[SPL] Sonic Proleague: Kick-off! Text by 2Pacalypse- Graphics by KasPra The revival of Korean Brood War seemingly cannot be stopped. Arguably it was never dead to begin with, but this doesn’t mean the current resurgence is anything short of miraculous. Just 2 years ago, hope seemed all but gone, but then Sonic outperformed himself over and over again.



The first Sonic KOTH tournament was extremely fun, but now we might be getting a more professional and frequent league, with a more standardized format, as sponsors start trickling in. Even though no hard facts are available just yet, the start certainly looks promising. Read on for this week’s Sonic Proleague preview. Table of Contents





Participating Teams

Team's aces and wildcards



Fighting Spirit Analysis

Balanced or Broken?



Week 1 Preview

Better late than never



Liquipedia

R&S Thread Team's aces and wildcardsBalanced or Broken?Better late than never



Participating Teams By: BisuDagger



CJ Entus

Ace: Movie



Movie is the clear ace on this team. His performances over the past year have been quite solid. If we remove Bisu from the scene, Movie becomes the clear #1 protoss in the Brood War scene. With a record of two SRT wins and 4 super tournament wins, Movie has quite the resume and is ready to lead CJ Entus to victory.



Wildcard: Kwanro



There is zero argument over this pick for wildcard. Kwanro has developed play that lasts longer then the first ten minutes. However, he is more than capable of cheesing effectively too. While Kwanro is not the second best player on the team, his ability to win against any opponent through ruthless all ins makes him a true wild card.







SK Telecom T1

Ace: Bisu



Yup.

+ Show Spoiler +

Fine, I'll justify this...

Bisu has a record 62/27/89 (win/loss/total games) between 2008 and 2011 in ace matches on SKT T1 according to liquipedia which is a 70% winrate and is one of the best percentages among ace players.



Fun fact, Flash was 123W/86L/209 with a 58% winrate in the same time period (but that is a ton of ace matches!).

Fine, I'll justify this...Bisu has a record 62/27/89 (win/loss/total games) between 2008 and 2011 in ace matches on SKT T1 according to liquipedia which is a 70% winrate and is one of the best percentages among ace players.Fun fact, Flash was 123W/86L/209 with a 58% winrate in the same time period (but that is a ton of ace matches!).



Wildcard: Larva



While ssak is a solid runner up for the wildcard position, I think that Larva holds more power here. He is a player that is capable of showing spectacular play, but pre-SSL9 has always fell short in comparison to the top players. Now, advancing first out of his group and making short work of his opponents, it seems that Larva and his back brace may be the perfect formula to wreck any opponent in proleague.







MBCGame HERO

Ace: Sea



Five time SRT winner including 4/4 in the latest SRT’s and a silver in SSL8, Sea has the 2.0 era record of any player. Sea has taken over Flash’s role of #1 Terran and he looks to establish himself as the best ACE player in proleague.



Wildcard: Lazy/ tie



These two protoss players are enigmas. Tyson is known as the player who makes his opponent think he’s playing really poorly and suddenly wins. Lazy is a PvP monster, but he was knocked out of the SSL9. I think both of these players will inconsistently show spurts of domination in Proleague which may be just enough for Sea to clean up the rest as MBC establishes themselves as the new evil empire.







STX SouL

Ace: by.hero/ Shuttle



By no means are by.hero and shuttle mediocre. Shuttle is just shy of best protoss at times and by.hero gets consistent results with multiple final four appearances in the SRTs among other sonic tournaments. This double ace potential makes these Bash Brothers a brutal force in proleague. While the entire STX roster isn’t the strongest, STX could easily find themselves as the scariest proleague team if both of them catch fire.



Wildcard: mini



Mini has 1.0 era wins against 2.0 era players Zero, Jangbi, Lazy, and Piano. Clearly, he is capable of taking down some of the more solid players participating in the proleague. Advancing to the SSL9 ro16 and strong PvP wins over shuttle, it appears that he may have an established role as a PvP sniper should the need come.







KT Rolster

Ace: Mind



Mind is the strongest player from the 1.0 era on this team. It serves right to say he is back in form and that it will be hard to be this Terran. His one disadvantage is the Terran heavy team makes it easy for teams to prepare against KT Rolster. But don’t worry! Mind is an MSL victor collecting his win over Bisu in dominating fashion. Mind looks to collect his skulls in this year’s first proleague.



