LRM vs iwL is one of those clan wars where you hope for some upsets or interesting events to occur because most of the time, on paper anyway, it's a bit of a miss-match. Unfortunately, this one went down as expected. Game one opened with Bakuryu vs Justice on Heartbreak Ridge with Bakuryu controlling the game from start to finish with some "lucky play", LRM takes it up 1-0. For the next match, we had a monster zvp master Technics on Tau Cross against the once retired Protoss ASmOdey for iwL. ASmOdey opted for a two gateway opening which did next to no damage other than force some lings out of Technics. The game then went at Technics' pace as he freely expanded and controlled the map with ease. Another one sided affair as LRM took the series up 2-0.

Game 3 was anticipated to be the highlight of the clan war as we had dOTY against Ace. dOTY opened sair/reaver and Ace your standard 5hatch hydra. Disappointingly, this match followed suit to those previous as Ace seem to have some multitask and macro problems and just couldn't keep up with dOTY's beastly macro and the game on Eye of the Storm ended rather shortly. The final game was cast on Polaris Rhapsody between LRM)Game and iwL.Artanis. Game opened with a 2factory vulture build which was completely shut down by Artanis who had a huge lead. For whatever reason, Artanis then began to not expand or produce many probes, which slowly accumulated into LRM)Game's return into the match. After some delayed expansions from Artanis, he threw down up to 12 gateways and even managed to kill Game's third command center. With some poor economic decision making from a great start to the match Artanis couldn't keep up with Game's growing army composition and was forced out of the game at the first large Terran push. GGs to LRM who cleaned the house of iwL with a 4-0.






Fox vs sas clan war opened up with a TvZ on Heartbreak Ridge between Poetic and cute. The game started with standard openings from both players where cute put down a twelve hatch at his expansion and Poetic went for a one Barrack expand. Afterwards, Poetic went for an impressive seven barracks timing push while cute did some cute muta harass. Fortunately for cute, his lurkers hatched out just in perfect time to defend the marine push. After a while, cute managed to make guardians and together with a hydra/lurk army pushed inside Poetic's base who only had marines and medics which was not enough to defend, making him concede his defeat.

Second game was a PvT between Lumix and Shrinker on Tau Cross. Lumix tried to sneak a proxy factory outside of Shrinker's base, but unfortunately for him was scouted and killed promptly. From there the game became more standard, but only until Lumix got himself a shuttle and dropped a small, but deadly, force on the ramp of Shrinker's expansion and thus effectively denied his mining. Even though Shrinker managed to deal with the harass, Lumix's macro was too much and he quickly rolled over Shrinker with superior force.

In third game of Fox vs sas we saw a PvP between Mewka and LocDog on Eye of the Storm. Mewka decided to try four gate strategy, while LocDog went for a safe two gate reaver build. Even though Mewka put a lot of pressure with his superior goon count, LocDog managed to defend with probes and eventually a reaver. Afterwards, Mewka decided to expand, but having complete scout with his observer, LocDog exploited the no-detection weakness of Mewka with a couple of DTs and managed to kill almost every probe. With his economy in rumbles, Mewka went for an all-in with his remaining units, but LocDog was more than ready for it and has won the game.

Being down 0-3, Fox was on a back foot so they sent Wallace to play a PvZ on Polaris Rhapsody against vorti. The game was pretty passive in the first half with both players playing standard and expanding. Once the Wallace took his third expansion, he decided to push out and went on to kill a fourth base of vorti. Even though vorti managed to clear the remaining of Wallace's units, his economy was way too bad and Wallace overwhelmed him with superior unit count.

Fifth game saw a Canadian Protoss dRaW going against another Protoss Fold on Outsider. Fold went for a safe two gate robo, while dRaW tried to make two proxy gateways inside of Fold's base while going DTs. However, Fold scouted the gateways and denied them from finishing. From there, the game turned to more macro style with both players expanding at their back expo. After some harass from both players, dRaW decided to attack Fold with his superior army due to his one expansion more and Fold had to tap out, thus making the sas victors of the clan war.






iFU vs SJ had all the right ingredients to set up for a delicious clan war, and it didn't disappoint. The first set was played on Heartbreak Ridge. Cryoc, the undefeated giant of iFU was sent to set the tone of iFU's pace while Whistler was sent from SJ. Whistler opened with a 2hatch muta with some less than stellar execution in micro, but managed to keep his tech relatively quick with 3 bases established. The game slowly turned into Cryoc's domain with a few nice drops and some strong mid game macro, iFU up 1-0. For the second set, we had an epic show between iFU.TTF and SJ.Funny which went on for almost an hour on Tau Cross. There was dark archons for mind control and even battle cruisers yamatoed down a nexus! Anyway, after that movie-length game, Funny tied the series up for SJ at one a piece.

For the following battle, Alfio was sent on Eye of the Storm against SJ.Terror in what could've been an ace match. Alfio's third was delayed nicely by Terror so he went for some strong macro timing where he maxed while Terror was still around 140 supply. Unfortunately, with some poor execution and delayed timing, Alfio failed the attack and Terror easily took the game afterwards. The next set was LancerX against Terranboy in a PvT on Polaris Rhapsody. LancerX managed to control this game from start to finish in a relatively text book style to set the score back at 2-2. The next game was quite entertaining on Outsider between Napoleon and Eonzerg. Eonzerg went for 2 hatch muta into 3hatch all in muta and Napoleon tried to tech to vessel while barely holding on the whole game, throwing up frantic turrets whenever there was an opportune moment. After a real nail biter, Eonzerg finally seized victory after continuing wave of lings poored into Napoleon's base.

