WTL 2021 Summer – Playoff Preview

by: Wax

After eleven weeks of regular season play, we've finally arrived at the grand finale to the World Team League: The Playoffs. While fans should be familiar with gauntlet tournaments, the SCBOY Team Leagues have a unique, hybrid format for the individual matches. Once again, here's the explanation of the playoffs:

Catch the WTL 2021 Summer Season Playoffs on the stream of Wardi on July 10th and 11th at 11:00 GMT (+00:00)!

5th seed: Shopify Rebellion (7W - 4L, +10 map differential)

Roster and regular season stats
The Shopify Rebellion were the surprise of the season, but not because they clinched the fifth and final playoff spot. That race always seemed wide open, with Shopify, Alpha X, Team Liquid, and Good Game Gaming all having a fair chance.

No, the real surprise was in how Shopify did it. Instead of "one-man-army" ByuN carrying the team, it was instead a group effort where Lambo was the biggest contributor. The highlights from Lambo's 16-7 record include 2-0's against Dark and Solar, 1-1's against sOs and Trap, and a crucial ace match win against Stats. When you factor in Lambo's top three finish in DHM Europe after beating Serral, he could very well be Shopify's ace player headed into the playoffs—who would have expected that at the start of the season?

Shopify is also getting a boost from Scarlett returning to good form, finishing second place in DHM North America and then upsetting Lambo and Trap to reach the quarterfinals of DHM Summer. No, we're probably not going to see her score any all-kills, as she did in previous seasons of the SCBOY Teamleague when the competition was weaker. However, Scarlett's skill with aggressive builds should hold her in good stead, making her a big threat to take a valuable "life" off of a key player.

ByuN is the biggest variable for Shopify, with the team's ostensible ace having disappointed thus far with a 14-11 record. ByuN's WTL performance matches his general slump since ASUS ROG 2020 back in November—after beating Reynor, Serral, and Maru to win the ASUS ROG title, he's become almost completely irrelevant in major tournaments. Was ByuN's idiosyncratic style figured out? Was ASUS ROG simply an irreplicable miracle run? Are ByuN's admitted psychological issues in the GSL even worse than we thought? Whatever the answer is, one thing is for sure: Shopify isn't a real contender until the real ByuN returns.

4th seed: Afreeca Freecs (7W - 4L, +16 map differential)

Roster and regular season stats

• Armani: 13-7
  
• KeeN: 0-0 (recently joined after completing service)
  
• Trap: 13-8
  
• TY: 9-9
  
• Stats: 7-2 (unavailable due to military service)

With Stats leaving for military service mid season, and TY dropping off rapidly as his own enlistment date approaches, these once championship contenders have been reduced to plucky underdogs. With such a depleted roster, even surviving a first round match against Shopify could be difficult.

The shining hope for Afreeca is Trap, the #1 Protoss player in the world, and collector of tier-2 tournament trophies. The WTL playoffs format might be complicated, but it still follows the fundamental rule of all-kill-style: Until you lose a map, you keep playing. If an elite player gets some momentum going in this format, they can become unstoppable—variance and regression to the mean be damned.

We all know how good Trap is at his best: he's an ace-of-all-trades player, equally masterful at executing a deadly all-in or suffocating his opponent in the late game. IF that version of Trap shows up to the WTL playoffs—and that's a big if, considering Trap's showings in DHM Summer and Code S—Afreeca Freecs might have a chance of contending for the title.

While we've seen the full 7-0 all-kill before in WTL, it'd probably be nice for Trap if he could get some help. While Armani is unlikely to go on a win-streak, he's a stout right-hand man who's only lost 0-2 once in the entire regular season (to Cure). Considering the rosters of the playoff teams, Armani going 1-1 would be a perfectly satisfactory trade for Afreeca.

At the time of writing, I'm unsure if TY will be playing in the playoffs, as it appears that his military service will begin very soon. TY was a disappointing SCBOY team league player even when he was in his prime—notably being cut from TSG—but Afreeca would be happy to have even a diminished version of TY available. If he could get just one of his signature Hellion drops to work, it would be one less opponent for Trap to take care of.

