Ah PvP. We’ll never get tired of auto-GGs after DTs, buggy dragoon micro, and RNG reaver wars. On paper, Shuttle was definitely the favored player coming into the match, but you can never count Jaehoon out. On any given day, you can literally just flip a coin on Jaehoon.

In the end, it was a good day for Jaehoon, but not good enough. The matches were fairly close and actually quite interesting for a PvP. In several games, both players actually managed to stabilize on two or more bases with large gateway/templar armies. If you remember our preview, FlashFTW mentioned that the biggest factor is how well each player can micro their shuttles; just as predicted, it was Shuttle’s micro that ultimately led him to victory.


Game 1 (Circuit Breaker):
Horizontal Bot

If the first game was any example for the series, we knew it was going to be a good day. Shuttle opted for the (fairly standard) opening of two gates into reavers while Jaehoon went the unorthodox route of triple gateway into expansion. Jaehoon used his unit advantage to push across the map early and contain Shuttle while expanding behind it. Once Shuttle had his reavers out though, he was easily able to push Jaehoon back and even kill the expansion to contain him.

Jaehoon got a miraculous reaver drop off to even the scales and was eventually able to break out of the contain once he got his own reavers. At this point, the game officially made it into the mid game, something you don’t see a lot in PvP. The game continued with both players teching into high templars and trying to secure a third base. In the end, though, Jaehoon was unable to gain any sort of map control and slowly bled units out until Shuttle took a decisive fight for the win.


Game 2 (New Taebaek Mountains):
Standard

Well, it’s Taebaek Mountains again. We’ve come to expect really weird games on this map, so it’s no surprise that Jaehoon went YOLO on a proxy forge cannon rush. Shuttle took way too long to figure out what was going on and had to abandon his mineral line to expand at his natural. Unfortunately, he just didn’t have the gas to get his dragoon production up and running fast enough, so Jaehoon just pulled ahead in the dragoon count and pushed across the map for the win.


It’s a bit telling that Jaehoon’s only win in the series was a surprise cannon rush that Shuttle responded to in almost the worst way possible, but...we won’t get into that.


Game 3 (Fighting Spirit):
Vertical right

Just like last week, we were lucky to have Fighting Spirit next to return us to normal. Both players pretty much mirrored each other with reaver builds, the only difference being that Jaehoon went for a fast expansion again while Shuttle pushed out on the map. Once again, Jaehoon’s expansion was cancelled and he was contained. He sent out a reaver drop just like game 1. Unfortunately, the hail mary reaver drop didn’t work so great this time around; the reaver died after killing only one probe.

After some painstakingly slow shuttle/reaver wars, Jaehoon finally managed to break the contain and retake his natural. From here, the game once again became a game of reaver wars as both players looked to get a third base up and start building up their templar count. Unfortunately, Jaehoon overestimated his advantage and took a third base early instead of building up his gateway unit count. Combined with some micro mishaps while retreating on the map, Shuttle punched a hole directly in Jaehoon’s defenses, shredding dragoons with speedlots and sniping reavers.

Swarms of zealots ran across the map to reinforce the push, breaking the natural and giving Shuttle the win.


Game 4 (Overwatch):
Horizontal top

At this point, it’s pretty clear to assume that Shuttle’s macro game is simply better than Jaehoon’s. That said, Jaehoon obviously had to make a risky play to get back into the series. The choice: fast expand into DTs. As far as BoX logic goes, this strategy makes sense; it combines insane greed with a clever risk that will pay off against an opponent who isn’t going standard. Unfortunately, Shuttle didn’t need to take any risks. He knows that he was ahead in the series and that he was the better macro player, so there was no reason for him to deviate from the standard robo opening.


Shuttle shut down the DT harass with ease and subsequently starts working on his own templar tech while taking an early third. He makes an early Dark Archon to cast feedback on Jaehoon’s templar. Once his third base is up and running, he begins a push across the map, reinforcing with tons of zealots. He manages to break Jaehoon’s defenses and destroys the third base, but he can’t quite end the game yet.

After a few lulls in the action, Shuttle starts throwing gateway units at Jaehoon over and over. With five bases up and running, it doesn’t even matter if he trades badly. After several waves of near-maxed out armies, Shuttle finally breaks Jaehoon and takes the series 3-1.



It was a clash of the old versus the new. Despite being the most decorated and arguably the best Brood War player to have ever touched the game, Flash’s days of glory are, more or less, over. While Flash moved on to play SC2 along with Kespa, Last stayed true to the game and kept playing, honing his skills and becoming a true force to be reckoned with.

Though both players had impressive records in TvT, most viewers would have given the edge to Last given his more extensive experience in the recent metagame. But I don’t think anyone expected the series to be so one-sided. Despite Flash’s history, Last was able to dismantle him with surgical precision, taking a clean 3-0 and advancing into the semifinals.

Game 1 (Fighting Spirit):
Horizontal top

The game started off disastrously for Flash when Last discovered his proxy rax in the middle of the map. Luckily, Flash kept his cool and finished the barracks without too much of a problem. Still, he lost a lot of mining time and gave Last the early economic edge.

