WTL 2024 Summer – Week 1 Recap/Week 2 Preview

by: Nakajin

The first World Team League of 2024 opened in explosive fashion, with title contenders BASILISK suffering an upset at the hands of an underdog Starlight Twinkle squad. In a season that initially seemed polarized between the haves and have-nots, it was a sign that the overall competition may prove to be much tougher than expected.

The Serral-less BASILISK will be immediately tested again in week 2, with Dragon KaiZi Gaming drawing favorable match-ups in their upper echelon clash. Meanwhile, some of the WTL’s mainstays will take on challenges from newcomers, as Shopify face off against the Stats-Classic duo on Twisted Fairy while Team Liquid will take on a very unusual OFFSYDE Gaming team including a random-playing uThermal.

Week 1 Recap

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

Vitality 4 – 2 Dragon KaiZi Gaming
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The reigning champions took care of business against a weakened DKZ in the season opener, setting the tone for the rest of the campaign.

Maru had won the championship-clinching ace match last season, and he picked up where he left off with a one-sided 2-0 over Jieshi. On Crimson Court, he used a two-base Stim-Combat Shield + SCV pull timing to bust Jieshi, while on Oceanborn, he bullied the DKZ Protoss early with Reapers and Hellions and finished him with a mid-game push.

Solar would have liked to have closed things out with a 2-0 of his own against Oliveira, but instead immediately gave up a map to the cunning Terran. In game one, Oliveira went for a classic Hellion-Banshee 3-CC opening, but then transitioned into a Hellbat push. Solar got caught with his pants partially down, but scrambled to put together an adequate defense. Solar then managed to stall Oliveira’s follow-up push as he went up to Hive, and for a while, it looked like he might be able to win it with Hydra-Bane-Viper attacks. However, Oliveira’s defensive skills proved to be more than adequate, and he withstood attack after attack until Solar had to GG from resource exhaustion.

Solar went for the Zerg-favored Post-Youth as loser-pick map (expect a whole lot of that going forward), which Oliveira tried to exploit with a clever 1-Rax proxy-Reaper into BC-Hellbat timing. However, Solar sniffed out the plan and stuffed the attack with Roaches, and then counter-attacked to earn the 1-1 tie.

herO vs Ryung seemed like a good match-up for DKZ, but Ryung worked his WTL magic and took the three points home for his team. Playing on Ghost River in game one, herO seemed to be in reasonable position to stop Ryung’s 1-base Marine-Tank-Cyclone all-in with his Stargate opener. However, he erred by losing his initial Oracle after getting a little too greedy, which let Ryung walk straight across the map and execute a series-winning push. herO got a consolation point back in game two (as well as some marginal prize money), winning in a straight-up macro game.

Shopify Rebellion 4 – 2 Berserker Esports
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Berserker re-entered the WTL after a one season hiatus with a strengthened roster, but were unable to overcome the stalwart Shopify Rebellion team in their return match.

Some scheduling changes were allowed due to EPT Europe, and we saw ByuN and GunGFuBanda play first. ByuN quickly took game one on Ghost River with a 3-Rax moveout, but game two on Dynasty was slightly more complicated. GFBD harangued ByuN’s gold base expansion with Blink Stalkers early on, which seemed to slow the Shopify ace down a bit. However, ByuN leaped ahead once he reached the mid-game, and won the game easily in a semi-basetrade.

BattleB vs Harstem started with a two-base Marine-Tank push on the cramped Crimson Court, but Harstem got his Colossus out in time to stop the attack and assembled a Phoenix-Colossus army. However, Harstem’s own counter-offensive also went poorly, as he was deflected after attacking into a wide Terran arc. The game could have gone in any direction from there, but BattleB decided to stay on three bases and commit to finishing Harstem with constant Marine-Marauder-Ghost-Medivac attacks. While some of BattleB’s maneuvering disoriented Harstem, the Captain eventually stabilized at home while sneaking in some GG-forcing backdoor attacks.

