Table of Contents

Round 5 Week 2 Preview
Lineups


Bisu's Battle
MSL Champion vs GSL Champion

Team 8's Test
Or perhaps more appropriately, quiz

Match of the Week
KT Rolster vs STX Soul


SK Planet Proleague table and results at Liquipedia

By: Wunder

We look towards the future, with the first week of Proleague behind us. A large mountain is before us, as many teams try to make the arduous journey up the Proleague rankings, simply to try and stay in the playoff top four, or make the ascension from the bottom rungs and try to reach the safety that is the playoff spot. The battles are most contentious in the middle as STX, KT, and SKT are three maps within each other for 2nd place. Indeed, a rivalry is brewing as STX Soul faces off against KT Rolster this week, each team led by a Terran champion and supported by Protoss lieutenants. This clash will of course inevitably end in an rematch of Flash vs Innovation. All this and more in this week's Proleague Preview!

Thanks to xpaperclip for formatting!

Round 5 Week 2 Matches

Bisu’s Battle

While our Revolutionist had a small reprieve near the end of round 4, it seems that SKT T1 has seen it fit to test his mettle once more, fielding him as a starter against Samsung KHAN. Unfortunately for Bisu, he is not so lucky as to get an opponent like TurN this time, as he did last round. This time, Samsung means business and has sent out RorO as their starter. While Bisu has had some easy and beatable opponents in the past, the most recent GSL winner is certainly going to be his greatest challenge yet.

Bisu will have to pull out all the stops to defeat Roro and it wouldn’t be surprising to see him bust out a fine tuned timing attack or all in off two bases to throw the Samsung Zerg off balance. Since this is SKT T1’s only match this week, Bisu will be hard pressed to perform well for his team, as a loss for SKT T1 would break the three-way tie among KT, STX and SKT T1, relegating them to a spot next to Samsung KHAN.


But SKT T1 still has their roster of strong players behind Bisu and with the possibility of seeing PartinG, Rain, FanTaSy, soO or even Brown behind him, Bisu shouldn’t feel too much pressure to perform well since defeating Roro would only leave JangBi and perhaps Reality left to defend Samsung. This should prove easy clean-up for anyone left on the SKT T1 bench.

Team 8’s Test

In a similar situation to EG-TL, Team 8 has always been only one or two wins ahead of our last place foreigner team, always at a risk of dropping down to the 8th place spot. With a collection of players from various teams that closed their doors, Team 8 represents the underdog in all of us. Facing both Woongjin Stars and CJ Entus this week, Team 8 will find themselves hard pressed to keep their momentum going.

Fielding TY in their first match, the once stellar Terran has since fallen off in past rounds, but has picked up a bit of speed after a two-kill last week. He’ll be up against Flying, who just got knocked out of Code S. While Ty has displayed a ferocious TvT, he has been largely untested in TvP, losing his two games against PartinG and herO last round. Similarly, Flying has shown his PvZ and PvP, but hasn’t been able to display his PvT. While both players aren’t the best their respective teams have to offer, the winner of this match will set the pace and tone for the rest of the series, and it will be interesting to see how a Ty, a player who exclusively goes mech in TvT, adapts his play-style to TvP.

The next test for Team 8 comes in the form of CJ, a team filled with fierce Zerg players in the form of Hydra and EffOrt. With Hydra finding his strength once more, CJ has fielded him as a starter for the second time this round. To receive him is Team 8’s Ace, Argo, and with two players of this caliber facing off this early in the match, it will no doubt shape how the rest of the match will play out as either player could grab multiple kills from the other team.

Writers: Wunder.
Graphics: HawaiianPig
Editors: monk.