Starcraft is a fickle venture. Some days you roll over your competition, and others you struggle against all obstacles. Such is the duality of sport. We all have days when all things are turned on, and days when nothing feels right.
When the day is over, some are able to say they breezed through, and others everything goes smoothly. If your name is Snow in particular, your last few weeks have been cake. If you're an Oz protoss, you need all the help you can get.
We had a few intensely notable matches in the last few days. The one everyone is sure to notice is CJ against KT -- they won yet again. In an era when KT was undefeatable (such as the first 2 rounds) CJ was able to take them down. This time, not only did they win again but they did so by pummeling Flash twice. The first in an OSL preview with EffOrt overpowering him ZvT, and the second with Snow, a relative newcomer to the CJ a-team lineup. Both are worth watching, though obviously we suggest the second the most.
Who had the easy gg button this week and who didn't? Why did they? Is there a higher meaning to it all, a kind of force they have learned to control and ride the ebbs and flows? Who can say for sure, these kinds of things are complex and we are but simple fans, forced to reduce all calculations down to a simple binary issue.
The question becomes: are you on or off?
KT Rolster: KT can't seem to beat CJ in a non-Winner's League situation. Closer this time than some earlier rounds but still messy. Flash will be done with individual leagues for some time, but until then the team looks like they still have training wheels on.
STX SouL: Only had one match this week, and took the victory. They are continuing to crush this round but it probably shouldn't take you untl the 5th game to beat KHAN. Still, they are in good shape to challenge KT for the top playoff seed.
MBCGame HERO: As a team they looked surprisingly shoddy against ACE, even came close to losing the deciding game. Coach Ha got his 100th victory this week so congrats to him. 8 Hyungjuns out of 13.
WeMade FOX They look like a real team these last few months, and its fun to see. This week they killed SKT (which is becoming less and less impressive) and went a long way towards securing a 4th place spot. Approaching with cautious optimism.
SK Telecom T1: Still playing nearly the exact players as last year, except they're all much worse now. Bisu looks terrible in games, and his stats show it (3-6) while fantasy has lost his edge and is now average (6-5). A week where your only winner is s2 does not bode well for the rest of the season.
CJ Entus: Well played. EffOrt looks good, Snow is blossoming, and Orion got a game. A great run through round 4. 100% this week.
Woongjin Stars: Lost both their matches, one in a route and one with their star losing twice (and once against horang2 of all people). Not a great performance, and for it they swapped their 6th place spot with CJ. A deserving punishment.
Hwaseung Oz: Ugh. I always call it silly to describe Oz as a one man team (last year HiyA and fOrGG were a huge source of wins) but this week no one else won a game. BBS in one of your good matchups, HiyA? Didn't you get an allkill once? 2 beedogs out of 11.
eSTRO: Beat up Oz and barely lost to KT. Really is probably the best choice for an ace game against KT, but you can't help but wonder what would have happened if another Action vs terran game went down. Impressive improvement through this year, still room for more and the future is promising right now.
hite SPARKYZ: One of the worst teams all year got a bit of a break, Leta won twice in pretty nice fashion against Stars and they showed they're "not as bad as ACE" by 3-0ing the Air Force team. They did so well as to bump KHAN into 11th place, good for them. Celebrate with some chicken a goodbye party for go.go.
Samsung KHAN: Who knows what their deal is. The ultimate on/off team, they look fine for a while and then explode. Losing their only match this week means they are now firmly in 11th because the difference in game wins is so great between them and the rest of the teams at the bottom.
Air Force ACE: Lost both their matches this week but they showed some heart while doing it. Nearly beating MBC has to count for something, though RuBy losing to Han and Reach losing to Horang2 says a lot about their season. I like their hustle. A for effort.
Action started this year well, and has only been better as the season continues. This week he faced the true test and faced one of the strongest players in history, and gav him quite a good game. The whole coverage team went nuts in our proverbial newsroom during this game, check it out!
