by: Nakajin

Week 4 saw DKZ take a huge step back in the regular season title race, falling to a 2-2 record with a loss to BASILISK. Still, there’s not much reason to worry as this is a familiar story for the KaiZi-DPG fusion team—they have no problem taking it a bit easy in the regular season before turning it on in the playoffs.

Starlight Twinkle featured in the biggest upset so far this season, improving to 3-1 with a victory over Mystery Gaming. This was supposed to be the start of the ‘easy’ part of Mystery Gaming’s schedule, and their seemingly guaranteed playoff berth could be in danger if they don’t shape up soon.

Week 5 brings us two huge matches in the upper half of the table, with PSISTORM and Team Liquid facing off on the 27th while ONSYDE and DKZ clash on the 29th.

Week 4 Recap

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

Starlight Twinkle 4 – 3 Mystery Gaming
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Starlight Twinkle stunned Mystery Gaming and moved up to 6th place in the standings. Initially a squad I deemed the weakest in the league, they now are almost guaranteed to avoid relegation. A real playoff push probably isn’t realistic as their schedule will get much harder from here, but they could keep playing spoiler to other teams in the postseason race. As for Mystery Gaming, it was another disappointing outing with their WTL-veteran core failing to take care of business.

SLT needed Wayne (formerly Rattata) to make something happen against SHIN (formerly RagnaroK) to have any hope in their series. SHIN got the game one win on Hard Lead, snowballing off of a great early game where he picked off three Queens with a half-committed Ling attack. Perhaps sensing weakness after Wayne’s sloppy first game, SHIN kept up the aggression on Alcyone with an early pool, which he followed with fake two-base Roaches into mass-Speedlings. The attack was able to kill Wayne’s third and take some decent trades, but it wasn’t a game-decider like in game one. SHIN continued the mind games, going for an empty third and a Ravager-Ling all-in of 30 Drones. The situation looked good for Mystery, but SHIN was perhaps a bit too slow to pull the trigger. Wayne made it so SHIN was extra all-in with a Zergling backstab, and he abandoned his third base gladly. The attack still looked very scary, but Wayne just managed to slip his Roaches away from the Ling surround and ensuing rain of biles. Having failed his all-in, SHIN had to concede the tie.

The next series started with Strange all-inning Nice with a Robo-Twilight-3-Gate build off of one base. However, his build was thrown out of wack early on by Nice’s double-Oracle opening, and despite some cute Force Fields-Blink tactics, he was too far behind to make the all-in work. Game two ended up being a frustrating loss for Strange as well. He had all the tools he needed to stop Nice’s one-base play, but he let a DT into his main seconds before his Observer got out. He pulled all his units into his main to kill it, only to immediately realize he had taken the fool’s magnet bait as Nice ran all his stalkers into the natural. All this put Strange terribly behind in economy and army supply, which Nice exploited with a three-base Chargelot push to take the 2-0.

ReWhite was always going to have a bad time against Bunny, and it went according to expectations. The bio-pushes from the Korean Terran were too fast and too fierce for him, and Bunny forced the ace match.

Wayne was SLT’s choice as ace, while Mystery decided to put their faith in Bunny’s hands on Equilibrium. They may have regretted this choice quite quickly, as Wayne seemed to have a good read on Bunny. He found a couple of good backstabs while also holding off Bunny’s double-drop opener with Roach-Ravager. After his good start, Wayne went to a fast four-base set up with a gold mineral base included. That let him assemble a huge Roach-Ravager ball and shove it down Bunny’s throat to take a dominant ace match win.

Shopify Rebellion 5 – 1 瘦死骆驼 (SSLT/Starving Camels)
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As expected, SR dominated SSLT, improving to a 4-0 record and maintaining second place in the standings. Unfortunately, last season’s darlings SSLT stayed in 12th place.

Cyan actually gave the Camels an early lead with an 8-Gate Chargelot attack that caught Scarlett off guard. Equilibrium, rapidly becoming one of the most popular loser’s maps, was Scarlett’s choice for game two. Scarlett went for a fast gold base, which Cyan responded to with double-Stargate Phoenixes (a questionable choice if you ask me). Cyan’s Oracles and Phoenixes couldn’t do enough damage before they ran out of energy, and that left him helpless when Scarlett came charging in with Ling-Roach.