The next match was SJ's Jumper Mr.King DT himself re-appearing in fashion to take on Tama. With a well planned build, not to mention complete build order win over Tama, Jumper took this one quick and effortlessly on Fighting Spirit. This meant we headed for an ace match, and a most unexpected guest arrived for iFU. It was LancerX against SJ.Terror on Jade. LancerX opened with 10-15gate goon into dt into three bases and then went straight to arbiter against Terror's 1 fact expand into drop which was denied by LancerX. With some very strong macro and good timing attack, LancerX was able to seal the deal for iFU 4-3!






The first game in the clan war between FR and PaiN took place on Heartbreak Ridge. Dima, playing Terran, against OctZerg, began the game in a very defensive fashion as he went for a one-barracks expansion with the command center built at the wall instead of at the natural itself. The Terran player moved out in the early game, but OctZerg completely bypassed that force and chose instead to attack the Terran base itself. The follow-up mutalisk attack whittled down the FR Terran enough for hydralisks and lurkers to come and finish the job.

The second game was over in just about the same amount of time it took for the first to complete, as trofl, playing Protoss against the Terran player moxie on Tau Cross, lost in relatively short order to a Terran attack that leveraged the lack of observers in the Protoss army, and the overall greed of the build that the Protoss player used, against a poorly-protected third base.

Down 2–0 in the series, FR’s leader, yoda, came out to play Zerg against PaiN’s Terran player, Elena, on Eye of the Storm. yoda opened with a smart build that took advantage of the Terran’s build order inability to punish greedy builds by going three hatcheries before pool into lurker tech. Unfortunately for him, Elena was able to execute an effective SK Terran mid game, and although he had ultralisks at the end, he was simply unable to defend his expansions and he thus lost the game.

A game away from losing the clan war, FR put their hopes on their Zerg player Moro to turn things around for them, and he certainly delivered. In a Zerg versus Zerg match-up against PaiN’s Cosy on Polaris Rhapsody, Moro was able to catch Cosy’s mutalisk force in a severely disadvantageous position, an act which won him the engagement, the mutalisk count, and the game.

In the fifth game of the clan war, FR continued to run it back against PaiN. On Outsider, FR’s idegel, playing Protoss, was able to execute a successful +1 zealot attack against PaiN’s Zerg player, Assault. idegel was able to catch Assault completely unprepared for the attack, with little to no units in position to defend, and pool building layout at the third that compounded Assault’s problems. After this victory, FR was at 2–3 against PaiN.

Game six brought the viewers an extremely entertaining hatchery rush on the part of FR’s Zerg player korea against PaiN’s Protoss player nVerted on Fighting Spirit. The Zerg player’s cheese went completely unscouted until multiple sunken colonies were already built and enough zerglings were made to completely compromise the Protoss base and ensure a Zerg victory. FR had brought the series to an ace match, tying it up 3–3. Learning that nVerted had refused to take a default win because of korea dropping in a previous game after failing nearly the same exact cheese (and thus, refusing a default team victory in the clan war) made it even more interesting in the end.

In the ace match on Jade between FR’s Werdi, playing Protoss, and PaiN’s Cosy, playing Zerg, ended in a similar manner to the fifth game in the series. Despite initiating the from rush at the beginning of the game, Werdi executed a devastating +1 zealot attack timing that seriously disrupted the third. The arrival of dark templars at that position sealed the deal, and FR ended up taking the clan war series against PaiN all the way back in a 4–3 victory.

sas continues their steamroll through Round 2 where no team seems capable of stopping their path of destruction. Three other teams have come close to beating sas but all have fallen short in the ace match. LRM stands as the last team to attempt to take down sas before the playoffs as sas has a break in the final week. They stand to have one of the best chances at taking down the unstoppable sas. Unfortunately for LRM, sas also happens to have the immovable force in the form of Sziky. While this may not be as important a game for sas as they’ve already clinched playoffs (and maybe even first place, I’m too lazy to do math*), it’s still important for LRM to not lose too badly as that might drop them off from third place.

*I ended up doing the math anyways, damn Asian genes. They’ve only clinched playoffs, but honestly, I don’t think they’ll lose 0-4 to lose first place.

Prediction: sas wins 4-2



iFU fights on this week to hang on to their second place position with LRM close behind. With iFU facing PaiN and LRM facing sas, this week gives iFU a good chance to run away with second place. PaiN on the other hand is pretty much out of playoff contention. They were one of few teams to force sas to a final ace match but their poor results early on in the season proved too much of a setback and they were unable to catch up to the other teams.

Prediction: iFU wins 4-1



The chance of SJ making playoffs is next to 0%. However, the percentage means nothing when a courageous heart can make anything possible. The question is, “Do all the members of SJ have a courageous heart?” I’ll leave that to the results to decide. On the other hand, iwL is in a similar position to PaiN, except worse. No matter how courageous their hearts are, they actually are just out of the playoffs =(.

Prediction: SJ wins 4-2



After a week break for NW, they come back from being tied for second place in the standings to being in fourth. Unlike what I’ve done to some of the other teams, NW is not to be counted out for the playoffs. They have one of the best chances to improve their ranking with minimal requirements on luck or results of the other teams. In their last week, they will play one of the teams directly in their way of a playoff position, but that’s another preview!

Prediction: NW wins 4-1