Table of Contents

Week 1 Lookback
Short Recaps


Flash vs. Revival
Featured Game


Week 2 Matches
Starters and maps


Fantasy Spotlight
Make Switches, Get Wooki


SK Planet Proleague table and results at Liquipedia

By: monk and Pokebunny

Round one saw the balance of power remain the same, as KT Rolster topped the charts alongside Woongjin and SKT. Towards the bottom of the table, Samsung and STX Soul found themselves sinking into an even deeper hole. Meanwhile, the middle of the rankings has become a fierce battlefield, with CJ Entus, EG-Liquid, and Team Eight all tied at four wins and five losses.

January 5th - 6th

Woongjin started off the match on a good note, with the battle of the evenly matched Protoss aces going in their favor. Fortunately for CJ, Hydra was able to score an upset, crashing through with mass roach-hydra as sOs tried to take a third base, evening up the score. free, who had been disappointing so far in SC2, was sent out next and scored an upset of his own, going for stargate harass into a mass gate all-in. Free was poised to take another win after taking a lead in the next game vs Bbyong, but was pulled out of position by a drop and subsequently hammered in the game deciding fight.

Woongjin's Zerg ace ZerO came out next, and would be the only player to win more than one game on the night. He cleaned up Bbyong with a mass ling-bane timing off three base, and then downed the prolific ZvZ player EffOrt from CJ with surprising ease in a standard roach infestor macro ZvZ.

The match was relatively standard as far as things go, but the games were decently entertaining, with the new maps playing into an interesting dynamic despite fairly standard play. The opening PvP was a key match. Even though sOs fell quickly to Hydra, CJ was left without their ace in the hole in the latter end of the match. For Woongjin, ZerO has been one of the better players of the new SPL, and he pulled through in his biggest performance yet to close it out. But the bigger surprise was really free, who had shown very little promise in SC2 thus far, but came close to winning two games.




In a battle between two of the lower half-teams in the league, both Samsung and Team 8 came in looking for a big win to start off Round 2 on the right foot. Team 8's Speed (aka Cure) continued to impress after coming out of nowhere in round 1 as Team Eight's most consistent contributor, pure-meching over Reality's biomech in game one, and downing Stork in a macro game in game two. JangBi was able to pull out a big win over Speed with some clever warp prism play and stellar control, but fell to Terminator in the subsequent PvP. Surprisingly, Terminator was able to clean up Samsung Ace RorO as well, holding off his muta ling play and gaining enough of an edge to crush in the macro game, allowing BaBy a day of rest as Team 8 ended the series with just two players.

Team 8 looked fairly promising in this match, with both Terminator and Speed taking some big wins and taking the pressure off BaBy. Still, Terminator and Speed are unlikely to hold up against the bigger threats in the league in the long run, and a win over a flailing Samsung isn't the greatest accomplishment. Team 8 will need to keep getting these big wins from their supporting cast if they hope to rise above mid-table.




We saw a flashback to the "Child Labor Terran" days of KT Rolster in their opening match of Round 2, with Flash romping all over some of EG-TL’s best. RevivaL put up the biggest fight in the opener and Flash’s excellent comeback was definitely one the games of the week (our featured game of the week). In game two, Flash took complete command of game two in a textbook TvP vs. HerO, denying his opponent's third base and pinning him back for as long as possible before crushing his last ditch attack. Game three featured a mech vs. mech faceoff from two of the best Terrans in Proleague, with Flash using an interesting thor-heavy composition and superior maneuvering to slowly take a positional advantage on TaeJa. Things did get dicey when TaeJa started making aggressive pushes as Flash was making an air transition, but the BCs and banshees sealed the deal after a relatively entertaining TvT. Sent out as the ace, JYP seemed more than a little bit intimidated in the booth, showing sub-par micro in the face of a proxy marauder rush. Flash took the lead, and safely took the win after deflecting JYP's storm/chargelot attack.

While Flash’s play was nothing revolutionary, he just set the tempo throughout each game, with the exception of the first game vs RevivaL. Contrary to his Brood War style of defensive play and specific timing attacks, Flash’s constant map presence and multitasking was the trademark of his SC2 play, always seeming to push his opponent into uncomfortable positions. He made players like TaeJa and HerO simply look inferior to him, despite them being some of the best competition in the world, and it will be interesting to see how he fares throughout the rest of the season as KT continues their dominance.

For EG-TL, the scoreline was certainly a disappointment. HerO and JYP were crushed without much of a hope, but Revival definitely had chances to win in game one, while TaeJa had a build order lead before letting Flash narrow the economic gap with a cloaked banshee. Cutting their losses and moving into a positive mindset before the match vs SKT would be key for them – with a very challenging first week, EG-TL couldn’t be too disappointed with not coming out with a perfect record. Jaedong was mysteriously absent here as well, but he did have the up and down matches coming up against Flash that same night, which may have played into the decision.




