[GSL] Symbol vs Seed, MC vs TaeJa

Results from Live Report Thread by SeeKeR.
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Swarming Youth
– Young Zerg talents ZeNEXLife and TSL_Shine stand out amidst a field of predictable winners

Just a few months ago, when the Zerg race faced its darkest days in Starcraft II history, Life and Shine would have been welcomed and worshiped as potential messiahs. However, we have now entered the era of the queen patch, and now Life and Shine find themselves joining the GSL's Zerg ranks as merely icing on the cake, two young players to make the Swarm's embarrassing wealth of talent seem even more obscene.

The fifteen year old Life was a player many had been expecting to break out onto the GSL scene for a while, but he suffered from severe nervousness whenever playing in the GomTV booth. From last night's games alone, it was difficult to tell if whether he had overcome those nerves, or was merely attempting to cover them up. Going up against Empire's Vines, Life went for a very fast Nydus worm in game one and followed it with a six pool rush in game two. Whatever the underlying psychological reasons were, Life's strategies proved to be extremely effective, and he won what might have been the fastest PvZ series in GSL history.

In Shine's case, there was no ambiguity. His complete domination of long time Code S veteran Virus in two lengthy games showed that he had no problem reproducing his best online and GSTL form in the GSL as well. Though it was surprising to see a famous GSL survivalist like Virus get eliminated by a player who was essentially a rookie, the quality of Shine's play left no question as to who deserved to remain in the GSL.

– ST_July becomes the final OSL champion to drop from the GSL

Boxer, Nada, and now finally, July. One by one, they've all fallen to the wayside. It was a wonder to begin with that legends with so many miles on their esports odometers were competitive in Starcraft II for so long. But in the end, it was inevitable that they could not keep up with teenagers who had just begun to chase their dreams, dreams that the legends themselves had provided.

As July went up against LG-IMYoDa, one could see glimpses of his greatness in the way he took over the map and consumed the expansions. But there was stubbornness as well, such as his refusal to spread creep, and his belief that Terran armies could be engaged off of it. Such mentality would have prevailed in the OSL, or even in the GSL one year ago, but it was obsolete in this day and age. Yoda played adequately yet not remarkably by today's standards, but it was still enough to overcome the tired god in the end.

– As expected: coL.Killer, FXOLeenock, TSL_Polt, FnaticRC aLive, and FnaticRC Oz cruise through

Though July passed on to a different plane of existence, the other stalwarts of the GSL held their ground. In the case of Killer, Polt, and Oz, it happened with remarkable ease as they outplayed their opponents in 2 - 0 stomps. In aLive's case, it required a bit of trickery, as cheesy tactics saw him through after he started the series by dropping a game to the skilled LG-IMFirst. Leenock's story was that of a more conventional comeback: After losing to MvPTAiLS when his overlord drop was caught mid-flight, Leenock fought his way back in game two with a mutalisk base trade, and then by thwarting a two-immortal push in the final game.

• Symbol
  
  Strengths
  – Strong mechanics and macro
  – Confident in his ability
  – Is friends with Jaedong
  
  Weaknesses
  – Lack of experience this deep in Code S
  – Has never won a major tournament
  
  Ideal winning scenario: Plays smart, doesn't choke and gets the job done in 3 games
  
  Craziest winning scenario: Loses two games in a row, takes the next two and finishes the comeback with an early pool all-in on Daybreak.
• Seed
  
  Strengths:
  – The two-base push is strong in this one
  – His ceremonies are possibly Top 5 in GSL
  – Is Tasteless' first Protoss man crush
  
  Weaknesses
  – Hasn't had a defining series or match to prove he is ready for this stage
  – Not going to win any TeamLiquid popularity contests this season
  
  Ideal winning scenario: Has a career defining series and beats Symbol in one of the greatest Bo5's we've ever seen and proves he belongs in the top tier of Code S.
  
  Craziest winning scenario: Cheeses every single game and takes the series. Instantly becomes the new villain of the GSL and the boards burn down from all the hatred.

When it comes to major Code S experience, these two, out of the eight remaining in the tournament, are the new kids on the block. While Symbol is trying to become the first royal roader in Code S history after Squirtle was seconds away from becoming one in last season's final, Seed is only in his second season of Code S and didn't get past the first round in his debut two months ago.

