Team FlaSh struggled beat Team Hero in the Round of 8 but managed to scrape by on the back of FlaSh. Team BeSt was looking dominant coming from a fast 3-0 over Team Stork. Everyone was obviously hoping for an ace match to see the potential FlaSh vs BeSt match.


No one expected this match to be as close as it was but MIsO sure gave a good fight. FlaSh opted for a forward 6 rax and caught MIsO’s first overlord in the middle of Blue Storm while MIsO opted for a 12 hatch and gas before pool. FlaSh massed up 4 marines before pulling 5 SCVs to bunker rush the Zerg. MIsO was forced to pull every single drone off the line to stop the rush as his pool was delayed significantly and managed to hold off the push without losing a single drone.

The game settled into a more standard affair after MIsO went 2 hatch lurker that pushed FlaSh all the way back to his natural before switching to mutalisks to catch FlaSh offguard. FlaSh with the map hacks knew mutas were on the way and easily deflected them before taking back map control and never looked back. MIsO had a brave effort but his army simply fell apart to FlaSh’s superior play and he was forced to tap out.


Game 2 sees a hyped PvP on Outsider and the shuttle play was the focal point in this match. Rain opted for a 1 gate expand to a backdoor mineral only but BeSt countered by going 1 gate robo and dropping 3 dragoons behind the mineral line, forcing Rain to sac his expansion and re-expand to the natural gas base. However, those 3 dragoons would be crucially left behind and were not recovered.

BeSt expanded himself but was met with a stiff attack from Rain, who crucially sniped a reaver in the beginning of the fight. BeSt held off the attack and soon after decided to go for a reaver harass of his own but Rain sent another attack into the natural of BeSt, wiping out all the probes and once again got another snipe on a shuttle-less reaver. From there, he busted into the main where BeSt was too late to save his probes. Without an economy left, BeSt GGed.


Last and Rain spawned 11 and 9 on Hunters while Last and MIsO spawned 12 and 7 respectively. The 11 vs 12 battle was the focal point of the match as Team FlaSh tried to batter down the Terran forces of Light. However, Light’s brilliant sim-city allowed him to hold off the enemy forces with relative ease while allowing MIsO to fast tech to mutalisks. Rain tried a last ditch cannon on Light, who deflected the attack before Team FlaSh was forced to GG to the superior army composition that out-scaled their rush attempt.


OK on second thought I should have realized what I’d be getting myself into when asking to do this preview. Last vs Light made me realize I hate TvT with a passion, or at the very least, low level, stalled out TvTs. And for the record I passed out a few times on stream casting this terrible game. But anyways, let’s get to the recap. Last opened 1 fact expo while Light went with the greedier option of 1 rax FE. It soon became a base-grab contest with tank lines to separate the map to a top vs bottom split. The center of the game soon became focused on the center base on Fighting Spirit while both players amassed huge wraith fleets. Last was the first to grab the center base, which caused Light to suicide two massive wraith fleets into Last’s army to try to push him back. Behind this, Last teched to battlecruisers and the resource efficiency caught up to Light and he was forced to GG to the might of the Yamato Cannons.

Team FlaSh advanced to the Winners' Match, 3-1!
Also known as Team SKT-MBC vs Team Woongjin Stars. This was perhaps the closest we have to an actual analogue to the glorious PL days, where we have some real chemistry in the teams.


The first set played out as your standard PvP. The proverbial roll of the dice ended with GuemChi getting DT expand and Tyson a 2-gateway range observer so you know it's not going to be a BO loss. It was a quiet game initially. Aside from a very early HT drop from GuemChi, they deferred from all the grit and dirt of an aggressive game to sit back, sip some tea and raise a big army.

To keep it short, three huge, storm-filled parties of death defined the game. GuemChi acted first and was rewarded with Tyson's plateau. However, his initiative evaporated because Tyson lined-up better, unleashed a vicious flank and got a timely upgrade to even up (+2 to +2 weapons). Tyson was likely feeling it, so he ventured uphill a bit after but promptly got trounced by a stingy hold at the stairs. Then a real momentum stopper happened when GuemChi's forge was sniped with a drop. This allowed Tyson to even up at 1-0-3 which came in handy when psionic energy blanketed the final battle.


Finally, we got to see how Bisu would fare in an offline match versus a good zerg player in Soulkey. I'll be honest in that I didn't really expect Bisu to win, much less man up to take out an expo whilst getting impaled by lurker spines.

In this game, Bisu trotted out a more old-school build; 2 gate into sair-DT, which taking the features of the map is normal. Soulkey meanwhile went with 3-hatchery lurker build and transitioned to defensive 6-hatchery game. Personally I don't know if playing defensive on a tactically rich map like Outsider is foolish or Bisu just made things look so easy. Bisu did a flurry of drops the entire game that wreaked havoc with intensity ranging from running drones to dead hatcheries. The sequence that killed a hatchery involved the aforementioned walking on lurker spines. On the other side, Soulkey didn't do too bad of a job himself with drops causing Bisu's units to run around like a bunch of headless chickens in his base. Despite destroying an expo and several workers, he wasn't able to stop Bisu from breaking his natural and down the game went with it.


There have been one of two themes we've seen so far on Hunters and this one was from the quick-but-action-packed variety. It was bound to be shifty from the start with the teams spawning in a perpendicular pattern. In this one, the winning strategy was PianO's quick tech supported by Soulkey's masterful management. Soulkey did the heavy lifting early, holding the fort in 2v1 which allowed PianO who sSak contained with a bunker to tech vultures, wraiths, a valkyrie and a dropship. With Bisu having the life squeezed out of him and sSak running out of marines, the dropship + vultures was a GG at first sight.


The fourth game. Fighting Spirit. Two terran players. What could possibly be wrong with this? Well, after a TvT that almost left several casters passed out (not naming anyone), casters and viewers alike were keen on avoiding anything that spelled 'TvT'. Hell, that game was so long, Last and Light were still slotted in the Live Report Post as PianO and sSak took their seats.


But now on to the actual game. Well, what can I say. I want to give props to PianO for pulling out a 2-port wraith. But man, when sSak discovered it early with his floating barracks, it was basically a BO loss. Okay, that's too drastic. PianO didn't exactly die outright. He held off a rush which was a bit impressive but he traded some SCVs for that. When your opponent can support production off five factories versus your two, you can't really afford losses like that. However, the game continued on as sSak chose to play it patiently even though PianO was basically playing with his hands tied behind his back. His patience was well rewarded though when his tanks strolled past PianO's lines on the way to victory.

Team Bisu advanced to the Winners' Match, 3-1!