After trading the first few games back and forth between the supporting cast, things took a decisive turn when Fantasy took down Innovation (aka Bogus) in a battle of Terran aces and proceeded to roll over the rest of the STX lineup. Fantasy defeated Innovation in a marine/tank/medivac TvT war, with a superior tank count and upgrades pulling him through after a few engagements. While Innovation did take out SKT's ace Zerg soO prior, realistically he had to take down at least two of the SKT triple threat of soO, Fantasy, and Rain for STX to have a good chance at winning – a very tall order.

The games were decent but fairly unremarkable, with Innovation’s mech comeback vs. soO’s 30 corruptor-3 brood lord army sticking out as being both humorous and exciting. Other than that, Fantasy’s multitasking and harassment vs. Trap was impressive, picking him apart with a harassment-crazy style reminiscent of his Brood War TvP. Fantasy proved that he has what it takes in SC2, and his constant improvement every week has been quite entertaining to watch. Overall, it was a match where STX's lack of depth was exposed, while SKT showed off the strength of multiple aces.

January 7th - 8th

Terminator was unable to continue his momentum from the match against Samsung, failing to beat the brood lord-infestor clock against Hydra. On the other hand, Speed continued his run of good performances for T8 by hitting back immediately, taking down Hydra with mech after staving off a surprising early pool. Unfortunately the good news mostly ended for Team Eight there, as Speed fell in a match where EffOrt showcased an interesting ling-bane-muta with fast upgrades and adrenal glands, a hybrid of the old muta style and the new turtle infestor style. Game four was a particularly painful one for T8 fans, as their ace BaBy had to quickly GG out to EffOrt's 1 base nydus on Arkanoid. Jaehoon scored a consolation point by crippling EffOrt with a strong three-base push, but was cleaned up by hero[join] in a final PvP match.




Samsung vs. Stars was yet another match where we saw vastly divergent play on Arkanoid, a map whose rocks were recently nerfed in round two. While free choose the immensely greedy path with double stargate and no warpgate research off of one base. Jangbi, on the other hand, choose to simply four-gate. At the 8 minute mark, after tirelessly breaking five sets of rocks, Jangbi finally arrived at free's base, find only a paltry force on defense. The game was quickly over.

But Woongjin Stars fans has no need to fear. sOs (aka sHy) had a few aces up his sleeve, fitting so as he was sent as the ace. sOs's meticulous play against the more sloppy Jangbi and his carefully planned build against RorO were enough for Stars to take the match and further cement Samsung as the absolute worst team in proleague. Meanwhile, sOs's win against RorO also brings him to a staggering 10-1 record on Ohana.




Wooki's impressive all-kill was the best of some already excellent performances put on by KT's supporting cast in round 1, showing that KT is the current team to beat. KT is strong from top to bottom in both the WL format and standard PL format, and backed up by one of the best aces in the league. Wooki seemed to outplay every single one of his opponents, even fending off Code S semi-finalist Innovation's (aka Bogus) harass and riding the standard Protoss upgrades and tech to a patient victory. As for the rest of his games, Wooki rolled over Dear with blink stalkers, over Mini with DTs into chargelots, and over hyvaa with a phoenix into blink play.

With victories in all three matchups over respectable opponents, Wooki certainly increased his stock and rewarded many Fantasy league owners handsomely. Wooki's builds and tactics weren't really anything special, and he came out on the upper end of the build order war in some games, but overall, he didn't make any big mistakes throughout the series and capitalized on his opponents' mistakes for some quick wins. KT looks to have plenty of confidence in their bench, and two all-new starters, Action and Crazy-Hydra, will be in play this week.




After EG-TL was smacked around by one top tier team, many expected the same to happen when they played another one of the most legendary teams of BW, SKT1. The first match especially, Fantasy vs. JYP looked to heavily favor the KeSPA team, with JYP being famous for his inability to win PvT and Fantasy having come off dismantling a host of Protoss players. But amazingly, JYP took not only one, but two games against Terrans in this match with both macro and tactical plays. He took out Fantasy straight up, while he sprung a Bifrost specific cheese on sSak.

soO took over and managed to even up the score, removing the threat of JYP and also Thorzain on his specialty map of Arkanoid. But the MVP of the evening would be Revival, who surprised everyone by taking down not only soO but SKT1's super-ace Rain, with surprising ease. In his game against the Protoss, Revival simply dumbfounded Rain by using a roach-hydra-corruptor composition, an older strategy Rain would not have had much practice against. Very few had expected Revival to be the star in a team with players like Hero, Jaedong, Taeja, and Stephano, but it looks like Revival might be the one who will rake in the most points for his team this round.

Round 2, Week 1 Standings

Writers: monk. Pokebunny, TheDwf and Waxangel.
Graphics: HawaiianPig.
Editors: monk. TheEmulator and Waxangel.