Symbol: The Superhuman

A nickname can tell a lot about your play. MC is called the Kratos Protoss for his aggressive and merciless style against his enemies. MVP, the Game Genie Terran, was given his nickname based off his incredible game decisions and how well he adapted to unique situations. For Symbol, in Korea, the community has connected Symbol to the Witch Doctor class in Diablo 3; essentially, he is compared to a supernatural being of power. From his shocking upset of MarineKing in the group stage of Iron Squid tournament to defeating Nestea in the semifinals, to his reverse all-kill of Incredible Miracle in the GSTL, no one has looked more superhuman than Symbol the past few months.

A lot of the time, players don't live up to the hype. They show up in a team league or online tournament, string together a few nice wins, and before you know it, people start to claim that he could be the next big thing. Only twice before in GomTV history has a GSTL super-ace been able to turn his success in team competition into equivalent individual success. Of course, those two players would be MMA and DongRaeGu, who have five combined GSL finals appearances between them, and three championships.

Following the same storyline as MMA and DRG, Symbol came to prominence on a team trying to find its identity. When MMA first became the first super ace of GSTL, Slayers was a brand new team. They were amazingly green, had no distinct character, and got smashed in their debut GSTL tournament by ZeNex, a team seen as the weakest in the field. MMA was able to turn the ship around the very next season, carried his team as the ace and won back-to-back team titles for Slayers.

With DRG, it was pretty much the same thing. MvP was a new team with no reputation, and DRG took it upon himself to drag his team to the finals in their debut GSTL season, only to fall to MMA's Slayers in the final. He would get his own team league title the season after, helping MvP get to the finals and beat Prime.

It's no secret that TSL was in a bit of a mess before Symbol decided that he didn't want to lose games anymore. All of their veteran players except for Revival had left for different teams, and Polt, their best player, was playing below expectations in team competition. Symbol instantly rectified the situation and took control like MMA and DRG before him, willing his team to victory over LG-IM and FnaticRC.

Springboarding off his Iron Squid success and GSTL rampage, Symbol proved he could do well in Code S as well. Being put into two Group of Deaths in a row, Symbol has beaten championship-level players like Squirtle and MarineKing to get to where he is today. With his love of overlord drops and unorthodox yet rock solid way of playing Zerg, Symbol has not only become one of the best Zergs in the world, but one of the most popular as well.

Symbol has a chance to follow in MMA and DRG's illustrious footsteps, achieving the highest degree of success in both the GSL and GSTL. This season's Code S crown is one half of that achievement. Similar to Squirtle last season, Symbol is considered to have one of the best chances to actually complete and walk down the royal road, but the Startale player last season showed us also how hard it is to close the deal.

The Code S trophy is the most prestigious in Starcraft 2 and the most difficult to win, but luckily for Symbol, if anyone can do it in his first try, it's the Superhuman.


Seed: The 1% Protoss

When comparing Seed and Symbol, but there is one main difference. While everyone and their imaginary friends are proclaiming Symbol to be one of best players in the world and a legit Code S championship contender, Seed has gone virtually forgotten.

When Seed first came onto the scene, he was a GSTL hero. Proclaimed as Tasteless Protoss man crush, a lot of people had high hopes for Seed. In the very first season of team league before the IM started deploying their more questionable line-ups, before Nestea stopped caring about silly things like team league, and before Mvp's wrists started to disintegrate, Incredible Miracle was an outstanding team. They got to the finals of the league with players like Seed and let their big guns take care of things when it came down to the final set.

Seed helped his team to the champions of the very first GSTL and had the potential to be IM's Protoss representative alongside Nestea and Mvp in Code S, competing for titles every season. The the wait began to see how long it would take for that potential to be realized.

The waiting continued.

And we waited some more.

By the time we finally saw Seed again, it had been almost a year, and not even Tasteless remembered his long lost man crush. From the time Seed took the GSTL by storm, we had seen dozens of new Protoss players come into the scene and try and challenge MC for the title of Protoss President. Seed was able to take down Boxer in his opening Code A match and advance to Code S in his first try after the lengthy vanishing act.

After having a disappointing royal road season, losing to Genius in the final match of their Ro32 group stage, Seed was able to wiggle his way out of one of the easier Up-and-Down groups and get back into Code S for the second consecutive season. Using two base pushes and other all-in strategies to get past the first two rounds of this season's Code S, Seed hasn't become one of the more loved players of the final eight.

Every season when you get down to the quarterfinals, you see archetypes from past seasons. You have the heavy favorite that the majority of people think will win the title (DongRaeGu); the fan favorite that people will support and cheer to win no matter what (Naniwa); the players who wouldn't surprise you at all if they won the title (Nestea, MC, Symbol); the dark horses who could pull major upsets (Taeja and Byun); and then, finally, you have that one guy.