ByuN wasted no time in opening up the lead against Silky with a 2-0. He took game one with a 4-Barracks Marine all-in in game one, and then took game two with another Marine all-in after a shockingly good Reaper start.

Lambo’s Mutalisks were enough to lock in the three points against TooDming, as the SSLT captain just didn’t have enough Roaches to fight through the glaives in game one. Lambo extracted some extra map points in the final game by holding off TooDming’s Ling-Bane aggression.

Team Liquid 5 – 1 Matcherino Esports
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The ‘reformed’ TL continued to rampage through the WTL, taking down Matcherino in a dominating showing. With the newly-signed Cure becoming eligible in a couple of weeks, TL could become a very scary opponent for the other top teams.

Perhaps taking inspiration from one of WTL’s most famous upsets, Astrea channeled the spirit of Nice and started with a proxy Void Ray all-in against Clem. However, the magic of the old days wasn’t there, and Clem made it a quick 1-0 lead for TL thanks to his good early scouting (and some poor micro from Astrea). Astrea then tried a ‘macro cheese’ in game two, going for a fast third base at the rich resource base on Equilibrium. However, Clem quickly made him pay with a fast Tank push, which Astrea just couldn’t dislodge with his Colossus tech. Astrea tried to turn the game around with some cheeky DT’s, but it wasn’t even close enough to making a difference as Clem continued his push into the natural for a quick and efficient 2-0.

SKillous then sealed the victory with his own 2-0 against Future. The Matcherino Terran opened game one with a 1-rax proxy-Marauder Bunker rush, followed by a fast Mine-drop off of one base. However, SKillous held off all this harassment while only taking minor damage (he had a close call against the Mines), and ended up with a serious advantage. SKillous ran over to the other side of the map with a Warp Prism and Blink Stalkers to take the quick victory. Future tried another proxy-Barracks in game two, but it was thwarted by a nosey Probe that killed off the building SCV. Future tried to go 2-Rax Reaper after that, which completely fell apart against SKillous’ decision to make a couple of Oracles. With the game basically decided, SKillous decided to take his time and end it in style with Tempest-Carrier.

The series was over at this point, but NightMare still had to come out and play for map score against Elazer. He stuck with the cheesy theme of the day, taking game one with a Glaive Adept/DT attack that did severe early damage. Elazer took things to Pride of Altaris Equilibrium for game two, taking the ‘standard’ gold base quickly. NightMare responded with some two-Gate Adept pressure but couldn’t’ slow Elazer down, and had to GG out to the Gold-powered Roach-Ravager push.

ONSYDE Gaming 5 – 1 Platinum Heroes
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ONSYDE concluded the easier part of their schedule with a full 12 points and a +18 map differential, giving themselves a leg up in the race for the #1 seed. Let’s see if they can keep marching toward another regular season title as they face some heavy hitters in the upcoming weeks.

Maru continued his undefeated season by beating DnS comfortably in the opening series. In the first game, a two-base Tank push was enough to earn him the win. He needed some more time in game two, but he took a similarly convincing victory in a longer macro game.

The bright spot for Platinum Heroes was once again FireFly, as he stole yet another 1-1 tie off of a strong opponent in Solar. FireFly opened Stargate into Robo in game one, but put himself in a bad position by losing his first three Oracles to Queens. With no eyes on the map, it looked like FireFly could be in danger against Solar’s +1 Roach-Ravager attack. However, FireFly showed that Immortal-Sentry can still counter infinity Roaches as long as your opponent insists on fighting into narrow chokes. After a series of battles with some brutal resources-lost ratios for Solar, the ONSYDE Zerg had to GG out and end his undefeated streak. After the huge upset, FireFly crumbled in game two. As Cranky Ducklings caster Light_VIP put it ‘’The wall was not a wall’’, with a 20-Zergling runby basically winning Solar the game..

ArT briefly gave the Heroes the hope of pulling off an insane upset in game one against Ryung. The classic Mine-drop vs Blink Stalkers exchange in the early game went ArT’s favor, and the Heroes’ Protoss put himself in position to crank out plenty of Gateway units with Storm and Disruptor support. Ryung was forced into a position where he really had to get damage done with his first big push, but ArT seemed to misread his position by hastily taking a fight. His attempt to save his fourth base was a disaster, fighting from a terrible angle that allowed Ryung to demolish the Protoss army and lock in the victory for ONSYDE. With the 3 points in hand, Ryung went for a fun build-in game two: double-Reactor-Factory-Proxy Cyclones (how many dashes can we fit into a single build?). Ryung was able to kill the natural but couldn’t push up into the main, forcing the two players into a strange 1 base vs 1 base scenario. Unfortunately for ArT, he tried to retake his natural when Ryung was still all-inning, leading to another defeat.

