WTL 2023 Winter – Week 10 Preview

by: Wax

After a quick break during which Serral won his fifth HomeStory Cup title, the WTL is back in action for an exciting final two weeks of the regular season. While there weren’t any matches during the break, there was still some action on the transfer market that could change the face of the league down the stretch.

Spirit to NAVI: Last season, Spirit made a big mid-season switch from Starlight Twinkle to a beleaguered PSISTORM Gaming. While Spirit joined too late to turn PSISTORM’s Summer season around, this season, he’s put up a 7-7 map record and put PSISTORM on track for the playoffs.

Spirit’s abrupt departure presents PSISTORM with a familiar conundrum: Who will back up ace player MaxPax? This is certainly a huge blow to PSISTORM should they make the playoffs, and it even opens up the possibility of a total disaster scenario where they go 0-2 in the final weeks of the regular season and miss the playoffs entirely.

Cyan to Mystery Gaming: One can hardly blame Cyan—who’s having a passable 7-13 season—for jumping ship from the winless Starving Camels. It’s sad to see this happen after the Camels went on an underdog run for the ages in the Summer season, but the writing was probably on the wall ever since Firefly was signed away by Platinum Heroes (WTL has never felt more like European football).

Official rules say that Cyan ‘’can be fielded after week 11,’’ which seems to imply he could play if MYG gets into the postseason. Given his tremendous performance in the recent IEM Katowice Asia qualifier, it looks like he’ll be a solid upgrade over Strange in the playoffs.

But will MYG make the playoffs at all? That’s the big question that will be answered in the next two weeks. The race for the seventh and final playoff spot is realistically down to MYG and SLT, and MYG seem to have the advantage as their last two matches are against the Freecs and the Starving Camels. MYG were going to be heavily favored against SSLT under normal circumstances, but it feels like overkill to sign one of the opposing team’s best players before a key match (and perhaps icky enough that it merits a review of the league rules).

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

• 3 points for a victory in a series that does not require an ace match
• 2 points for a victory in a series that requires an ace-match
• 1 point for a loss in a series that requires an ace-match
• 0 points for a loss in a series that does not require an ace match

Preview: Regular Season Week 10

by Nakajin

Two of the main pieces of the final puzzle could be decided this week. ONSYDE can clinch the regular season championship with:

• A three or two-point victory vs Shopify
• A one-point loss AND anything but a three-point victory from DKZ

SSLT will be 100% relegated with:

• Anything but a 3-point victory

During the first 9 weeks of the season, TooDming and Silky combined for a grand total of 4 map wins. Now, they have to face the mighty BASILISK with team game specialist Sakura as Cyan’s replacement—it’s not looking great, man.

With that said, the Camels can still trip up the favorites with just a single map win here. BASILISK currently sit in fourth place with a +12 map differential, which is 5 maps behind DKZ. Both DKZ and BASILISK are likely to win out the rest of the season, but BASILISK have an outside chance of overtaking DKZ if they can wallop their remaining opponents with clean 6-0’s. No, it’s not the most glorious thing for SSLT to play for, but it’s something.

If an upset were to happen, Silky vs Trigger would be the match to watch out for. But then again, Reynor has a chance to do the funniest thing ever…

Prediction: BASILISK 6 – 0 SSLT

The odds are overwhelmingly in favor of ONSYDE to win their second straight regular season title, but Shopify has a small chance of reigniting the title race headed into the final week.

If Shopify could somehow take three points off of ONSYDE, they’re basically guaranteed second place and could even challenge for first if Liquid get anything positive against ONSYDE next week. Alas, Shopify have benched their best weapon in this key moment, with ByuN sitting out for the match (one might think it was due to IEM Katowice qualifiers, but then wouldn’t that also apply to every single player on Shopify?).

Lambo will open things up against Solar, which is a decent draw for SR. While Solar’s ZvZ is a deadly matchup, Lambo showed he’s a strong ZvZ sniper by 2-0’ing Reynor in Week 9. A 1-1 tie is certainly in the realm of possibility, though not the likely result.