BattleB went for the “just play like Maru” strategy in game two on Oceanborn, going for a Reaper-Hellion opener followed by a Marine-Tank push (just like Maru in the previous series). While he wasn’t quite as successful as Maru, he did just enough damage to get the job done and give his team their first map win of the season.

Scarlett made sure things didn’t get unnecessarily tense and immediately locked in the three points against DnS. The Frenchman faked out Scarlett on Oceanborn by hiding a double Oracle opener, but sadly, he lost the “which base should I attack” lottery and only managed to pick off a few Drones at the well-defended third base (whereas the main was Spore-less). Scarlett got her macro going without much trouble, and marched across the map to destroy the Protoss third with Roach-Ling. That essentially put her in an unloseable position, and she closed things out with a Roach-Ravager push.

Playing for map score, DnS chose to go double-Stargate Phoenix into Chargelot-Archon on Goldenaura. None of DnS’s attacks went particularly well, but he showed us exactly why he picked the map as he still got to enter turtle/deathball mode without being punished. After quite a bit of late-game fighting, Scarlett eventually fell into that dreaded situation where you have nothing but Corruptors left over after a major fight, and GG’d out.

Team Liquid 4 – 2 PSISTORM-NAVI
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TL got off to a great start as they looked to build on their runner-up finish from last season, defeating PSISTORM despite Clem being missing from the line-up.

Cure’s previous season in the WTL had been a huge disappointment, and he started his redemption arc with a convincing 2-0 against Gerald. He took game one with relentless pressure, pummeling his opponent with attacks and forcing a sub-10 minute GG. Game two was even quicker, with Cure pulling out double proxy-Barracks Marauders (which is becoming a new signature strategy for Cure) to win in under 5 minutes.

MaxPax then came back with a 2-0 of his own against Elazer. The TL Zerg’s quick Ling-Bane-Hydra timing in game one put MaxPax in danger, but the PSISTORM ace survived the semi all-in and won with a counterattack. Elazer went to the Post-Youth well in game two, and decided on a double-gold base Roach all-in as his map-specific strategy. However, Elazer’s attack was seriously slowed down by MaxPax’s Oracle-Adept harassment, and by the time Elazer crossed the map, he was greeted by game-ending DT’s.

That put all the pressure on SKillous and Spirit in the third match-up, and the Liquid Protoss rose to the occasion with a series-clinching 2-0. Game one on Ghost River saw Spirit go for a map-specific cheese, proxying two Barracks near the opponent’s natural mineral wall while using SCV’s to mine through. It was a nice idea, but one Spirit had clearly just come up with moments earlier—he didn’t bring enough SCV’s to actually mine through the wall. While SKillous might have been able to shut down the cheese even without the comical error, it made it all the easier to get an early lead. Spirit did a somewhat credible job of playing from behind, but his inability to pressure SKillous at all gave the Protoss too much of an economic lead to overcome.

SKillous got off to almost as good a start in game two, but this time he earned it through his own abilities. With his fast Prism-Stalker harass going up against Spirit’s Cloaked Banshees, he did a better job of microing and multitasking in the hectic early game. Skillous didn’t quite snowball out of control, but he correctly read Spirit’s follow-up Marine-Tank-SCV all-in and defended to take the victory.

Starlight Twinkle 4 – 3 BASILISK-BIG
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TL.net’s #1 power rank team BASILISK came into the match with their superace Serral missing, but were still favored to get the job done against the underdog Starlight Twinkle (#11 in the power rank). Instead, the Twinklers(?) came through with a stellar performance, knocking the championship contenders down a notch.

Reynor and Wayne were up first, and NO, the 50/50 man was not the culprit this time. The Italian Zerg took game one by successfully defending against Wayne’s low-tech all-in, after which the two Zergs decided to play a more standard Roach-Ravager war in game two. While Wayne caused some economic trouble for Reynor with burrowed Roaches, Reynor came out on top in the game deciding fights thanks to big Bile hits and chip damage from his supporting Mutalisks.

