+ Show Spoiler [Results] +
Both QXC and Tiger begin the series by expanding off a handful of units. QXC patters along his standard tech path while tiger goes for the ever-sneaky hallucination supported DT rush. When the DTs arrive in both of his mining bases QXC is forced to wait for scans because he doesn't even have an engineering bay at this point. Eventually stabilizing and holding off the cloaked assault, QXC finds himself massively behind economically. In a final use for their player the remaining dark templars morph into archons to better support the natural busting push by Tiger to end the game.

Against the lap-zerg Tiger opens up with 2 stargates off a nexus first, while sheth responds with a 3rd base. Sheth ends up being very well prepared despite only scouting 1 of the 2 stargates. Though sheth loses a baker's half dozen in overlords to the protoss air force, he responds in haste by destroying a protoss assimilator. Sheth does lose the initial main army engagement along with his 4th base (eventually), the voidray dps follows on through blazing through the zerg 3rd as well. Sheth brilliantly engages the protoss in a position of his natural that is covered by 3 spore crawlers, decimating the protoss air force easily allowing the ground army to follow suit. Great defense! From here sheth only had to macro and a-march his zerg units to victory

Sheth then goes into what looks like an uncomfortable match up for him, at least on TV. Curious got some nice early zergling and drone kills from his banes, Sheth let this happen a little too easier than he should have. Immediately after curious gets a solid surround on Sheth's initial roaches with some zerglings, and right when things are about to stabilize Curious demonstrates the devastation of a ling speed advantage. From here on out it's a simple numbers gained by curious, and eventually he just attacks with more roaches before Sheth's infester tech can kick in.

The FXO PvZ ace comes out in a man that names himself after the race he intends to kill. A very passive game initially with both players going full force on the macro throttle. Oz has his sentry heavy army caught out of position by speedlings, but minimizes his losses with some great forcefields. Oz eventually engages the roach heavy army of Curious, and crushes through the zerg's 30+ supply lead with some excellent usage of blink and forcefields. Ending the game with a wonderful manner nexus!

The next game was a simple case of Squirtle going DT and Oz not having detection,

Quickly moving on Squirtle brings a voidray supported by 3 warpgates to Moonan's front door. Normally this would be a pressure move that shouldn't be able to end the game, however combining nice micro from Squirtle with some sloppy mistakes from Moonan allowed Squirtle to take the game with this initial pressure.

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+ Show Spoiler [Results] +
I now love the new IM uniforms, because they remind me of my good, personal friend, Wiz Khalifa.

Choya, despite being 22 years old, looks so young, that when he is standing next to IM's manager, I just want to root for him. He looks like such an underdog, and for this match, indeed they are just that. fOu's lineup isn't much deeper than Gumiho and sC, other than that there is really only Leenock and TheBest, who no one is expecting an all kill from.

For game one, IM chooses Happy while fOu chooses asd, both relatively unknown Terrans. But in reality it's IMScrooge vs. GreedyfOu. GreedyfOu (asdfOu) goes command center first while IMScrooge (IMHappy) goes one barracks expand on Crevasse. Both players get their third bases before a single siege tank is created. Since both players are doing near mirror builds, it comes down to army efficiency. GreedyfOu just wastes too many marines in failed micro attempts. This combines with IMScrooge's superior positioning and result in a win for IM. It was a little bit titillating, but to be honest, also pretty standard. And it takes more than just your standard TvT to titillate me.

fOu sends out their next player Lucky to try and kill IMHappy, who showed some pretty strong play last game. Happy manages to defeat Lucky using a very creative build. This match is worth watching, Thor hellion marine timings are somewhat of a rarity in TvZ now a days. In fact, this timing will make grandpa Zergs cringe (back when I was a kid I had to deal with thor hellion with no roaches, on Lost Temple, in the snow, both ways).

Let's see if GuMiho can turn IMHappy into IMUnhappy (haha). Both players open banshee, and despite GuMiho taking more damage than happy, he has an expansion up so is able to recover a few minutes later. Happy keeps GuMiho contained for 8 minutes until GuMiho pulls a ton of SCVs and breaks the contain. Despite the SCV pull, he is still economically ahead due to Happy's inability to protect from cloak banshees. GuMiho is able to use his superior macro and positioning to force the gg from IMHappy. This turned into an awkward TvT, with weird contains and banshee harass that did way too much damage on both sides,don't watch it, unless you're into that sort of thing.

