CJ Entus vs Jin Air: Match 1

by TheOneAboveU

Bunny <Echo> Rogue

CJ Entus’ young terran Bunny leads the charge of a surprising line-up against Jin Air Green Wings. He is coach Park's spearhead, supposed to draw first blood in the difficult battle to follow. Of course this is no easy quest, as his opponent Rogue is known for being a tricky player to beat and even trickier opponent to defend against. The good start Jin Air got in the playoffs wasn’t really shared by the Sexy Boy Zerg: the first match against KT was over before he got to play, and in the second match Rogue failed spectacularly (the viper anti-timing was a thing of the storybooks) to successfully assassinate his target Flash, falling to the Ultimate Weapon’s mech play.

Even though he remains the overwhelming favorite against Bunny (you can’t argue against a guy with 8-3 ZvT stats over the entire season and more than ample displays of skill elsewhere), the CJ player is a bit of surprise package—you just don’t know what you’re in for until you open it. And once you open it, you may find it contains highly flammable material, or a bomb about to explode. Most notably, Rogue’s teammate sOs has fallen to Bunny’s bag-o'-tricks before, getting blasted off the map by massive widow mine hits. TvZ may not be Bunny’s best match-up, but Rogue has shown himself vulnerable against aggression by Flash. The vulnerability is a small one, but sometimes small is all you can hope for. And if there is one kind of Terran that knows how to make Zerg players kneel before them with hellbat pushes, it’s the CJ Terrans.

Bbyong <Iron Fortress> Cure

The CJ Entus trinity starts off the day with Bbyong facing Cure in a mirror match-up. The 2015 Season wasn’t great for either player, Bbyong going 14-13 (due to the distinct lack of Habitation Station), and Cure going 11-11 overall. But in regards to their Terran vs Terran, the stats differ quite a bit: the CJ terran holds a 5-3 record, while his Jin Air counterpart sits at 2-6 and a five games long losing streak. And what holds true for Rogue is even more relevant for Cure. Even though the team might have had a good start into the Season Playoffs, it was atrocious for the Terran. He lost the only map in the first match between the Green Wings and KT, and the way he lost it against Super—of all people—does definitely not speak for his present stability.


"Welcome to the church of mech, I am your patron saint."

His opponent isn’t as solid as he once was, so Bbyong looks like the favorite in Iron Fortress. Of course the map might play a huge role in this duel, as its size oftentimes leads to a clash between the mechanical and the biological, a scenario which might well unfold in this case. While Bbyong has already made a name for himself as an infamous mech player (long before the general rise of mech usage), Cure—following his teammate Maru in this regard—hasn’t shown great love for the slower, more defensive style. It's not strange that Cure would opt to not play a style which just doesn’t seem to fit his high-paced brand of Terran, but it's hard to make a case for bio play's superiority over mech at the moment. Playing bio, he suffers a direct disadvantage against a more powerful style. Playing mech, he enters Bbyong's area of expertise at a deficit. Whichever strategy the two players choose in the end, the advantage of shape and style goes to Bbyong.

ByuL <Coda> sOs

The ZvP on Coda is probably the most critical game in this series, nearly enough deciding victory and defeat. ByuL has had an exceptionally good year, advancing into three individual league finals in Korea, performing amazing in Proleague and finding solutions against the increasingly infuriating Terran mech play. And even though ByuL has a difficult GSL final to prepare for, we know he won’t let his team down - he has always been there, and delivered, in the past. At his core the Zerg is still a team player above everything else, as he always was. It helps that he had to prepare for two long ZvP series in recent weeks, and since the finals against herO is done, he can practice with his colleague again.

Preparation, of course, is something that becomes rather irrelevant when you play sOs. Cany anything really prepare you against a player, who enters the booth laughing, when his team is down 0:3 and goes on to risk everything with a cheese—without hesitation? [E/N: Well, you could begin by scouting properly - hint hint, KT players]

However, there are several factors to be considered in this match. First thing is the map: ByuL has lost on Coda both against herO and against Dear, unable to hold the ground between his natural and third bases against the protoss aggression. This is an area that sOs could easily exploit, so readily available as to seem almost too simple. The second and third points have a common cause: sOs was in Sweden over the weekend, where he lost the DreamHack semifinal against Solar—but winning on Coda—which might give ByuL some ideas on how to counter his opponent. More importantly, however, is that sOs could very well still feel the jet lag on Tuesday. Even though he is an experienced traveler, jet lag is a fickle beast, and even the slightest sense of fatigue could disturb his concentration. In a match as even and as important as this one, there isn't much room for making tired mistakes. We all know what happens, after all, when you overlook a point on the minimap against this certain Zerg player: the ByuLshit is merciless.


"Ha, people really think I care about jetlag. Evil is never tired."

Sora <Cactus Valley> Trap

Coach Park's most intriguing decision for this match is fielding Sora. Yeah, that guy that has like one good run [E/N: it's actually uncanny] in the year and then falls back down into obscurity. Sora literally has been so invisible, that Aligulac marked him as inactive in their rankings. His last recorded tournament was Leifeng Monthly #3 in May. So even though we’d like to talk about how his shape and his playstyle look at the moment, we just can’t do that. We have no idea. He plays Protoss, we think, and usually tends towards macro games. Maybe. But the CJ staff has an idea and in the end that is what counts. Park never sends out players who he doesn’t believe in. That alone is enough reason to start to think that Sora might be doing very well in in-house practice. A Sora on a streak is a dangerous Sora, as we all know. It’s not like CJ don't have other options: they could’ve sent Hush (whose reliability in PvP has been a great aid in the past) or Trust out. But they sent Sora. And Sora still hasn't had his annual good run.


