Teams win and teams lose. Players go on hotstreaks and starleague winners fall into mediocrity. It is all part of the cosmic ballet that is Brood War.
For, fellow fans, the Starcraft battlefield acts as a great neutralizer. The overall skill is so high in this, the most professional of leagues (get it?) that even the most lowly of players will always stand a chance.
While sometimes a player will look absolutely invincible, he always crashes back to reality. On the other side, even players laughed at occasionally string together a few wins, or a minor starleague run. The SKT zerg lineup knows a thing or two about that.
The dueling grounds have an effect that humbles some and honors others, an effect that brings the pack closer and draws those on the outskirts inwards.
Brood War is The Great Equalizer.
Game of the Week, Bisu vs Jaedong
by Mystlord
by Mystlord
Unfortunately we didn't see Yellow perform in Proleague this week, so we were robbed of seeing him featured in three Game of the Weeks in a row. Damn it. Oh well, in place of Yellow's awesomeness, we have something kind of awesome, that really reminded me of 2008-2009, both in terms of the map, Judgment Day, and the play style featured, aka Jaedong vs Bisu!
We haven't really seen too much of Bisu since his fall from grace a while back, though apparently now he's back... the same as before. His play style hasn't really changed that much, and his strongest feature still remains his impeccable multi-tasking, as was clearly seen in this game. Jaedong is still the beast that he always was, and a definitely strong all around player. Unfortunately, he still has a ways to go in his multi-tasking skills, as he kind of fell apart at some points during this game. Regardless, let's jump in without further ado!
Jaedong starts at the 5 position as the teal Zerg while Bisu warps in at 11 as the Orange Protoss. I wish they changed the colors because Orange on desert mini-map is ridiculously hard to see, but whatever. The map is Judgment Day, which really reminds me of Andromeda, especially in terms of map layout. The primary difference between the two is that Judgment Day has narrow and convoluted passageways instead of an open center, and it also has more resource nodes, allowing for more macro oriented play.
Both players open up completely standard, with an obvious Forge FE from Bisu, and strangely enough, an Overpool from Jaedong. On a map like Judgment Day, a 12 Hatch should be fine, but the Overpool from Jaedong does allow him to apply some early pressure with Lings, and also prevents Bisu from teching up too fast, which is definitely a concern. Either way, the long distance between naturals on Judgment Day still allow Bisu to place a 14 Nexus after Forge, before warping in two cannons for defense. However, because Jaedong spotted Bisu's scouting Probe earlier with his Overlord, he knows that Bisu is in the top left position, so he immediately rallies his initial 6 Lings to Bisu's base.
Bisu meanwhile is harassing Jaedong's mineral line with his scouting Probe, but Jaedong soon pulls it together after almost losing a Drone and kills the pesky Probe with his Drones. Jaedong's Lings have arrived at Bisu's base, and two are able to sneak into Bisu's base before the Cannons complete. Bisu pulls four Probes to chase around the two Lings, but the Lings end up only serving as scouts.
When his first Zealot comes out, Bisu opts to send it immediately to Jaedong's base, hoping to do some economic damage if Jaedong was greedy enough to not spawn any Zerglings. Jaedong had spawned 8 more Zerglings though, and those easily drove back and killed Bisu's Zealot. The Zealot bought enough time for Bisu to sneak a scouting Probe in though, which sees Jaedong's building Spire. On the other side of the world, Jaedong's Zergling that's still alive from like minute 3 sees Bisu researching Air Weapons, so Jaedong responds by beginning to research Air Carapace. Jaedong almost kills Bisu's first Corsair with his Scourge, but some quick micro by Bisu saves his Sair, which sees that Jaedong has taken a base at 6 and is transitioning into 5 Hatch Hydra.
Hero Ling Scout
Hoping to harass that new base, Bisu sends two Zealots down there, which encounter Jaedong's 8 Zerglings. Showing the trademark
Once Bisu sees Jaedong's Hydras outside of his natural, he sends his Corsairs out of his base, trying to catch some Overlords while the Hydras are out of position to deal with the threat. Jaedong's +1 Air Carapace still hasn't finished, while Bisu's Air Attack has, so Bisu is able to annihilate several of Jaedong's Overlords before some Scourge fly in to pick off some Corsairs. Jaedong is able to reduce Bisu's Corsair fleet to just 3. Bisu has meanwhile flown a Reaver into Jaedong's natural, and picks off one Drone before being forced to retreat.
Pre-Scourges...
Post-Scouges!