Wildcard: Light



Light has some crazy strategies include amazing starport play in TvZ. In fact, his TvZ is some of the most spectacular you can see when he is firing on all cylinders. If you are playing KT and only have Zergs remaining to throw at Light, then it might as well be GG.







Hwaseung OZ

Ace: Killer



4 time runner up to Sea in the past 4 SRTs does not make Killer any less fearsome. He’s evolved from minidong to full dong and clearly is the best Zerg in the Brood War scene these days.



Wildcard: beast



If killer falls, OZ fans will have to rely on Hiya to hold his ground. Unfortunately, he can’t win them all and the second best Z on their team, Beast will have to step up to the plate. Beast has participated in almost every Sonic tournament in the 2.0 era. You may be surprised to hear he has two silvers and one gold in Sonic Ranking Tournaments. Beast has become a zerg that most people who follow the scene know. Maybe not a fan favorite yet, but proleague is his chance to earn some more fans.







Woongjin Stars

Ace: ZerO



Zero is one of the most recent retires from SC2. His return to Brood War was very welcomed. However, we are all still uncertain his max potential at this time. But as a clear ace for Stars in the previous proleagues and experience in beating TBLS, we can assume he will be taking back that role in the coming weeks.



Wildcard: PianO



Piano has some of the most entertaining games. However, they usually get really close in the mid to late game and end with him losing. If Piano can do the same thing, but turn those games into wins he might become everyone’s favorite Organ.







Sonic Team

Ace: N/A



Wildcard: the whole team



I literally have no idea who is on this team, but I still Liquibet them to beat KT Rolster.





Fighting Spirit Analysis By: Epoxide

It's actually rather interesting how Fighting Spirit has a 62 64% TvZ win rate. Zerg either suck or Terrans have found some exploits. - mustaju



It would be interesting to discuss if that's fault of the map or the players - 2Pacalypse-



Fighting Spirit is regarded by the majority as the most balanced map in StarCraft history. The reasons for it is very sound. There are over 250 games played in each non-mirror match-up by far , and that's still an understatement, the map is played so much certain people have started to express their hate towards the map. I would just like to point out that you are all wrong, Fighting Spirit is the #1 map.



When we turn our eyes to the win rates



Lets start with what's most recent in our memories; this summer. This summer started okay for ZvT, Killer won SSL8 and hero did decently against sSak in the consolation match. Then the month of June continued on day two:





Legend of the Summer?



From the end of SSL8 to the end of SRT17 Terran went 69-47 (59.5%) against Zerg. 30 of those wins came from two players; Killer (17) and hero (13). It was very clear, only two players could consistently takes games off of Terrans and hero's winrate was only at a measly 44.83%.



Lets take a trip even further back, when top Zerg like Killer and hero were not around. SSL6 featured fourteen TvZ games on Fighting Spirit, thirteen of which Terrans won, and only one which Zerg prevailed. If we take a look at the



If we compare that to SSL8 we see the contrasts. During SSL8 Mong, Sexy, and Sea was slumping from their ordinary 60+% TvZ win rate, only HiyA and sSak were holding the flag high. Zerg had players like Killer, a performing hero and Larva, amateur star ZeLoT (yes lol), and a re-surging Cola. Needless to say the outcome was much different, the score ended up at 9-9 (50.00%) on Fighting Spirit. A staggering improvement for the Zerg.



The statistics are skewed even further when you look at who tops the



It's quite clear that it was never a map issue, Zerg players have just historically sucked in the SOSPA scene.





Week 1 Preview By: mustaju

Thanks to how vague the available information is, making accurate predictions in an already difficult format is going to be even harder. Now I really have to work for my Liquibet points. Here’s just some factors to consider:

Players will be playing on 8 different maps without knowing in advance who their opponent will be. Such a format might cause some really unorthodox cheeses or some unexpected failure from an otherwise highly esteemed player. The highest level of play depends a lot on preparation, and strategic well prepared cheeses should be able to produce upsets.



Leading us to yet another factor, sponsorship. How are these connected? Motivation to perform well should be higher, meaning that players might practice a sniping build more diligently with their teammates than they otherwise might have. On the other hand, pressure might become more of a factor, and at 300+ APM, nervousness is something you can ill afford. Who is going to be sponsored, and how significant will the sponsorship be? Will the unsponsored teams perform better to attract sponsors to themselves or just give up and play worse?