IMYongHwa has undoubtedly been training to snipe GuMiho. This is because GuMiho is one of fOu's two real star players. YoungHwa is quite successful in his endeavor, holding off GuMioh's drops and then winning the big battle that really mattered. He's then patient as he goes to finish GuMiho off and take the game. This one isn't really worth watching. It's really just a big turtle until both players are near maxed and then the balls engage. Not too fun to watch.

fOu sends out their next best player – sC - to try and defeat YongHwa. YongHwa smashes through sC's attempted early game contain very cost efficiently and is far in the lead afterward. sC get's a very late third while YongHwa is pushing off of two abses – once his main is mined out. sC gets an emp on all of YongHwa's Templar and is able to kill off all of his colossus. After that engagement, YongHwa is too far behind and makes one last desperate push before being forced to gg.

IM sends out Losira against sC, an interesting choice considering sC's superiority in TvZ. sC does a cool hellion opening into huge two base marine maurader medivac play. sC continuosly drops behind Losira's natural on Tal'Darim Altar, forcing him to have superior position then Losira for engagements. Once Losira has lost all of his banelings, he really doesn't have a hope to hold the constant agression and is forced to gg. After the match, the first instance of drama for the day occurs, with sC knocking on the booth and then thumbs downing Losira.

IM sends out Yoda to try and defeat sC. Yoda is aggressive early on, and forces sC to one base for much longer than he would like to. This puts Yoda into a big lead going into the midgame. Yoda is able to be the agressor on Xel'Naga Fortress, allowing him to do some very cute positioning tactics. Those tactics allow him to contain and drop sC until he has no army left and is forced to gg.

This team battle wasn't too exciting as a whole to be honest. Aside from sC's Losira taunt there was no real drama and every game aside from Happy vs. Lucky was pretty standard.

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+ Show Spoiler [Results] +
To start off the match, Alicia quickly takes a hidden expansion at the gold base fortunately noblesse is quick to scout this. However not long after setting up a second base of his own Alicia manages to break his natural with an immortal lead push. Meanwhile every probe at the protoss gold falls to a banshee during the action. Alicia then pulls a brilliant move by harassing the third base of Noblesse, pulling the entire terran army in this direction. Then, while this army is out of position Alicia runs straight into the terran main and prevents the army from stopping him with forcefields at the ramp. Two bugged out colossi and a razed main later Noblesse is unable to win the game with his final standing army

Following this, Violet comes to a very similar conclusion that most of us would in the scenario of alicia vs most opponents: he's probably going to win. Based on this he goes for an extremely aggressive 1 base roach ling all-in type build. Alicia manages to hold this off with some amazing forcefields, the little cannon that could, and a little help from violets rather poor control. Alicia retorts with a devastating voidray + phoenix attack, decimating the zerg drone line as well as the overlord count in both the main and the natural. Alicia simply rides this momentum, ending the game with a massive sentry stalker push supported by his previous air units.

Even though he scouted Guineapig first Alicia's reaction to the discovery of his opponent's race being protoss is a little weird in this third game. Alicia is caught in strange positions a few times early on and eventually out of position again when the big battle came and Guineapig won it easily

In a very boxer-esque fashion the emperor places his two initial barracks somewhere in the middle of the map, his presence on the stage is now known. Upon realizing that his opponents main Guineapig promptly puts down a bunk....a command center. With no static defense the marine micro of boxer is simply too good and Guineapig's economy falls to pieces. The game is over as soon as the random player realizes that boxer's eventual banshee does indeed have cloak.

If at first you succeed, do do again! That's the boxer motto for openings this game, again proxying 2 barracks in an attempt to bunker push the natural of DRG. Unlike his team mate, DRG realizes the importance of static defense and gets a spine crawler up to comfortably defend this pressure. DRG takes a hidden expansion in the corner while demonstrating his muta presence on the map. The zerg expansions begin devouring the map while Boxer is contained by the ever mobile air force to just inside his natural for far too long. Once the terran ball moves out the zerg easily counters into the natural, leveling it, and then shortly doing the same to the remaining ground army.

