Match A:
Calm 2-1 ► Advances to Round of 8
Ssak 1-2 Eliminated

[VOD] Ssak < Circuit Breaker > Calm
[VOD] Ssak < Benzene > Calm
[VOD] Ssak < Dante's Peak > Calm

Match B:
Hydra 2-0 ► Advances to Round of 8
Classic 0-2 Eliminated

[VOD] Hydra < Circuit Breaker > Classic
[VOD] Hydra < Benzene > Classic
[VOD] Hydra < Triathlon Classic

Match C:
Jaedong 2-0 ► Advances to Round of 8
Midas 0-2 Eliminated

[VOD] Jaedong < Dante's Peak > Midas
[VOD] Jaedong < Benzene > Midas
[VOD] Jaedong < Triathlon > Midas

Match D:
Snow 2-0 ► Advances to Round of 8
HoGiL 0-2 Eliminated

[VOD] HoGiL < Circuit Breaker > Snow
[VOD] HoGiL < Benzene > Snow
[VOD] HoGiL < Dante's Peak > Snow

Match E:
great 2-0 ► Advances to Round of 8
Action 0-2 Eliminated

[VOD] great < Benzene > Action
[VOD] great < Dante's Peak > Action
[VOD] great < Circuit Breaker > Action

Match F:
ZerO 2-1 ► Advances to Round of 8
Neo.G_Soulkey 1-2 Eliminated

[VOD] ZerO < Circuit Breaker > Neo.G_Soulkey
[VOD] ZerO < Benzene > Neo.G_Soulkey
[VOD] ZerO < Triathlon > Neo.G_Soulkey

Match G:
Kal 2-0 ► Advances to Round of 8
RorO 0-2 Eliminated

[VOD] RorO < Dante's Peak > Kal
[VOD] RorO < Benzene > Kal
[VOD] RorO < Circuit Breaker > Kal

Match H:
Stork 2-0 ► Advances to Round of 8
Bisu 0-2 Eliminated

[VOD] Bisu < Benzene > Stork
[VOD] Bisu < Circuit Breaker > Stork
[VOD] Bisu < Dante's Peak > Stork

By ]343[





Jaedong's early micro was ok, but Midas abused SCVs to defend. At this point, he was far far ahead, even after losing his main, with over 10 SCVs to Jaedong's 4 drones. Then, Midas inexplicably fails to defend his bunker despite knowing about lings in his main and outside his nat, losing him the game. Very exciting, very ballsy by Jaedong, and very disappointing by Midas.

By ]343[






Miraculously, Roro scouted Kal's nat, saw no expansion, and assumed Kal wasn't there (even expanding to Kal's nat!)... so his zerglings took a tour around the other bases before finding anything. After that, Kal had the game.

By l10f

After losing the second set convincingly, Ssak starts at 7 o'clock as the White Terran to face Calm, the Blue Zerg at 11 o'clock. Ssak walls off his natural using a barracks and two supply depots and expands before making a marine. Calm does the standard 12 hatchery 11 pool 13 hatchery build. Ssak gets last scout and decides to get an early engineering bay and academy to upgrade his marines quickly. The SCV passes through the zerglings to see that Calm is going a 3 hatchery build.


Ssak adds two more barracks in the corner to get a lot of +1 upgraded marines quickly. Calm decides to get a spire, and Ssak adds one more barracks to make it 4 barracks. Ssak makes medics first to get some energy on them, while getting turrets to defend against mutalisks. Ssak has a lot of bionic units by the time Calm gets to Ssak's base, and there are turrets to stop any type of harassment.

Ssak moves out with his army, but Calm threatens with his mutalisks so Ssak can't move out too far. Ssak spots Calm's 3rd expansion at 11 o'clock and decides to move out with his army. There are too many marines for mutalisks to deal with, and calm is forced to build sunken colonies to stall time until lurkers are out. Ssak attacks Calm's 3rd base but Calm morphs the lurker just in time to stop the marines from coming up the ramp.


Ssak builds two starports for his SK terran build, and Calm techs up to hive, unable to control the center. Mutalisks see that Ssak is not making any tanks, but are not able to do any damage. Ssak blinds the lurkers, but he's unable to gain anything from doing so. Ssak's vessels begin to come out, but Calm snipes the first vessel as it was going to Ssak's army. Ssak expands while continuing to contain Calm, and Calm begins to move out as he gets his first defiler.

Calm takes his 4th base after getting consume and dark swarm, and Ssak takes yet another expansion while he still has map control. Ssak's vessel count is continuing to increase and begin to irradiate any gas unit in sight. Ssak and calm are both on 4 bases and Calm knows he has to do something or Ssak's vessels will just keep on killing his gas-heavy units. Ssak expands to the 7 o'clock main base and gets a third starport for even more vessels.


Ssak makes a move towards Ssak's natural, but stacked lurkers and dark swarm drives him back. Calm finally makes his move out onto the map from his main base, but is unable to do any real damage. Ssak begins to get factories in his 7 o'clock expansion to prepare for late game. Ssak has one more expansion than Calm and he is feeling very comfortable in this game. Ssak's vessels continue to get free kills on Calm's lurkers and defilers, but ultralisks are finally out for Calm.


Calm waits until he has a lot of fully upgraded ultralisks before finally moving out with his army. Ultralisks quickly destroy Ssak's main army and a lot of vessels fall to scourges. Ssak needs a little more time to build a lot of tanks to defend against the ultralisks, and Calm continues to press towards Ssak's main. Calm kills all of the SCVs at both the 5 o'clock expansion and the 6 o'clock expansion, but also loses his own hatchery at 12 o'clock. Even though Ssak lost two expansions very quickly, he has been increasing his tank count, and 7 o'clock is ready for any type of ultralisk assault.