If it comes down to deploying KeeN, it wouldn't be a complete disaster for Afreeca. He's been surprisingly quick on the re-uptake after returning from military service, stealing maps and occasional series against established Code S players in online cups. From what I've seen, most of his upset wins are due to cheese or catching his opponent napping during early harassment, but that's kind of what you expect from a recent military returnee. Of course, all of this is grading on a curve, as KeeN would be hugely outmatched against any of the title contenders. Still, when our baseline expectation for recent returnees is zero, it's encouraging that KeeN has an outsider's chance of stealing a map.

3rd seed: KaiZi Gaming (9W - 2L, +23 map differential)

Roster and regular season stats
KaiZi Gaming has the dubious honor of being my pick as the most confusing team of the playoffs. Let's start off with their most pressing issue: how well will INnoVation play? A joke made about his lax practice habits during the Code S group selections turned out to be more serious than we imagined, with Korean and Chinese fans dredging up his SC2—and League of Legends—ladder record to seemingly confirm his lackadaisical approach. However, the story took another twist,as it was recently revealed that INnoVation is set to begin his military service soon. After spending over a decade in the trenches of StarCraft competition, one can hardly begrudge the legend for taking it easy in his last few weeks as a civilian—though it bodes poorly for KaiZi Gaming. However, considering INnoVation's reputation for delivering good results with less-than-standard practice, perhaps he'll find a way to go out with a bang.

On the plus side, Solar has been playing extremely well lately, finishing second place in NeXT Season 1 after barely losing to Trap by a 3-4 score in the grand finals. While his recent Code S RO16 elimination was certainly painful, he had a good excuse—he was the victim of PartinG's abnormal Pylon-wall due to insufficient quality testing on GSL-only map Oblivion. Outside of that unfortunate circumstance, Solar has been on a roll in all competitions, and he's recorded an impressive 19-4 record in WTL while climbing to #2 in the Aligulac.com Korean Zerg rankings. Somehow, Solar always seems to bring his A-game to the SCBOY Team Leagues, and he's one of the few players we could call a 'traditional' powerhouse. Much like Afreeca, KaiZi will need their ace to go on a hot streak if they're to contend for the championship.

Finally, there's TIME, who has struggled since WTL dropped the Chinese player quota. He was projected to be the only Chinese who might be successful even without protections, but instead he put up similar statistical results to players like Coffee (9-15), Cyan (8-14), and XY (7-15). While one might look at that as a good sign for the overall parity of the Chinese scene, it's bad news for KaiZi headed into the playoffs. While TIME is more than capable of trading blows with middling Code S players, he typically struggles—or gets straight up destroyed—when he plays against championship-tier players. KaiZi must take care to deploy TIME in spots where he can be effective.

2nd seed: Team NV (10W - 1L, +29 map differential)

Roster and regular season stats
While the WTL's format favors top-heavy teams, Team NV still finished 2nd place in the regular season with their Maru + the boys roster construction. This was largely due to Maru's support cast being stronger than expected, with Bunny and sOs surging both inside and outside the WTL.

Bunny, in particular, has been playing great StarCraft II as of late, earning top eight finishes in almost nearly every major tournament he enters. Team NV gave him an incredible vote of confidence in the final week of the regular season, sending him out as their ace against Afreeca's Trap. Bunny repaid this faith by winning the match in a fairly straight-up macro game, a testament to his strong all around play in 2021.

sOs is also enjoying a late-career hot streak, finishing top four in Super Tournament 2 and breaking a four-year Code S playoff drought. Notably, he beat his own teammate Maru in Code S, showing that micro is a very overrated skill compared to "make things weird and then make good decisions." sOs is frequently touted as the person that other players most loathe to play, and his unpredictability makes a dangerous sniper in this format.

On the flip side, ace player Maru has had a sneakily underwhelming regular season. While the win-loss record says 17-3, most of those wins have come against weaker players he's 'supposed' to beat like Alka and MacSed. The best player Maru earned a 2-0 against was either TIME or Scarlett—meanwhile, he went 1-1 against Trap, Cure, and Clem. Still, he did live up to his reputation as a closer in his two ace matches, beating both Solar and MaxPax to seal victory for his team. Similarly, you expect the Proleague legend to take his game up a notch in the playoffs, but that could be difficult against the absolutely stacked line-up of players DPG is bringing to bear. While Maru is certainly the #1 Terran player in the world, recent tournaments suggest he's not the unstoppable super-ace of old—he's just one of many great players in the championship mix. Fortunately for Team NV, sOs and Bunny are playing at a level where Maru can act as a closer, rather than having to catch fire and go on multi-kill streaks.