Dragon KaiZi Gaming 2 – 4 BASILISK
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BASILISK got a big 3-point victory on the back of Trigger’s best performance in the WTL so far. If the Canadian Protoss can keep this level of play up, BASILISK could become truly unstoppable. As for DKZ, first place is now almost assuredly out of sight. Still, the regular season has never been DPG/DKZ’s focus in the past, so everything will hinge on their players’ form when the playoffs come around.

Things were slow in the early game of Trigger versus Oliveira, with fast expands and macro buildups on both sides. Trigger continued to take this third while defending against Oliviera’s 1/1/1 aggression, and he held off the follow-up Stim-Shields timing as well. With everything having gone his way in the buildup stage, Trigger was able to hit a strong Colossus-Stalker timing to force the GG. Oliveira took a page out of Ryung’s book in game two, going for a double-Factory-Reactor Cyclones with SCV’s to repair. However, his micro was rather lacking, leading to an easy hold and victory from Trigger.

Dark tried to rally his team to a comeback, taking the first map against Serral. The early game went well for Serral, as he defended against Dark’s gold-based powered Roach push on Alcyone. However, he went into a counterattack too quickly, perhaps thinking Dark would try to catch up in economy. Dark was actually continuing to crank out units, and he surrounded and destroyed Serral’s transiting army to take the game. The second game started in much more standard fashion, with both players going through the usual 3-base macro sequence in ZvZ. Dark decided to make a detour at Spire for Mutalisks, while Serral stayed focused on ground units with double-Evo upgrades. This made all the difference, as Dark barely got anything done with his Mutalisks while Serral assembled a better-upgraded Hydra-Roach force. Frontal attacks combined with burrow-Roach tactics kept Dark pinned down, and Serral freely teched up to Lurkers to close the game out (even getting a snipe on Dark’s Lurker Den to keep him even further behind). Good Viper usage allowed Dark to survive one major Lurker attack, but he soon had to GG out against Serral’s overwhelming resource, upgrade, and tech unit advantage.

In order to keep his team alive, herO needed to do something no one had ever done during the WTL regular season: beat Reynor 2-0. He started things off with his trademark herO-style in game one, going for Oracle-Stalker without a Robo. He opted for one of the more aggressive branches, skipping Forge for an 8-Gate Blink all-in. At the same time, Reynor was thinking offense as well, going for a 3-base Roach-Ravager attack with Queen-drop support. After spotting the attack, Reynor decided to improvise, using his ground army to defend while sending his Overlords to Queen-drop both herO’s natural and main. At first, it seemed like herO was going to get completely pulled apart by this triple-prong pressure. However, unsupported Queens don’t actually do much damage, and herO managed to put out all the fires while preserving the bulk of his army. Once defense was taken care of, herO immediately resumed attacking at the other end of the map, hitting a lethal timing to force the GG.

Reynor predictably picked Equilibrium as the second map, and for once, someone actually stopped the obvious gold base with a Probe and offensive Pylon. Reynor went for a normal macro game from there, while herO went for Adept-Stargate into 2-Stargate Phoenixes. Reynor got an early scout on herO’s tech, which herO responded to by switching out of Phoenixes for ground-based approach. This tech switch might have been able to stop Reynor’s mass Roach-Ravager-Queen timing under normal circumstances, but a Zergling runby from Reynor devastated herO’s economy at a critical juncture. After that, there was nothing herO could do to stop Reynor from securing the 4-2 for BASILISK.

PSISTORM Gaming 5 – 1 Kwangdong Freecs
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Game one saw Spirit open 3-CC Banshee against soO’s own macro opener. This could have led to the kind of Lair-stage combat that soO is quite adept at, but poor defense against Spirit’s Banshee harass meant the game was basically half-over in the early-game. Spirit went on to execute a strong parade push and force the GG out of soO. The two players went to Equilibrium next, and this time soO got to play a ‘proper’ macro game. Alas, this didn’t change the outcome, as his Hydra-Ling-Bane actually got overpowered by Spirit’s bio. Spirit’s preference for slow and methodical play made it a long game, which made soO’s eventual defeat extra-assured.

