The date for battle of arguably the best two teams had finally arrived as the undefeated sas went up against LRM, the finalists of last season's Gambit Cup. Game one was the LRM slayer himself, Skzlime, in a TvP against dOTY on Tau Cross. Skzlime opened with two factories while dOTY did the dreaded 10-15 goon build. The game turned into a relatively standard macro game and dOTY aimed for a timing attack which was defended by Skzlime while the terran player had secured his third base. Skzlime's economy was pretty well on par with dOTY from that point and he ended up having too large an army for dOTY to handle, resulting in a 1-0 for sas.

Game two was another epic with sas.Draw going up against another LRM undefeated player, Technics. The map was Eye of the storm and turned out to be quite action packed as Draw utilized some nifty cannon trickery to deceive Technics into suiciding some early lings. Draw then followed up with two gateways of slow zealots and harassed effectively, transitioning into two stargates of corsair with +1 air weapon and reavers. Technics was on the back foot for most of the game with successful harass from Draw, and it appeared as though Draw would win with his almost indestructable composition on his big max army push. However, technics managed to restabilize his economy and Draw didn't manage to build enough production facilities or expand enough, resulting in starvation in the latter stages of the game. This game ended in death by mass hydras and the score of the clan war was evened at one a piece.

Unfortunately for LRM that was their only highlight as the remainder of the games were relatively one sided. Game 3 was set on Polaris Rhapsody with Dewalt vs koll. After the starting of the game where a few of koll's lings entered Dewalts base doing minimal damage, Dewalt followed with a two stargate build and hit a timing attack which ended the game as koll's predictability got the better of him. In the next set, it was Michael for sas against Bakuryu on Outsider. Michael had an opening advantage and learned from his mistakes in the TLS finals against sziky as he took this game with impressive micro to keep sas at a 3-1 lead.

Finally, LRM's line up wore thin as they had to send out Spaniard in a PvP against Locdog. The game was relatively one sided on Fighting Spirit, with Locdog taking his time to close out the series at 4-1, sas remained undefeated through-out the season and are looking to be a scary opponent for the finals, congrats to them on their success.






While FR was out of play off contention, they still ahd the opportunity to make life miserable for NW who hasn't secured a spot yet. Game one opens in favour of FR as werdi is paired against Mazur in a PvP on Tau Cross. Both players open with 2 gateways, werdi choosing to then go with an expansion and mazur a dt drop which werdi scouted. Despite the advantage for Werdi, Mazur manages to slow Werdi down quite a bit with drop play and with a few bad follow up plays from Werdi, Mazur was able to stabilize a lead and control the game into a victory for NW. For the next match we had Trutacz vs Moro in a zvz on eye of the storm. Trutacz expertise in the match-up proved to be too much to handle as the game was short and sweet, giving NW a 2-0 lead.

The next players to appear on the stage were Julia for NW and idegel for FR on the map Polaris Rhapsody. This game was unfortunately quite anti-climatic as idegel appeared to miss play his build resulting in an extremely easy win for Julia. Down 3-0, FR decided to send reliable gag to fight Wolf on Outsider in a TvT. Again FR failed to deliver as Wolf took this game down with a single push keeping it as short as can be for the match-up, NW wins 4-0 and edges closer to their play-off goal, congrats.






Unfortunately VOD hasn't been saved for this clan war.






Unfortunately VOD hasn't been saved for this clan war.

Week 9. The final week. It’s do or die. Go big or go home. Insert more clichés.
With first place safely locked in by sas, they get to enjoy this final week like an emperor sitting on top of their throne watching the rest of the plebs viciously fighting over who gets second and third place. And what a vicious fight it will be, with the four teams that have a chance at playoffs, actually playing EACH OTHER in the absolute final week. NoOne must be clairvoyant to have scheduled everything so perfectly.

What’s so big about this week you ask? The second and third place teams are scheduled to play each other, and similarly, the third and fourth place teams are also scheduled to play each other. NoOne* will be safe from elimination. It will be a bloody fight with every team fighting to the bitter end to claim those two spots. As of week 8, iFU and NW are just barely holding on to second and third place with 34 and 30 points respectively. Hot on their heels is LRM with 29 points and finally, the slightly distant but still possibly there SJ with 25 points. With the simple introductions out of the way, get ready for some real BS theorycrafting that will be full of more holes than Swiss cheese.

iFU is currently sitting relatively comfortably in second place. While they haven’t clinched a playoff spot, they are only 1 point away from doing so. The only possibility of them to not make playoffs is if they were to get 4-0’d by NW power this week, AND for LRM to also 4-0 their opponents. That would finish with NW and LRM in second and third place respectively. LRM has been doing fairly good this season with the least number of set losses at the moment, so a 4-0 sweep of their opponents is quite a likely possibility, and iFU does not want to risk their playoff spot off to chance.

Next up is the hotly contested third place position currently held by NW. They are hanging onto this spot just by a thread with a 1 point lead over LRM. NW needs to win to keep their playoff hopes alive, but to actually clinch that spot they would need to sweep iFU which would push them out of reach of LRM regardless of their results. LRM’s chances feel slightly more complicated just because of how close they are with NW at the moment. To be completely safe for them, they need to sweep SJ and hope NW doesn’t sweep iFU. For the more complicated parts, if LRM loses, they need to pray NW loses even worse than they do. Regardless, every match will be extremely important for these two teams.

Last but not least is SJ, and they are in the complete opposite position of iFU. Where iFU needs to win only 1 set to clinch, SJ needs to win EVERYTHING. Their only hope is to sweep LRM 4-0 gaining them the 5 necessary points to tie with NW, AND hope that iFU sweeps NW 4-0. Then they would be tied in points with NW, but win the tie breakers due to having more set wins and less set losses. Crazy, I know. We’re talking about relying on two teams to sweep two of the biggest favourites in the entire tournament, on the same week! The percentage of achieving this is almost zero!

Predictions:
iFU > NW 4-3
LRM > SJ 4-1
iFU and LRM to advance to playoffs.

I said this two weeks ago, but realized it fits even better this week. While the odds of victory may be stacked against some teams, the percentage means nothing. A courageous heart can make ANYTHING possible!

FINAL OPERATION – BEGIN!

*lol I so punny :D