by: Nakajin

Promises of unparalleled parity have proven premature, with the WTL league table looking pretty predictable three weeks into the season. There’s plenty of time for upsets to happen, but week four probably won’t be where we see chaos introduced. Still, we have plenty of great StarCraft to look forward to, in Sunday’s must-see DKZ vs BASILISK match.

Week 3 Recap

Top 7 teams qualify for the playoffs.
Bottom 2 teams must requalify.
Points are awarded as follows:

Dragon KaiZi Gaming 5 – 1 Kwangdong Freecs
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I’m honestly not sure if the Freecs and aLive didn’t just pull an ‘invisible man’ joke on the community with his no-show forfeit. The old GSL mainstay previously made a surprise appearance for the Freecs in WTL Code A, but perhaps that was the last we’ll see of him all season.

In any case, the no-show pretty much killed any remaining buzz around this already one-sided match. It’s a shame since Stats was actually able to steal a tie against Oliveira, taking his win in an ultra-long bout on Radhuset Station. Alas, TY couldn’t get anything done against Dark, losing twice after going for mass-Cyclone mech builds (something we’re slowly figuring out is not that good, or at least not that good for TY).

PSISTORM Gaming 2 – 4 BASILISK
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MaxPax extended his PvP winning streak to a ridiculous 34 maps, taking down Trigger 2-0 in a slightly scary series. The PSISTORM ace went for his traditional 1-Gate into Stargate fast expand in game one, and slapped down his opponent’s proxy aggression as he’s done hundreds (thousands?) of times in the past. Things got more complicated in game two, as Trigger actually destroyed MaxPax’s expansion this time around. However, MaxPax transitioned seamlessly into 1 base play, making Void Ray-Immortal against his opponent’s low-tech force. His counter push caught Trigger’s Stalkers mid-map, giving PSISTORM a solid 2-0 start.

A little change of schedule saw Gerald vs Serral moved to the second match. Serral delivered the expected 2-0, though Gerald put up a tenacious fight in game two on Radhuset.

Thus, the series was tied 2-2 headed into a decisive match between Spirit and Reynor. Spirit didn’t back down from Reynor in game one, going for a tried-and-true 3CC-Banshee macro build. Reynor responded in kind by going full macro-monster himself, spawning huge swarms of Ling-Bane-Hydra. After a lot of back and forth combat, Reynor found the game-deciding engagement as he overwhelmed a pre-Ghost Spirit with an ocean of Banelings. Unsurprisingly, Spirit went back to his 3CC-Banshee macro play in game two, but this time Reynor took an aggressive approach with a Dropperlord assisted Roach-Ravager-Queen timing. Spirit handled the frontal attack well but was caught off-guard by a Zergling drop into his main. This gave Reynor the momentum needed to keep pressuring with Roach-Ravager and put himself in an advantageous mid-game position. Spirit appeared to stabilize somewhat, but it was an illusion since Reynor was going up to Ultralisks unimpeded. The space cows rampaged over a Terran without proper counter units, prompting the GG. The 50-50 man has now taken a 2 week hiatus—has Reynor exorcised him for good?

Starlight Twinkle 4 – 2 瘦死骆驼 (SSLT/Starving Camels)
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Nice went back to the classics in the first game against TooDming, going for the DT into an Archon drop opening. He then gave it a twist by teching up to DT-Blink as well, which let him perform some pretty effective harassment in the early-game. Nice followed up with a piercing Immortal + Gateway units timing which forced the GG from TooDming. Game two saw TooDming go for a Zergling flood attempt which was easily countered by a hold position Zealot and a couple of Oracles. He insisted on dragging the game out for a while longer, so Nice went up to triple-Stargate Carriers and finished him in style.

Silky vs Wayne opened on Equilibrium, with Silky gambling on the new map by taking a fast third hatchery at his rich resource base. Wayne opted for a quick Roach warren to punish the risky expansion while Silky went for +1 melee lings. Rather than commit hard to defending his exposed base, Silky decided to go for aggressive Zergling backdoors to try and throw the game into chaos. This proved to be the right move for Silky—even though he had to sacrifice his rich resource base, he did enough Drone damage on the other end of the map to make it worth it. Silky went into Muta-Ling from there, which he used to close the game out against the ground-bound Wayne. Game two saw both players open with 12-Pool into Hatchery, with Wayne playing a more macro-oriented follow-up while Silky stayed on a low Drone count for a speedling all-in. Wayne didn’t get overly greedy, however, and prepared enough defenses to hold the Ling flood and take the tying point.