Game of the Week, Flash vs Action
by l10f
by l10f
Flash, who showed a chink in his invincible armor this very week, started at the 11 o'clock base on Roadrunner against the rising start Action. Both players open with standard builds, 3 hatch muta vs 1 barracks expansion. Flash then moves on to build a quick engineering bay and refinery, mining only 100 gas for the +1 attack upgrade. Flash makes 5 barracks even before Action's spire is done and pumps out bionic units. Flash moves out with his small bionic army to pressure Action before his mutalisks come out.
Action takes the 8 o'clock main expansion and kills Flash's advanced army while losing a couple of mutalisks. Flash has been pumping out of his 5 barracks, and another army moves out as soon as his first army is destroyed. Action, seeing this, goes into Flash's natural with his mutalisks and Zerglings and kills a lot of marines and SCV's. Flash brings back half of his army to defend, while harassing the 8 o'clock main base with the other half.
Flash in in trouble?!?
Action techs to hive and builds a defiler mound along with a greater spire. He also pumps drones while making only enough units to stop Flash from destroying any of his expansions. Because Flash made 5 barracks early on, his tech is slower than usual. By the time Flash moves out with his bionic + tank + vessel army, Action is able to defend with defilers, lurkers, and guardians. Flash uses wraiths to take care of the guardians.
Flash does a great job preventing Action from securing a 4th gas expansion, constantly utilizing his map control in the middle to shut down expansion attempts at 9 and 7 o'clock. With overwhelming map control at this point, Flash secures both 1 and 2 o'clock expansions and marches his army towards Action's natural expansion, seeing the minimal defense there. With clutch swarms, Action fends off the attack all while mounting a small lurker/ling/defiler attack at 1 o'clock that is handily defended by Flash.
A drone on top of 3 stacked lurkers, hiding them. Cute.
Having seemingly secured 7 o'clock, Action now turns to try and take 9 o'clock. At 1 o'clock, Flash has built three additional factories, in preparation to switch to a tank heavy army. Flash barrels into 9 o'clock and wipes out Action's expansion attempt with ease, pulling back out to the middle of the map. Now on 4 base and with a huge vessel count numbering over 10, Flash looks to be seemingly in control of the game.
With a small zergling army, Action attempts a small attack at the 2 o'clock expansion, only to be wiped out with ease. As Flash's forces move out towards the 4 o'clock expansion, Action catches Flash's science vessels out in the open and lands 2 huge plagues on almost all of the science vessels. Action now begins pushing out towards the middle with lurker/ling/defiler. Meanwhile at 1 o'clock, Flash has at least 10 tanks just lined up, and has also taken the 3 o'clock expansion while Action has finally secured 9 o'clock.
With no sign of ultralisk tech, Action continues to pump out lurker/ling/defiler and proceeds to launch an attack at 3 o'clock, which forces a liftoff of the command center. After swarms wear off, Flash's tank heavy army is able to clean up with ease. Action now takes towards the center with a ling heavy army and launches a huge plague over all of Flash's vessels once again.
PLAGUUUUUUUUUU
At three o'clock, we see guardians once again, attacking the turrets and units at three o'clock. Flash cleans up the guardians with ease thanks to irradiate, but loses three vessels in the process to one lone mutalisk.
Once again, Action pushes towards the center with hydra/ling/lurker/defiler al the way up to 1 o'clock, but is forced back by tank fire. Now the tides have turned, as Action now has firm control over the center of the map, pushing towards the 1 o'clock expansion. Flash continues roaming his vessels out into the open, irradiating stray defilers as Action continues his assault on 1 o'clock, taking down 3 tanks in the process.
Now having taken 10 o'clock, Action is now on 6 gas, still firmly on lurker/hydra/zergling/defiler tech. Action catches Flash's vessels once again with a huge plague that allows two mutas to kill 6 vessels. Flash attempts to drop 10 o'clock, but is denied by great scourge play, picking off both dropships. Action attempts to attack the turret ring at 2 o'clock, but doesn't micro his guardians well, losing all his guardians in the process.