The game continued in pretty standard TvT fashion: vulture wars, siege tank pressures, and vulture drops. Both players set up a siege line pretty much perfectly down the middle of the map. Flash got a few wraiths out to push back the tank lines, but made little headway in actually pushing Last back.


And then the hammer dropped. Last got a surprise drop onto Flash’s 12 o’clock base, securing the high ground and opening an avenue directly into the main base. Despite his best efforts, Flash was unable to make a dent in Last’s defense, and a subsequent doom drop into Flash’s main sealed the deal.

Game 2 (Circuit Breaker):
Vertical left

In game 2, Flash tried out a fast tank build against Last’s standard FE. He set up a tank/marine contain of sorts, but SCV pulls were more than enough to shut it down. Flash lost a few tanks, but he also killed a fair number of SCVs, so the game more or less evened out.

From here on, it was the siege line yet again. Last set up his siege line diagonally across the map, creating a sort of natural concave. Despite various, almost reckless, attempts to break the siege line closest to Last’s natural, Flash just didn’t have the firepower to take over map control. Rather than attempt to play out the game with only a small section of the map to his name, Flash tapped out to prepare for the next game.

Game 3 (Overwatch):
Vertical right

Much like the first game, this game started with Flash’s proxy barracks being scouted almost instantly. Last got a second SCV as well as a marine over to Flash’s barracks in time to camp the production and prevent anything more than one marine (in red health) from escaping. Flash had to build a bunker at the top of his ramp and pull SCVs in order to prevent himself from outright losing the game at that point.

Last had a huge advantage and nearly unlimited options for how to use it. He decided to proxy a factory, built a machine shop, and one vulture. Maybe this was the beginning of a potential siege tank contain, maybe he was hiding the double starport in his main base—we’ll never know. Flash made a strong push across the map with a small marine/tank army, but Last managed to easily deflect the attack while still hiding his fleet of wraiths.


As Flash retreated to his base, Last surprised him with cloaked wraiths, destroying Flash’s wraiths, killing off a few tanks, and even getting a few SCV kills in the process. Once the valkyrie was out, the surprise tactic was shut down, but it was still a pretty huge blow to Flash’s economy and production. Flash attempted set up a contain at Last’s natural using his now-superior air force, but got shut down hard by better micro from Last. A solid push across the map guaranteed Last the easy victory for a 3-0 series sweep.

The STX SouL

Following the jaw dropping 3-0 victory over Flash, Last is looking to continue his undefeated streak in the Afreeca Starleague against his former STX teammate Shuttle, but what are shuttle's chances?

Well quite frankly pretty low. Shuttle's PvT isn't anything to write home about and he is a better PvZer (although TLPD suggests otherwise, it does not take sponmatches into account) but he is always someone that tries to catch his opponents off guard with particular builds. In general, he is pretty good with carriers, going 6 : 9 against Last for sponmatches in July which is the second closest head to head for last in TvP (other one being vs Bisu).

Last's perfect streak in the tournament is a testament to his playing form in 2016, going up against shuttle who he only recently met in the Kim Carry league where he went over him 2-1. After dropping the first set to fast carriers, Last followed with amazing Biotank play game 2, which is something he occasionally does in the matchup, having played a full 20+ minute game against BeSt like it was a TvZ on Circuit Breaker.

Overwatch is the repeat map of the series, meaning that both players feel confident about playing on the new map. Shuttle likely goes for early goon pressure and transitions into carriers off 3 bases taking the mineral only base before his third gas or a shuttle reaver into a big midgame army. Last will likely want to go for a quick two base factory aggression to take control of the high ground "donut" and later expand.

New Taebaek mountain's revised 2.1 version (oh boy do the players hate this map having gone through so many revisions, but seems a lot more solid now than it was before the Ro8) sees the easiest 3 gas since Loki II. Shuttle will probably look to get fast reavers for early harass or fast arbiters and power through with gateway army or fast. Last on the other hand has options of going for vulture openings or might even proxy factory behind the temples and go for drops delaying protoss tech while expanding and transitioning into a midgame timing. It's unlikely we'll ever see a split map situation but it would benefit last over shuttle.

Fighting Spirit and Circuit Breaker are our stable maps. We've seen what the matchup plays out like on them so if I were to pick a winner for them, I'd say a standard game would have Last win over with a 2/1 timing, but I really want to see on either one, this:



Last <Overwatch> Shuttle
Last <New Taebaek Mountains> Shuttle
Last <Circuit Breaker> Shuttle
Last <Fighting Spirit> Shuttle
Last <Overwatch> Shuttle

Last advances 3-1 to The Grand Finals

Sharp vs Sea: Tide of Terran
Head-to-head: Sharp 1-2 Sea

The TvT specialist, Sharp, has continued to look decent in this matchup. My usual stat drop includes a respectable 57.7% win rate with his losses only coming at the hands of exceptional TvTers (Last, Sea and 2015 Mong). This however, might be a worrying trend with his inability to take games consistently off of higher level players. This is observed with his stats in the month of July, where he failed to take a single game off of Last (0-6) and only one game off of Flash (1-7). Against an upper-echelon player like Sea, this spells trouble for the up-and-coming newcomer.

