The first game in the clan war between LRM) and iFU featured the Zerg player, INF3CTED, versus the Terran player, Cryoc, on Outsider. INF3CTED opened with a three-hatchery mutalisk build that Cryoc sought to counter with a quick starport for valkyries. Despite having sneaked a scout into the Terran base, INF3CTED was unable to see the Terran tech choice and he went ahead with the mutalisks.

After driving the mutalisks off, Cryoc moved out with a largely medic and marine force alongside a developing mechanical base of support, against which INF3CTED hoped to inflict some pain with queens and broodlings. INF3CTED was unable to beat back the Terran’s pressure, despite a number of decent broodling, plague, and ensnare hits, and he succumbed in the end to the Terran containment and the follow-up drop play.

The second set featured the Protoss player, Must, versus the Zerg player, TechnicS, on Fighting Spirit. TechnicS set the tone of the game early with a nine pool without gas opening. Initially, Must opened with the intent to forge expand, but his plans were thrown into disarray once TechnicS’ early zergling rush was finally scouted. In a panic, Must cancelled his Nexus and threw down two photon cannons in such a way that it severely crippled the effectiveness of his wall. Consequently, Must was forced into an inconvenient gateway placement that was not at all ling-tight. TechnicS exploited this to his advantage and he infiltrated a number of zerglings through the wall. Must was required to pull probes in order to defend, and after the zerglings were finally driven back he was far behind relative to TechnicS’ position in the economic game.

After this initial success, TechnicS choose the safe path to ultimate victory and thus he transitioned to a five-hatchery hydralisk style instead of an all-in play. For his part, Must recognized that he was at a disadvantage at this point in the game and he resorted to the Protoss special: dark templars when behind. Unfortunately for him, his initial dark templar was blocked from entering the Zerg main and it was picked off before it was able to deal any significant damage at all.

With five bases up as his opponent was barely starting up his third, TechnicS was able to constantly wallop the Zerg player with hydralisks and lurkers for the remainder of the game. While Must was able to turn some engagements in the middle of the map into small victories, he was simply unable to beat his opponent in the larger war of attrition.

The clan war was tied at a game apiece as the Protoss mirror match between SpaNiarD and AlfiO began on New Heartbreak Ridge. Both players opened with largely identical builds, although SpaNiarD opted to research dragoon range before starting a dragoon.

After a suboptimal engagement outside of SpaNiarD’s natural, AlfiO fell back to his base and transitioned to a defensive-four gate style. When his initial attack against AlfiO’s natural faltered, SpaNiarD went fully all-in against his opponent and pulled a significant number of his probes from his base in an attempt to break through his opponent’s defenses. However, impatience got the better of him, and he attacked into AlfiO’s defenses before his probes had a chance to make a difference.

With the knowledge that he was far ahead of his opponent at this point in the game, AlfiO returned the favor and brought along a number of his own workers in his counter-assault against SpaNiarD. AlfiO completed his demonstration of strength and sealed his victory in this game with a successful attack that was punctuated by the placement of a nexus and pylon wall in SpaNiarD’s base.

Down a game in the clan war, LRM) sent out the Moustache Zerg himself, Bakuryu, against the Terran player, Marwin, on Tau Cross. Bakuryu opened with a three-hatchery mutalisk build, while Marwin went for a conventional one-barracks expansion. Bakuryu’s initial mutalisks ran into a bit of trouble as the Zerg player seemed to underestimate the exact number of marines that were out on the map at the time, and he lost a lot of them in an attack.

Bakuryu’s lurker-based defense enjoyed a little bit of success at the start of Marwin’s counter-attack, but, once the Terran player was able to focus his efforts, the Zerg was only barely able to hold on with the help of defilers and the deployment of dark swarm. Marwin proceeded to take advantage of his ability to drop, and he did significant damage to Bakuryu’s economy and tech structures this way.

Marwin pulled back to take the economic advantage while Bakuryu struggled to get things stable. However, Bakuryu’s efforts were for naught, as Marwin was soon in a position that allowed him to build battlecruisers off two starports, and he won the game with their help.