Flashing to first person views, we see that Flash at 196/200 with 2.5k/750 in the bank. Action now expands towards 4 o'clock, taking the last free expansion on the map. Flash pushes out from both 1 o'clock towards the middle as well as towards 4 o'clock with marine/medic/tank armies, but is denied in both directions by clutch swarms. At 4 o'clock, Action attacks with ridiculously well placed swarms, and hydra/ling, killing off the few stray tanks pushing towards 4 o'clock.
And I thought Effort's defiler usage was good...
Flash has successfully united his armies at 4 o'clock, breaking Action's lurker army in the middle with a nice defense matrix on a firebat. Flash once again pushes towards 4 o'clock, but Action with ridiculous swarm defense forces Flash to pull back temporarily. Relentlessly attacking 4 o'clock, Flash is repeatedly denied by Action's ridiculous swarm defense, as Action now has an insane number of defilers, forgoing ultralisks for more defilers. Action now has pushed his way into 3 o'clock, launching huge plagues all over the tanks, swarms all ove the place.
30+ minutes into the game. Not a single ultralisk.
In the middle of the map, we see a 2 queens from Action, presumably to infest the CC at 3 o'clock. Action continues his assault on three o'clock, with a huge hydra/lurker/zergling army, wiping out Flash's low ground units at 3 o'clock. But with 10+ tanks on high ground, Flash's tanks completely melt away the units, and Flash lifts the CC at 3 o'clock well before the queen can come in for the infest.
As the action settles, Flash has cleared Action's units at 3 o'clock and is now pushing towards 10 o'clock with a marine/medic/tank army that he seemingly whipped out of nowhere. As 10 o'clock falls, the tide of the match has turned, as Action is now on the defensive after being the aggressor for the last 10 minutes of the game.
The moment Action let Flash take a breath, he lost.
Flash reclaims 3 o'clock, and is now pushing down towards 9 o'clock with the army that just wiped out Action's 10 o'clock base. Switching to a first person view, we see Flash at 186 supply with over 3.5k/2k in the bank, while Action sits at about 160 supply, but is almost broke with only 50 minerals and 250 gas.
Flash pulls his huge marine/tank force and attacks 4 o'clock, taking advantage of tank range to blast away at trailing zerglings coming in to attack. Despite good swarms, Action just doesn't have the units to fend off Flash's tank/marine/medic/vessel army, and as 4 o'clock falls, Action GGs.
Not everything we do here is about the individual games themselves of course. We have things like fantasy proleague to keep us checking up on results completely independent of anything else. Even better, if you don't want to stay inside of fpl, we have an update here that lets you stay updated without having to spend any energy at all, isn't that great?!
FPL Round 4 Week 6
by IntoTheWow
by IntoTheWow
After a long time without an update I feel there's too many things to say. The match-fixing scandal really screwed some teams. People are seeing thrown games everywhere, as their expensive picks perform worse and worse!
STANDINGS
SUMMARY
- Buy low! Sell high?
WeMade FOX, CJ Entus and eSTRO have the lead in the ranking in terms of points. The three of them ended up with bad scores last round. Some teams that did good last round (like KT and MBC) went down in terms of efficiency. Playing safe in FPL will only get you to the middle of the rankings.
Woongjin for example had a very good start this round, but then stayed with the same amount of points for 3 weeks. Only a couple of FPL teams in the top ranks can hold with that flaw. As we draw near to the end of this round, risky trades make all the difference. - Winter is coming
Snow is as of now, the best 'bang for your buck' pick. As FPL went back to the old scoring system, cheap picks are making all the difference. Let's crunch some numbers!
Snow (2$): 26 points.
Flying (2$): 25 points.
Midas (2$): 24 points.
Horang2 (2$): 24 points.
Classic (1$): 21 points.
That's 120 points for 9$. Leta costing 9$ racked up 34 points so far. Ouch! - One man stand
No. I'm not talking about Flash. With the match-fixing scandal hite was left without a coach and a manager and lost 3 'big' names in their line-up. go.go, Yarnc, type-b. Leta is one of the few strong cards left in hite along with Horang2.