Cyan put his team on the verge of an ace match with a dominant game one win against Cham. He played herO-style Orable-Stalker beautifully, keeping Cham constantly on the backfoot before overwhelming him with Stalker-Disruptor. Cham then chose Radhuset Station for game two, looking to close the series out without any complications. He didn’t have anything especially complicated in mind: just a good’ ol Nydus-Zergling-Queen all-in. Cyan figured out what was going on and seemed like he’d have no trouble defending, but he F2’d himself to death by pulling the Zealot plug from his natural wall in response to a Nydus at his pocket expansion. Zerglings flooded through the front door, and in conjunction with follow-up Nyduses, took the series for SLT.

Shopify Rebellion 4 – 2 Mystery Gaming
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Our opening match of Lambo vs SHIN wasn’t a very exciting affair to start, with both players macroing up for eight minutes without much interaction. The game swung as both players made key choices around their Spire transitions. Lambo went for slightly faster Mutalisks with fewer roaches, while SHIN decided to delay his own Mutalisks to hit a big Roach timing. The risk paid off, as he broke Lambo’s defenses and ransacked his economy before Mutalisks could clean the attack up. From then on, SHIN was able to dominate the Mutalisk wars on the back of his better economy, giving Mystery Gaming the first point of the match. SHIN continued to show the power of Korean ZvZ in the second game, catching Lambo overdroning with a Roach-Ravager all-in.

Moving onto the next series, ByuN tried to get a cheeky win with a proxy 2-Rax Reapers against Bunny. This almost did critical damage, but Bunny did a great job at backdooring with a single Reaper which left the SCV counts similar when the dust settled. Bunny quickly counterattacked once he had his first Tank, setting up position just outside ByuN’s natural. Bunny continued to send troops to reinforce the line, and eventually he had enough units to make a big push into the natural and end the game.

ByuN wasn’t deterred in his love of the Reaper, opening double rax-Reaper once again in game two (at home, though). He was rewarded for this slight tweak, picking off the first hoppy-boy of Bunny as well as a bunch of SCVs. However, Micro Jackson got a bit too fancy for his own good, sacrificing all his Reapers in an overaggressive second attack. Bunny tried to play a double-Starport style from there, but things went terribly wrong for him. Instead of slow, vision-based pushing, he was caught off-guard by Marine-Tank and suffered severe casualties. ByuN was ruthless on the close out, going for a simple drop+ground attack combo to finish his overstretched opponent.

Needing a 2-0 to save her team, Scarlett was almost taken off guard by Strange’s Immortal-Sentry all-in in game one. Strange once again displayed the great force field skills that saw him nearly tie Solar in an earlier match, fighting his way into a very threatening position at the Zerg third. However, his ‘dodge Corrosive Bile’ skills weren’t up to the same standard, and a few big hits foiled his attack. After that, there wasn’t much for him to do but GG to Scarlett’s massive counterattack.

Game two on Hecate saw Strange go for Glaive-Adepts, which seemed to match up well against Scarlett’s decision to play a purely Ling-Queen based early game. Strange picked off enough Drones to give himself an advantage before transitioning comfortably into macro play. However, Strange’s mid-game play wasn’t the best, as he stayed on mass-Gateway play for quite some time while failing to apply much extra pressure. By the time he belatedly added Colossus tech, Scarlett had already fought her way back into a reasonable position. Hectic, multi-front fighting ensued at this point, with both players striking at each other’s bases all across the map. The game swung decisively in Scarlett’s favor when Strange went for a painful defensive recall as Roach-Ravager-Bane swarmed in on one of his bases. Strange couldn’t stabilize after this huge loss of units, and Scarlett took the GG after continuing to pile on attacks.

The series headed to an ace match on Oceanborn with ByuN and Bunny sent out as the respective aces. Bunny looked to play the more economy oriented build by going up to 3CC quickly, while ByuN delayed his own third to be more aggressive with Marine-Tank. ByuN put the heat on Bunny with a series of Marine-Tank pushes, but he was ultimately repulsed by Vikings and Liberators without having done much economic damage. Bunny was firmly in the driver’s seat at this point, and he set ByuN even further aback with some effective drop tactics. It looked like ByuN would need to work some magic to get back in the game, but what he ended up getting was a Bunny blunder instead. Bunny overplayed his position, allowing his main army to get caught off guard with his Tanks unsieged. ByuN was absolutely clinical in capitalizing on this mistake, shredding the main army and marching forward to victory.