How strict are the rules going to be enforced? During the last teamleague, we saw players playing other tournaments during the match, so that replacements were needed. Some players were also allowed to play twice if one player was missing. With theoretically more money on the line, will the system be abused, so that Bisu for example, might come out 5 times? It would certainly make some fans happy, but the results would likely be drastically different.



Add to that that the amateur additions to the teams might tip the scales, and you have yourself quite a mess. Now, let’s try and make sense of it!





Stars vs STX



The second season of Proleague starts off with a pretty even match. Ex-Woongjin Stars plays Ex-STX SouL (for brevity, we’ll be using the former team names from now on), with both teams players recently having upset in the SSL9 and looking in good form.



Stars have arguably higher highs and steeper lows, because their aces ZerO and PianO performed extremely convincingly in their respective groups. The same cannot be said for their lows, however. Zergman , Brave and SalDaGa (Who?) carry over 3 wins and 16 losses from the previous season, and their SSL hopes weren’t any brighter either . Stars, like many other teams, like field a Zerg player first, who is likely to be Zergman. From there on out, because STX has no Terrans, they want to take out the STX Protosses with ZerO and the Zergs with PianO. PianO didn’t drop a single game to Zergs last season, ending up 4-0 in the match-up, and ZerO played excellent ZvP for an overall 6-3 record. The rest of the players can be used as sacrificial lambs to weed out unfavorable maps.



Statistically, STX look better off, but their form has looked shaky as of late. Shuttle no longer looks like a championship contender at the moment, and while by.hero has a beastly record from last season (11-6!), his performance against Kwanro left much to be desired. Mini on the other hand, looks pretty well off, but any of these 3 will still find it difficult to win against either ZerO or PianO. I don’t see neither Terror nor Britney contributing much towards that goal either.



Prediction: 5-4 Stars





Sonic All-Stars vs. KT



Sonic All-Stars and KT are what will make or break the legitimacy of the league. Neither of them left much of an impression last season (except when SAS beat STX as a huge upset), because both teams found themselves cancelling a lot of the matches. Especially KT was guilty of this, which was unsurprising considering the initial weakness of their lineup. Things having cooled down, let’s look at the teams.



While I’m still writing this, the SAS lineup has not yet been announced, but assuming it does not differ from last season’s lineup, they have their work cut out for them – only two players accomplished anything of note. PvP sniper Changers went 4-0 against Protoss, but 0-2 against Zerg. Shinee went 2-1 against Z, kills including hero and Killer, but dropped out of SSL 9, and went 0-2 in the other two match-ups. The rest either beat very weak players or just lost their games. SAS has a lot to prove, and I don’t think they’re just there yet.



KT is a team that I see doing pretty well this season. The core of Mind, Light and Modesty looks extremely strong on paper. Modesty in particular looks better every game I see him, for example upsetting Mong and Sea last season. Light’s glaring weakness is TvT, but his other matchups looked strong and polished, absolutely crushing hero. He even went 2-1 in TvP in the KOTH teamleague, albeit against weak opponents. Mind and Ample have been performing OK, and that’s pretty much all you should need against SAS.



Prediction: 5:2 KT





Oz vs CJ



Here should be the most exciting match of the week. If you haven’t seen the Mong vs Killer series in Group A yet, do so now and prepare for a ferocious rematch. Hell, if you have seen it, rewatch it, then watch this right afterward. I know I will.



Kwanro surprised me during the SSL ro32, but he is still transitioning back into BW. This season, he could be a welcome addition to the already monstrous Mong-Movie duo, perhaps even making Chill post in BW threads again. While Movie has managed to achieve a whopping 80% winrate in the past two months, Mong has struggled, and his advancement shows a return to form.



Speaking of a return to form, this is what Oz desperately need. Killer went 1-4 against Terran last season, and talks of a slump have not left him after he started losing tournaments to Sea. Even a wounded Killer is still dangerous, however. Killer still has the best ZvZ and the best vP in SOSPA at the moment, and having an axe to grind with Mong, will almost certainly want to have his revenge. HiyA has held his own with a 5-5 record against strong opposition, but he clearly isn’t ready to take the reins from Killer yet. I see him winning against Mong, but losing against Movie. Sky can cheese, but lack of practice has really hurt his ability to play macro games, and while beast and kkong have good records, they do so against weak opponents, and their play has not been impressive in the slightest.