Despite that, hite managed to go 2-0 last week (3-0 Air Force ACE, 3-2 Woongjin). As player choices narrow for the team, hite trades get hot. Hite's current roster consists of: Horang2, Britney, Leta, PuMa, HoGiL, ASuka-Jr according to Horang2 (who knows what happened to Tazza, HakSoo, etc). That only leaves two choices per race, some easy trades in there it seems! - One week left!
Only one week of Proleague left for this round. And as the trade gains and weekly rank changes show, the top is up for grabs. GTR stayed in the lead for a long time, but despite his smart trading (+54 points for trading) he couldn't keep it. 'Who is playing who?, 'What teams are playing twice?', 'Who is playing ACE?' is all things people in the top 30 should be asking themselves to do the last trades for this round. - But ITW, what's the moral of the story?
DON'T PICK RORO FOR ANTITEAM. No, seriously, don't do it. He will get double the line-up appearances you think he will and ace every time and win (even vs Jaedong). He rapes anti-teams for a living.
See you guys next week! :3
Phew! This round is almost over, seems like yesterday that we just began at fresh starts for the new round. There are a few sendoff matches however, and here is flamewheel with a quick update on how they look.
Week 7 Previews
by flamewheel
by flamewheel
The rounds really do fly quickly. One moment, I'm sitting here, watching KTFlash fail against WeMade FOX in the first week. I blink my eyes, and Flash has crushed Mind. I blink again, and KT loses the next three. One last time and... it's week 7 already? Holy cow. This round has definitely brought out a lot of new stuff. New players and teams have risen, such as WeMade, and old teams such as OZ and KHAN have fallen from the top. Well, this last week is going to be short. There are only three days of playing time left, and each team is going to be looking to wrap up the round by playing the one team they have not yet played. Looking through the matches for this week, I could not help but feel just a tad bit sad, knowing that the season is coming to an end, but after this week, Round 5 awaits, and the road to the Championships draws nearer.
Week 7 Matches:
MBCGame HERO vs Hwaseung OZ
KT Rolster vs hite SPARKYZ
CJ Entus vs Air Force ACE
Woongjin Stars vs eSTRO
WeMade FOX vs Samsung KHAN
SK Telecom T1 vs STX SouL
flamewheel91's matches of interest:
MBCGame HERO vs Hwaseung OZ
I'm not sure what has happened to either teams. As heyoka has described is, this match is going to be a "battle of the has-beens." Here I thought OZ was doing well: at the end of Week 5 they were on a tear, but as Week 6 played out Jaedong OZ reared its ugly head again, causing OZ to drop both its games 1-3. Guess who took the one win for OZ both times? Either way, MBC has not done so well this round either, with a 4-6 record. They're still comfortably in the #3 spot, but they have to deliver against OZ. I doubt FOX is going to lose its match to KHAN this week, so MBC has to watch its back. Given that MBC only has two "good" players and OZ only has one, this match should be decided based on whether or not Coach Ha can keep Sea and Light from avoiding Jaedong. He's probably just going to end up sacrificing a Protoss. However, if it gets to Ace OZ will have this definitely. Look for the trademark OZ scores: either 3-2, or 1-3.
Woongjin Stars vs eSTRO
If you had asked me to predict this match at the beginning or middle of Round 5, I'd have said Stars easily. Woongjin tore through the opposition at the beginning of this round, much to the delight of those that placed their FPL trust in Stars, and eSTRO has struggled through this round with a 5-5 record, weakened by the removal of UpMaGiC and SangHo. However, a good start does not make for a good finish, and Stars has lost steam. Losing both their games Week 6 has put them at a dismal 3-7, and they've dropped from 4th place to 7th. Whoever wins between eSTRO and Stars will take the spot, since both teams are at 21-22 right now. Though I still believe in ZerO, free, and Kwanro, eSTRO has been looking good lately, with Really, Flying, Action, and even Classic playing good games. Given current trends, I'll say that eSTRO will actually take this match in the Ace (go Action!) but don't look at me, I'm terrible at predictions. Look at what happened between ACE and Hite last week after I called for ACE to win it in Ace.