The upset began in the next bout, with Krystianer holding ShoWTimE to a 1-1 tie in the debut WTL match for both players. Both players initially went for passive macro in game one, but Krystianer made a quicker transition to attack mode by adding Chargelots, Archons, and Immortals to his force. He caught ShoWTimE on almost pure Blink Stalkers, and easily took the win with head-on attack combined with a backdoor Zealot warp-in. The two Protosses went for another passive macro build-up on Goldenaura, with Krystianer once again going for faster tech while ShoWTimE focused on pure Gateway units. The bigger map allowed ShoWTimE to actually try more mobility-based tactics, but Krystianer’s defense was airtight as he assembled his powerful army. It was when Krystianer finally moved out that he slipped up. When a good chunk of his army got stuck in a Stasis Ward, he misjudged his army advantage and continued his march forward. This allowed ShoWTimE to execute a perfect mid-map ambush and win the game-deciding battle.

Krystianer then passed the baton on to Cham, and the Mexican Zerg sprinted his way to a massive 2-0 win over Trigger. The Canadian Protoss went for Glaive Adepts on Ghost River, but Cham was more than happy to stay on a low economy and overwhelm his opponent with mass Roach-Ling (Trigger didn’t help himself with wasteful Adept movements). Trigger then picked the allegedly unlosable PvZ map of Dynasty, and once again went for Glaive Adepts as his opener. But, yet again, this played into the hands of the notoriously aggressive Cham, who stayed on a low Drone count and invited Trigger to a brawl with low-tech units. Cham made life difficult for Trigger, handcuffing him with a Roach-Ravager push at the front while harassing with a Queen drop at his gold base. However, Trigger managed to stay composed and assemble an army for a big frontal push, which threatened to end the game. In this moment of danger, Cham found the opening for a crucial Zergling runby that plunged the game into chaos. Ultimately, Cham managed to barely stop the frontal attack while wreaking havoc in the Protoss base, and eventually closed the game out after more scrappy fighting.

Headed into the ace match, one would have thought a ZvZ coinflip would be the move for Starlight Twinkle. Instead, they sent out Krystianer to take on Reynor in a battle on Amphion.
Neither player did anything tricky early on, and both eschewed the left-side path to macro up. While Krystianer built up to a powerful ground army with Templars and Immortals, Reynor took a brief detour on his path to Lurkers by going for 6-Overlord Hydralisk drop harassment. This resulted in a semi-basetrade situation where both players inflicted damage before stepping back to assess the situation.

With both players’ economies left hurting, it worked out Krystianer’s favor as Reynor was forced to stay on Roach-Hydra for longer than he wanted while Krystianer had retained most of his Immortal-Templar core. As hard as Reynor tried to delay Krystianer with continued drop harass, eventually the unstoppable Protoss push came knocking at his door. Reynor’s late Lurkers could only offer up token resistance, and he was forced to give the GG that prompted a well-deserved pop-off from Krystianer.

OFFSYDE Esports 1 – 5 Mystery Gaming
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OFFSYDE was one of the more interesting teams of the qualifiers due to their unusual roster construction, but their opening match suggested wins could be hard to come by in the main event.

Cyan took the starting 2-0 by surviving Rex’s aggressive strategies in both games, though Rex came close to winning in game one.

Then, Firefly gave OFFSYDE some hope by holding off Strange’s ultra-aggressive proxy Robo to put his team on the board. However, Strange took that point right back in game two, using some early Adept harass from a hidden Pylon in his opponent’s main to win an economic snowball game.

Coffee delivered the killing blow against uThermal’s random Protoss on Ghost River. Finding himself without a shield battery at his third and with insufficient units, uThermal couldn’t hold on against the Chinese Protoss player’s two base Tank push. uThermal rolled Protoss again in game two, and he suffered an even uglier loss as he GG’d to a single Medivac drop he already had tagged with Revelation.

Platinum Heroes-R8 4 – 2 Twisted Fairy
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Platinum Heroes gave us our second upset of the week, welcoming Twisted Fairy (Twisted Minds + Little Fairy) to the league with a 2-4 loss.