Prediction: 5:3 Oz







WRITERS: mustaju, BisuDagger and Epoxide

GRAPHICS: KasPra Movie is the clear ace on this team. His performances over the past year have been quite solid. If we remove Bisu from the scene, Movie becomes the clear #1 protoss in the Brood War scene. With a record of two SRT wins and 4 super tournament wins, Movie has quite the resume and is ready to lead CJ Entus to victory.There is zero argument over this pick for wildcard. Kwanro has developed play that lasts longer then the first ten minutes. However, he is more than capable of cheesing effectively too. While Kwanro is not the second best player on the team, his ability to win against any opponent through ruthless all ins makes him a true wild card.Yup.While ssak is a solid runner up for the wildcard position, I think that Larva holds more power here. He is a player that is capable of showing spectacular play, but pre-SSL9 has always fell short in comparison to the top players. Now, advancing first out of his group and making short work of his opponents, it seems that Larva and his back brace may be the perfect formula to wreck any opponent in proleague.Five time SRT winner including 4/4 in the latest SRT’s and a silver in SSL8, Sea has the 2.0 era record of any player. Sea has taken over Flash’s role of #1 Terran and he looks to establish himself as the best ACE player in proleague. Tyson tieThese two protoss players are enigmas. Tyson is known as the player who makes his opponent think he’s playing really poorly and suddenly wins. Lazy is a PvP monster, but he was knocked out of the SSL9. I think both of these players will inconsistently show spurts of domination in Proleague which may be just enough for Sea to clean up the rest as MBC establishes themselves as the new evil empire.By no means are by.hero and shuttle mediocre. Shuttle is just shy of best protoss at times and by.hero gets consistent results with multiple final four appearances in the SRTs among other sonic tournaments. This double ace potential makes these Bash Brothers a brutal force in proleague. While the entire STX roster isn’t the strongest, STX could easily find themselves as the scariest proleague team if both of them catch fire.: miniMini has 1.0 era wins against 2.0 era players Zero, Jangbi, Lazy, and Piano. Clearly, he is capable of taking down some of the more solid players participating in the proleague. Advancing to the SSL9 ro16 and strong PvP wins over shuttle, it appears that he may have an established role as a PvP sniper should the need come.Mind is the strongest player from the 1.0 era on this team. It serves right to say he is back in form and that it will be hard to be this Terran. His one disadvantage is the Terran heavy team makes it easy for teams to prepare against KT Rolster. But don’t worry! Mind is an MSL victor collecting his win over Bisu in dominating fashion. Mind looks to collect his skulls in this year’s first proleague.Light has some crazy strategies include amazing starport play in TvZ. In fact, his TvZ is some of the most spectacular you can see when he is firing on all cylinders. If you are playing KT and only have Zergs remaining to throw at Light, then it might as well be GG.4 time runner up to Sea in the past 4 SRTs does not make Killer any less fearsome. He’s evolved from minidong to full dong and clearly is the best Zerg in the Brood War scene these days.If killer falls, OZ fans will have to rely on Hiya to hold his ground. Unfortunately, he can’t win them all and the second best Z on their team, Beast will have to step up to the plate. Beast has participated in almost every Sonic tournament in the 2.0 era. You may be surprised to hear he has two silvers and one gold in Sonic Ranking Tournaments. Beast has become a zerg that most people who follow the scene know. Maybe not a fan favorite yet, but proleague is his chance to earn some more fans.Zero is one of the most recent retires from SC2. His return to Brood War was very welcomed. However, we are all still uncertain his max potential at this time. But as a clear ace for Stars in the previous proleagues and experience in beating TBLS, we can assume he will be taking back that role in the coming weeks.Piano has some of the most entertaining games. However, they usually get really close in the mid to late game and end with him losing. If Piano can do the same thing, but turn those games into wins he might become everyone’s favorite Organ.: N/A: the whole teamI literally have no idea who is on this team, but I still Liquibet them to beat KT Rolster.Fighting Spirit is regarded by the majority as the most balanced map in StarCraft history. The reasons for it is very sound. There are over 250 games played in each non-mirror match-up recorded during the KeSPA era. All three match-ups are around the 50% mark, with the highest being ZvP with 134-117 (53.4%), TvZ and PvT both