Photo: Blizzard
Speculations circuiting community boards indicate that STX's ace Innovation might be Team Acer's mysterious signee.
The first mention of Team Acer expanding with a new player was this Friday, August 23rd, when the team tweeted they will be announcing a new acquision on Sunday, August 25th, after the completion of the WCS Season 2 grand finals.
We'll announce the acquisition of a new SC2 star on Sunday, after the WCS final.
— Team Acer (@aceresport) August 23, 2013
At that time, no additional information was provided and the StarCraft community had to wait a day for the first hint. On August 24th, Acer's own Scarlett posted a couple of tweets, strongly indicating that the new signee will be a Terran player known for his ZvT and one who didn't manage to make the round of eight.
Unfortunately our new @AcerEsport player was knocked out before the round of 8~ So he will be announced tonight at 8 CEST instead !
— Scarlett (@AcerScarlett) August 24, 2013
After my break when I start practising with the new @AcerEsport player, I won't be losing ZvTs anymore :)
— Scarlett (@AcerScarlett) August 24, 2013
This was the first time that the StarCraft community gravitated towards the possibility of Innovation being Acer's new player as only four contenders met both the "being Terran" and "eliminated in the group stage" prerequisites: Polt, Innovation, Maru and MMA. The latter was immediately eliminated for already being on the team and so the pool was down to the three WCS champions.
Between the two tweets of Scarlett an official statement from Team Acer was also published which, despite revealing almost nothing, tightened the possibilites even further. The newspost by Acer's Editor in Chief Duncan "Thorin" Shields spoke of the player still being under a contract with his old team, the latter wishing the announcement of the signing to be delayed until September 1st.
This information further pointed towards Innovation's signing. Of the three Terran players not already contracted by Acer, the Season 1 champion is the only one who is employed by a team (Polt being under the personal sponsorship of CMStorm) and renowned for his ZvT (Maru, in both Korean WoL and worldwide HotS tournaments is at the subpar 48% TvZ win rate). Furthermore, community members were quick to match the picture of new signee's darkened silhouette to Innovation's profile picture on Liquipedia.
In any case, it will be five more days until the new Acer player is confirmed. If the rumors end up true, Innovation will be the third Terran player on Acer along with MMA and DarkHydra.
Team Acer line-up
MMA
DarkHydra
Nerchio
Scarlett
Paranoid
Bly