One loss away from losing the clan war, LRM)’s hopes were on the Zerg player Kolll’s shoulders as he faced the Terran player TEH on Eye of the Storm. Kolll opened with a twelve-hatchery style that was further developed into a two-hatchery mutalisk build. TEH opened with a mech-oriented build, that started off as a one-factory expansion. TEH quickly massed goliaths with range in order to fend off Kolll’s coming mutalisks.

After eventually building missile turrets in order to supplement his primarily goliath-centric air defenses, TEH felt confident enough in the game to attack with his goliaths in a move that seemed to channel the showmatch between Liquid`Sea versus Sziky in the TLS. Unfortunately for TEH, he was not, in fact, Liquid`Sea, and his attack failed in the face of the sheer strength of Kolll’s hydralisks. The failure of the goliath attack put Kolll in the advantage, and he was able to win the game with it.

The final game took place on Polaris Rhapsody, with the Zerg player, eOnzErG, versus the racepicker, DragOn, who chose to play Protoss in this particular match-up. eOnzErG opened with a standard twelve-hatchery play against DragOn’s forge expand.

While things appeared to progress in a standard fashion, eOnzErG was allowed to slip five zerglings directly past DragOn’s defenses. These zerglings ran amok in DragOn’s main and put him terminally behind in the game. With his loss in this game, LRM) lost the overall clan war against iFU, with a final score of 4–2.






This week saw the star studded line-up from the Polish Brood War website NetWars facing up against the fresh faced Fox. With Fox beign formed to play in the Gambit's Cup, and not having any real star players in their ranks, they were of course the underdog in this matchup. Game one opened up the series with the popular Australian protoss streamer Fold being matched up against Pike on what is probably the most unconventional map in the pool, Outsider. While normally Protoss would go for a one base or gateway into expansion build on this map, utilising the back expos, Fold instead opted to do a standard forge fast expand, similar to what you would see on a map like Fighting Spirit. The followup for the Protoss was sair/reaver, which managed to be fairly well handled by Pike. Despite Fold managing to do some good damage in the midgame, sniping one base with a cute zealot drop, and another with a midgame push, Pike managed to turn the tide with some solid drops to hinder Fold's economy and some other mystery events that will forever be shrouded to the viewers due to an unfortunate replay bug near the end of the game.

The second game featured TrutaCz against Fox's MVP. While MVP normally plays Zerg, he picked Protoss to avoid the unpopular ZvZ matchup. Unfortunately his Protoss play wasn't up to scratch to match up against the strength of the Polish Zerg and TrutaCz was able to dispatch him with ease, noticing that MVP had a poor wall at his natural, and simply pumped out a couple of rounds of zerglings with the speed upgrade and decimated MVP's defences for an easy win.

The third match featured one of the new stars from the TLS, Julia matched up against Poetic. Julia opened up with a 9 pool and managed to do some good early damage with some zerglings despite Poetic having a bunker and SCV's to block. After suffering in the early game poetic was never really able to recover his position in the game, and Julia was easily able to overwhelm him with a quick lurker runby through the backdoor on Heartbreak ridge.

With Fox sitting on the brink of defeat, WandS, the C rank prodigy (now B ish rank) was sent out to try and salvage the situation and was pit against Mazur. Mazur went for a 3 gate goon build to try and pressure WandS early but was unable to break WandS' defences despite WandS doing a robo first build and had to settle for a contain. WandS got a reaver out and managed to break the contain and despite losing it during the break out he was able to get another one out and do a counter punch that broke Mazur's defences and clicnched the game bringing the series back to 3-1 in NetWars favour.

Continuing the comeback, Shrinker was able to take down Southpark in an exciting game on Empire of the sun (technically the game was a walkover, because it was supposed to be played on Eye of the Storm). Southpark went for a 9 pool speed build and didn't really managed to do the damage he needed to do to justify the economic investment. Southpark followed up with a big mutaling attack that got relatively well shut down by Shrinker. Southpark was left with an unimpressive economy, and Shrinker was able to do some good damage with a counter attack and South park was never able to recover, eventually being overwhelmed by Shrinkers superior economy.