Jaedong reveals his answer to Bisu's Corsair/Reaver on this map – Doom Drops. They're extremely effective on this map, not only because of the size of the map, but also because the paths into Bisu's natural and main aren't that easy to defend. Jaedong drops a huge force of Hydralisks into Bisu's natural, which destroy the Nexus, but accomplish little else as Bisu's Zealots come in and destroy the remaining Hydras. Jaedong also killed many of Bisu's Probes, setting his economy back quite a bit.
Yes, he really does lose from here.
Jaedong also tries to drop a few Hydras behind Bisu's mineral only expansion, but Corsairs catch the attempt and shut it down. Bisu sends an attack to 6 to counter, and Reavers just do an extraordinary amount of damage to Jaedong's Hydras.
Most of these kills caused by Reavers.
The Zealot/Reaver combination completely destroys the base at 6, and evens up the game economically, since Jaedong lost basically no Drones. He takes 3 to compensate, and retakes 6 soon after.
Bisu starts transitioning to a more Dragoon and High Templar heavy composition in anticipation of Lurkers, which Jaedong is still researching at this time. Bisu loads up a DT and two Hts into a Shuttle, and sends them towards Jaedong's base. The DT delays mining at Jaedong's 6 for a while, but is soon shut down. The first HT ends up getting no kills, but the second HT is able to get 5 or so Drones with a single Storm.
Bisu moves out just as Jaedong's first Lurkers finish, and he is able to kill some Hydras sitting outside of his natural. Jaedong sets up a flank, with a large group of Hydras at his 3 o'clock base, ready to hopefully snipe Bisu's Reavers. Unaware of the base at 3 and the impending flank, Bisu advances into Jaedong's rally area, but even though it initially seems that he will win the engagement, Jaedong soon brings his reinforcements to bear and decimates Bisu's army. At this point, it seems that Jaedong is in a clear advantage, as he has five bases to Bisu's three, and his Hive tech and presumably Adrenal Glands upgrade are finished. Defilers are also out for Jaedong, which only serve to further cement his lead.
Jaedong sends a force to 12 to shut down any potential expansion attempt by Bisu, but unfortunately he forgets to micro against Storms, and pretty much his entire attack force melts. Jaedong didn't do any damage, and lost a lot of units.
Lost these units...
And all these Lurkers for nothing!
Even worse, he continued to funnel units into the attack, only suffering more losses while not really doing any damage to Bisu's main army. Bisu thus gets12 up, and Jaedong is down a lot of supply against Bisu. At this point, Jaedong makes a crucial mistake. He drops 14 Lings and a Defiler into Bisu's mined out natural. This might not seem like much, but when Jaedong is as strapped for units as he is, those Cracklings could have helped out a great deal against Bisu's main army, especially under the cover of Swarm. As it turns out, Bisu completely rolled over Jaedong's army, though Jaedong refuses to give up despite losing his main and all of his tech.
The battle drags on for a while longer, and Jaedong rebuilds his army and drops Bisu's main. Although he succeeds in wiping out Bisu's Gateways and Production buildings, he's just unable to crush Bisu's main army. Jaedong doesn't have good enough upgrades on his units to defeat the Zealot/Archon/Goon/Reaver combination that Bisu uses to break through all of Jaedong's bases. Bisu slowly works his way across the map, leveling all of Jaedong's expansions. Jaedong's last base is at 6, and once Bisu starts destroying that, Jaedong finally GGs.
Lol at the mini-map...
It came down to just one mistake by Jaedong to seal the game in Bisu's favor. If Jaedong had just camped a while longer, he could have built up a solid economic advantage, and considering that he was also taking bottom left, Bisu would have been powerless to stop the Ultralisks that would inevitably come. Unfortunately for Jaedong, he got crushed before he could build up that advantage, but major props to Bisu for taking decisive action and attacking Jaedong instead of rushing back to defend his base.
We said that the field of war, brood war, is a magnificent leveler of skill right? ACE showed what that means this week, really this whole round, changing their luck of the season and realizing their goal of 10 wins.
Overall these last weeks seem to be cementing each team in whatever place it has been for the round. A string of teams has been going 1-1 each week for the past month or so, which leaves us with tight standings but ones that aren't changing much in the spots that matter.
STX lost twice (to Stars and ACE) which makes their position more precarious than it really should be, they could actually find themselves in third if the stars align improperly. MBC is hot on their tail, and while the switch-a-roo is unlikely it remains a remote possibility.
With that, its time for the truly important issues - fantasy.
Fantasy Proleague week 6
by IntoTheWow
by IntoTheWow
STANDINGS
SUMMARY
- Bittersweet
Not many people traded for ACE players. It's a hard call since their players cost so little that the value drop is too big if you switch for players from other teams. So far ACE is playing pretty well. They went 1-1 this week, not bad for a team who usually ends 2-9 each round. As the round is dropping the curtain, ACE players pick up an interesting amount of points. Their "ace" RuBy has 23 points so far, while other players in the team get 15, 11 or 8. Not bad at all considering their cost. Will people risk up their chances next round with ACE players? - Bittersweet #2
Flash won this week, but....