Gerald took home the three points for PSISTORM, beating KeeN 2-0 in the next match. Game one saw KeeN channel the spirit of MarineKing and open without a safety Bunker, allowing Gerald to mess him up with Zealot-Adept harass. This helped Gerald hold off KeeN’s Tank push and Liberator harassment without too much trouble, and eventually roll to a win in a macro game. KeeN adjusted by opening with a safer high-ground CC in game two, after which he went for another Tank push. Gerald found it a bit harder to hold the push after failing to deal any early damage, but he still pulled off the hold in the end. Stuck on two bases, KeeN pulled the boys for a desperation attack, only to get obliterated by Gerald’s Storms.

With the series already decided, the stakes in the last match were PSISTORM’s map score and MaxPax’s 26-match PvP winning streak. Game one saw Stats match MaxPax fairly well into the mid game, keeping on top of scouting with hallucinated Phoenixes and seeing the enemy’s Dark Shrine. …aaaannnndddd he didn’t click on it, didn’t build any detection, and didn’t hesitate to GG when the invisible man showed up. Life be like that sometimes.

Game two also saw Stats keep up reasonably well with MaxPax in the early/mid-game. However, MaxPax’s Oracle, Blink Stalkers, and Adepts harassment taxed Stats’ multitasking, delaying his fourth base and putting him in an economic hole. Stats one big chance was a +2 attack timing… …aaaannndddd it actually worked! Despite some DT shenanigans, Stats stayed steadfast in his push and overwhelmed the pure-Stalker army of MaxPax. The Dane’s PvP win streak ended at 26 with a draw at the hands of Stats.

Weekly MVP: SLT.Wayne

I wavered a lot between Starlight Twinkle’s Wayne and BASILISK’s Trigger for this week’s award. The Canadian Protoss certainly gave an amazing performance, beating the reigning world champion Oliveira in what ended up being the deciding series for his team. In the end, though, I gave the edge to Vanya/Rattata/Wayne for his 1-1 against SHIN and ace match win against Bunny. Wayne was very impressive in his two twins, first surviving a scary all-in against RagnaroK and then dominating Bunny in the ace match.

Weekly MVP’s:

• Week 4: SLT.Wayne
• Week 3: BASILISK.Reynor
• Week 2: SR.Harstem
• Week 1: BASILISK.Serral

Match of the week: DKZ.herO vs BASILISK.Reynor – Game One

This one was short but sweet, with the game spiraling into utter chaos after both players went for aggressive strategies. This one turned out to be a vintage smiling assassin performance, with herO matching Reynor’s multitasking to come out with the victory. Overall, a very fun and hectic little game that you don’t see everyday.

Watch VOD: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1957441696?t=74m01s

Preview: Regular Season Week 3

Friday, Oct 27 12:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00) Matches

The Freecs seem to be in for another hard time in week 5 as they take on second place Shopify Rebellion. I don’t think there is any point in StarCraft history where I would have picked Armani to beat ByuN, and I certainly won’t now that he’s been losing to Future, BattleB, and Kas.

TY vs Scarlett may be where the Freecs could start to mount a comeback. TY has not been playing that well since his return from the military, but he is inexplicably doing great against Scarlett. Since he came back from the army, TY has only won four TvZ series, and three of them were against Scarlett (7-2 in maps). I have no idea what the hell happened in this match-up to cause such outliers, but maybe we’ll find out on Friday. TY might be be 1-3 against Scarlett since his return, but he’s still the player who went furthest in the GSL out of all the Freecs this years (RO8). His dogged obsession with mech might doom him here, but he’s one misread BC rush away from stealing a 1-1 tie.

Harstem vs KeeN will probably close the series out. KeeN didn’t play badly against Gerald last week and may take a map here if he can end it in the early/mid-game. However, Harstem seems to be in good form this season, so I can’t see it being any worse than a tie.

Prediction: Shopify Rebellion 5 – 1 Freecs

PSISTORM have edge in terms of match-ups as they face Team Liquid in this key mid-table match.