YoungYakov came in prepared for Classic on Crimson Court, mining both backdoor mineral walls to Zerling flood right into the Protoss natural. Classic nevertheless managed to scramble successfully on defense, and escaped with a victory on the counterattack. Classic’s own early game tactic was more successful in game two, although his was more straightforward: an Oracle ransacking an empty main. From there, Classic progressed up to a comfortable mid-game situation, and furthered his lead by surviving YoungYakov’s Ravager-Ling-Bane attack. Yakov did manage to partially claw his way back with surprise Mutalisks, but in the end, he didn’t have an answer for the high tech Protoss army.

Mokou—who we assume will be replaced by KeeN once he becomes eligible in week 3—did admirably well to keep up with Kelazhur in two late-game duels. However, it was only a moral victory for Mokou, as the far more established and experienced Brazilian pro ultimately took the 2-0 as expected.

Everything was left in the hands of Goblin and Stats, and the Croatian Protoss delivered a major upset for his team. Starting on Ghost River, Goblin went for a two-gate opener, while Stats went for the MaxPax one-gate expansion. In reaction, Goblin chose to test Stats’s defense with a proxy Robo all-in. Even the Shield of Aiur doesn’t seem to have the MaxPax magic quite yet, and he GG’d out to goblin’s constant probing and repositioning with a Warp Prism. Stats caught an early break in game two by scouting his opponent’s quick Dark Shrine, but Goblin just morphed in some Archons and progressed to a normal macro game alongside Stats. After the two played built up large Stalker-Zealot-centered armies, Goblin found a superior engagement angle in the game-deciding fight and marched to victory.

Weekly MVP: SLT.Krystianer

Starlight Twinkle’s Krystianer easily wins this season’s first weekly MVP award, delivering a 1-1 split against ShoWTimE and an ace-match win against Reynor. In all three games he played, Krystianer defied his underdog status by playing straight-up games, where he proved to be as good or better than two of Europe’s top tier pros. His play against Reynor was especially impressive, displaying composure and decisiveness despite Reynor’s attempts to sow chaos with constant drops.

On a funny side note, some Korean community forum-goers decided to start calling Krystianer as “Ronaldo” (as in Krystianer/Cristiano Ronaldo), which is a nickname we really hope starts to stick.

Other players deserving MVP consideration were Goblin for his 2-0 over Stats, and SKillous for his 2-0 over Spirit.

Weekly MVP’s:

• Week 1: SLT.Krystianer

Preview: Regular Season Week 2

Friday, May 03 12:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00) Matches

Coming off a strong initial showing against PSISTORM-R8, Team Liquid move on to facing the far less formidable but far more amusing team in OFFSYDE.

MaNa will make his first appearance of the season against his ex-teammate uThermal. Surprisingly enough, it’s been almost two years since the two met in an official match, but MaNa probably isn’t complaining given he left things on a 10-match losing streak. However, uThermal was still a full-time Terran at that time, and you have to think uThermal’s commitment to picking random gives MaNa a solid edge here.

Cure also faces an ex-teammate in Rex (who was actually on Jin Air for a while, in case you forgot), to what I imagine is the great despair of the latter. It should be a quick 2-0.

Clem and Firefly will close us out, which isn’t the free 2-0 you might think it is. The Chinese Protoss has never defeated Clem, but he did tie him 1-1 in two out of their three WTL bouts.

I’m predicting TL to get three points, but some Terran rolls for uThermal + more WTL heroics from Firefly could force this to an ace match.

Prediction: Team Liquid 4 – 2 OFFSYDE Gaming

Having avenged their sole match loss of 2023 against DKZ, Vitality will continue their quest to go back-to-back-to-back against Platinum Heroes-R8.

While the Heroes are an easier opponent than DKZ on paper, they drew some favorable not-awful match-ups in this scenario. They’ve forced Ryung into his weak match-up of TvZ, which is about as much as you can do to help a less experienced WTL player in YoungYakov. Likewise, Kelazhur vs Maru is by no means a good match-up, but Kelazhur has some history stealing TvT ties in the WTL. Also, Solar’s defense has been inconsistent at times, which might make him vulnerable to a clever strategy from Goblin—if the match isn’t already over by then.

While Vitality are highly favored to win, at least you can see the path toward an upset here (unlike some other WTL upsets which just seem to be due to the whims of the SC2 gods).