DRG carries right on through the emperor rearing to tear into Ganzi. The beginning of this game is a world of action where DRG struggles to maintain his third and every time Ganzi moves out a flood of lings pour into his natural. Eventually after all the drops and back stabs and lost 3rds there is an engagement in the center and despite his recently finished upgrades DRG can't break through the sick spread Ganzi has set up. After both players set up their 3rd bases, the players are very even in every respect but DRG manages to achieve far more efficiency out of his armies. The clashes go more and more in the zerg favour until DRG is able to pick completely away at Ganzi, forcing a final game.

We finish off with a rematch of last team league's finals. DRG goes into his usual muta style to control the map, while MMA techs to a diverse ground army in order to secure his 3rd. DRG gets off a sick baneling bomb once the SCVs transfer. As MMA pushes towards the zerg 3rd, the mutalisks fly in and ravage the main mineral line. From here the mutas keep MMA in his main while DRG continues to become miles ahead. Once maxed DRG pushes in and crushes the terran 3rd with his massive army. After this MMA has no answer for the insane mutalisk harass of DRG and is eventually plowed over by the never ending stream of zerg. Revenge for DRG!

+ Show Spoiler [Results] +
The old pvp 4 warp gate dance of doom ensues to start off the match, with Killer being the aggressor. Nettie handles this situation well, showing strong micro and forcing Killer to retreat. From here there are a few haphazard attempts at aggression, until Killer catches Nettie trying to tech and expand at the same time. Coupling the unit lead with a nice flank is enough for Killer to overwhelm his protoss opponent

Killer's next opponent the ever terrifying baby flatulence steps into the arena. Killer opts for a fast expand in this game accompanied with an embarrassing rally point for his probes to start things off. Once this is established BB executes a sick zergling runby and manages to get almost a dozen inside the protoss main. Needless to say the protoss economy is crippled from losing 11 workers and a ton of mining time. Killer tries to counter the zerg 3rd with zealot voidray, but BB is more than prepared for this with his lead. Killer committed enough to this attack that from here he can only wait for BB to macro up to a maxed army and run him over.

TSL sends out their most upstanding player to deal with the menace of funny noises. Gentleman kills 3 of BB's drones with an initial marine and scv to open the game, immediately followed up with a 2 kill reaper. From here his blue flame hellion harass is completely denied by the zerg. The hellions continue as Gentleman transitions into mech while taking his 3rd base and destroying a zerg expansion. BB responds well initially taking over the map and macroing up, but his downfall becomes his indecision. Constantly feigning aggression in the form of taking excessive siege tank rounds while losing his recently taken bases. Eventually the terran mech ball becomes a death ball that he can't stop due to his pointlessly whittled forces.

Prime is forced to respond with their utmost in skill to deal with the grace and elegance of a Gentleman. This very same Gentleman attempts some early pressure with hellions and a banshee, however his micro isn't quite good enough to accomplish any damage. MKP counters with a battalion of his favourite force killing plenty of SCVs and some hellions. Once his blue flame finishes Gentleman counters with his hellions again, this time more than compensating for the damage MKP inflicted earlier. Gentlemen flowing through to more and more positives, completely denying a drop while sneaking a 3rd. What ensues is a beautiful time of each player taking great small victories over the other in succession. Eventually Gentleman wins out because of his air superiority allowing for better siege tank positioning and leaving no medivacs for the bio section of MKP's army.

Even though Gentleman's previous TvT was insanely strong, Prime decides to send out their ace into this match up in hopes of defeating the pinnacle of suave. Gentleman steps up his banshee harass this time against the GSL champion; taking out depots and SCVs alike. Much like last game Gentleman is again able to stifle the harass coming from his opponent while slowly chipping away with his own. He then simply pushes to a great position on the lowground of his opponents main, wiping out most of the production facilities and denying the counter attack. This guy is far too good at TvT.

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+ Show Spoiler [Results] +
Even Tastosis admitted that this wasn’t exactly a headline match-up; these teams have about five players anyone has ever heard of between them. That said, the number of question marks going into this game was just staggering. No one really knew who would play, let alone who would win, and with this season is already furthering the GSTL’s reputation as a scene for unknown players to explode onto the scene it had the promise to be an exciting match even without the headline names.

