Game 1: Mine over Matter
The group starts off with a TvZ between Mind and underdog Sacrsi. Mind spawns down at the bottom left and immediately opens up with an 8 rax. Those who have watched Mind since the Sonic era should be no strangers to the early aggressive play Mind employs in most TvZs (see KSL). Feeding of the energy of a live studio, Sacrsi pulls a great number of drones and defends the early marine-bunker rush. Now that Mind’s been forced to play a longer game, he proceeds to employ the 1/1/1 that most Terrans are using these days. Sacsri is forced to respond. Having drawn experience from the recent Soulkey vs Last series, Sacsri does a variation of a hydra opener in response. However, he opts to turtle up and push tech over aggression. This choice proves well, because of Mind’s option to upgrade mines early on. Mines are a great defender ff a small hydra push to the natural occurred. Instead, Sacsri chooses to macro up and expand to a third…

Except the single greatest vulture/mine combo would occur. Sacsri’s drone at the third cannot form a hatchery because a mine is burrowed and since there was a vulture attacking his drone, he was forced to make an extractor. As the extractor nears a 100%, the drone has to cancel and rebuild! To top it off, the mine is finally removed, but by the time the drone can make it to the hatch location, the remaining vulture kills it off. The delay of the third was too critical. As Artosis and Rapid (Raposis? Artopid?) echo-ed, Sacsri really was playing a great game, but not getting the third kept him from playing the macro game he required in order to stay ahead of Mind. Mind in turn proceeded with a bio-mech push that would put him in the winner’s match.

Game 2: The worst movie ever made
This game still confuses those of us who watched it live. Best, spawning at the 8 o'clock position, opts for a dt expand build meanwhile Movie, at the 12 o'clock goes for a 3 gate timing. Movie pushes hard with his 3 gate army just as the first dt leaves Best’s natural. Best has a natural base that he chooses to defend instead of sending the DT straight to the third. Now, in an attempt to reason with Movie’s choices, here is what he did. Movie creates a templar archives instead of a forge. Making a choice that would give him DTs instead of detect DTs. It is possible he thoughr the damage he could enforce on Best would be so great that the follow up of DTs would cause an instant GG in the game. Instead, Best survives and is still in really good shape. His DTs march over and force a GG out of Movie. The question remains, had Movie made that forge, would the outcome have been different?

Game 3: Best in show
Best versus Mind face off on the German Highway. Best spawns at the top left and Mind at the bottom right. As the game opens, it is clear that the Protoss trend of acquiring reavers would be what Best goes for. Mind hunkers down on his two bases and forms a solid mech army and chooses to push out with his tanks. Best has one option here, which is to engage the unsieged army with his shuttle/reaver/dragoon squad. The micro and decision making in this battle is nothing less then astounding. Best completely ignores the threat of a few goliaths and commands his reaver to target tanks only.

Meanwhile, he dances his goons beautifully to pick off each goliath with surgical precision. Each target attack from his units breaks down Mind further and further. The mech army makes it to the natural of Best, but Best has a double advantage. With defender’s reinforcements, he can take on the tattered Terran army without his reavers. Knowing this, Best was able to counter attack and harass the worker line with no resistance. Mind is unable to fight back and taps out.

Game 4: The worst movie ever made - Part II
Sacsri has to take care of business or he will be eliminated. Using Autobahn’s map exploits to his advantage, Sacsri opens up fast speedlings at the 11 o’clock position. Using the early lings, Sacrsi heads to the far right and starts breaking down the neutral building blocking a path to the north of Movie’s natural. Let’s take a pause now to discuss an awesome moment that happened. Artosis points out the irregularity of Movie’s second defensive cannon. Often times we’ve watched so many games of Starcraft 1 that we don’t always question every building placement. But Artosis really went Day9 on us. He posed the question “Why there?”. This fundamental question and answer was exactly how Movie was able to survive the early rush from Sacsri.