...he didn't play one of the games and he didn't get to play an ace match. A player costing as much as Flash does NEEDS to ace once a week to keep their value up. Terrible, terribledamageseason for the people who picked Flash.
Even if the bitter taste remains from the loses Flash had the past weeks, KT is on the top of the rank and victory could be sweet. Just stop disappointing us in FPL Flash : ] - WINgjin Stars!
BAM! Woongjin Stars goes 3-0 (against STX) and 3-1 (against WeMade) this week, taking +10 for all their owners. The 3-1 could have been a 3-0 as well, but Stars decided to play PianO. Woongjin, theres no race rule anymore, you don't have decent terrans, stop sending them.
So close to playoffs, yet so far - Calm before the shitstorm
What the hell STX SouL. You went 0-2 this week. Kal lost 2 games, Calm lost another. NO ONE FROM STX WON A MATCH EXCEPT FOR CUTEANGEL. Did you notice how weird that last sentence sounded? I did. I cannot believe this.
Kal and Calm better be in a match fixing scandal, filling their pockets with thousands of dollars. Else I'm going to be pissed that a team with this shape is getting into the playoffs.
If you didn't trade STX players or the team by now, your FPL team is probably 6 feet under.
The question is: Will you pick STX players next round when they are cheap? Hrmm...
Only one week remains for this round. Some teams have one match left, some have two. Trading becomes tricky for the people at the top spots. If you are doing good with trades, think of good trades to grab an award next week. If you are doing horribly, try to suck even more so you can win an award too!
See you guys next week
One more week. The next few days are of grave importance.
Actually that is not entirely true, no team is in any truly dire situation as they pretty much know where they stand in regards to post season. That certainly doesn't make anything less exciting, however. Here is a look at whats coming up.
Final Week Previews
by harem
by harem
Hwaseung OZ vs Hite SPARKYZ
MBCGame HERO vs KT Rolster
eSTRO vs Woongjin Stars
Air Force ACE vs CJ Entus
STX SouL vs SK Telecom T1
Samsung KHAN vs WeMade FOX
Hwaseung OZ vs MBCGame HERO
Hite SPARKYZ vs KT Rolster
MBCGame HERO vs KT Rolster
eSTRO vs Woongjin Stars
Air Force ACE vs CJ Entus
STX SouL vs SK Telecom T1
Samsung KHAN vs WeMade FOX
Hwaseung OZ vs MBCGame HERO
Hite SPARKYZ vs KT Rolster
STX may as well have had their heads in the sand this Proleague round but they do have one reliable weapon and no suit of bees will ever stop him. His name is Cuteangel and this is what he has to say about that suit of bees.
On December 27 2009 16:21 MrHoon wrote:
- You are 4:2 against Bisu including non-sanctioned games
▲ I remember all the games I played with Bisu. But if you add the map testing games, I am actually 6:2 against bisu. But bisu probably doesn't care about that. I may have put the score 1:1 in sanctioned games today but it wasn't a big deal for me.
- You are 4:2 against Bisu including non-sanctioned games
▲ I remember all the games I played with Bisu. But if you add the map testing games, I am actually 6:2 against bisu. But bisu probably doesn't care about that. I may have put the score 1:1 in sanctioned games today but it wasn't a big deal for me.
Sadly, Midas is too busy practicing for individual leagues but just the mere thought of Nada vs Stork or Jangbi is enough to make fangirls everywhere go wet in anticipation. Also, I hope Baby finds his lucky rainbow striped socks because him in form vs Stork or Jangbi should make for a great game. Another Baby vs Great like what they had on Roadrunner would be acceptable as well.
Light may have managed to beat Flash (although who doesn't these days?) but his worst nightmare lurks near and he wears a Hwaseung Oz uniform. These nightmares cause Light to break out in a cold sweat while shouting, "NOOO KIM TAE GYUN, WHY DID YOU HAVE TO LISTEN TO KIM CARRIER?" I'm sure Light flashes back to that series everytime he loses to carriers now. Hopefully, we also get to see a Backho vs Jaehoon to finally prove once and for all that "Hwaseung Oz Protosses are the best protosses."
Stick a fork in us 'cuz we're done. The games have already started, so grab your favorite beverage, snacks, and friends (not necessarily in that order) and settle down to prepare for the very last week of this season! Exciting times are ahead, we're nearly to playoff season, a season so important it deserves bold. Proleague is an experience, remember to enjoy.