The first question to be answered was who the hell NSH was going to send out; they went with Sculpt while fOu opted for the equally mysterious Sirius. The perception that this was amateur hour continued as Sculp did absolutely no damage with his 2-rax versus Sirius’ hatch-first build. From there on out Sirius realized he was in the GSTL and picked up the pace, keeping Sculp pinned on two bases with constant muta harass and ling runbys. For his part, Sculp continued his generally sub-par play, flailing around trying to defend himself and never mounting any sort of real threat. An easy game one for fOu.

Worth a watch if you want to see how a superior zerg just takes apart a terran.

For NSH’s next trick, they sent out a player who Tasteless and Artosis didn’t even recognize: Sage. His forge fast expand pushed Sirius into an awkwardly-placed third base, which Sage immediately started hammering with zealots from a well-placed proxy pylon. This is relevant, because it fed into Sage’s master plan of massing phoenixes and harassing with them and a continuous stream of zealots while teching to an archon-templar army. Because you know, that’s a build people do. Sirius weathered the storm for a while, but he just started crumbling under the non-stop multi-pronged harassment. He still somehow managed to hold off Sage’s first real push and launched a strong roach-hydra counter; it looked like it might have been an improbable comeback until Sage just barely saved his third nexus, at which point we realized there were zealots in the zerg main and the phoenixes had been happily shredding overlords the entire time.

Sage’s fun, unconventional strat is neat to watch, and his sometimes-sloppy micro keeps you guessing as to whether or not he can keep all the balls in the air.

fOu wasn’t too happy about this; they may not be the best team in the GSTL, but they were pretty sure they were better than NSH. They decided to see if Sage’s PvT was as good as his PvZ and sent out asdfOu, the player whose keyboard-mashing name isn’t particularly confidence-inspiring. Sage went for a fairly quick expand off of two gate robo, which led to an intense micro-war that he barely survived. From there both players macroed for a bit; asdf stayed on MMM with a few ghosts mixed in while Sage went for templars. Sage secured his third just a bit earlier, an advantage that was compounded when he managed to take out asdf’s third. From there it was all downhill for asdf. Sage kept bashing numerically superior armies into asdf’s third, allowing him to maintain an ever-mounting economic edge that was eventually just too much.

There’s some excitement in asdf’s early push, but once Sage gets ahead a base it becomes clear he’s just going to grind asdf down.

Before the match, choya made the pronouncement that he was sure fOu would win, because if all else failed he’d just put sC in to all-kill the NSH team. It was a bit late for an all-kill, but in sC went to eliminate the pesky Sage. Sage scouted sC’s marauder-heavy two rax play and threw up a stargate, which popped a void ray out just in time to save him from sC’s first push. Sage immediately moved out, throwing down a gold expansion and poking at sC’s ramp with the superior range on his void rays. Bizarrely enough, that was the story of the game. Sage kept constant pressure on sC’s ramp, sniping off any units that dared venture far enough forward to be forcefielded out. Between non-stop perfect forcefields at the ramp and great spotters to catch any drops, Sage just crushed sC.

Sage dominates this game, but he does it in a fantastic way that makes it worth watching anyway.

Rather than test Sage’s PvP with their last chance, fOu instead turned to the other player on their team that you might’ve heard of before: Leenock. With all of fOu’s hopes on his shoulders, Leenock went with a pretty standard hatch-first build. Sage, on the other hand, felt like he’d already exceeded expectations and went with a... Let’s just say “somewhat riskier” one gate expand into DTs build. In spite of Leenock having lair before the DTs hit, they still not only significantly disrupted mining, they also managed to take out Leenock’s just-completed third. This put Sage in a position he clearly loves: Ahead economically, ready and able to just hurl units at his opponent to keep him from catching up. Sage once again did this with aplomb, and that was that.

Having seen the other games of the set, it’s not too hard to figure out how this one will go once Sage gets ahead.

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+ Show Spoiler [Results] +
While ZeNEX doesn't have any star status players, I was surprised how deep their lineup actually is. With the exception of Yong and SuhoSin I've heard of all of their players and seen them play some good games. They're a team that will be underestimated for sure.