end up with just +/- 1%, 148-139 (51.6%) and 143-137 (51.1%) respectively. These numbers also line up with the common notion of Protoss over Terran over Zerg over Protoss balance. It's also the most played map on Fish, and that's still an understatement, the map is played so much certain people have started to express their hate towards the map. I would just like to point out that you are all wrong, Fighting Spirit is the #1 map.When we turn our eyes to the win rates provided from SOSPA games the turnout is surprising to say the least. Especially the Terran vs Zerg win rates, 159-89 (64.1%), a whole 12.5% higher than during the progaming days. The question is this due to the players changing or was the map possibly imbalanced?Lets start with what's most recent in our memories; this summer. This summer started okay for ZvT, Killer won SSL8 and hero did decently against sSak in the consolation match. Then the month of June continued on day two:From the end of SSL8 to the end of SRT17 Terran went 69-47 (59.5%) against Zerg. 30 of those wins came from two players; Killer (17) and hero (13). It was very clear, only two players could consistently takes games off of Terrans and hero's winrate was only at a measly 44.83%.Lets take a trip even further back, when top Zerg like Killer and hero were not around. SSL6 featured fourteen TvZ games on Fighting Spirit, thirteen of which Terrans won, and onlywhich Zerg prevailed. If we take a look at the players list it gets obvious very quickly what was going on. Terran had TvZ superstars like (all win percentages listed was what they had during the tournament); HiyA (85.71%), IcaruS (77.78%), Mong (69.57%), and Sexy (63.64%). Compare that to what the Zerg could field; ZergMaN (52.00%), beast (30.00%), mahell (27.27%), Cola (20.00%), and StarCue (33.33%) who was the only one who could win a game. It's also worth noting his current win rate at 8.33% and that was his only win in ZvT ever.If we compare that to SSL8 we see the contrasts. During SSL8 Mong, Sexy, and Sea was slumping from their ordinary 60+% TvZ win rate, only HiyA and sSak were holding the flag high. Zerg had players like Killer, a performing hero and Larva, amateur star ZeLoT (yes lol), and a re-surging Cola. Needless to say the outcome was much different, the score ended up at 9-9 (50.00%) on Fighting Spirit. A staggering improvement for the Zerg.The statistics are skewed even further when you look at who tops the charts on Fighting Spirit. Mong, Sea, and HiyA are all in the top five. Mong has the best record overall at 77-44 +33 with 30-17 +13 in TvZ. Sea follows with 46-17 +29 overall and 19-4 +15 in TvZ. HiyA rounds it out with 54-33 +21 overall and 26-9 +17. On the other side of the spectrum we have beast, the player with the worst of them all at 21-36 -15 overall and 6-12 -6 in ZvT.It's quite clear that it was never a map issue, Zerg players have just historically sucked in the SOSPA scene. Further reading written by kjwcj.Thanks to how vague the available information is, making accurate predictions in an already difficult format is going to be even harder. Now I really have to work for my Liquibet points. Here’s just some factors to consider:Players will be playing on 8 different maps without knowing in advance who their opponent will be. Such a format might cause some really unorthodox cheeses or some unexpected failure from an otherwise highly esteemed player. The highest level of play depends a lot on preparation, and strategic well prepared cheeses should be able to produce upsets.Leading us to yet another factor, sponsorship. How are these connected? Motivation to perform well should be higher, meaning that players might practice a sniping build more diligently with their teammates than they otherwise might have. On the other hand, pressure might become more of a factor, and at 300+ APM, nervousness is something you can ill afford. Who is going to be sponsored, and how significant will the sponsorship be? Will the unsponsored teams perform better to attract sponsors to themselves or just give up and play worse?How strict are the rules going to be enforced? During the last teamleague, we saw players playing other tournaments during the match, so that replacements were needed. Some players were also allowed to play twice if one player was missing. With theoretically more money on the line, will the system be abused, so that Bisu for example, might come out 5 times? It would certainly make some fans happy, but the results would likely be drastically different.Add to that that the amateur additions to the teams might tip the scales, and you have yourself quite a mess. Now, let’s try and make sense of it!mustaju, BisuDagger and EpoxideKasPra Moderator "We're a community of geniuses because we've found how to extract 95% of the feeling of doing something amazing without actually doing anything." - Chill