SK Telecom T1 vs STX SouL
Sorry SKT, you're not going to stop STX. While your Zergs have been playing good games recently, it's not enough to stop this round's champion. STX, at 9-1 this round is closing in on KT, and you're not going to stop them. Beware though, a loss here is going to cost you your spot to whichever team wins in the Stars vs eSTRO match... Oh well, I expect good games out of you. And disciple hopes that Bisu can not suck, as he has been doing all round. 3-2 STX, with Calm or Kal taking the Ace win, as usual. Also, Shuttle is cute.
MBCGame HERO vs Hwaseung OZ
KT Rolster vs hite SPARKYZ
CJ Entus vs Air Force ACE
Woongjin Stars vs eSTRO
WeMade FOX vs Samsung KHAN
SK Telecom T1 vs STX SouL
flamewheel91's matches of interest:
MBCGame HERO vs Hwaseung OZ
I'm not sure what has happened to either teams. As heyoka has described is, this match is going to be a "battle of the has-beens." Here I thought OZ was doing well: at the end of Week 5 they were on a tear, but as Week 6 played out Jaedong OZ reared its ugly head again, causing OZ to drop both its games 1-3. Guess who took the one win for OZ both times? Either way, MBC has not done so well this round either, with a 4-6 record. They're still comfortably in the #3 spot, but they have to deliver against OZ. I doubt FOX is going to lose its match to KHAN this week, so MBC has to watch its back. Given that MBC only has two "good" players and OZ only has one, this match should be decided based on whether or not Coach Ha can keep Sea and Light from avoiding Jaedong. He's probably just going to end up sacrificing a Protoss. However, if it gets to Ace OZ will have this definitely. Look for the trademark OZ scores: either 3-2, or 1-3.
Woongjin Stars vs eSTRO
If you had asked me to predict this match at the beginning or middle of Round 5, I'd have said Stars easily. Woongjin tore through the opposition at the beginning of this round, much to the delight of those that placed their FPL trust in Stars, and eSTRO has struggled through this round with a 5-5 record, weakened by the removal of UpMaGiC and SangHo. However, a good start does not make for a good finish, and Stars has lost steam. Losing both their games Week 6 has put them at a dismal 3-7, and they've dropped from 4th place to 7th. Whoever wins between eSTRO and Stars will take the spot, since both teams are at 21-22 right now. Though I still believe in ZerO, free, and Kwanro, eSTRO has been looking good lately, with Really, Flying, Action, and even Classic playing good games. Given current trends, I'll say that eSTRO will actually take this match in the Ace (go Action!) but don't look at me, I'm terrible at predictions. Look at what happened between ACE and Hite last week after I called for ACE to win it in Ace.
SK Telecom T1 vs STX SouL
Sorry SKT, you're not going to stop STX. While your Zergs have been playing good games recently, it's not enough to stop this round's champion. STX, at 9-1 this round is closing in on KT, and you're not going to stop them. Beware though, a loss here is going to cost you your spot to whichever team wins in the Stars vs eSTRO match... Oh well, I expect good games out of you. And disciple hopes that Bisu can not suck, as he has been doing all round. 3-2 STX, with Calm or Kal taking the Ace win, as usual. Also, Shuttle is cute.
Thats all for today, this coming week is the few matches until we begin the final round robin. The race will come down to the wire and every match from here on out counts, especially for those fighting for the lower playoff spots. OSL is now over so you might as well watch something until MSL finishes too, right?
Join us next week for a brief recap of the round. Enjoy the games!
This Proleague update was brought to you by Team Liquid's PL 2009-10 coverage team - heyoka, pangshai, l10f, snowdrift86, flamewheel91, and IntoTheWow. Many thanks to keit as usual for the stellar graphics!