FXO decides to open with Moonan, a choice just as good as Qxc in my opinion. Meanwhile ZeNEX opens with their player "hack" who is a relative unknown, but a strong player regardless. Hack just outplays Moonan in every single way in this game one. Moonan gets behind about 20 workers all game long and loses far too much to banshees despite being prepared for them. Moonan makes a single positioning error against Hack, after which Hack is able to just roll in and finish Moonan off.

Hack showed some good TvT last match, so sending slog out next is a nice choice. Slog goes for a six gate, with three of gateways proxy'd. The attack ends up failing against the three bunkers of Hack. Hack uses a double medivac drop combined with a push at the front to dissect Slog's army and do maximum damage. Slog loses his third and a bunch of his tech and gateways. Hack wins by nuking the army. No I'm not joking. That was cool.

tgun is out next, and I think we're all excited to see him play. Poor, poor Tgun. He showed some great positioning at holding the hellions, but then rushes for infestor. Hack does one of the few builds that can beat it so early, two port banshee. Four banshees roll into Tgun's base and take the game as Tgun has no anti air.

Out of the game: Hack looks undeserving of respect. Likely a heat of the moment type of deal, but still inappropriate. Tgun types out " gg wp " after losing to a frustrating cheese and putting his head down in defeat. Hack decides that this would be a good time to go thumbs down the tgun and FXO. This was bad manner considering the opponent was well mannered after losing to a blind cheese build.

Oz is FXO's last hope to bring down Hack. Oz is probably induced by a three supply depot wall in by Hack to go for a three gate void ray attack. Oz waits a little too long before pulling back and loses everything in the retreat. Hack is able to just 1a after cleaning up the army to take the win.

Hack didn't all kill FXO, FXO all killed themselves. Each game just had a few critical mistakes that forced FXO to lose.



FXO vs. ZeNEX was a very strange team league game, and I think it highlighted FXO's relative inexperience under pressure. Hack never did anything special to win, he was really handed each of the games for free. I watched game after game as FXO put themselves ahead, only to end up losing afterwards. I'll break it down game by game to better explain what I mean.

In game one, despite Moonan's perfectly timed turrets and vikings, he still allows two banshees to inflict far more damage than they should have. Hack does no special micro tricks with his banshees but Moonan is too hesitant to bring marines back to defend with his viking and most importantly didn't even notice the banshee when his viking started shooting at it the first time. Moonan had probably the fastest possible indication of cloak banshees (aside from scanning it of course) and still lost due to poor control. Following that up, the move that actually wins Hack the game, Moonan runs all of his marines accidentally into sieged tanks that demolish them all instantly. Now, Hack was ahead in workers and probably would have won anyways, the point is just that he didn't have to work very hard for it.

In game two, Slog is up in probes and tech despite his six gate attack failing. In fact, luck played a huge role in Hack holding the six gate, Slog's forcefields allowed continued bunker repair as they were slightly miss placed. After the engagement, Slog has caught back up. Slog's army is still bigger than Hack's, even after losing so much infrastructure to multipronged attacks. He doesn't notice the nuclear-freakin-bomb though and loses everything as a result. This game was more Hack getting lucky then anything: lucky his SCVs could still repair, and lucky that Slog didn't notice the nuke launch. Even Hack's multipronged attack wasn't all too skillful considering it relied pretty heavily on Slog not expecting it more than forcing it to work, and as I said, Slog's army was still bigger afterwards.

Game Three had Tgun ahead of Hack with a perfect defense of his reactor hellion opening. Hack then crossed his fingers and went double starport. Tgun never sacked an overlord through Hack's base to check what tech path he was going for, and lost as a result. He even had the evolution chambers, able to build spore colonies if he was forced too. This was just another loss that FXO did to themselves, not scouting at the critical time to check the tech path was a crucial error.

In the final game Oz makes a good decision to go for a 3 gate void ray in response to Hack's wall in, but despite seeing that medivacs are out, doesn't retreat his forces in time. If Oz pulls back 10 seconds earlier, than both players are very close, but since he didn't, he lost everything.

In summary, Game One: Moonan loses to banshees through poor micro and runs into tanks, Game Two: Slog doesn't notice a nuke, Game Three: Tgun doesn't scout an all in, and Game Four: Oz retreats ten seconds late.