First observed, the cannon placement does extend the covered area had the lings decided to dive through the front door. This extra length is indeed effective in dealing with speedlings. However, the cannon placement becomes more splendid with the backdoor entrance being exposed. That single cannon was able to defend the nexus from an attack coming from the left or the top. Now, there have been certain maps over the years that we have seen this mandatory cannon placement, but even so one can really appreciate hearing a perfectly placed question and watching the answer divulge itself as Movie defends so perfectly. From the point at which Movie is completely safe, Sacsri is greatly behind. Still, he mounts a really aggressive lurker hydra attack on Movie. This attack would have more then succeeded, but another huge blunder costs Sacsri the game. He became another victim to the horror of DT harass. As Movie defends by the skin of his teeth, the economic damage forces a GG.

Game 5: The worst movie ever made – Part III
Like, Godfather 3, we are happy there is another game, but are afraid of how ugly this one can get. Sure enough, this was another disappointment for Movie fans. The final series is cross spawns PvT on Circuit Breakers. Movie and Mind both open with a strong economic focus. Movie expands pretty quickly to his third and fourth at the 6 o’clock position. Meanwhile, in the top right Mind grabs the mineral only as his third. Due to Movie’s aggressive expansion timing, Mind senses a moment where he can go for a mech push before 2-1 finishes. He proceeds to go for the throat and moves his mech army to the high ground that precedes the third and fourth base entrances. Movie in a wild move yanks his army away leaving the pathway clear. What this allows him to do is pick off oncoming reinforcements as he slowly confronts the army.

Movie eventually defends quite well. It opens up the opportunity and he expands to the 6 o’clock base and macroes up a near maxed army. Movie gathers for a recall on the main that is easily deflected with an EMP. Sensing he must force the issue, he orders his entire army to try and take on the fourth base of Mind. This force is decimated as it tries to walk down a ramp and past a depot into the siege fire of Mind. Following the failed attack, Movie transitions to 4 stargate carrier. Mind uses his game sense and throws down a scan revealing the entire plan. Pumping of 3 gases and 2-1 upgrades, Mind is well prepared for the carrier attack. Movie shows fatigue as the match ensues and even loses a carrier to a turret. Mind finally takes a PvT and sends Movie back to his day job.

Best and Mind advanced to the Ro16!

We got TvT expert Sharp, TvZ expert Light, G-chizzle aka OMEKim aka GuemChi, and the fresh faced ACS finalist yerim2. We got some variety in store for this group.

Sharp vs yerim2:
Once again Sharp proved in the KSL that he has some of the best TvT, but falls flat in the face of other matchups with his two 3-1 victories against Sea and his eventual quarterfinal fall against Soulkey. However, since then he seems to have started to redeem himself online currently going 14-6 in TvZ going up against the best ZvT players. Definitely will be looking sharp (pun intended) in his opening game.

yerim2 draws a bigger question mark than the ACS champion as we know very little about him outside of his qualifier run where he beat Jaehoon, ForGG and Leta to earn his spot in the Ro24. Those are definitely known names, but he needs to show what he's like on the big stage come game day.

Light vs GuemChi:
Another teamkill match as both players were formerly in Woongjin Stars and were teammates (albeit briefly).

Light is right now probably in the best shape he's ever been in and that includes his KeSPA-era career. While he still seems to have trouble with TvP, he's been showing a lot more improvement especially in recent months with his runs in the KRS series, even going as far as performing an All-kill earlier this week. He is definitely going to be riding that momentum going into this group.

GuemChi has a winning record against both Terrans of the group (to be fair, it's a 1-0 against Light and a 2-1 against Sharp, hardly a record) since August, but his focus so far on stream has been playing more PvZs than PvTs which won’t serve him much against Light. Expect Light to make quick work of this matchup.

Winners', Losers', and Finals' Match:
Sharp going up against Light is easily the main event of the night even if it is a TvT. Both players are equal in their head to head, and both players are known for being able to take the matchup at all stages, early, mid and those late late game BC vs BC scenarios. One can only wonder how it would work out on Autobahn.

As mentioned earlier with GuemChi, he has been focusing on PvZ right now, and he should be more than ready to beat yerim2 to make it to the final match.

It's usually in this situation that we are likely to see the appearance of OMEKIM or to put in simpler terms, GuemChi burns your eyes with his play (thus the name Oh My Eyes Kim) and outplays himself into a bad situation. However, there is no doubt in my mind that either Sharp or Light should be able the close the game out themselves without him needing to do so. But expect GuemChi to gamble on an early game proxy robo reaver drop at either the 12/6 base on Circuit breaker.

Sharp and Light to advance to the Ro16!