Effectively what the records said before WCG in 2013

Trap, of course, has been much more present than his opponent overall, but in PvP that actually doesn’t really hold true. Because Trap’s last official mirror match was in June, only one month after Sora went missing, we don't really know much. We don't know what the Jin Air player prefers to do in matches against other protoss players, or if he's any good in the match-up. Since Trap is also known as the Wing Commander because of his love for oracle plays, we can assume that this is definitely an option for him, but his oracles have always been less pronounced in PvP than PvT and PvZ. He has good control and he feels comfortable using the unit and likely won't be afraid to use it, but a PvP is seldom decided by oracles alone. And other than that one avenue of proficiency, this match-up is one huge question mark for all of us. We have to assume the coaches are confident in their decisions and the players have ample time to prepare. This one’s a toss-up

herO <Terraform> Symbol

We know a bit more about the opponents facing off on Terraform. herO has just become CJ’s first StarLeague champion in Starcraft II after several years of individual losses for the team, beating his colleague ByuL in a brutal final series for the Zerg. It’s not a secret that he is the huge favorite in this match against. His PvZ is very deadly in every part of the game, and his famous blink control is almost unstoppable. Granted, herO hasn’t been super stable in the match-up this season, slipping up quite a few times, as his 4-5 stats show. Most notably MVP’s young DeParture was able to upset the Protoss with a smart build, smashing him into the dust of Coda. But then, herO has had his ups and downs this season, and right now he's definitely riding quite the up.


"Hey Symbol, I've made a chart about how many StarLeagues you've won and how high your chances of winning this match are!"

To exploit these few cracks in herO’s armor is Symbol’s great hope. The Jin Air player hasn’t gotten many chances from his coach yet. He only played three matches during this Proleague season, and lost two of them. It is unfortunate for him to meet such a tough opponent now, that he finally was able to gain the coaches confidence again. Not much is going the right way for Symbol: he won a ZvP against Blaze in the last round of SPL, which should have boosted his morale a bit at least. Other than that, Symbol has to believe in his old abilities, his killer instinct, and one little thing called roach. Should it come to that, herO certainly knows what he believes in: blinking his way to victory.

RagnaroK <Vaani Research Station> Maru

RagnaroK is in a similar position to Symbol: he’s pretty much nothing else than bait for a better player, sacrificed to give his team a better shot at winning. On the other hand, now is probably the best time to play Maru as a Zerg, than any other era in HotS. RagnaroK—like Symbol—is a zerg in the spirit of TSL, he likes to build a lot of roaches at inconvenient times for the opponent and, preferrably, send them crashing over unsuspecting bases. RagnaroK is also the only colleague of ByuL, helped herO practice for StarLeague and probably faces Bbyong’s mech a lot, so we have to assume that he gets some of the best in-house training imaginable for a Zerg player. With Maru being in the state he is—not presently possessing very fearsome TvZ—a surprise from RagnaroK doesn’t seem out of this world.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Maru is still the overwhelming favorite. He has done more in his career than RagnaroK most likely ever will, and has made more comebacks against nearly impossible odds than can be counted. And if this game goes into the mid game with Maru playing bio, the CJ Zerg... is probably pretty dead. However, the game has to get there in the first place, and Maru’s wrists have to say yes to bio play. Neither is a certainty. How many times has Maru died to roach baneling busts before? And when Maru doesn’t play bio against mech in a GSL semifinal, how confident is he in the composition at the moment? His own mech—despite winning against Life—did look shaky at best, and RagnaroK has some of the better mech players in Bbyong and sKyHigh to train against. There are many hazards for the Little Psychopath on the seemingly easy path to victory.

Remember TSL, Maru. Remember TSL.

Ace Match: <Echo>

An ace match on Echo would be a difficult affair for both teams regarding picks, because there are actually several reasonable and advantageous possibilities. Of course the map is good for defensive styles of every race, so ByuL seems a good choice for CJ Entus, but since we are talking about Echo here—a map also known as Mecho—a mech Terran is not impossible to field here.

The Jin Air coach will stand in front of a hard choice here: Maru is probably not an option against ByuL (losing four out of the five last matches against him), while choosing sOs might seem plausible, but that highly depends on how the first game between the two players went—and what state sOs is in, physically speaking. Rogue is a great ZvZ player and could hold his own against herO and Bbyong as well, but he is not the traditional choice. Interestingly enough, Trap is Jin Air’s best player on Echo, having a 3-0 score on the map. Same as Bbyong for CJ. Does that mean anything? It could, depending on how secure the teams feel in their own predictions. Fielding Trap against the wrong player could be disastrous, and Jin Air will most likely avoid such dubious risks.

Match Predictions

Against KT, Jin Air prepared exceptionally well. Now they face CJ Entus, who field a surprising roster, which just has to have something up its' sleeve. Bunny, Sora and RagnaroK could have deadly builds prepared to offset the disadvantages they face against their respective opponents - evening the scores through risks and gambles. In the end CJ's primary goal is to get to the ace match, where the most reliable player ByuL should reign supreme over anyone Jin Air throws at him.

TheOneAboveU
Bunny < Rogue
Bbyong > Cure
ByuL > sOs
Sora < Trap
herO > Symbol
RagnaroK < Maru
ByuL > Rogue
CJ win 4-3

Zealously
Bunny < Rogue
Bbyong > Cure
ByuL > sOs
Sora > Trap
herO > Symbol
CJ win 4-1

Writers: TheOneAboveYou, Zealously
Graphics: shiroiusagi
Photo: Shayla
Editor(s): Zealously