Unfortunately for Fox the resurgance was fated to end, with Wallace being unable to take down AMLAcZ in a PvP on Polaris Rhapsody. AMLAcZ went for an agressive 10/12 gateway build with a good manner pylon that seemed to throw Wallace off his game early on in the piece. AMLAcZ demonstrated some impressive zealot micro while also throwing up an expansion while Wallace teched to robotics. Unfortunately for Wallace, AMLAcZ's economy came online before the reaver and he was able to bust out of Wallac's contain with superior unit numbers and Wallace was unable to repel the flood of Dragoons into his natural that followed, giving NetWars the victory 4-2.






Idegel open with a two gate. Ace goes for a 9 pool expand and scouts the attack. When the hatch finishes he immediately builds four sunkens. Ace mistakingly thinks he has enough sunkens and cancels two of them. Idegel's reinforcement Zealots prove to be too much and Ace is forced to gg.

Artanis goes two gate robo against Werdi's three gate robo. With Werdi's bigger army, Artanis gets pushed up his ramp and has to cancel his Nexus. With Artanis contained in his main Werdi expands. Artanis tries to break out with his reaver but doesn't micro his shuttle and loses the both the shuttle and the reaver. Artanis has enough dragoons to break out of his main but lacks an army to counterattack. Artanis decides to expand from behind while he tries to put on some pressure. Werdi doesn't micro his reavers properly and Artanis is able to do more damage than he should have, managing to kill one of the reavers. Artanis attacks once again and manages to kill another reaver. Werdi barely survives the following attacks.

Werdi decides to counter-pressure but loses both his reavers once again due to lack of micro. Half of Artanis army is also out on the map which makes for a great flank. Artanis expands to his third while Werdi attacks once again. Artanis' army looks really small for no apparent reason and dies to the attack. Both me and Sayle are confused.

Gargoyle opens with a one factory expand while Justice goes for a one factory siege with wraith support. Gargoyle scouts the wraiths and goes for goliaths with range. When Justice reaches Gargoyle's natural siege has finished and Gargoyle has nothing to defend with. Gargoyle pulls his SCVs to try to break it but has the SCVs on move command and they go untargeted. Gargoyle has no more units and taps out.

Bender goes for a defensive FD while trofl goes for a defensive two gate goon range double expand. The game gets extremely passive with Bender taking his third and trofl taking his fourth mineral only. Bender goes for a two tank drop on trofl's fourth while distracting the army with vultures. The tanks are dropped behind the expansion and does decent damage.

trofl takes a fifth while attacking into Bender's third in a 200 vs 200 army collision. There is no way the attack should have worked but half of Bender's army gets stuck and trofl gets a reasonable trade. After the attack Bender decides to expand to the fourth mineral only. trofl attacks once again at the fourth and Bender's army is way too small to defend. Bender loses his fourth while trofl takes his sixth. trofl attacks Bender's natural and is successful in breaking the front but doesn't have enough army to do anymore damage. Macroing up another big army he attacks again. Bender has no units and ggs.

Moro overpool expands against Pono4ka's forge fast expand. Without anything special going on Moro takes the close third. Pono4ka goes for the standard stargate with templar archives. He tries to sneak in a DT into Moro's main but fails due to Moro's simcity and the DT dies. Moro makes a small attack with hydras at Pono4ka's natural but gets stormed to pieces. Moro attacks once again but does an incredibly nice storm dodge. This gives him the opportunity to contain Pono4ka on two bases. Eventually Moro gets lurker tech and gets a solid lurker contain. Pono4ka tries to break out several times while Moro takes a fourth, then a fifth, and eventually a sixth. During this time Pono4ka tries to break but gets stopped again and again. Templars gets sniped, doesn't have enough energy, and just doesn't do enough damage with the storm they successfully gets to cast.

Pono4ka finally breaks the contain but it's minutes too late. While he goes to set up his third Moro attacks his natural and he doesn't have enough to defend with. Pono4ka mines out his natural and has no more minerals. Moro closes the series and takes home the win for FR.






Before this round, these two teams played against each other, but sas was certainly heavily favoured. The clan war started with a PvZ: Dewalt versus Cosy on Outsider. The game was very standard, as Cosy opened with six hatcheries on four bases versus forge fast expand into corsair-zealot, à la Bisu. Dewalt's attack at Cosy's third was a huge success thanks to a bad simcity, and Cosy lost three hatcheries and was only able to defend because the corsairs weren't there. After that, the corsairs went on a rampage and got tons of overlord kills, and then Dewalt took an expansion. Another zealot attack on the retaken third plus a drop in the main meant that sas lead 1–0.

