Yet another week goes by of amazing groups. The highlight of the week just finished a couple of hours ago; group D, the group of death. Sea winning both his matches and making it out of the group without any losses cements his place as the current best Brood War player in the world. He has to play again in just a couple of hours. Watch him and the rest of quarterfinal match-ups duke it out to survive to the next stage of the tournament.

The quarterfinals starts just one day after the round of 16 ends just like last time, so here is a quick summary for you. We are once again joined by KristofferAG and his recaps of the previous weeks' groups. The recommended VOD section returns with the best games of the round of 16. To finish off the write-up is the preview of the quarterfinals, describing what is around the corner. As always with the SOSPA Ranking Tournament, another broadcast is just a heartbeat away, day one of the quarterfinals starts in just .

This round of 16 might just have the two most stacked groups in SRT history, and we kick it all of with HiyA, Tyson, Mong and Shuttle. Both HiyA and Mong have been somewhat unreliable, and are looking to make up for it this tournament, but Shuttle's PvT is something to be seriously worried about.

What better way to start the day than rushing carriers? Sure enough it's a fancy way to kick off the round of 16, but HiyA would have none of it. With incredible macro, HiyA would keep expanding and adding on factories while containing Shuttle, and outmicroing him at every turn. The carriers had no chance. The second run was somewhat similar, with a strong contain forcing Shuttle to avoid the army and go for counters and recalls. HiyA was able to defend it nicely, and the recall ended up being on top of a set of mines. Even with arbiters getting off good stasis' in the engagements, HiyA would deny any counterattack while killing off Shuttle's third, till gg was called.



The two first games between Mong and Tyson were long and drawn out, with neither player looking to go on the offensive in the first game, and any minor harass was deflected without major damage being done. Mong's superior macro in game one definitely won him the game, in spite of Tyson nailing a couple of stasis', but game two saw Tyson going the heavy macro route, with Mong unable to take down any of the bases. In spite of some absolutely terrible recalls that lost Tyson his army many times over, the Protoss won the game. The third game ended up being a quick win for Mong, as Tyson's first reaver died before getting a single scarab off, letting Mong's mech push through and end it.

Mong opened the winners match with a proxy rax, but was unable to actually make anything happen with it. Mong still took control from the very start, denying much mining from the natural, and shutting down mining on HiyA's third when it came up. Tyson attempted a proxied gateway in Shuttle's base, but the defense was fairly solid, and a follow-up two gate goon attack was enough to kick Tyson out.

So we ended up with a rematch of the first series of the day, and it all seemed very similar. HiyA got his contain up, did some minor drops, while Shuttle did his best to avoid any heads-up confrontation. HiyA seemed to be in the lead till a huge recall took out his natural, leaving the Terran with no mining bases. Still, HiyA cleaned it up, expanded to the middle base, and set up his contain again. Shuttle tried to break it, but with only a single stasis available, the Protoss army got wrecked, putting HiyA up one point. Shuttle attempted a shield battery rush on HiyA's early expansion, but even with two shield batteries HiyA defended it with almost zero losses. With a large bio/tank army, HiyA was able to slowly push his way into Shuttle's main, claiming a 2-0 victory.






Group B was probably one of the easiest to predict. Powerhouses sSak and hero were pegged for first and second place early on, while there was some uncertainty as to who would be third and fourth. Pusan's PvP record is nothing to be proud of, and even someone like Lazy would be scary for the old timer.

The two first games between Pusan and Lazy were fairly long macro games. The main difference being both players' reluctance to attack in game one, compared to the constant back-and-forth fighting of game two. Basically the player with the better reaver control would end up winning a deciding fight, and follow it up with a counter-attack and smash through the opponent's defenses. Game 3 went in Lazy's favor after Pusan went for an early expansion, meaning he didn't have a shuttle to go with his reaver, and lost the nexus without even getting to mine. Eventually, Lazy's army wast just way too big for Pusan to handle.

Already in their first game, sSak and hero proved just why TvZ seems to be the favorite match-up for so many Brood War fans these days. Terran got to show off his bio micro, and hero was forced to fight from behind the entire game. Over the course of 20 minutes, sSak was everywhere, taking down expansions, keeping hero on his side of the map, while hero managed to get very little done, and had to focus on minimizing losses. The final move from hero was a large mutalisk switch, which sSak was completely prepared for. Zerg's mutalisk play in game two was shut down completely by sSak's valks, but the game wouldn't end just like that. Just like in game one, hero fought from behind all game, and though he would end up losing, he has nothing to be ashamed of.

