IGL
IGL
IGL is short for in-game leader. In Project A, it is the position that carries the main call.
Attack shape and cover, the retake, the moment an ultimate comes out — the command tower that runs every movement on the map. In a sense, the most important position in Project A is the IGL.
Plenty of people would quarrel with "most important." Ask most of them and they will tell you the position that matters is entry, and nothing else. I don't see it that way. Entry is a well-honed blade: sharp, and that is all. However sharp a blade is, it means nothing with no one to wield it. The IGL is the hand on that blade.
A brilliant IGL with no weapon still cannot fight properly. A brilliant entry with no IGL to give the call cannot fight properly either. In the end they need each other, the way a crocodile needs the bird that cleans its teeth, and every truly strong team in the world keeps an outstanding IGL. On the pro scene the role matters that much — enough that a gap in what an IGL can do is enough to flip a game.
And why wouldn't it? Ranked can open huge gaps between players. The pro scene cannot, once you set aside a few irregulars like Apas and Duke. When the skill on both sides sits that close, the IGL's work — putting your team into the fights you are actually favored to win — cannot help but feel decisive.
It is the same right now. Weigh TLB against SC and the side that ought to win is TLB. Granted, this match has an invasive species named Nebula running loose in it, but if you go by the average, the side ahead in skill is still TLB.
And the result?
Domination. The second half was SC overwhelming TLB, full stop. Nine to nine looks like a coin flip, but the half had opened at 9–3, which meant SC had taken six rounds straight without giving a single one back. A team that had been bullied badly enough to build a 9–3 first half had dragged the score to level — no, to the edge of a reverse. How?
Area Vision Secured
Because SC had TLB, quite literally, dancing in the palm of their hand.
Watch it once and it looks like Nebula's one-man show. Every one of those plays was possible only because SC was hunting nothing but TLB's weak points — the places TLB least wanted touched. However they had managed it, SC was striking only the thinnest seam in the defense.
First they exploited the fact that TLB rarely invested bodies into mid, hit that lane, and slipped through the gaps between the utility for a surprise take of A. Next, counting on TLB to lock mid down tight, they let the clock run and hit mid again around the forty-second mark. TLB, strung tight because they never knew when the rush was coming, hadn't even taken main properly, and ate another surprise. They couldn't afford to eat it again on the third round, the one where the rifles come out, so they finally put players into mid. That was exactly what SC wanted.
TLB's average weight class sits above SC's, but an average is only an average. Player for player, SC had Nebula. Leave mid empty and you live in fear of a rush that might blow through it at any second. Spend bodies on mid and you lose the straight fight for main to Nebula. Try to take main from the opening and play by process of elimination, and a raw force fight is too heavy to want. The method shifted, but SC had found their own way into a TLB that was losing the force fight.
Early in the PCLK season, SC had moved like a single body. What they were showing now was that same shape. Right. This is how you use Nebula.
People who look only at the title — former Asia server rank one — often get him wrong. They assume he is an ace built purely for fights, the way I am, the way Jaeseong is. The truth is nothing like that. His aim is clean, as it should be for someone who touched rank one in Asia, but it is not on the level of the world's monsters. Force the comparison and he sits a notch under me and Jaeseong, the top of the domestic scene.
If that were all he was, I would not rate him nearly so high. Calling, aim, mind games — his strengths run across several fields — but the thing only a few people know, his real worth, lay somewhere else. An overwhelming gift for multitasking, as if he were running two brains at once.
Because of it, calling never gets in the way of his own play, and that sets him apart from other IGLs. Even the in-game leaders of the world's best teams cannot focus on their own hands while the calls are coming out. He can give the order and still execute his own play perfectly, so his ceiling sits much higher. Set aside the quality of the calls and the precision of the aim: he was born with a talent every IGL would envy.
Second half of set one. SC completely overturned a game that had them down 9–3, and they carried that momentum straight through. TLB never adjusted to an SC whose style had changed without warning. They flailed, and the set was taken from them.
It did not stop at one set. The momentum of a team that had climbed out of 9–3 could have split the sky. TLB, maybe because they had lost from a winning seat, carried the shock into set two and could not show real play even on the map they had chosen.
And so the biggest upset of the Promotion Series: eighth in the first division handing the winners' bracket to second in the second.
The MVP, of course, was Nebula for both sets. He had opened the lane as first-line entry and owned the team's calls, doing the work of entry and IGL at once — two players' worth, at minimum. If it was obvious, it was obvious.
Han Seongun looked dazed, as if he hadn't expected to be chosen.
Please. He knew he'd get it. He's just playing coy.
"Does young Seongun play this game well?"
Driver Kwon knows Han Seongun well enough. He does not really know Nebula. His protectee's only friend is a pro player, and he seems curious just how good that friend actually is.
"Well... he's good?"
"How good, exactly? Watching only this match, I can't quite tell."
"Mm... good enough that he was rank one in Asia, once?"
Han Seongun's biggest achievement, for now, is hitting rank one on the Asia server. That seemed the right way to put it. Driver Kwon nodded, as if the explanation had landed at about the right level, and then—
"Then is he better than you, miss?"
He went and asked something awkward.
"Pfft!"
Han Seongun is good. I'll give him that. Honestly, though, not that.
"...I'm better."
I'll admit he plays well. That was never the same as saying he plays better than me. I was a pro myself, once. My pride runs pretty high, all right?
"Then have you been Asia rank one as well, miss?"
Driver Kwon asked it with a face so clean you'd think there wasn't a shred of malice in the question. Whether the word pure even belongs on that face is a separate issue. It was a question of pure evil.
Uh...
"That's..."
I haven't, actually...
"Never mind. It was a needless question."
"No, I really am better than him, okay?"
"Yes, yes. I believe you."
...I am, though.
If I could have, I would have proved it on the spot. I already knew that saying any more would only make me look worse.
So I settled for watching Han Seongun's interview. His face looked worn out, though. His skin used to be perfect.
An error in communication. Outsiders already knew, more or less, that there had been rumors of friction inside the team. He had phrased it carefully. Was he saying it was resolved?
Han Seongun dipped his head toward my side of the stands. From where I sat, I could tell the greeting was for me. His line of sight was vague enough that the crowd had no idea who he had bowed to.
Word that I had come to the Park would already be out, and this would roll through the communities as fresh bait all over again. Even so...
"He knows how to be grateful, at least."
It feels good when the team you came to cheer for wins.