MaNa getting matched with Spirit is probably not the result he was hoping for. He has enjoyed a fair degree of success against his countryman in the past, but is currently in a dry spell, losing their last seven meetings. Spirit is not as consistent in TvP as in TvZ, so maybe Mana can steal a map and really help his team.

After getting trampled by Serral a few weeks ago, Gerald gets the role of the sacrificial lamb once again against Clem. Ideally, Liquid would have matched Clem against MaxPax, but instead they’ve drawn the short end of the stick with SKillous facing the Danish PvP master. As I mentioned above, Stats did manage to break MaxPax’s winning streak at 26 with a tie, but the unbeaten streak is still alive at 29 matches (screw it, I make the rules!).

If everything plays out like it should on paper, PSISTORM will take the 4-2 victory. If TL can somehow force the ace anyway, then we’d get Clem vs MaxPax for the 20934839th time. The balance of power in that match-up has swung back and forth over the years, but Clem has had the edge in the last few months.

[b]Prediction: Team Liquid 2 – 4 PSISTORM Gaming

Saturday, Oct 28 12:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00) Matches

Matcherino vs Mystery is my most anticipated match of the week. Both teams have talented players, both teams are currently playing below expectations, and both teams desperately need to win here to salvage their season.

The first two series could really go any which way. Astrea, NightMare, Bunny, and SHIN are all in shaky form right now, and it’s anyone’s guess as to who will snap out of their funk first.

Arrogfire will then fight a ‘’Mystery’’ Protoss player in Nanami. The young Chinese Protoss has barely played outside of his region, and in fact, this will be only his second official match against a European player. It’s hard to judge his skill level, but the fact that he loses against Cyan and Nice most of the time suggests this is winnable for Arrogfire. Since this a PvP between two players I’m unsure of, a 1-1 seems to be the best guess.

In a potential ace match, I think all combinations of [NightMare/Astrea] vs [Bunny/SHIN] are equally likely, and I have no idea who would be favored in each scenario. However, Matcherino have been a bit more clutch this season, so I’ll timidly predict their victory.

Prediction: Matcherino Esports 4 – 3 Mystery Gaming

ReWhite gets to make an appearance for SLT for the second week in a row, only to get an even more hopeless match against Reynor. The most optimistic scenario I can envision for SLT is Wayne stealing a 1-1 tie against Serral and Cham defeating Trigger 2-0 to force the ace match. However, considering Trigger’s good form in this season of WTL and Serral’s good form in everything since 2018, I don’t see it happening.

Prediction: Starlight Twinkle 1 – 5 Basilisk

Sunday, Oct 29 12:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00) Matches

Firefly will reunite with his old teammates but it’s hardly a joyous occasion. In fact, he’s probably the one who will put the final nail in their coffin. Firefly has been excellent this season despite the struggles of his new crew, and TooDming is a more than manageable adversary. Perhaps TooDming has a secret read on Firefly he’s been keeping in his pocket, but barring that I’d give the 2-0 to the Heroes.

ShaDoWn and DnS also have the advantage in their matches, though they’re hardly guaranteed to take 2-0’s. Both Cyan and Silky came up with clutch performances during SSLT’s miracle run last season—if they can summon just a bit of that magic, then maybe this match could be close. However, SSLT’s current season has been anything but magical so far, so a Heroes victory seems much more likely.

Prediction: Platinum Heroes 4 – 2 SSLT

DKZ finds themselves in a marquee match for the second week in a row, this time against the reigning-champion ONSYDE Gaming.

All three matches have interesting complications. Solar and Dark, by far the two best Zergs in Korea since the retirement of Rogue, are set to play in the Code S semifinals next week. Neither player will want to give anything away ahead of that match, so perhaps conservative play will reign here (although, it would be very Dark-ish to just double 12-pool all-in).

herO vs Ryung favors DKZ, but the ONSYDE veteran has a puncher’s chance. Strong TvP has been a big part of his late-career resurgence, and it’s a match-up that has been fruitful for him in the WTL.

Finally, we get a TvT between Maru and Oliveira. It’s weird—you would have thought these two had played at some point, but nope, it’s never happened.

Prediction: Don’t you dare hurt me again Maru.

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• Source: https://tl.net/forum/starcraft-2/617681-wtl-2023-winter-week-4-results-week-5-preview