EPT![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Milkis/PLWriteup06/jbpbanner.jpg)
[SPL] A Timely Resurrection
| Forum Index > News |
[SPL] A Timely ResurrectionApril 29th, 2011 09:54 GMT
By Milkis, Mystlord, and Waxangel What an eventful week. What happened this week? Well, let's see. First there was the entire KT Rolster incident, where KT looked into suing a specific Bisu fan that spent their time on the internet defaming Flash. It's actually quite common that players get insulted online, but this user apparently crossed the line to the point where they were actually reported. Luckily for this netizen,  God Young Ho proved his maturity yet again by forgiving the netizen, which led to the netizen turning over a new leaf. Much kudos to Flash of course, but it wasn't too surprising considering how mature Flash is for his age. Perhaps, it is his mature worldview that leads to his success in Starcraft.But that's just one story. What else happened this week? Let's find out! Week 1 Results and Recap by Milkis Hite Entus 4 - 1 Woongjin Stars Leta ≪ Beltway ≫  SoulkeyHydra ≪ Icarus ≫ Light Snow ≪ Alternative ≫ FlyingMovie ≪ Neo Aztec ≫ ZerOsKyHigh ≪ Circuit Breaker ≫ Really≪ New Empire of the Sun ≫ The results are quite surprising considering that these are the two deepest teams in Proleague at the moment. Who would have expected that the results would be so one sided? Although Soulkey won with his excellent use of queens, the rest of Woongjin fell apart as Light seems to suffer from the Woongjin Terran syndrome while Really did not have much of a chance against SkyHigh, the TvT bonjwa. Flying was an interesting choice on Alternative, but what hurt Woongjin the most was the fact that Zero was not able to stop Movie's amazing momentum. Almost makes you regret putting Movie on your anti team, huh? Air Force ACE 3 - 4 SK Telecom T1 PianO ≪ Neo Aztec ≫ n.Die_soOM18M ≪ New Bloody Ridge ≫ BisuIris ≪ Icarus ≫ s2Much ≪ New Empire of the Sun ≫ Fantasyggaemo ≪ La Mancha ≫ Ssakfirebathero ≪ Beltway ≫ By.Sunggaemo ≪ Alternative ≫ BisuThe results aren't actually that surprising. SK Telecom is a team that is deceptively shallow -- while they look deep on the surface, they're only deep due to massive amounts of preparation rather than actual fundamentals. Indeed, Iris, ggaemo, and firebathero was successfully able to abuse the weaker parts of SKT's line up -- Iris aggressively pummeling s2 to submission, while ggaemo and firebathero pulling out wins against Ssak and By.Sun, the newbies. Bisu was able to save the day, defending ggaemo's drop perfectly and expanding again at exceptional timings to save SKT from defeat. STX SouL 2 - 4 WeMade FOX Bogus < Neo Aztec > herO[jOin]Kal < New Bloody Ridge > PureCalm < Icarus > RorOLast < New Empire of the Sun > BaByShuttle < La Mancha > MidasClassic < Beltway > MindNot exactly a surprising result, especially when STX's one two punch, Kal and Calm was defeated by Pure (!) and Roro, easily leaving STX without their core. The new Empire of the Sun did not seem to deter Baby from completely outplaying his opponent, which is not too surprising considering Baby's record on that map. Some interesting strategies were used by Midas and Mind -- Midas choosing to play aggressive and attempting to keep Shuttle contained, but failing. Meanwhile, Mind's cheese put him at a huge advantage against Classic, who had apparently failed to simcity properly. Oh well. Samsung KHAN 4 - 2 Hwaseung OZ Reality ≪ Beltway ≫ HiyA JangBi ≪ Icarus ≫ KillerStork ≪ Alternative≫ AloneGrape ≪ Neo Aztec ≫ PerfectMangreat ≪ Circuit Breaker ≫ JaedongJuni ≪ New Bloody Ridge ≫ sHyWait. What? Jaedong and Stork lost on the same day? Quite a shocking result, but of course, only one of them lost in a rather embarrassing fashion to a player who once called himself Princess. Jaedong's ZvZ was decided the moment great sent his Overlord to a different direction than what is traditional from most Zergs. Clearly, he was metagamed. The series also featured some nice aggressive plays from Jangbi and Juni. SK Telecom T1 4 - 2 KT Rolster Ssak ≪ New Empire of the Sun ≫ BarrackSn.Die_soO ≪ Neo Aztec ≫ StatsBeSt ≪ La Mancha ≫ FlashFantasy ≪ Circuit Breaker ≫ ActionBisu ≪ Alternative ≫ Crazy-Hydras2 ≪ Icarus ≫ PerfectiveThe Easter day buff ended with this series, with Best channeling the last bit of the buff to best Flash in a PvT. With Flash taken out, KT could not bring the game to the ace match, and unsurprisingly they lost. It didn't help that Bisu was completely familiar with Crazy-Hydra's cheese, as he has dealt with them before in practice games. But it was interesting cheese, none the less. Oh, and Fantasy went