EPTOn the 2nd day of Proleague the scheduled matches were Samsung up against Jin Air followed by what promised to be an explosive series between KT and CJ.
In the opening ceremony we saw sOs and Maru garner their new brown and green uniform for the first time in an official match. Wanting to capitalize on their imports Jin Air would send out sOs against Solar in the first game of the night in what seemed to be a free win.
sOs played out his best matchup, PvZ, the exact way we’ve come to expect. For those playing at home; get out your fake cannon rush, add in a sprinkle of massed void rays but don’t forget the archons! And stir until victory. Solar being aware of this unique yet predictable style would counter sOs’s late game focused play by building forty speedlings which would slip in to the protoss base and feast on the undefended probes giving Samsung the unexpected lead.
Maru’s first game of Proleague was also in his best matchup against Samsung’s protoss captain Stork who hasn’t risen to the challenge of HotS just yet. Maru focused his efforts on denying the protoss third base and on the way managed to wipe out his opponent’s overconfident army with typical Maru micro.
In the third game Jin Air’s Rogue utilized burrow movement roaches combined with swarm hosts to out-multitask Trend.
After an initial stargate vs DT situation Samsung eMotion would build the more efficient immortal archon army to wipe out Terminator before he could reach a critical mass of colossi. eMotion’s first win in Proleague would take the series into the deciding game.
Despite their loss in game one Jin Air chose sOs over Maru to play in the ace match while Samsung picked Solar creating a rematch of the first game. Solar’s unorthodox pool first into a fast triple hatchery was a work of genius considering his opponent who typically goes for an early game all-in or safe lategame focused play and rarely in-between.
But in-between is exactly how sOs played utilizing a reactive oracle based pressure with a haphazard bunch of gateway units that barely didn’t break the zerg defense. With Solar’s drone lead, a quick tech to ultralisks with queen and infestor support would give Samsung the series and Solar a personal 2 – 0 lead against sOs.
Samsung > Jin Air
The second series of the night started with a bang as Sora and Flash showed us the best of late game PvT positional play after some very effective DT's had prompted an SCV pull that would bring the game back to almost exactly how it was 5 minutes before. Flash seemed confident going into a TvP lategame, an area of starcraft which players that aren’t Taeja fear to tread.
An engagement against an army of tempests, colossi, archons and high templar put Flash in a 20 supply as the vikings barraged the undefended air units. That is until Sora turned around and faced his opponent head on. Here was a gift basket for Flash as he EMP’d the protoss army, took out most of the colossi and then lost. What Flash hadn’t accounted for were two flanking high templar which rained down multiple storms taking out the densely packed terran army. The KT ace wasn’t given the chance to regroup his reinforcements and had to concede defeat after 31 mintues.
In the second set of the second series the new map ‘Outboxer’ gave us our first macro game. The openness of the third base tempted Hydra into a swell of roaches and lings which would fight Stat’s gateway units under the full power of a nexus cannon. Hydra had taken out the third base but had sacrificed more than enough drone production to for their to be no distinct advantage either way. A second wave of roaches would achieve even less and now Stats had a tech advantage. Hydra would max out on roach hydra with brood lord support against an army of Colossi and Void Rays. The conclusion was simple, Stats, the KT right hand man would even up the series.
On Polar Night Zest’s proxy stargate seemed to be a blindcounter to CJ.Bbyong’s fast hidden third command center, but the KT player was too timid to directly confront the low numbers of marines.
Despite being down one base the cost effectiveness of Zest’s splash damage army was enough to take the game.
KT’s new recruit TY would go up agains CJ’s ace herO in the fourth match. Against herO’s blink stalkers TY made his main and natural an effective no-protoss zone with a building we've never seen before (a sensor tower).
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/HbMa0Np.png)
A thousand terrrans mutter in unison: ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’
TY’s airtight defense gave him a 30 supply lead over herO’s ineffective start. With some basic storm dodging TY would close out the series 3 -1 in KT’s favour. KT fans should be pleased to know that a loss for Flash isn't necessarily a loss for KT.
KT > CJ
