling/bling/muta, using the mobility of the mutas to deny drops across the map. Fantasy came within an inch of winning the game as he sieged Effort's fourth, but he was pushed back and this eventually ended up being the turning point for Effort, who from then on exerted map dominance with a powerful broodlord/infestor force. In response to this, Fantasy brought nukes to the field, but questionable control (nuking a large part of his starved army, mostly) eventually ended up costing him the game.

February 4th - 5th

One storyline we've been following throughout the season is KT's search for a solid sixth player. Sure they have a solid core of Flash, Carno(Stats), Zest(Wooki/P7GAB), Action, and Crazy, but that coveted sixth slot is always up for grabs. MyuNgSiK took a stab at it this week and in his debut match of the season, he took down one of Samsung's strongest players in Jangbi. It might have appeared that MyuNgSiK would be the key sixth player KT had hoped for, but when you take a closer look at the game, you'll realize that MyuNgSiK was just a sniper, using a carefully planned out cannon rush to snipe Samsung's key player. The search continues.

In the end, KT Rolster and Flash couldn't finish the deed, losing to an on-fire RorO in the ace match. Samsung continues to rise with their stellar 3-0 performance thus far in Round 3, breaking into the upper half of the Proleague standings for the first time since their abysmal losing streak to start off the season. With RorO and JangBi finally living up to expectations and the supporting cast pulling in wins day in and day out, Samsung has definitely proven that they are no longer a cellar-dweller in what should continue to be an exciting long season of Proleague. For KT, the match was rough, but in reality not too much can be said - they just need to get back to their winning ways and they should be able to keep their playoff position.



After woes throughout much of Round 2 and Round 3, EG-TL desperately needed a boost, but a surprisingly solid Team 8 would not prove to be an easy opponent. Things looked to be going the way of previous weeks with two of their better performers, Jaedong and Revival, falling to TY and Savage. With Argo and Cure still waiting in the wings with favorable matchups for Team 8, things were looking grim for the foreign superstars. However, patient play from EG-TL stalwarts in Stephano, HerO, and JYP along with a flashback 1/1/1 from PuMa to upset Argo allowed EG-TL to pull through with a 4-2 victory. The PuMa and JYP victories were especially surprising, as PuMa had yet to record a single Proleague win (and Argo had been looking like a top Proleague player as of late) and JYP's infamous PvT going up against the impressive Cure didn't look too promising, but the original EG Koreans were both able to prove their worth with big wins.

It was a much-needed victory for EG-TL, as their recent skid had led many to question whether the team could hold up without ace TaeJa, and with Stephano's future plans uncertain, the team definitely looked to be in trouble. If PuMa can step up to be a solid contributor in weeks to come, EG-TL's prospects of success definitely seem to be looking up a little bit. Team 8's loss was particularly disappointing after big wins early on, with top Round 2 performers Argo and Speed both failing to win matches they were certainly expected to.



After a painful sweep at the hands of Woongjin, STX headed into their match with CJ hoping to right the ship and continue clawing their way towards playoff contention. CJ's herO continued his strong performance after a relatively disappointing Round 2 with a PvP win over Trap, but that was to be the only bright spot in a 4-1 STX domination, with huge favorites EffOrt and Hydra falling to Classic and Dear. Classic's win especially was impressive, playing well to take a much-deserved victory over EffOrt, whose performance hasn't quite been up to par as of late.

STX's mashup of players with no clear big favorites has been scoring quite a few wins as of late, and all they really need at this point is for someone to step up as a real ace. INnoVation was expected to play that role earlier in the season, but fairly average performances have placed him among the ranks of what would be maybe a second or third best player on most teams. Still, life in camp STX is certainly looking up, while the same can't entirely be said for CJ. They did take a close win over SKT earlier in the week, but a 1-2 record especially highlighted with their loss to Samsung has caused them to trade places with Samsung in the rankings, falling out of the top half. With EffOrt and Hydra not being as reliable as in the past, CJ will need big contributions from players outside their top three to see continued success.



There was no clear favorite with this interesting set of match-ups for SKT vs Woongjin. With the teams looking fairly even going into what some might expect to be a match between two top teams. Unfortunately, the reality is that SKT just hasn't been that top contender team as of late that we still seem to expect them to be - at only one point in round three, SKT saw a ton of fantasy team picks from hopefuls that they would return to former glory, but they just haven't managed to put it all together yet.

The highlight of the night was Rain vs sOs, a battle between Proleague's top two performing Protoss. With both these players showing their typical solid standard styles, we were treated to a macro PvP the likes of which we'd never seen before, a modern extreme late game PvP. In an extremely close and nail-biting game, the two players smashed together some of the strongest PvP armies we'd ever seen. In the end, Rain won by the closest of margins by catching sOs's superior army out of position.

Unfortunately, despite SKT taking two highly contested match-ups between big guns early on, they weren't able to pull it together - Fantasy continued his horrible woes in Round 3 (falling to an 0-4 record) and BeSt and s2 were defeated in the battle between the supporting casts. This match marked yet another disappointing loss for SKT, especially considering that sOs and free both failed to win for Woongjin. The result in itself was not so disappointing as was the way the series went, with SKT completely unable to close out a hopeful start. They just can't seem to get all their players going full steam ahead at once, and that's going to continue to be a big problem, and their fall to 6th place in the rankings certainly shows their woes. Woongjin's depth was displayed once again, with their lineup being perhaps the most well rounded of all the Proleague teams in the traditional Proleague format.

Round 3, Week 2 Standings

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