hero seems to be playing some of the best Starcraft of his career right now, and he looks to have completely solved the ZvT metagame. Seemingly applying questionable mutalisk micro when losing mutas to small MnM balls, there seems to be some reason for hero's "madness". He often sacrifices mutalisks in order to kill off the pressuring marine groups in order to safely expand for his third game. Most other Zerg players have instead, targeted the economy of the Terrans, which does not seem to be having much success. Consequently, he also hinders the Terran’s 9 minute MnM/MnM + tank push since they have much fewer marines in their army. He’s on a 7 game win streak in ZvT, in which he soundly trounced Sea in the Seaside Super Finals 3-0. His late game large army control has also been phenomenal and superb, managing to defeat Bisu in a hard fought ZvP on La Mancha in group stages. However, his opening build orders have been relatively linear, constantly opening hatch first. We’ll see if Mong takes advantage and throws in some cheese in the series. Nevertheless, I expect a strong showing in the Round of 8 from hero.


Mong hasn’t played much TvZ of late. He was pushed to the edge by Hyuk in group stages before managing to stabilize and having Hyuk overcommit and squeezing out a win. In fact, in the past 15 games, Mong is actually 8-7. Ever since his monster 9 game win-streak vZ, he has underperformed and many question if he is still one of the best Terrans. It is no wonder he has recently been dropping in the Elo ranks. We will see how well he prepares against a mastermind like hero; the future, however, looks bleak.


The map selection may play a significant role. hero has historically had success with a vT win rate of 50% or greater on Circuit Breaker and New Heartbreak Ridge, which is scheduled for sets 1 and 5, while more so struggling versus Terran on the Fighting Spirit-family of maps like Jade and La Mancha, but hero's hot streak of late cannot be underestimated.

hero to advance 3-1.

free’s PvP experience in this SSL alone is facing off against GuemChi 3 times(once in regular group stage and twice in tiebreakers) going 2-1 showing decent games, outside that free seems to do really well against his current competition of Protoss players outside Bisu (and Jangbi but he’s now in the army) who is the only one to hold a winning record against him in tournaments.


Movie has played only one PvP since his exit from SSL10 and that was his SSL11 Ro24 game against Jaehoon where movie crushed him with a build order advantage and good engagements. Movie has shown that he has been actively practicing from his gradual improvement in the tiebreakers against Mind and sSak and now that he’s reached the elimination bracket he doesn’t need to worry about practicing for multiple matchups either.


Protoss vs Protoss is a mirror matchup that's proven to be exciting time and again in a Bo5 series (e.g. TaekBang Rok), it is also important to note that free and Movie have never faced off against each other in the post-KeSPA era prior to this Ro8 and it's hard to tell just what to really except when these two players clash against each other, the odds favor free for being more active in the Korean scene and generally showing a more solid play-style whereas Movie has been mostly active in China, although he seems to be returning back to Korea now.

free to advance 3-1.