Moving past pure statistics, Sharp’s road to the semifinals has been very impressive. He broke out of group B in second place after essentially winning his group through pure TvT, beating PianO in tiebreakers to take 2nd spot. Following that, Sharp’s 3-1 series win over sSak in the Round of 8 looked extremely decisive. Sharp played perfect macro games in games 1, 2, and 4, constantly out-trading and outplaying sSak. He dropped a random cheese game on TaekBaek when his bunker rush didn’t do enough damage but otherwise showed immense strength in his games. His drop play and harass were exceptional, not only doing economic damage with his vulture drops, but keeping them alive with the dropship to ensure further drops were possible. This continuously put sSak on the backfoot in every game and allowed Sharp to take economic advantages to roll over his opponent. He also dealt with sSak’s attempted air fleets very convincingly in both games 3 and 4 and crushed him in a huge timing window while transitioning to wraiths in game 1. He took a much more mobile army of goliaths and smashed through the thin tank lines left by his opponent. Sea has shown an affinity towards going wraiths in many of his TvT games so we’ll see how the two playstyles clash.

However, Sharp did show some flaws in his games against sSak. His early game response to wraiths could have been a lot cleaner, as he lost a few SCVs and mining time which delayed his 3rd. He showed a stubbornness of refusing to grab an earlier armory for goliaths or e-bay for turrets in most of his games which allowed sSak to harass with wraiths more freely. Furthermore, on maps with expansions that aren’t as easy to defend (Overwatch’s min-only and the side gas bases), he commonly ran into a problem of having to pull back units to defend those bases while losing SCVs and mining time. Against a better player like Sea, Sharp will be facing a harsher punishment for lacking defenses.

Sea on the other hand has been a solid player throughout the post-KeSPA era, but mostly known for his online tournament dominance and having a reputation for choking offline. However, Sea has shattered his old form, taking first place in his group of death by defeating both [tlpd#players#sospa#T#hots]Flash[/tlpd] and ZerO as well as narrowly defeating his arch-nemesis, herO, in the quarterfinals 3-2. His confidence is high and he has all the momentum behind him right now.

The stat drop for Sea is pretty impressive. TvT win rate of 67.62% (albeit only 4-2 in 2016) is quite impressive, though most of that came from 2014 and early 2015 when he looked his strongest. He almost went on a 15 game TvT win-streak before Mong had to sneak in a defeat in the middle of his epic run. He’s 18-5 on Fighting Spirit which will be our repeat match and 12-3 on Circuit Breaker which will pose a huge threat to Sharp. However, he does have a slight hiccup. In the month of July, he only went 1-1 against Last so there’s not much to pull from there, but also went 0-4 against FlaSh (not that it mattered since he beat him in the game that mattered the most).

Sea has some great strengths and weaknesses I wanted to touch upon. His strength comes in great tank vs tank micro, always targeting the most optimal tanks in siege breaks. He has great air control with his wraith/valk fleets, definitely better than Sharp’s and he makes incredibly intelligent moves with his army to garner small incremental advantages. His game against FlaSh showcased fantastic air superiority, eliminating FlaSh’s air and using his wraiths to effectively halt FlaSh’s push and force him to all-in.

Apart from that, Sea actually has glaring holes in his game which actually make me question how his TvT winrate is so high. Much like Sharp, he fails miserably at defending locations and continuously loses SCVs to vultures. In addition, he has a tendency to get complacent in tank standoffs and doesn’t really do anything with that time except macro more of an army. He doesn’t expand and will commonly fall behind on bases if the game is relatively even, which puts pressure on him to make a push forward to end the game before he falls behind economically and causes him to lose the ability to make good decisions. These holes are easily exploited when he got destroyed by Mind in practice matches on Fish, constantly losing SCVs to harass and falling behind on bases. We’ll see if Sea can clean up his play and win over Sharp.

Overall, I’m actually predicting an upset for Sea, 3-2. Sharp’s game has been looking good, and this is actually a clash of play styles. I’m predicting Sea to put a decent amount of emphasis on achieving air superiority and for Sharp to be able to thwart it with his goliath/tank composition that can batter through Sea’s tank lines before he masses up to critical numbers. I think Sharp will also expand behind pressure and map stagnance which will put economic pressure on Sea.

Sharp <Fighting Spirit> Sea
Sharp <New Taebaek Mountains> Sea
Sharp <Overwatch> Sea
Sharp <Circuit Breaker> Sea
Sharp <Fighting Spirit> Sea

Sharp 3-2 Sea

Last vs Shuttle	Sea vs Sharp
2Pacalypse- (Shuttle 3-2) BigFan (Last 3-1) v1 (Last 3-1) BLinD-RawR (Last 3-1) Flashftw (Last 3-1) SC2John (Last 3-0)	2Pacalypse- (Sharp 3-1) BigFan (Sea 3-2) v1 (Sharp 3-0) SC2John (Sharp 3-1) Flashftw (Sharp 3-2) BLinD-RawR (Sea 3-2)