So don't look at the overall result and wonder how Hack pulled it off, all he had to do was not die as FXO's suicidal tendencies took over for them. Since FXO's players were ahead right up to their critical errors, I know that they could win over ZeNEX in the future, things just didn't workout this time.

Flops from the big guns; stars out of nowhere.

With sky-high price tags, people were expecting a lot from the likes of MC, MMA, MVP and Bomber. After all, these guys are legitimately the best-of-the-best; they’re practically all-kills waiting to happen. An investment here guarantees the surest points money can buy.

Or, as it turns out, not. The four 9-cost players at the start of the tournament have netted a combined 2 points over the course of the first two weeks, making the whole lot of them worth as many points as the renowned SiriusfOu, crusher of nerds. Players a little further down the list didn’t fare much better; with the exception of DongRaeGu’s eight point performance and sC’s four points, no other player with a cost above six scored more than one point.

For the first two weeks, it turned out to be the players no one had heard of on the teams no one thought would win that churned out the most points. I remain convinced that most of the people who picked up Hack before his all-kill did so simply because he was a low-cost player who was guaranteed to play a game, and the trade tracker shows that almost no one thought to grab Sage before his all-kill catapulted him to his own fan club thread. Even Puma’s comparably modest 8 points tied DongRaeBong, the undisputed champion of high-cost players.

I’d say the surprises continued on the team front, but when you have Zenex leadoff player pull an all-kill that by definition gives you a surprising team result. Sure, it was against FXO, a team that no matter how hard we root for isn’t too likely to win all that often, but a 4-0 was still unexpected. Couple that with NSH’s 4-2 victory over fOu and a newly Fruitdealer-and-Trickster-less TSL winning 4-1 over Prime and you’ve got an awfully weird top three for fantasy teams.

Looking ahead at this week’s matches, we have a whole new set of question marks. We're pretty sure we will see Hack again, but can he look as dominating when he's up against much stiffer competition in the form of IM? Will Sage dominate again, or can FXO notch their first win against the equally inexperienced NSH team? Will Nada all-kill MVP just to further ruin my personal fantasy team, or will he be the next run over by the DongRaeGu bus (which still won't help my team)? The answers to all these questions and more in the next installment!

One of my first writing assignments for Sc2 was a series between two players making their debuts in GSL2. The eventual series winner was a zerg named Suhoshin, who was most notable for not spreading any creep in the entire series. You know him as ZeNexLine. His opponent, and the series loser was a protoss named FreeDSL. You know him as HoSeoSage.

Even in defeat, FreeDSL played an impressive series. In an age in Sc2's development where "build units and win" was an acceptable path to victory, FreeDSL rolled out a mutli-layered plan of harass, attack and defense, with dts and phoenixes playing a key role. It looked wonderful, felt really smooth, and was great to see. But of course, that all demonstrated a flaw in the plan, which was, namely, that it didn't work. Suhoshin simply weathered the harass and then went and killed FreeDSL, which gave the series something of a Beauty and the Beast quality, except in this case, the Beast actually was a feral animal and ripped Beauty to shreds.

Shame.

But all of this goes to say that the recent resurgence of FreeDSL as NSHoSeo's GSTL hero was particularly interesting to me. Not just that his second prime-time appearance result in the complete opposite result as the first, but that he managed to achieve those results with a very similar harass-based, micro-focused playstyle. It's rare enough that we see former GSL also-rans re-emerge as gosus, but to see a player succeed simply by making his play smarter was especially inspiring.



Sage's build against Sirius in his debut GSTL match was the most interesting of his series. Sage not only played quite well, his opponent did as well. Despite suffering almost nonstop harassment, Sirius held on for a remarkable amount of time, defended Sage's planned timing attack, and almost countered back. This makes it somewhat difficult to gauge Sage's build properly, and the game gives us almost as many questions as it did answers. Is zealot-phoenix it vulnerable enough to nearly lose the game despite seeming to succeed? Is it safe enough to still deliver the game despite good defense? And most importantly; will it ever work again?

Sage's play against Sirius is in keeping with recent trends in PvZ. The latest wave of protoss strategies all incorporate mid-game harass and can be seen as a response to more innovative and effective zerg late-game compositions. Several people, especially Plexa, have argued that this kind of thinking would eventually emerge, but it has come about later than most people hoped. I've written about the oGs protoss solution to this problem, but Sage presented a different one in the GSTL that merits attention.

