SK Telecom 2014
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The beginning of the end for Round 1

by Zealously

The round robin portion of round 1 has ended with four teams securing their spots in the round playoffs. What's on the line? 15,000,000 won for the winning team, alongside a whopping 40 points toward qualification for the season end playoffs.


KT Rolster await in the finals while Samsung Galaxy KHAN guard the path. In the first round, Jin Air Green Wings and SK Telecom must go to toe-to-toe.

Jin Air Green Wings: Not a one-man show

Until just last week, Jin Air was Maru's team and Maru's team alone. With the MarinePrince playing some of the best TvP in the world and having the second best Proleague record to boot, you could almost forget the fact that sOs was flopping miserably. This week, though, Maru might find himself sharing the spotlight.

Jin Air has a not-so secret, but most certainly deadly weapon. As it was foretold by the great prophet Juan Carlos Tena Lopez the Devout (more commonly known as "MajOr"), Rogue has revealed himself to be a very dangerous Zerg player. Previously, he had been more well-known for his inability to stick to an ID, having gone by Ryul2, Savage, and Climax in the past. Now, we know him as Jin Air's second best player.

Rogue was a reliable right-hand man for Maru in the round robin, beating players like KeeN and the wrecking ByuL. However, Rogue's most impressive result came recently in the extremely stacked IEM Katowice qualifiers, where he went 15-4 to earn the qualification to the $100,000 tournament. He beat against an impressive array of players, including Soulkey, Sacsri and Rain (all SKT players, by the way).

While it is true that online results do not always translate directly to offline results, the level of play displayed by Rogue in the qualifier is certain to give SKT a headache as they plan for the series. With Rogue having beaten Soulkey and Rain just a few days ago, it may have disrupted whatever plans SKT originally hatched. And to those of you yelling "But Zealously, you hyped up Sora from one qualifier. Look at him now!", I'd like to remind everyone that Sora was excellent for several months after his WCG run, until he hit his recent slump.

Although Jin Air's depth does not match that of SKT, the one-two punch of Rogue and Maru is a real enough threat to any line-up, regardless of depth. Where many Terrans have been struggling, Maru has made TvP look imbalanced in favor of Terran. TvT is unlikely to be an issue in this match, unless SKT want to take a very risky gamble on Bravo or Fantasy. That leaves only TvZ, which historically has been Maru's weakest. He went 0-2 against Soulkey when Jin Air faced SKT in the regular round, a somewhat troubling fact if he ends up being the final player for Jin Air. Jin Air will have to do their best to draw out Soulkey before finally deploying Maru.

The biggest question mark on Jin Air is sOs, a player who has failed to live up to expectations thus far. He is an absolutely dismal 2-6 this round, which contributed heavily to Maru's hasty promotion to ace. Though Proleague has been harsh on the BlizzCon champ, he barely seemed to break a sweat when playing in GSL Code A, going 4-0 and crushing his group. If sOs could get a win against Soulkey or Rain – players he has historically been evenly matched against – then he will have pulled his weight.

Finally, JinAir would also be happy to get anything out of their rotation players. CoCa absolutely trashed Stats in the pre-season, but he's yet to play a game in Proleague after that. After seeing him get manhandled by SuperNovA in Code A, I think we know why. Cure and TRUE are more likely to make an impact. Cure has creative mech play in his repertoire while TRUE is infamous for his all-ins. Either one could pull off a crucial snipe and turn the tide of the match. Also, don't sleep on Terminator! The Jin Air captain could easily be deployed as a sniper against Rain or PartinG, both of whom are looking inconsistent in PvP as of late.

SK Telecom T1: "Can we make this best of eleven?"

While Jin Air might be okay with the best of seven all-kill format, SK Telecom probably wouldn't mind adding a couple of maps. SKT has five players who would be surefire starters on other teams: soO, Soulkey, Rain, PartinG, and Classic. With soO starting, at least one of the latter four is going to have to sit it out in this match.

On top of that, they have Code S players Dark and ParalyzE who have barely played in Proleague so far, as well as valuable rotation players in FanTaSy and BrAvO. Strange as it may seem to say this about a team that hoards aces, but SKT's biggest strength might actually be depth, not multi-kill power.

Of course, no team is without a weakness, and SKT is seriously wanting for a reliable Terran player. Yes, Terrans have been performing woefully in recent months, and plenty of teams have gotten by perfectly fine without a Terran ace. Yet, in this kind of playoff situation, you're surrendering a serious advantage to the opposing team by allowing them to write off an entire third of the game. Does Jin Air think there's really a chance Fantasy or BrAvO will be included in the four man line-up? Ahead of players like Soulkey, Rain, PartinG, AND Classic? Probably not.

XvT is the name of the game for SKT. Though all four of their Protoss players are strong in PvT, it would be foolish to let Maru play his best match-up without entertaining other options first. Thus, it's likely to fall to Soulkey to take Maru out before he can harm any of the Protosses. Going by their previous two clashes in Proleague, Maru will be hard pressed to win that match.

Predicting which players SKT will field is difficult because they have so many options. However, it seems safe to predict that Soulkey's brilliant ZvT will be saved for Maru (unless Rogue goes rogue), and one of Rain/Classic will be fielded against Rogue if soO loses the opening match.

Overall outlook

This match comes down largely to who takes the first map. Jin Air HAVE to take the first map to protect Maru from Soulkey down the line. If soO takes the first map, then there will be almost no way for Jin Air to gain a match-up advantage. They would almost certainly end up using Maru as a bailout card in an unfavorable situation. The only way for Jin Air to recover from such a disaster would be for BlizzCon sOs to take a time machine to the future, mug his future self and steal his uniform, and step into the booth to save his future team.

Rogue is hot right now and might be slightly favored on the first map (although most of his recent losses have come in ZvZ, notably to SKT's Dark). However, he can't be expected to wade through the veritable sea of talent SKT has at their disposal. To win, Jin Air need everyone to play beyond their normal level, and they need one more guy to step up. If someone could just steal one map in between Rogue and Maru, then there is a chance. If not, and Rogue and Maru are not allowed to bring their Protoss-slaying skills to bear, Jin Air's line-up will fall to the combined might of SKT.

Prediction:

SKT 4-2 Jin Air

Writers: Zealously.
Images and graphics: SpoTV, shiroiusagi.
Editors: Waxangel.