by stuchiu


Standing at the Top

It’s good to be Startale right now. Two weeks into the GSTL and they are in first place, and look like the early favorites to win the league. Even though they’ve lost two of their core members in Squirtle and PartinG, it has only seemed to motivate the players who were previous hidden in the background, as there is a free for all to see who will become the main supporting actors for Life. Where before the line-up was all but locked in, now ST is has a wide variety of players of relatively equal merit, with 7 players in Code A/Challenger League and 2 in Code S. And even should the rest of the ST players under-perform, they can always just use their get-out-of-jail-free card in Life. Yes, Life is good for ST.

To All-kill or be All-killed

Team Azubu is a perplexing team and much like the actual Azubu, poses more questions than answers. Going into this season, Azubu was one of two new teams and no one could quite expect what would happen as Azubu had a rag-tag group of players rarely seen in tournaments led by the tag-team of Symbol and viOLet. Two rounds later and we still have no clue where Azubu actually stands. They got all-killed by Byun, but had GanZi all-kill NSHS leaving us with no real clue how the team dynamic is actually working. Despite all of the mystery surrounding them, Azubu has done quite well for themselves in WCS proper with three of their members making it into the Challenger League. So while it’s hard to say just yet that this team is a real contender in the GSTL, they certainly have the potential to make it happen.

The Path so Far

Both Startale and Azubu have had similar paths leading to this match. Both teams have all-killed NS HoSeo with a Terran player. Both teams played off against Prime. The difference here is ST beat Prime with a definitive 4 - 2 score while Azubu got all-killed by ByuN. Then by transitive property, ST > Prime > Azubu. This bodes well for Startale as they will be wanting to pad their lead with an easy win here as tough matches against LG-IM, MVP and Axiom-Acer will be coming up in the next few weeks. As for Azubu, it’s hard to tell exactly where they want to land. Certainly, a play-off spot would be nice, but without seeing at least a few more of their players actually win a GSTL game, it's hard to talk about goals.

ST Musical Chairs vs Azuwho?

For Startale, it’s quite difficult to choose who will be sent into the match besides Life, who it seems crazy to leave out, and their starter in Hack. They have a plethora of choices allowing them to switch players week-by-week. That's exactly what Startale have done so far as they have yet to repeat a player in the first 2 weeks of play. If they deem Azubu to be soft competition, then they might consider to keep tinkering, with Life in the wings as a safety valve.

As for Azubu, beyond Symbol it’s hard to gauge where the team is exactly at. Beyond their strong Zerg trio of Symbol, B4 and viOLet, all of their players are generally recognized, but none have actually played in the GSL for a while as many of them had spent much time in teamless, Code B exile. On top of that Violet could at any moment leave for America to play in WCS NA and B4’s loss in his recent Code S group may affect his confidence.

Even the better players on the team like SuperNova and San are not known to be consistent when they have to play in the booth. While Supernova was once a consistent Code S Terran and briefly gained fame as the best Terran player in the HotS beta. But he is also the only only current player in HotS to have died to collapsible rocks. San is still incapable of playing well in live tournaments, and unless Azubu can somehow con San into thinking this is an online qualifier, Azubu will have a hard time trusting San to get a kill here. At least they have Symbol who can easily be a one-man team, so not all hope is lost for them.

Starters: Hack vs. Symbol

This leads us to our opening match. On the one side is Hack, a former Code S Terran whose greatest accomplishment has been slaying Roro in Wol TvZ. On the other side is Symbol. While Hack seems to have regained his form by getting into Code A, Symbol still continues to be a perpetual fixture in the Code S landscape. Despite being the runner-up of the last WoL tournament, Symbol seems to have transitioned quite well into HotS easily 4-0’ing his group and smashing the runner-up curse along the way. While Symbol would usually be played in the ace spot, Azubu has gone with a clever gambit. With 4 teams fighting in the middle with a score of 1-1, map-score and all-kills become more and more important for teams in the middle of the pack. So they will send out Symbol first to try to get as many kills as he can before he gets taken out. Odds say a good-but-not-great Terran player like Hack will get ripped apart by a seasoned veteran and GSTL beast like Symbol, but surely Hack will come with special plan for taking Symbol down.

Overall Prediction:

While it is a strong move for Azubu to send out Symbol first, the momentum, roster and Life are all on Startale’s side. In fact, I haven't even mentioned Bomber in this preview yet. So this team match will probably come down to how many people Symbol can take down. If Symbol can take out 2 - 3, then Azubu has a good chance here, but if that was the case, Startale can just send in Life for the reverse sweep.

Startale 4 - 2 Azubu