ONSYDE Gaming 5 -1 Matcherino Esports
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The defending champions were hoping to have the best ever record through the first three weeks of CTC/WTL, which they could achieve with a 6-0 sweep of Matcherino Esport.

Ryung got the ball rolling by winning his first game against Arrogfire. The French Protoss brought the pressure early with a Blink opening, but Ryung absorbed the attacks and set himself up nicely on three bases. Once he had a sufficient army, Ryung crossed the map, set up a siege, and crushed his young opponent. Arrogifre went back to the same well in game two, but this time things went much better as his first Blink caught an undefended Tank and a Raven. Unable to stop the growing snowball of Blink Stalkers, Ryung had to accept defeat and end ONSYDE’s pursuit of the 18-0 map score start.

It didn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things, as ONSYDE still won handily. Solar was rock solid against Nightmare, winning 2-0 on the back of Roaches and Hydralisks. Maru also made pretty short work of Astrea, taking a 2-0 in fairly straightforward fashion.

Team Liquid 4 – 2 Platinum Heroes
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ShaDoWn surprised Elazer with a Skytoss rush to start the series, with his Golden Armada fittingly purifying Goldenaura of any Zerg presence. Unfortunately for the Heroes, Liquid reeled off four straight wins after that, bringing an end to any underdog hopes for the Heroes. SKillous was the key player here, besting DnS in both Blink Stalker wars and Phoenix wars to take the 2-0.

FireFly did manage to get a win for the road against Clem, overwhelming the Terran with a powerful mass Gateway unit timing. While the upset came too late to affect the flow of the series, it’s still an impressive notch in the belt for the upstart Protoss.

Weekly MVP: BASILISK.Reynor

For once, it’s Reynor who delivered the weekly MVP-worthy performance for BASILISK instead of Serral. Of course, Serral did fine with an expected 2-0 over Gerald, but it was Reynor who got the more difficult victory over PSISTORM’s Spirit. The Polish Terran might have caused fits for Reynor in previous meetings, but this time around, Reynor won cleanly in impressive macro games. It’s always a pleasure to see Reynor play his best, and if he continues to do so in WTL, BASILISK should be favored to win the championship they let slip last season.

ByuN’s 2-1 result against Mystery Gaming is also worth a mention, but I can’t quite give him the nod as Bunny pretty much gifted him the victory in the ace match.

Weekly MVP’s:

• Week 3: BASILISK.Reynor
• Week 2: SR.Harstem
• Week 1: BASILISK.Serral

Match of the week: PSISTORM.MaxPax vs. BASILISK.trigger – Game Two

None of the macro games stood out in particular this week, so we’ll go with a bit of a curveball choice: MaxPax being great in PvP.

MaxPax’s fast-expansion defense in PvP is infamously tough to break through, but Trigger got the job done with a clever proxy. However, that didn’t mean the game was over for MaxPax—far from it. The king of PvP showed that nothing can knock him off balance in the mirror, absolutely crushing Trigger from what seemed like a precarious position.

Watch VOD: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1953130576?t=113m38s

Preview: Regular Season Week 3

DKZ vs Basilisk is without a doubt the match to look out for this weekend with a favorable draw for DKZ increasing the chance of seeing Basilisk lose their first-ever WTL regular season match. Other duels to look out for include an intriguing match between TL and Matcherino, where TL could confirm their status as one of the league’s very best, as well as MaxPax continuation of his protoss versus protoss win streak.

Friday, Oct 20 12:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00) Matches

Saturday, Oct 21 12:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00) Matches

Matcherino has yet to capitalize on their upset potential, but perhaps Saturday will be when the stars finally align? Probably not, as the match-ups favor Team Liquid.

Clem will get to show his all-powerful TvP against Astrea, a match-up where Astrea was hard pressed to win even when he was in better form. Alas, with Astrea struggling against top end Terrans at the moment, an upset or tie seems very unlikely here.

SKillous-Future should be more tense—despite being the more high-profile player, Skillous’ PvT win-rate in 2023 is barely above 50% in 2023, and includes a 0-2 loss to Future back in a July WardiTV tournament. I won’t go as far as predicting a 2-0 for Future, especially since the American isn’t exactly lighting it up in TvP himself, but I’ll pick a 1-1.