You know that guy. The one that is picked last for dodgeball. The one that can't find a date for senior prom and has to take his cousin. The one that never gets the last slice of pizza. This season, that one guy would be Seed. In TeamLiquid's new poll to the community on who would end up winning this season's Code S, only 1% of the 14,000 who voted thought that Seed would be the champion when the dust finally settled.

In the history of the GSL, that one guy in the quarterfinals has had his ups and downs. TheBest was that one guy in the Super Tournament, defying all odds and getting to the final eight before displaying his best banshee control and getting destroyed by MarineKing. HongUn, throughout his career, was that one guy. No one ever thought he should beat the people he was taking down and his whole Code S life was being that one guy who no one thought belonged with the elite level of talent surrounding him.

The two best cases of that one guy going on and doing well in Code S would be two seasons ago with Gumiho and Jjakji during GSL November. Gumiho made it to the quarterfinals to the surprise of everyone, getting laughed at by Mvp during the group nominations and being a player that a lot of players wanted to pick. Gumiho used that to motivate him and went on a run of a lifetime, beating Puzzle in the Ro8 with his hectic multi-drop style and was up 2-0 on the eventual champion of the season DongRaeGu before losing in five games.

Seed, if looking for any silver lining at being that one guy, should go back and watch Jjakji's championship season. When the Ro8 was announced, Artosis and Tasteless went down a line on who they thought could win the season and it ended up with Artosis dismissing the idea Jjakji could end up as the winner. As you can see, Jjakji was able to breakthrough the stigma of being the guy no one thinks can win and take the entire tournament.

Symbol is the huge favorite in this match-up, and Seed is going to have to pull out all his tricks to get into the semifinals. With seemingly the whole world against him and only a minuscule amount of people rooting him on to win it all, we'll see if Seed will go the way of Jjakji and shock the world or end up as another one of those guys that never stood a chance.


Overall Outlook and Prediction

It's hard to pick against Symbol. With his GSTL dominance, going through much tougher groups than Seed to get to the quarterfinals, and just considering how well Zerg is doing recently, it would almost seem ridiculous to pick against him. If we were to play devil's advocate, you have to point out that out of all the match-ups, vP probably is Symbol's weakest match-up. While he has possibly the best Zerg line-up from top to bottom on his team to consult with, and a great Terran in Polt to practice with for ZvTs, TSL really doesn't have that good of a Protoss line-up for Symbol to work with. Inori and Value aren't terrible, but neither have cracked Code A and aren't specialists in the match-up.

Seed will have Losira and possibly Nestea to talk to and practice with for this match, and he is already at his best in the PvZ match-up. It isn't out of the realm of possibility for Seed to win this, having already given Symbol a hard time in their Code A match last season, but there is a reason why Symbol is the Superhuman. He carried his team in GSTL, finished high in multiple international tournaments, qualified for the next OSL, and has reached the Code S Ro8 through two groups of death this season.

Seed shouldn't be blown out and could possibly take it to a fifth game, but if Symbol plays at his top level, there will be little chance for Seed to break through into the semifinals.

Prediction: Symbol 3 - 1 Seed

• TaeJa
  
  Strengths
  – Ridiculous mechanics, especially micro
  – Good mid-late game TvP player
  
  Weaknesses
  – Constantly dies to Protoss all-ins in tournaments
  – Lack of experience in the elimination rounds of major tournament
  – Terrible at interviews
  
  Ideal winning scenario: Scouts meticulously, plays safe, defends well and crushes MC in the mid-game.
  
  Craziest winning scenario: Trades games with MC, Squirtles him in the final set.
  
• MC
  
  Strengths:
  – Best all-ins in the game
  – Has played and won more multi-game series than we care to count
  – Reasonably good dancer
  
  Weaknesses
  – Standard play is somewhat unproven due to frequency of all-ins
  
  Ideal winning scenario: Dismantles TaeJa with three different kind of attacks in a row, just like Squirtle did last season.
  Craziest winning scenario: Plays sick double mind games and defeats TaeJa by playing super greedy in every game.
  
  

It's rare to see two players with such clear strengths and weaknesses go up against each other. MC is the master of all-ins and early attacks. TaeJa is monstrous if he is allowed to play a macro game. The key points for both players couldn't be more simple: MC needs to kill TaeJa early. TaeJa needs to survive.


MC: A Master at his Craft

Though MC occasionally shows us that he's a more well-rounded player than his public image would suggest, he is still at heart, a peerless artisan of all-ins. When a difficult opponent must be defeated at an important juncture, it's almost always a cunning, perfectly executed timing attack that seals the deal for MC in the end. Even when MC is on the receiving end, all-in rushes are kind to their master. The incredible gateway unit micro that makes him such a deadly attacker makes MC one of the best defenders as well.

