Hi! I got into TL because of FPL, partly thanks to The_Templar's recaps in round 1. Those have been a little rarer recently (Templar is a busy man), so I figured that since I was thinking about FPL a lot, I might as well try to write about it. I ripped off the format from Templar, as you can see, with his quasi-permission. This is obviously not official TL material, just a fan's perspective.
Where are the ace matches?! This week continued the trend of 3-0’s and 3-1’s that have characterized round 4. It’s not like the traditional top four teams (SKT, KT, JAGW, CJ) are stomping everyone else, either—SAM, SBY, and MVP have all managed upsets without having to go to the ace.
In addition to being exciting, ace matches also make FPL more volatile and give people outside the top 100 a chance to move dramatically up the rankings. As it is, the rankings have remained fairly static. Thus, we plebs must scrounge for extra points by clever trades or, if we’re lucky, by holding onto the few players out there with winning streaks. Speaking of winning streaks….
Player of the week: Blaze
What can I say? Blaze is on fire. In week 1, he melted through Leenock’s ultralisks in a razor-thin timing attack. In week 2, he smoked Life with a proxy two-gate. This week, he 4-gated Hush and then burned him with a powerful stalker/immortal/sentry combo that essentially ended the game. For his back-to-back-to-back victories, he earns a bonus point. This MVP hotshot is well on his way to being this round’s bargain player. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
On May 06 2015 06:47 TeamLiquid ESPORTS wrote:
The King of the Bargain Bin Award for Best Value
Panic - $1, 13 pts, 3-0 record
The King of the Bargain Bin Award for Best Value
Panic - $1, 13 pts, 3-0 record
Runner-up: Zest
Zest is also on a three-game winning streak, pulling his weight for KT Rolster. Indeed, this is the second week that he’s been the only winning player on his team. This week his proxy-gate beat Bomber’s proxy-rax in a fairly silly game. Good job, Zest! Now get the rest of your team in shape—the Telecom Derby is next week.
Anti-player of the week: DongRaeGu
A surprising number of people (78) have DRG on anti. Your mistake! He did pretty well last round and continues the trend this round as well with a nice win vs. a meching Flash, denying almost 150 people points, not to mention contributing to 0 points for the 105 KT Rolster holders.
Runner-up: Stats
Oh, Stats. You did so well in previous rounds. You all-killed SKT! Now you’re colossus-dropping for no damage and 0 points. Technically jjakji should be the runner-up here, but no one could put it better than Wolf: “Stats defeated himself.”
Trade bait for week 3: Losira
With a two-game losing streak, Losira is cheap and MVP plays Prime next week. You do the math.
Runner-up: sKyHigh or RagnaroK
CJ plays a terran-heavy Samsung next week. SKT showed that BrAvO and Reality are weak against zerg, while sKyHigh has a renowned TvT. That logic didn’t work for the many people who acquired Hush last week (myself included), but maybe this time?
Team of the week: capiston
Capiston earned a solid 23 points this week off the shoes and wings of Sbenu and Jin Air, shooting up almost 600 ranks in the process. Indeed, KeeN was the only player on the team who didn’t take a win this week. Fortunately for capiston, Dear didn’t play, netting a mere -1 for his lineup appearance. Next week, Sbenu and Jin Air play each other, so things could get dicey. Time to make some trades? Good luck and well done in any case!
Worst team of the week: calzone_hime
This hasn’t come up yet, but now it does. I believe the worst team of the week award should go to someone actually trying—i.e., a $30 main team and a $13 anti-team, or thereabouts. You picked Inno, Classic, and soO as your anti? Yes, you’re very clever, but the true art of FPL-flopping requires more subtlety and skill. With this in mind, the award goes to the following team:
OK, a $25 main team consisting of three people who will basically never see play is not exactly shooting for the stars, but the anti-team is legit, and Life and Maru ought to be picking up points. Basically this team is a clinic in how not to do things. $8 and $9 players need to win every week to be worth it (so they’re not worth it). Stork and BBoongBBoong are better picks than TaeJa and Jim, respectively. Rogue on anti was actually working out for a while, but those days are probably over. Sorry to kick you while you’re down, calzone—better luck next week!
Best possible no-trade team:
SKT best KT?
$7 soO 10
$5 Curious 12
$3 Blaze 11
$3 DeParture 7
$3 Sorry 6
$3 Impact 6
$6 SKT 12
$7 Stats -1
$4 Creator 0
$3 Seed 0
For a total of 63 points.
Best possible team:
Wow this is really hard. I think the following team is the best, but I could be wrong.
$7 soO 10
$6 Dear –(week1)-> Bbyong 12
$5 Curious 12
$3 Sorry –(week1)-> GuMiho -(week2)-> Rogue 12
$3 Blaze 11
$3 DeParture 7
$3 SAM –(week2)-> JAGW 11
$9 Maru -1
$3 YoDa 0
$1 Jim 0
For a total of 70 points.