Proleague began the second of its four rounds last week with several of the teams featuring new players on their rosters. It's safe to say the newcomers had quite an impact, though not always in the way the teams may have hoped. Here are the standings at the end of week one.MarineKing looked surprisingly sharp as he won his first official match after returning to StarCraft 2. Facing MVP's Dream, MKP used a a curious mech-sky style to squash Dream's bio oriented forces. Though MKP struggled a bit to keep up with Dream's multi-directional harassment, he defended well enough to eventually amass an unstoppable army of mixed forces. The "defend until you can win with one push" approach made it look more like an IM_Mvp game than a MKP game, but as long as he's winning, Prime fans aren't complaining.Life also made his Proleague debut last week, but unlike MKP he failed to impress. Playing for IM as allowed by the ST-IM partnership, Life was put up against SKT's Fantasy. It seemed like an easy match for Life with the SKT Terran coming off poor form in individual leagues and barely any starts in round 1, but Fantasy upped his play for round 2. By bringing an unusual half-mech, half-bio composition to the table, Fantasy was able to confuse Life and give him army composition conundrums.Life could have won despite his less than optimal reaction to Fantasy's unusual strategy, but he ended up taking a horrible, almost panicked engagement with brood lords that cost him the game. For all his individual league success, Life was never a particularly great player for Startale in the GSTL, and it seems like that hasn't changed now that he's playing for IM in the Proleague.KT Rolster (2-0)When you see the difference in how KT Rolster players perform in Proleague and in GSL, it makes you want to go inside the house and see what goes on in there. What could the ratio of practice be? Weighted 80:20 toward Proleague? 90:10? 100:0 with all individual league practice taking place in players' free time? Despite having just one player in Code S (Zest), KT Rolster is still on top of the mountain in Proleague. With two wins in ace matches last week, KT Rolster have improved to 4-1 in ace matches on the season.CJ Entus (0-2)CJ Entus is the anti-KT Rolster. Its players came into the new Proleague season with excellent results in individual tournaments, but they've failed miserably to bring their team any success. Even team ace CJ_herO, two time IEM champion and Code S player, has slipped below a 50% win rate. It's hard to tell why this roster of talented players can't do any better in Proleague. All we can say is that there is something terribly, terribly wrong.andOn one hand, Flash lost to Stork and was forced to suffer through the following ceremony.On the other hand, Flash immediately won the following ace match against Solar to send KT Rolster to the top of the table.

Round 2, Week 2: More New Arrivals

Gumiho vs. Flash

Choya vs. Soulkey

State vs. Classic

MKP, Hurricane, Life, and Curious made their Proleague debuts in week one, but not all the new players had a chance to do so. Week two will feature yet more players playing their first Proleague matches, including the American player CJ_GuMiho will be the first player in week 2 to have his Proleague debut match, barring a 3-0 result in the series. It didn't take long for Gumiho to find a new home on CJ Entus after fOu/FXO disbanded, and it's not surprising that the grizzled veteran has worked his way into the starting line-up ahead of Bbyong and Bunny. Though Gumiho is no longer the Code S regular he was in his prime, he can still be a valuable player for a Proleague team. He plays a very aggressive style that's not the easiest to prepare for, and he's also adept at making unusual builds that tailored to his style. It may not be the skillset you need to make a deep run in Code S, but it seems well suited for the best-of-one Proleague environment.While no one wants to play the best Proleague playerin their debut match, TvT was the ideal match-up for Gumiho to draw. It's the match-up where players stay competitive the longest after their skills in other match-ups have deteriorated, and Gumiho was able to compete with the best Terrans in the world during his prime. Though this match doesn't favor Gumiho, he has a decent chance of winning.Back in the days of FXO and GSTL, we used to joke that the only reason Choya got a chance to play was because he was the one making the line-up decisions. However, ChoyaPrime has now earned a start as part of another team and under a different coach, raising a lot of questions. Were we wrong all along? Did Choya actually earn all of those important game appearances for FXO based on merit? Is Choya quietly taking over the SC2 head coach position at Prime while Gerrard is busy playing HearthStone? Though we can't blame anyone for writing off Choya against Soulkey , you have to be reminded of another Prime Protoss who went up against Soulkey as the underdog. Back in round 1, JilaPrime scored a gigantic upset against Soulkey by employing cheesy, all-in tactics. Choya has pulled off similar upsets in his GSTL days (notably beating a peak-form MMA), and he's sure to have a trick up his sleeve against Soulkey.With Prime, it's impossible to tell which roster decisions come out of desperation and which ones are based on merit. In round one, Creator was the only player to have a regular line-up spot. The other three spots almost seemed to be filled at random, as if Prime was just throwing players out haphazardly to see if anyone would stick.In round two, Creator has been joined by MarineKing as line-up regular. However, the last two spots still seem to be getting picked by the same rotating door system. So even though we're cheering hard for State to succeed, realistically we can't be that optimistic about his chances. That said, PvP does happen to be the match-up where the most foreigner > Korean upsets have occurred in the past, so Classic is far, far from being guaranteed a win.