Ssak takes the 7 o'clock natural expansion and regains his foothold on the center with his vessels and marines. Calm tries to expand to 9 o'clock but it is quickly killed off by Ssak. Mines do a lot of damage to ultralisks in the center, but there are enough ultralisks left over to force 5 o'clock to lift again. Ssak responds by attacking calm's 11 o'clock natural expansion, but a good dark swarm and zerglings stop Ssak from doing any damage. Calm cleans up this force using ultralisks and zerglings and kills a lot of vessels with scourges. Calm even defends against a drop without losing anything.


Ssak is now dangerously low on vessels even though he has been pumping them from three starports. With most of the vessels gone, Calm is finally able to use his greater spire tech, and builds up a large force of ultralisks and guardians. Although Ssak has made a lot of tanks at 7 o'clock, they are unable to stop the guardians after the ultralisks killed most of the marines, and Ssak is forced to GG.

By l10f

Snow starts at 7 o'clock as the Yellow Protoss and Hogil starts at 1 o'clock as Green Zerg on Benzene. Hogil starts with a 9 pool without gas. This forces Snow to get cannons first, and if Snow lets his guard down, Hogil could run his Zerglings to Snow's main. Hogil takes the 5 o'clock expansion as his first expansion due to Snow's probe being in his natural. Hogil only makes two zerglings since Snow saw it early, and Snow responds by making his nexus right after the first cannon.


Hogil kills off the initial scouting probe and starts his gas before taking his natural as the third expansion. Hogil gets hs lair, and snow sends another probe to see that Hogil is not doing any type of all-in.

Snow gets a stargate and manages to sneak a zealot all the way to Hogil's 5 o'clock expansion, and stops Hogil from mining for a while. Hogil puts down two more hatcheries and a hydralisk den and prepares for a 5 hatchery hydralisk build. Snow gets a quick templar's archive, and makes two dark templars.


Snow loses a corsair carelessly, and Hogil decides to make mutalisks. The dark templars spot the mutalisks as they pass through the center. Snow uses his corsairs and dark templars as distraction while preparing for the mutalisks. Snow brings back his army and now has enough corsairs to drive back the mutalisks. Hogil tries to kill the corsairs with scourges, but Snow reacts quickly.

Both players move around at the center without committing to any attacks. Hogil finally decides that he has enough hydralisks, and moves forward. Snow quickly retreats to his templars. After a little skirmish, snow decides to attack, but only loses his mutalisks due to Snow's awesome micro. Snow now has templars and even hydralisks are forced to turn back.


Hogil quickly gets lurkers to continue controlling the center. Hogil carelessly loses a few lurkers, but Snow also misplaces his storms. Snow tries to drop dark templars in Hogil's main bu fails. However, the next storm drop manages to kill a lot of drones. Snow adds dragoons and observers to his army, and due to Hogil's misplaced units and jangbi-esque storms, Snow pushes through Hogil's defense and kills Hogil's mineral only expansion.


It looks like Hogil might be able to defend, but Snow's reinforcements take away any chance of defending, and Hogil GG's once his expansion and natural fall.

By ]343[

It was unfortunate that the MSL bracket-makers forced Bisu and Stork, the two most popular Protoss, to meet so early. Stork commands the purple forces in the top right of Benzene, while Bisu spawns in teal in the bottom left.

Stork's Cybernetics Core is significantly earlier than Bisu's, finishing a few seconds before Bisu's started and opting for an an early zealot instead.

When Bisu's probe leaves Stork's base, Stork adds a second gate; Bisu goes instead for the early Robotics and Support Bay. Stork pushes his early dragoon advantage to snipe a Zealot at Bisu's ramp.

Bisu adds his second and third gateways after his observatory, while Stork goes Nexus before observatory. But Bisu's reaver pops and heads toward Stork's base. Stork tries in vain with dragoons to intercept the shuttle before it arrives. When Bisu's shuttle, now speedy, arrives, it meets great success in the form of 12 probe kills.


The shuttle even escapes with 7 health. Meanwhile, Stork's dragoons fight to a draw in the center. To celebrate his victory, Bisu expands and puts his hero reaver in time-out.


Bisu sends the empty shuttle as a ploy to attract Stork's dragoons, but Stork doesn't bite. Then Bisu decides to engage near Stork's natural, and his reaver crawls out from the corner to help. Though the reaver even gets off a sneaky hit, pure heroism enough is not enough to save Bisu's army from obliteration.


Bisu adds his 4th gateway and builds reavers to defend his natural. Stork baits Bisu's units out to the natural by threatening with dragoons, but sneakily drops his reaver and takes out a few probes in the main.

Bisu, paranoid, builds a 3rd reaver and a shield battery in his natural. Both players build their Citadel, Forge, and Templar Archives at similar timings. Stork's dragoons go to the main to defend against a possible drop, but come back out when he realizes one isn't coming. Bisu adds a cannon in his natural to be even more safe.

Both armies maneuver around the center while both players take their third base at the same time. Both players have 6 gateways pumping units. Stork adds a few dark templar and high templar to his army.

Stork storms his way to victory in the following engagement despite attacking uphill through bridges.


With his now massive dragoon advantage, he attacks into Bisu's 3rd and even snipes the shuttle containing two reavers.


Stork takes his 4th and destroys Bisu's 3rd nexus. Bisu does his best to defend, but Stork's superior army and high templar count let him easily breeze through Bisu's natural.


Bisu concedes after a high templar storms over half his natural's probes.


Overall, a well-played game by both players, though Stork's ability to take advantage of the small timing window he had due to taking an earlier expansion shows that his PvP is way better than I thought it was. I'm sorry I doubted the Dinotoss!