We then got a PvP on Fighting Spirit between Arcneon and Locdog, which featured a two-gateway robo mirror. Locdog choose to expand, while Arcneon added a third gate and went for a timing. Without a shuttle from Locdog, his reavers were picked up very fast, and good micro sealed the deal. The series was now at 1–1.

Then the surprise of the day came when Elena and Michael battled on Heartbreak Ridge. While Michael's muta did a ton of damage, he wasn't prepared for Elena's counter and his two lurkers and two sunkens were sniped, which meant he lost his that was morphing at the natural. The subsequent three tank push plus vessel put PaiN in a surprising 2–1 lead.

Nevertheless, sas still had some power left and sent Sziky to battle poor Moxie on Tau Cross. Moxie went for a five rax plus one attack timing against three-hatch muta, but forgot range, which, combined with Sziky's stellar muta micro, meant he lost every single one of his marines and, when lurkers arrived, the game was over.

We then finally got our first ZvZ of the day: Octzerg against Cute on Eye of the Storm. Octzerg had the build order advantage after his overgas and hatchery in his main against Cute's nine pool speed. Octzerg tried to press his larva advantage with a ling attack, but Cute held with a sunken and a good drone drill. Octzerg built a spore, and both players started to accumulate mutas. Not much happened until Octzerg tried to take his natural. Cute denied it, but Octzerg counterattacked his opponents main and killed every drone there. A good split and a second spore enabled him to defend his own main base, and his win put PaiN in a very good position at 3–2.

All of the hopes of sas then fell on Zaraki, who was matched against Assault on Polaris. This was a particularly tense game, because both players went twelve pool and not much happened at the ling stage. Assault suddenly decided to make a move, and went for a muta-ling attack, but he lost the muta battle and allowed Zaraki to equalize the series.

The ace match was, alas, pretty one-sided. Arcneon chose to nine-nine center proxy gate Sziky on Jade. Sziky scouted the gates with a drone, put a second hatch plus a sunken in his main, and countered with his first lings in response. Arcneon defended as well as he could, and blocked Sziky's ramp. Sziky droned drilled out, and his better production allowed him to take the center gates out first, and then move on to Arcneon’s two defending cannons. sas won 4–3, but it was much closer than expected.

It’s sad to say that after 5 weeks of play, Fox is statistically out of playoff contention. To make things worse, they will be up against LRM who is currently ranked fourth in the standings after a surprising upset loss versus iFU last week. LRM looked a little shaky last week with their top Zergs INF3CTED and Bakuryu dropping games to the iFU Terrans. Last week was a wakeup call to them that they’re not guaranteed playoff spots yet despite the early success, and that they’ll have to play just as hard as any of the four other teams vying for the spot.

Prediction: LRM wins 4-1



Speaking of iFU, they’ve been a team that’s been flying slightly under the radar compared to the obvious powerhouses LRM, NW and sas only to suddenly show up in Week 6 being in third place. Their games have been close, with two clan wars going to the ace match and coming out one and one. Their opponents have been on a bit of a downslope coming off a painful 4-1 loss to FR last week. Although iwL is tied for 5th place with three other teams, they’re a good 7 points back of the current third place team and will need a big win in order to catch up. With iFU as their opponents this week, it will definitely be a tough task to accomplish.

Prediction: iFU wins 4-2



After a rough first three weeks, FR appears to have found their stride heading into the second half of Round 2. They were able to take iFU to a close 7 game series only barely losing in the ace match, and last week, made short work of iwL. Their slow startup means they have a big hill to climb from being in second last to that playoff spot. However bleak their chances, if they continue to play as good as they have the last two weeks, that playoff spot might just be within reach.

Prediction: FR wins 4-2



With Week 6 we also get an insane matchup between the top two teams in Round 2. sas has been sailing through the Round undefeated although not without some unexpected turbulent waves. They’ve had to take two matches to a final game 7 and almost got swept by iFU in Week 2. However strong NW is, their chances of victory will drop significantly if it gets taken to a Game 7. Sziky has shown in both team and solo play that he is undoubtedly the best foreign player.

Prediction: sas wins 4-3