Harstem will have a much, much harder time against Maru. Besides a curious weakness to MaxPax, Maru has been absolutely dominant in TvP this year and should be the heavy favorite to take a 2-0 here.

It’s been eleven years since Ryung and Scarlett first played each other in a competitive series, and they’ve traded blows almost equally along the way. In terms of current form, they still seem to be closely matched. However, Ryung has definitely been the more clutch player when it comes to the WTL, and I can’t see him doing worse than a 1-1.

Prediction: ONSYDE 5 – 1 Shopify Rebellion

To have a reasonable chance of fending off MYG and hanging on to the 7th place spot, Starlight Twinkle need to somehow find at least two points against TL and SR. Looking at this week’s draw, it sure seems like they should start thinking about Week 11.

In probably the worst draw they could have had, relative newcomer ReWhite will need to overcome a top 3 TvP player in Cure, Nice has the honor of facing the top 1 TvP player Clem, and finally Wayne will have to face Elazer in what’s been a historically bad match-up for him. Even though Wayne is playing much better in 2023 and has narrowed the gap on Elazer, I don’t think SLT as a whole have it in them to steal a point.

Prediction: Team Liquid 5 -1 Starlight Twinkle

Mystery Gaming have been paving their way to the playoffs with a second half surge, and now they need to make sure they don’t somehow hit a pothole during the final few miles.

While many of the players in Week 10 will be stressed due to IEM Katowice qualification, Bunny might be especially distracted as he failed to make it through the recent Asian qualifier. Now, he has to think ahead to unfavorable open bracket gauntlets in both Europe and the Americas.

The good thing for MYG is that they are playing the underwhelming Freecs, so getting a 4-0 is hardly a colossal task. KeeN is playing some fine Starcraft this season and has emerged as the Freecs’ ace, but SHIN has been playing even better during MYG’s second half run. As for TY, he’s been hugely underwhelming since his surprise Code S appearance in Season 2, putting up a 5-12 match record ever since. He also gets stomped every time I watch him, so I don’t have the slightest hope that he can beat Bunny.

Stats should be able to save a bit of face for the Freecs against Strange, as his PvP has looked quite potent lately (it even secured him a completely unexpected IEM Katowice spot). However, it will probably be too little, too late.

Prediction: Mystery Gaming 4 – 2 Freecs

Matcherino and DKZ should give us an entertaining bout, though there’s little doubt as to what the final result will be.

NightMare’s PvT is not his specialty, but he does seem to elevate his game somewhat in the WTL. Even with Oliveira looking better by the week, he’s still not quite at his world championship level yet. The Astrea and Dark match-up is similar. Dark might be the favorite, but the gap isn’t so large that you pencil this in as a 2-0 stomp. Between NightMare and Astrea, Matcherino should be able to take at least a map.

As for Future vs herO, that one’s rather baffling as Future actually has a positive 2-1 record over herO, with all those matches having occurred in 2023! One has to assume that’s a huge statistical outlier, but who knows—maybe Future will show that there’s some real substance to it.

Prediction: Dragon KaiZi Gaming 5 – 1 Matcherino Esports

After Spirit’s departure, PSISTORM’s path to the playoffs is not entirely safe. They’ll be hoping that MaxPax can guide them to the promised land, but he can’t do it alone.

With Firefly being highly favored against emergency replacement Namshar (who briefly played for the PSISTORM second division squad during the WTL qualifiers) and MaxPax being the solid favorite against ShaDoWn, DnS vs Gerald will be the most important match. The Frenchman holds the overall head-to-head lead, but Gerald has had the upper hand lately. A 2-0 victory for Gerald or a 1-1 seems equally probable to me, though a 2-0 for DnS isn’t out of the question. However, if things are close, I’ll usually go with the prediction that gives us more StarCraft, so I’ll say the two tie 1-1 and send us to an ace match.

That would give us the ace match of Firefly vs MaxPax in a must see PvP, if such a thing exists. While Firefly has been playing out of his mind as of late, MaxPax is still clearly the best PvP player in the world and should get the win.

Prediction: PSISTORM Gaming 4 – Platinum Heroes

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• Source: https://tl.net/forum/starcraft-2/618745-wtl-2023-winter-week-10-preview