Lazy's attempted proxy gate was handled with easy by sSak, who managed to cut his losses to just a few marines. By the time dragoons were out to join the push, the Terran already had two siege tanks and a bunker in place. Though the Protoss defended well all game, his pushes were disastrous, losing him army after army till he was forced to gg. Pusan's FFE went up against a nine pool from hero, and with Pusan deciding a single cannon would be enough, it all went downhill from there, ending in a successful three hatch hydra bust.



And what do you know, a three hatch hydra bust would also finish up Lazy in the first game of the final match. In game two, however, Lazy went with an early zealot aggression, which was defended nicely. The follow-up was a lot of sairs to kill all the overlords while zealots in hero's natural made sure the hydras left the sairs alone. The next Protoss push ended the game, and tied it all up. In spite of a failed three hatch hydra bust in game three, hero was left mostly alone, allowing him to tech up and end the game without breaking a sweat.






Sure, Terror was entertaining to watch in the round of 32, but his play wasn't particularly impressive, and no-one really expected him out. No, group D definitely had its favorites in Movie and Brave, with Ample coming in third, continuing his tradition of average play and average placing in SOSPA tournaments.

Already in the opening match Terror proved what everyone suspected, he really doesn't have what it takes to get a high placement. Unable to deal with vultures, and unable to take proper engagement resulted in a fairly quick and uneventful 2-0 in favor of the former KT Terran. For some reason Brave forfeited his initial match against Movie, meaning he'd go up against Terror in the losers match instead.



Movie vs. Ample was... different. Ample went dancing with Movie, but neither of them knew all the steps. The game ended up being a fairly long TvP, with not that many engagements. Movie attempted some recalls that weren't able to do enough damage, but both players were vigilant in denying mining for the opponent. Movie eventually found himself with zero mining and a huge carrier fleet, while Ample was long-distance mining off of one base. Sadly for Ample, Movie has good carrier micro, and combined with some great stasis' on packs of goliaths, he was able to grab the victory.

I guess Brave was feeling out of it, because his attempted cannon rush against Terror got shut down immediately, and the six zerglings from Terror made it to Brave before any defensive cannons were up, knocking Brave out. In the final match, Ample took the first game off Terror with a forward rax and a bunker rush against a fast-expanding zerg. Ample tried doing the same in game two, but Terror was able to defend it. With a completely failed mutalisk play, Terror was suddenly far behind, but with some impressive hold position lurker play Terror was able to bring himself back into the game, and in spite of some sloppy control, tie the series up.

In game three Ample abandoned his cheesy ways and went for a one rax expansion, but as he lost all his initial marines to zerglings, he had no defense against mutalisks, letting Terror go to town on the Terran worker line. Terror looked great, buuut it is still Terror, and he lost a huge chunk of his army trying to break Ample's front, while Ample took out the third base of Terror. Ample pushed on Terror's natural, while Terror's guardians shelled the natural of Ample, but somehow both fronts were defended, and both players stabilized. Ample ended up doing some really cool drop play and multitasking, which Terror was unable to deal with, leading Ample to the second spot in the group.






It finally arrived, the group of absolute Death, which without a doubt was the most hyped out of the four round of 16 groups. Featuring three SOSPA champions, Sea, Killer, and Sky, and the only foreigner left in the tournament, Fengzi from China.

No-one really expected Fengzi to beat Killer, considering Killer's reputation and history in ZvZ. The only thing we could hope for was really a lag-free ZvZ, which was a bit much to ask. Both games actually looked to be in Fengzi's favor in the beginning. In game one Fengzi went spire off one base, while Killer expanded and defended with spores. Fengzi found some holes and even sniped the spire, but Killer's two bases allowed him to get a superior mutalisk count, and out-micro Fengzi. The story was the same for game two, with Fengzi grabbing the early advantage and losing it to some seriously impressive mutalisk micro.

Sky's performance against Sea was not very impressive. In game one he opened proxy gate and proxy reaver, going for an elevator of goons and reaver harass, but with lacking micro and good defense by Sea, Sky found himself fairly far behind. A follow-up push from Sea off of two factories was enough to win the game. In round two Sky opened two gate goon, which was once again defended by Sea with Sky lacking in the micro department. The game went on for some time, with minor skirmishes, and though Sky had some excellent storms, Sea's macro allowed him to produce a massive mech army that took care of anything Sky had.



Which means everyone got what they wanted, a match between Killer and Sea, and what a match it was. Over the course of fifteen minutes Killer put on immense amounts of pressure with his flock of mutalisk, keeping Sea contained on two bases. Sea had a hard time defending as SCVs and turrets got sniped, but managed to squeeze out a couple of valkyries. Killer, for some odd reason, decided that mutalisk was still the way to go. After holding a lurker/zergling push, Sea finally got to push out, and his rather small bio army made it to Killer's base, destroyed it, and forced out the gg.

