The match started with both teams trading games back and forth. First Beast defeated Terror by exploiting his faster zergling speed in a 12 pool vs. 12 hatch ZvZ, and then Britney answered by easily zealot busting Beast the following game. Sky won a PvP against Britney, who went templar tech instead of robo and died to Sky's eventual DT drop. Mini was the first player to string some consecutive wins together, and he did so in a very impressive fashion. In particular, his game against Killer was utterly dominant, as he transitioned from cannon rushing Killer's third to getting an early second gateway and keeping constant pressure on the zerg with zealots. His coup de gras was a double stargate followup, which decimated Killer's overlord count and won Mini the game.

After giving up three losses to Mini, Oz sent out Hiya, who played a brilliant PvT, scouting Mini's carrier tech and applying constant pressure to keep map control and fight the carriers on his own terms. Hiya then claimed a suffocating victory over Hero, whom held to four bases while expanding all over the map and building up an invincible metal army. STX's last stand was on Fighting Spirit, where Shuttle played the role of their ace. Hiya used a devastating two factory build that crippled Shuttle, killing off his natural and leaving him scrambling to catch up for the rest of the game. He never did, and Hiya ended the series by pushing out across the map with more tanks than Shuttle had dragoons.






SBENU just does not look like a team that can win matches in this league. Zergman of all people opened for Woongjin with a 2-kill. He was stopped by the terran Icarus, whose dropship heavy play proved too taxing on his multitask. Icarus shocked everyone by winning a TvP against Brave with what seemed like a very non-committal early attack with two tanks and a vulture. Brave lost two dragoons to a mine while fighting a retreating battle, and Icarus found himself in position to keep rallying tanks and vultures to Icarus's natural to close out the game. The success was shortlived, however, as Woongjin sent their ace Piano, who cleaned up Icarus, then went 2-rax against Spire, making his TvZ on Blue Storm more difficult than it had to be but ultimately winning in convincing fashion. SBENU's ace was Shinee, who Piano beat in a long TvT on Sniper Ridge.




HTML looked like it was going to take this match easily going into a TvZ on Blue Storm between Ssak and Modesty up 4-1. Ssak went for a 2-rax build against two hatch muta similar to what Piano went for in the previous match (is this actually good?), and looked to be in good shape with a very large bio and tank army bearing down on Modesty's third gas. But with an awesome flank, Modesty was able to defend and save his hatchery, and all of a sudden Ssak was on two bases against four, trying to take a mineral only. Modesty finished Ssak off, and then proceeded to rip off two more wins against Larva and Midas and bring things to a final ace match against Bisu. The Revolutionist quickly quashed any hopes of a KT comeback, doing an excellent job of harassing with sair DTs until Modesty was basically all in on his 5 hatch hydra attack. Bisu easily defended with cannons and storms and countered to win the game.

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WRITERS: mustaju and nbaker
GRAPHICS: KasPra