Bio. That explains how Action won, I guess. MBCGame HERO 4 - 2 Hite Entus Tyson ≪ Beltway ≫ LetaSaint ≪ Icarus ≫ HydraJaehoon ≪ Alternative ≫ SnowCheck ≪ Neo Aztec ≫ MovieSea ≪ Circuit Breaker ≫ sKyHighHyuN ≪ New Bloody Ridge ≫ Horang2Hydra and Movie get free wins from pushovers, yet the rest of Hite struggled against MBC's main team, which seems to have gotten stronger than most people are willing to give them credit for. Air Force ACE 4 - 3 Samsung KHAN M18M ≪ Circuit Breaker ≫ Grapefirebathero ≪ New Empire of the Sun ≫ JangBiggaemo ≪ New Bloody Ridge ≫ JuniRuBy ≪ La Mancha ≫ StorkIris ≪ Beltway ≫ TurNPianO ≪ Neo Aztec ≫ greatIris ≪ Icarus ≫ greatIf it wasn't for Winner's League, Ace would definitely be a midranked team. After all, they got a quite solid core in ggaemo and firebathero, and Iris finally seems to have adjusted into Ace. Ace regained their momentum at the end of Winner's League, and they've been able to pull through with them with a decisive victory over Samsung. WeMade FOX 2 - 4 Woongjin Stars RorO ≪ Icarus ≫ Neo.G_SoulkeyMidas ≪ La Mancha ≫ freeBaBy ≪ Beltway ≫ LightShine ≪ Alternative ≫ ZerOMind ≪ New Bloody Ridge ≫ GuemChiPure ≪ New Empire of the Sun ≫ ReallyWemade had the right idea in mind when they sent out Baby early -- after all, Baby is so often seen in Empire of the Sun that most teams always have him in mind when they play on Empire. Not only that, but the sniper could be caught off guard, which would also allow another Wemade player an easier win. The plan was good, and to an extent, it had worked -- it's not surprising that Really was sent out on the map to deal with Baby. And yet, the plan failed in both ways -- not only was Baby taken out by Light, but Pure was not able to win against Really. Maybe one day, Pure will win a game that's not PvP, but a las, this day was not the day. STX SouL 0 - 4 KT Rolster hero <Circuit Breaker> BarrackSClassic <New Empire of the Sun> StatsCalm <New Bloody Ridge> Crazy-HydraTrap <La Mancha> Perfective<Neo Aztec> <Icarus> Stats and the KT backup cards make short work of STX. Quite a disappointing showing from STX. MBCGame HERO 2 - 4 Hwaseung OZ Dream.t)check ≪ Icarus ≫ KillerTyson ≪ La Mancha ≫ PerfectManSea ≪ Beltway ≫ DearJaehoon ≪ Alternative ≫ PrincessSaint≪ New Bloody Ridge ≫ JaedongHyuN ≪ New Empire of the Sun ≫ HiyADecent series overall. Jaedong comes back from a build order disadvantage with clutch Zerglings, and Hyun's strategy against HiyA almost would have worked but I don't think Zerg has any good ways of delaying Terrans when they pull of strategies like this. It almost reminded me of what Jaedong tried to do against Flash in Triathlon (double defiler mound and everything!), but HiyA was able to push through as he realized what was going on a bit quicker. Probably because Jaedong had warned him. FPL Week 1 Reflections I'm quite surprised at the number of people who have MBC players in their anti -- especially Jaehoon. Then again, I also have Hyun on my anti. But regardless, MBC players probably will all get quite a bit of playtime so we'll see how it goes. Check might be a decent pick, since MBC seems to be willing to try him out. However, it is also questionable if MBC will continue to field him. ACE had a field day, of course. Firebathero, ggaemo, and Iris all won their games (although ggaemo lost against Bisu in an ace match). Iris destroyed a lot of anti teams. Gambling against Ace players is a pretty bad idea especially when they were performing so well at the end of last round. I guess people learned the hard way! Surprising number of SKT all ins, but let's not get too cocky -- they barely beat ACE and slipped past KT. Bisu seems to be the key, with winning all three of his matches. Flash and Jaedong netted very little points, but then again, one bad week probably isn't enough to start panicking just yet, especially when Jaedong gets to play WeMade. Did you know Jaedong has a 19 game winning streak against WeMade players in Proleague? I didn't know either. But when making your trades, you should probably look at the weeks ahead and see what teams each team has left. That should help you decide whether or not your team may perform or not! Thanks as always to Simplistik for formatting and keeping the R&S thread updated!! Whew! Now, for some of the more interesting games that occurred this week. Here's Mystlord who will be spotlighting more games. We have decided to go with this spotlighting format, as GOTWs were by nature too long and we were limited to one match at a time. Now, we can cover as many games as we please. Proleague Spotlight by Mystlord And we're back! I'm sure that everyone was dying in the interim between