MC's present Code S run encapsulates these characteristics well. Just two weeks ago, in the very match that saw him advance to the Ro8, MC defeated an elite TvP player in MKP by succeeding with a blink-stalker rush, and then holding off a 1/1/1 all-in from MKP perfectly.

We also saw MC's weakness this season. For his incredible prowess at going all-in, MC has not been convincing at playing standard, macro PvT games. In MC's very first match of the season, he barely put up a fight in a 0 – 2 loss to coL.GanZi when he opted to put his aggressive tendencies aside. Not surprisingly, MC eventually did make it through the group by defeating GanZi again later in the night, but this time by going for his trademark aggressive timings.

It's not that MC can't play macro PvT. He's shown some very solid standard play in a handful of games, like one against ST_Bomber during the Red Bull Battlegrounds finals, against a variety of Terran of opponents in his NASL Season Three run, or the deciding game of the IEM WC grand finals. However, those kind of games are more the exception than the rule. They're the kind of games that he needs to play now and then to set-up his real strength in timing rushes, the jabs that set up the haymaker.


TaeJa: The All-in Magnet

Compared to MC, TaeJa is almost his mirror opposite in TvP. TaeJa is at his best when he can play greedy macro games as his excellent mechanics allows him to bludgeon his opponents to death. Like other skilled late game TvP players such as FnaticRC aLive or MKP, TaeJa can use his great macro, micro, and army positioning to make the idea of the invincible Protoss deathball seem like a more of a joke than a legitimate complaint. We've seen TaeJa do it countless times in online cups, and he proved that he could reproduce that kind of play in a live setting when he defeated ST_AcE in an exciting slugfest during the GSL Ro32.

Conversely, TaeJa has a shown that he has a major weakness in his vulnerability to early game attacks – precisely the kind MC shows total mastery over. When it comes to live tournaments, nearly all of his losses to Protoss in 2012 were due to his opponents' unconventional play. TaeJa was knocked out of the previous GSL by ST_Squirtle's three-cheese variety pack, flummoxed by Quantic.SaSe's cannons and Liquid`HerO's DTs at DreamHack Summer, and most recently, suffered a 0 – 2 defeat to LG-IMSeed's four and six gates in the GSL Ro16 (in an ironic twist of fate, the famous all-in technician NSH_Tassadar defeated him in a macro game in the GSTL). People familiar with TaeJa's play will tell you that this weakness isn't a big factor when he's playing online, but it's clearly becoming becoming a dangerous liability in live tournaments.


Squaring Up: The Experience Factor

None of the above information is any big secret, and both players will know each others' relative strengths and weaknesses going into this match-up. There's a lot of potential for mind games that go many levels deep, involving the "he knows that I know that he knows that I know..." kind of thinking.

MC has a massive advantage here, having played (and won) vastly more series than TaeJa, against a far wider variety of opponents. TaeJa might be the master of online cups, but he enters this match with precisely three series played in the elimination rounds of live tournaments, a rather pitiful number compared to what must be several dozens for MC. To make matters worse, TaeJa is 0 – 3 in those series as well. It wouldn't be a surprise if MC read TaeJa like a book, and it would be no great shame for TaeJa either.

While the experience factor points to a landslide victory for MC, it's not like the situation is hopeless for TaeJa. In the past, MC has rarely tried to exploit his reputation for all-ins by playing ultra-greedy, so doing very safe rax-FE builds could be the best strategy for TaeJa. Even if MC does happen to read this plan and counters it by going for greedy Nexus first builds every game, playing a macro game against MC with an economic disadvantage would be preferable to getting destroyed by a 4-gate while going command-center before barracks. Basically, I'm recommending the White-Ra plan: Make expand, then defense it. (Like most White-Ra-isms, it's easier said than done)


Overall Outlook and Prediction

While TaeJa has probably learned his lesson and will win a couple of macro games where he opens up safely with three bunkers, I get the feeling that he won't be able to resist the urge to gamble in a few games as well, and lose as a result.

I can just see it now: TaeJa decides he really, really needs to open CC first on Atlantis Spaceship and then dies to another cannon rush. Or how about this: TaeJa goes FE into gasless 5-rax on Antiga and tries the marine-sneak around the Xel'Naga watch-tower, only to get dismembered by MC's instant reaction time and perfect force fields.

I can imagine quite a few more such scenarios that you think Terrans would stop getting themselves into against MC, but somehow, they keep happening anyway.

Prediction: MC 3 – 2 TaeJa