When Fengzi and Sky met up, Fengzi once again managed to inch in a lead, which he subsequently lost so hard that Sky threw up two manner nexuses in the middle of the map. The game was also an absolute lag-fest, which might be why Fengzi didn't look near as on top of his game as he did in the round of 32 or even against Killer just an hour earlier. To top off the day, we got to see Killer do what he does best, three hatch hydra bust Sky in one game, and completely outplay and dominate him in a slightly more macro oriented second game.

In this new section we list all the good games from the previous stage of the tournament for your viewing pleasure! The games are handpicked by me, KristofferAG, and 2Pacalypse-, the games are in no particular order. Enjoy!

Sea just came out off an incredibly hard group. Going 3-0 against Sky, and Killer. Sea just cemented his place as the current best Brood War player in the world. With an eleven game win streak and a twelve game win streak in TvP it's safe to say that Sea finally figured out his worst match-up. Getting out of the group 3-0 also meant that Sea broke a new all-time ELO peak in the SOSPA TLPD. Sea hasn't lost a single TvT series since March, where he lost to HiyA 2-1 in a best of three in SSL8.



HiyA has meanwhile been playing very well in TvP but suffered an unfortunate loss to Mong in his round of 16 group. HiyA's TvT is just above average, with most of his wins played against Mong. Without Mong, HiyA's TvT would be under 50%. HiyA and Sea are 1-1 in best-of-series and 3-3 in total games. In their progaming careers they faced each other five times and Sea won three of them, most recently in Jin Air OSL. With the most recent best-of-series win in SRT14 and Sea's amazing shape as of late, HiyA shouldn't be much of an opposition for him.

Sea 3-1 HiyA.



sSak cruised his group without a single loss and beat hero pretty damn convincingly. sSak's TvZ is probably the best it's ever been. Unfortunately for sSak, even though Killer didn't win against Sea, and his recent inactivity; it hasn't made Killer any worse. Killer is still the monster we all recall. Killer is 6-0 against sSak, 2-0 in best-of-series, both best of fives ending in a 3-0. Killer really seem to have sSak's number and has a seemingly easy time controlling the games from start to finish.



There isn't much else to say other than that Killer still is the favourite against everyone but Sea. sSak's recent stint in TvZ, and the trickiness of New Heartbreak Ridge & Nostalgia might be kind to him. sSak should be able to take one game, two if he's really lucky.

sSak 1-3 Killer



At the start of the tournament, I would have never expected to see these players in the round of 16, let alone in the quarterfinals. Both Mong and Ample has been on a steady decline since SSL8 and hasn't looked like themselves ever since. Suddenly both of them got out of their round of 32 groups without too much fuss 2-1, and proceeded to upset their round of 16 groups. Most notably Mong 2-0'd his round of 16 group, beating Tyson in a narrow series and winning a TvT against ex-progamer HiyA.



Mong and Ample have a long history, at one point they were the #1 and #2 on the ELO rankings. But that was during SRT7 and we have come a long way since then. Both of them have barely over 50% win rate in TvT and generally lose to the superior ex-pro TvT of HiyA and Sea. Mong and Ample have faced each other ten times and Mong has won six of them, and the last five encounters. With his recent win over HiyA, Mong should be able to win against Ample, unless he decides to two port. Ample has decided to not disappoint this season, lets see if it's time now, hopefully he can put up a fair fight and take one or two games.

Mong 3-1 Ample.



The last quarterfinal match-up is probably the most interesting one, and the only one that can realistically go either way. hero and Movie have faced each other a whopping 20 times, with the score of 11-9 in hero's favour. Their most notable best-of-series was in SSL8, also in the quarterfinals. Movie looked hot to make the grand final but got stopped in his tracks. hero schooled Movie in how to play ZvP properly. They also played each other in a round of 16 group in SRT13, where hero won 2-1.



I currently have the feeling that no SOSPA Protoss is capable of winning against hero. No Protoss is especially known for their PvZ, and hero has always been known for his incredible ZvP. hero came close to losing against Lazy, but that was mostly due to him doing a three hatch hydra bust three times in a row. hero knows that Movie has the best PvZ and he will bring it. If there is one series you have to watch in the quarterfinals it's this one. The two best PvZ'ers in the scene duking it out in a best of five. It will be entertaining and it will be really close.

hero 3-2 Movie.