the All Stars match and the return of Proleague, so let's get right down to it with some of the absolute best games in the past week. And where better to start off than the first game played upon Proleague's return? I'm sure that everyone knows what game I'm talking about, if not, then you need to watch the VOD right now. I am, of course, referring to: You know how Zergs all QQ about turtle mech play? Soulkey showed us exactly how to counter that: Mass Queens. The latest strategic revolution in ZvTurtle Mech has been led by the Woongjin Zergs, and revolve around Broodling usage to snipe Terran Tanks to prevent a critical mass from ever building up while amassing a large enough Hydra force supplemented by Defilers to absolutely crush any ground army that Terran can even attempt to mass up. ![[image loading]](/staff/Mystlord/2011ProleagueR5/2011PLR5W1_15.jpg) The Zerg answer to Irradiate, clearly. Leta also decided to help Soulkey out a bit by losing more vessels than he needed to, as well as trying to play a defensive, macro based game, essentially letting Soulkey control the game flow. This meant that Soulkey was not really as pressured APM wise to manage his army to try to stop a Terran push, and so Soulkey was able to Broodling Tanks, and then retreat with his Queens. Leta soon found himself unable to compete against a vastly superior Zerg ground army as Soulkey ate away at Leta's Tanks and his economy. To truly appreciate the game, I encourage you to watch it in its entirety. Obviously I would have to include this game. Best has been in a pretty disappointing slump lately, showcasing some rather subpar play, leading many to believe that Bisu had absorbed Best's skill. But Best finally broke free of his recently disappointing performance by winning against Flash, out of all people. This game really demonstrated where Best's strength lies. Long, drawn out macro games. Total number of Gateways Best made? 25. ![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Milkis/PLWriteup06/bfgate.jpg) Of course, just throwing units at a Terran position is generally a losing proposition, but Best attacked Flash at his weakest and least fortified position at exactly the right time, forcing Flash to siege up in a subpar location, then storming the hell out of Flash's units. And once Best found a weakness in Flash's position, he did exactly what he should do: Pound that exact same weak position over and over with his excellent macro until more weaknesses show themselves. Once Best broke Flash's middle-left position, Flash never truly recovered. As Flash was forced to shuffle units around to defend weaknesses in his defense, Best took advantage of each opening that Flash gave, starting by crushing Flash's top middle expansion, then continually ramming Flash's middle left and bottom left expansion while preparing for a recall into Flash's base. Once that recall got into Flash's base, there was only one possible reaction: ![[image loading]](/staff/Mystlord/2011ProleagueR5/2011PLR5W1_12.jpg) Biting his lower lip, trying so hard not to smile... Honorary Mentions While the above games are noted because they were well played games of Starcraft, there was one game of Starcraft that deserves a special mention... Ok, so this game really wasn't the greatest PvP that ever graced the Starcraft scene, but it was significant for one player in particular: Pure. If you don't know what I'm talking about, well, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words: ![[image loading]](/staff/Mystlord/2011ProleagueR5/2011PLR5W1_13.jpg) Pure's last 13 games He has not won a single game since last December until this point. Granted, Pure has never been the most stable player, but never before has he been in such a rut. He was MIA for roughly 2 months, from 12/15/10 to 1/14/11 and from 1/16/11 to 02/27/11. His confidence has taken a big hit during this time, and so after he won the game, he came out of the booth with a radiant smile. Even though he lost his next game to Really, I hope that Pure is slowly getting back into the groove. ![[image loading]](/staff/Mystlord/2011ProleagueR5/2011PLR5W1_14.jpg) Fight on Pure, fight on. The emergence of Queens took the Terran players by such a surprise that they are now holding an emergency meeting to deal with the threat. But of course, that is besides the point. But now that the Korean memes are making their way over to us foreign fans in the forms of amazing comic strips, we thought that it would be nice to give everyone some nice background on the latest meme -- the Paewang meme that has been featured in some nice intensive interviews. Here's Waxangel. The Glorious Art of Losing