As for the rest of the roster, one wonders if we'll actually see them in action. Creator, NightMare, and Percival certainly pulled their weight in the regular season, but it would take some serious faith from Team NV to wager their season on one of these players. ZvT specialist DongRaeGu probably has the best chance of seeing some action, as every playoff team is almost certain to field a Terran player. But even in that situation, sOs seems like the stronger anti-Terran card.

1st seed: Dragon Phoenix Gaming (9W - 2L, +34 map differential)

Roster and regular season stats
Our pre-season favorites have come in first place as expected. The philosophy for Dragon Phoenix Gaming seems to be: Why choose between depth and stars when you can have both?

Our roster rundown has to start with regular season MVP Cure (according to the TL.net awards, anyway), who put up a ridiculous 16-1 record during the round-robin phase of the tournament. "Online-Cure," though diminished from his 2020 peak, is still one of the best players in StarCraft II, recently recording top four finishes in both TSL7 and NeXT Season 1. In fact, he's reclaimed the #1 Terran spot in the Aligulac.com rankings, thanks to both Clem's mini-slump and his own rampages through ESL Open Cups. Much like his former teammate Trap, Cure is a player who can do it all—early, middle, or late, he can beat you at any phase of the game. Really, the only question is whether the WTL playoffs is too big a stage for Online-Cure to show up on. Remember, in last season's playoffs, Cure dropped the ball for DPG, going 1-1 against RagnaroK in their initial series, and then losing again to the Alpha X Zerg in the ace match. Given Cure's regular season performance, you have to think DPG will give him a chance to make up for his past mistakes. Can he take advantage of the opportunity?

Not only do DPG have Cure, but they also have the other god of online cups in Zest on their side (you figure if Mouz ever let HeroMarine go, DPG would find a way to pick him up). Compared to Cure, Zest is much better at bringing his skills to bear in major competitions, though that's not to say he's an especially consistent player. Some days, we see the smart, decisive player who made it all the way to the finals of IEM Katowice. On other days, we see him lose haplessly after losing the one Warp Prism that was the key to his entire strategy. If Zest gets hot, he could easily pull off a string of wins that seals the championship for DPG. Then again, so could any other player on the roster.

Speaking of inconsistently great players, Dark seems to be finding his footing at the perfect time for DPG. A full-on playoff benching seemed reasonable for Dark halfway through the season, when he was straddling a 50% win-rate in WTL (giving up 1-1 draws to Harstem, RagnaroK, Ryung, and Cham) and failing to make it out of the Code S group stage. However, things have started to go better for Dark since June, as he reached the Code S RO8 and ended Clem's invincible TvZ run in TSL7. Now, given the number of strong Terrans in the playoffs, it seems very likely that Dark will be called upon—as long as the rest of the strong vsT players on his team don't take care of business first.

In contrast to Dark, Rogue seems to have hit a patch of rough water at an inopportune moment. Technically, Rogue did make good on his vow to avoid the post-championship slump by advancing to the RO8 of Code S, but his performance wasn't convincing at all. He dropped a map to Code S newcomer Percival, and gave up a clean 0-2 loss to Bunny in the winners match (he only qualified advanced by beating ByuN in the decider match). Rogue's top four run in the recent DH Summer Finals is deceptive as well. His wins came against some of the weaker players in Nice, SpeCial, and TIME while he gave up losses to Reynor and Nice in return (7-5 overall map score). Making things worse, Rogue hasn't been particularly good in the WTL either. While his regular season record was better than Dark on paper at 11-5, he only managed to put up one 'quality win' against sOs. When forced into make-or-break matches against ace-caliber players, Rogue ended up going 0-2 against both INnoVation and Clem.

While Rogue has a reputation for coming up clutch in big moments, one has to wonder if the WTL finals will count as such a scenario in his head. He did happen to carry Jin Air Green Wings to the championship in the CTC Season 2 playoffs, but that happened quite a long time ago and was for a team that had a special camaraderie from years of living together.

Ultimately, there's no wrong choice for DPG when it comes to roster selection in the grand finals, with every player having the competitive resume to justify being fielded. When it's all said and done, it's unlikely that we'll miss a player because they've been benched—but rather because their teammates already finished the job.

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Source: https://tl.net/forum/starcraft-2/575313-wtl-2021-summer-playoff-preview