NightMare already has an ace match victory to his name this season and could establish himself as the clear central piece of Matcherino by beating Elazer. While I personally hope he can pull it off, 2-0’ing Elazer is a tall task. Elazer, despite some erratic form in the WTL, has only given up 0-2 losses to four players since he entered the competition in the summer of 2022. I see the Polish Zerg closing the series once again for the boys in blue with a 1-1.

PredictionL Team Liquid 4 – 2 Matcherino Esport

ONSYDE will face a tough Week 5 test against DKZ Gaming, but until their all-you-can-eat wins buffet continues. Maru and Solar have kept up last season’s momentum, being two of three 6-0 players so far this season. Firefly might once again do the impossible (or at least slightly improbable) and end Solar’s undefeated streak, but it’s unlikely to affect the ultimate outcome. Maru should be a near lock to win 2-0 against DnS (despite his GSL woes), while Ryung is also favored to win his series against ArT.

Prediction: ONSYDE Gaming 5 – 1 Platinum Heroes

Sunday, Oct 22 12:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00) Matches

DKZ certainly has won the draw battle in this week’s feature match. Oliveira is a big favorite against Trigger and should put their team up 2-0. Of course, plenty of teams have 2-0’d Trigger, only to fall to the combination of Serral and Reynor. But DKZ actually have some decent match-ups against the EU Zerg duo as well.

Serral has to play a ZvZ against Dark, which has always been a tough match-up for the reigning regular season MVP. Ever since winning BlizzCon 2018, Serral has dropped at least a map to Dark in eight out of their nine meetings (19-17 overall map record in favor of Serral). I’d give Serral the edge in a longer series (6-3 in matches in the same period), but in a BO2, Dark is one of the only players in the world who can convince me to predict a 1-1.

If Dark can pull off the upset, it’ll give herO a chance to secure a huge win for DKZ. He and Reynor split their series 1-1 last season, and with herO winning two of their last three confrontations since then, I see no reason why he couldn’t do it again.

However, BASILISK have yet to lose a regular season WTL series outside of an ace match, and I don’t believe they’re going to suffer their first zero-point loss just now. I think Serral and Reynor will find a way to go 3-1 combined, which would leave everything to be decided in a final BO1.

Last time around, DKZ chose to send herO out to face Serral, and he ended up paying the price for challenging the strongest ZvP player on the planet. While I believe Dark is the correct choice for DKZ, they could very well go with herO once more given his great online form. In any case, I believe Serral will come through with the victory in the end.

Prediction: Dragon KaiZi Gaming 3 – 4 BASILISK

The Freecs are looking better this week simply because all three of their players are likely to play, but they’re still considerable underdogs against a much more active group of players in PSISTORM.

I know soO’s overall statistical record is pretty decent since made his comeback, but I swear every time I watch him he looks completely lost, and sadly I do watch WTL Code S as well. I have little reason to doubt Spirit here, so I won’t—it will be a 2-0 start for PSISTORM.

KeeN has more favorable odds against Gerald, as both players oscillated around the same level in the last couple of years. However, Gerald has been more active, while KeeN seems like he’s semi-retired. Still, KeeN didn’t look all that rusty in his WTL appearances so far, so he won’t be a pushover. I sense a 1-1 here, but a 2-0 either way wouldn’t surprise me.

In the last BO2 of the week, Stats looks like he’ll be the latest sacrifice on the altar of MaxPax’s PvP. The mysterious Dane’s map winning streak in PvP finally came to an end at 37 victories in a row, as he dropped a map to ShoWTimE in the recent ComebackTV Invitational. However, his match winning streak is still alive at 25 wins in a row (with a combined 50-2 map score in those matches), meaning that he’s two-thirds of the way from matching Serral’s seemingly untouchable 36-match ZvP streak from April to November 2020. A lot can go wrong in the next 12 matches, but his pursuit of Serral’s record does make his upcoming PvP against Stats a lot more interesting. It’s doubtful the Shield of Aiur has the answer to the 1-Gate opening of MaxPax, but in a BO2 format Stats just needs to cause one misstep.

Prediction: PSISTORM Gaming 5 – 1 Kwangdong Freecs

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• Source: https://tl.net/forum/starcraft-2/617523-wtl-2023-winter-week-3-results-week-4-preview