by Waxangel Oh, DCinside Starcraft Gallery, what would we do without you. Just like their American cousins 4chan, it's far too easy to criticize this group of anonymous mischief-makers as the dregs of the internet, while quietly ignoring the fact that they create half of the funny things on it. This time, they've brought us a new Starcraft "line (following the Bonjwa-line, God-line, etc.)," the so called "Paewang" Line. What's a Paewang? According to the dictionary: Paewang (패왕, 覇王): noun. [pʰɛwaŋ] a king; a dynast; an autocrat; an overlord; a supreme ruler. So who's part of this line then? Certainly Flash and Jaedong; how about Bisu? Well, hold on a sec. Pae (패, 敗)]: noun. [pʰɛ] loss. You see where this is going. Paewang (패왕, 敗王): noun. [pʰɛwaŋ] a king of losing. Much better. So who's in the line? Pure (1-13), BeSt (3-10), JangBi (4-13), and HoeJJa (2-13).Understandably, Starcraft fans found this to be terribly entertaining, and made this to be quite a meme. It didn't help that people were posting funny webcomics of the following sort: by ㄷㄹㄷㅁㅍ (drdmp) Source: DCInside Starcraft Gallery + Show Spoiler [comics] + ![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Waxangel/paewang1.jpg) ![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Waxangel/paewang2.jpg) ![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Waxangel/paewang3.jpg) ![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Waxangel/paewang4.jpg) Progamers have a good sense of humor, even when they're the butt of a joke. When three of the "Paewangs" won their games on the Easter SPL weekend, Jangbi was more than happy to address the recent fad an interview. Source: Daily E-Sports Q: All of the Paewangs won today. A: It's boring if the Paewangs lose every game. We want to win games too, so we can have nice interviews. ARISE MY BRETHREN. PAEWANGS, ARISE! ![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/jangbieaster.jpg) by Maekaehanyeongi Source: DCInside Starcraft Gallery <-- Click here for more photoshops, with awesome background music. Thanks to Angelhalo Wiki, the ultimate source of fan lore for all things Korean BW, for being such a great reference website. And now, something more serious. The SKT Bias by Milkis Bisu, Winner's Interview after beating Airforce Ace (Daily E-Sports) If I prepared a lot more, I think I would have been able to get better results. I think I lacked understanding of the maps. I'm really angry because the team does not make any provisions to players to practice individual leagues. I think if I had one full day to prepare I would have been okay. I have some resentment because the team only thinks of Proleague. Getting eliminated from Individual Leagues has a huge effect on the player. If I prepared little by little earlier then it would not have ended like this. It sounds like an excuse but I was really tired while going through Winner's League. We had two days off for break, and I couldn't prepare well because I had to rest. I was jealous because other players looked like they prepared really well. I did my best to get two wins today so I could say this today. Because I haven't been able to go to the semi finals or even to the quarter finals lately I wanted to make it there. I can't even look at the fans who cheer for me. SK Telecom has quite a bad rep for being exceptionally focused on Proleague. We all remember their policy back in 2006 when they forced their players to choose only between OSL and MSL. Rumors also have it that even Boxer was denied practice time when he had asked for time to prepare for individual leagues back then. But to what extent is Bisu telling the truth? Is it true that Bisu did not get much of a break? After all, there was the workshop, the "marathon" (a 5K walk). Rumors also have it that SK Telecom players only got about 3 hours of sleep while preparing during the Winner's League Post Season, so they all needed the rest. But to put everything into context, here's an excerpt from Fantasy's interview from the same day. Fantasy, Winner's Interview after beating Airforce Ace (Daily E-Sports) I had a lot of time to prepare for the MSL so I was quite ambitious, so I'm quite disappointed I was eliminated so easily. It keeps lingering in my mind so I think I'll be disappointed for a while. I don't think that I played badly in the MSL matches, but I think I was flustered since it was the first time I've played against a style like that. This fueled the fire, of course. Immense amount of speculation fired up from Bisu fans, as they were quite angry at SKT for giving Fantasy plenty of time, but Bisu not enough. This event actually led people to dig up up some amusing