Prediction: Vitality 5 – 1 Platinum Heroes

Saturday, May 04 12:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00) Matches

In a spectacular faceplant, my bottom two ranked teams both started things off with a win, with MYG even standing atop the rankings at the end of week 1.

After rampaging through the Protoss-heavy bracket of ESL Asia to earn a runner-up finish, Coffee meets another Protoss: the one and only Kristianer Ronaldo. While Kristianer has posted some solid PvT wins this year—including against Spirit, ByuN, as well as Coffee himself—you have to be impressed by Coffee’s hot streak as well. I was always a Messi guy anyway, so I’ll give Coffee a slight edge.

Cyan has his own regional streak going in PvZ, but I’m not sure how much it will help him against a stronger zerg in Wayne. Finally, Cham faces off against Strange in a battle of predictably aggressive players, and we might be due for some very weird (or at least funny) games. I’ll mark this as a draw, hopefully in the silliest games possible.

I expect things to go to an ace match, where I’ll predict Coffee to line up for Mystery Gaming. Things are less clear for SLT—it’s hard to argue against Krystianer after his ace performance against Reynor, but Wayne could be the safer choice against Coffee match-up-wise.

Prediction: Starlight Twinkle 4 – 3 Mystery Gaming

Lambo will start the series against the not-yet-retired Nice. The German Zerg comes in as the favorite, but some worryingly shaky ZvP in the EPT EU regional points to some chance of an upset for Nice.

After a rough post-military patch, Stats has taken control of his head-to-head against ByuN with 3 consecutive victories. He should be trusted to get a draw against SR ace, or perhaps even a pivotal victory. I don’t think there’s much separating Harstem and Classic in PvP, so I’ll pick them to tie their bout.

A 4-2 win for Shopify seems most likely to me, but if Twisted Fairy can get to an ace match, I think the pendulum swings back to the Fairy’s favor as Goldenaura is a good standard protoss map which should be ideal for either Stats or Classic.

Prediction: Shopify Rebellion 4 – 2 Twisted Fairy

Sunday, May 05 12:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00) Matches

In our most anticipated match of the week, DKZ and BASILISK-BIG find themselves in the unusual position of being in the bottom half of the rankings.

Last week, ShoWTimE wasn’t able to secure the victory against Krystianer, starting the catastrophic chain of events that led to a shock defeat. He will have an opportunity to make a better second impression against a much more manageable PvP opponent in Jieshi.

The teams’ aces (at least at the moment) will meet in the second match. herO has been one of the few people able to contain the Italian Stallion Reynor, going 5W-2L-3D in their last ten confrontations. However, given that Reynor is historically hard to actually 2-0 in the WTL, I predict another draw between them.

If Reynor-herO goes as expected, Trigger would need to pull off a small upset to save his team from an ace match. WTL historians will recall that Trigger swept Oliveira last season in arguably his finest moment for Basilisk, and he will hope to recreate that result. But, even if Coffee saw enough vulnerability in Oliveira’s TvP to off-race against him in EPT Asia (I guess he might have just felt really bad about his own TvT…), I’m not going to make the same mistake of underestimating the normal man—this is a 2-0 for Oliveira.

I see things going to an ace match, which would see herO and Reynor meet again on Goldenaura. herO may be playing better StarCraft at the moment, but Reynor will come in the match with a chip on his shoulder after last week’s ace loss, a position he’s great at playing from. It should be enough to propel Basilisk to an ace match victory.

Prediction: BASILISK 4 – Dragon KaiZi Gaming

It will be an all-mirror day between PSISTORM-NAVI and Berserker to close out the week. I’d give a small edge to Gerald over Gungfubanda and to Spirit over BattleB, but the likely result is a 2-2 nonetheless.

Maxpax is, however, a big favorite over DnS, and I expect the PSISTORM ace to once again bring home the points for his team.

Prediction: PSISTORM Gaming 4 – 2 Berserker Esports

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• Source: https://tl.net/forum/starcraft-2/624884-wtl-2024-summer-week-1-recap-week-2-preview