comments from oov's cyworld -- where in which a Bisu fan comments that this OSL and MSL will be taken by Bisu, and oov responds "But Fantasy is the one who needs to win...". Whether joking or not, this comment is now being used as evidence for the hypothesis that SKT is content using Bisu solely for Proleague, and promoting Fantasy for individual leagues. Indeed, angry Bisu fans are now chanting for Bisu to declare himself as a Free Agent for the next season. But how much of that is actually true? Let us see that just this November, Daily E-Sports reported that with respect to the most recent Bacchus OSL: Bisu expected that Shine would be his opponent in the round of 36. Because of this, it's been reported that he is spending all of his time preparing for every possibility, even skipping the friendly Progame soccer matches. Indeed, SK Telecom has given Bisu plenty of time to prepare for the past, but unfortunately, Bisu's MSL matches fell at a rather bad time for the team to make some concessions. The finals took place on the 9th, and Bisu's games took place on the 21st while Proleague started on the 23rd. Meanwhile, Fantasy's games took place on the 18th -- which just begs the question -- if Fantasy had enough time to prepare from the 9th to the 18th (after the workshop and the marathon), then shouldn't Bisu have had ample time also? Bisu claims that he only had two days to rest after the workshop, but Fantasy follows the same schedule. Bisu in fact, even admitted himself that if he had prepared little by little earlier, he would have been okay. This interpretation matches with both Fantasy's comments and Bisu's comments without resorting to extreme justifications . The real issue, I believe is that Bisu chose to prepare for the MSL rather late, and by that time the team had began preparing for Proleague and was unable to make concessions. I think the lesson here is pretty clear: Procrastination sucks. Let the progamers teach you that, and I hope Bisu had learned his lesson this time, as I do want to see him win something this year given his Proleague performance. But I believe that the fault lies more in Bisu than in SKT for this entire incident. Thanks to doothegee for helping out with the research and fact checking. Thanks so much! And that's all for now! Thanks for tuning in and we'll be back next week with more coverage. Enjoy the games, and make sure you catch Jaedong get his 200th Proleague win this week! (hopefully) Writeup brought to you by the Proleague Coverage team. It's midterm season, so stay cool and we hope you enjoyed this study break! Thanks as always to HawaiianPig for the amazing banners and graphics. We're always grateful to Simplistik for his hard work for formatting and updating the R&S thread! 
 | ||
|
jtype
England2167 Posts
Excellent write up though. I missed most of those games so it's great to have them broken down.  | ||
|
Qzy
Denmark1121 Posts
| ||
|
JSH
United States4109 Posts
Gratz to Best for a win finally And oh wow Pure is slumping so hard I knew he wasn't doing well but that's pretty D: Thanks for the great write-up Appreciate all the effort put into the articles and game reports | ||
|
StutteR
United States1903 Posts
 Nice write ups! Hope the Paewangs get out of their slump. Never thought much about Pure other than his deep deep voice and girly mannerisms but BeSt, jangbi, and sometimes even Hoejja can be pretty good. | ||
Kiante
Australia7069 Posts
wow but seriously, looks awesome | ||
Milkis
5003 Posts
| ||
|
Doraemon
Australia14949 Posts
| ||
|
aimaimaim
Philippines2167 Posts
Thank you for this! Fight on Ace .. FIGHT ON! | ||
|
zeru
8156 Posts
| ||
|
Keone
United States812 Posts
And though it's funny to make fun of Hoejja sometimes... poor Best. He used to be SO famous for his unbelievable macro... | ||
|
NicksonReyes
Philippines4431 Posts
. | ||
|
Mawi
Sweden4365 Posts
| ||
|
Divine-Sneaker
Denmark1225 Posts
| ||
|
poptartazn
United States84 Posts
On April 29 2011 19:21 Doraemon wrote: paewangs, funny name, so chinese It's a hangul/hanja pun, but it's still korean | ||
|
Simplistik
1891 Posts
I liked the overview of all the matches, particularly because I haven't got the time (or energy) to watch all of them. | ||
|
bN`
Slovenia504 Posts
| ||
|
5FDP
Germany44 Posts
| ||
2Pacalypse-
Croatia9453 Posts
On the other hand, I really love this new trend of using queens in ZvT (like ZvT was not epic enough of a match up). Also, these write-ups are getting more and more awesome, good job to the whole writing team, never stop being so awesome! | ||
|
potatoedoughnut
United States334 Posts
| ||
| ||
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/keit/star.png)