The first key to this build is obviously the fast expand. This primarily gives protoss the economy with which to simultaneously mass phoenix, get chargelots from 3-7 gateways after teching to storm. However, it also strongly suggests a quick third from the zerg, as all-ins, or surprise muta techs are both poor against a cannon-equipped protoss possibly going stargate. We are past the point where a void-ray follow-up would kill off a third expansion, yet the void ray is important because it does initial damage and forces hydralisks. Whereas simply going mass phoenixes might convince the zerg to getting infestors, the void rays prompt a hydra den, which then becomes the most convenient AA for the zerg when the phoenix count increases.



These two facets of this strategy cannot be counted upon to do damage, but they are important in provoking the necessary reactions from the zerg. Hydras are the unlucky choice primarily because of their relative immobility, but also because chargelots and phoenixes—most protoss units, actually—deal with them surprisingly well. The correct response, meanwhile is more spore and spine crawlers, with an eye towards infestor-muta-ling in the mid-game. But this response is not intuitive, nor is it likely to be, as an overreaction from the zerg could prove harmful if the protoss abandons stargate tech after producing just a small fleet.

Another key element of Sage's play was highly map specific. Tal'Darim Altar LE was the perfect map for Sage's strategy because (1) Forge FE is standard, (2) The zerg third base is blocked by rocks, and (3) There are an abundance of places to hide pylons. Of the current GSL map-pool, only Terminus seems even remotely suited to this playstyle. On no other map is a forge FE so easily taken, except on Crevasse, where the bases are easily taken and connected, and where warping in units is much more difficult.

This all is meant to show why Sage is somewhat brilliant. But basking in the after-glow of Sage's play, it's easy to miss that Sage very nearly failed. Sirius's third hatchery fell almost twelve minutes into the game, after being harassed for nearly half the game. Sage's third was so delayed, he was only able to take it at roughly the same time. And just a minute later, before either of these advantages could be compounded, and before Sage could get robo tech into play, he made an extremely poor decision to attack that nearly lost him the game. Attacking so soon after achieving two long-term advantages seemed to be a relapse; the same kind of mistake that cost him his series with Line last year. The attack seemed like a timed strike, but if it was, it should've been delayed one to two minutes until robo tech units could join his army, or he could use blink effectively. It's possible that Sage did not anticipate Sirius's defense throughout the game being so stout. Instead by losing a battle at that moment, Sage gave Sirius an unusual army victory and the opportunity to counter-push. Sage was too far ahead, it turned out, but that hardly improves the rational behind his late timing.



So what to make of Sage? And what of his playstyle?

It's difficult to say. But for all of Sage's panache, I'm a little bearish. The history of all-kills is littered with players who remain irrelevant. So too is the history of players who seem stunningly new and innovative. Sage's playstyle is one that is forced to compromise in maps that do not support it, and beyond that it seems somewhat simple to counter if expected. I don't expect Sage to be silly enough to try the same style every game, but there's enough doubt in my mind that he can save himself if his gambling mentality turns his results for the worse. So while I enjoyed Sage's all-kill and debut game as much as anyone, the specificity and risk of it worries me. As MC, HuK, and the oGs house has shown, there are other ways to pressure a zerg that aren't so intricate.

For the moment, I'm excited to see Sage again. But it would be better to watch without the burden of expectations.

After their clutch win against the defending champions Slayers, MVP is no doubt riding on their high note and looking to continue on a winning streak. Much like their first match this week will be no walk over. OGS is a team with incredible strength in players with the likes of MC, Supernova, and TOP amongst their roster making victory a difficult feat. They lack any strong zerg presence but I wouldn't count out either Cezanne or Zenio. They also have excellent snipers with the likes of Inca for PvP. I predict this series to be very close, much like the match against Slayers. I think the real question here is can anyone stop Dongraegu? 4-3 MVP.


FXOpen had a great showing in their first match, not taking home the W but showing that their players clearly have potential and can take games on television. They seemed to fall apart in their second match, coming into the stereotype for how top Koreans expect foreigners to perform. NSH has however been agreed upon to be one of the weaker teams in the league...well that was until their last match. Did anyone else SEE this sage guy? If they can even have one other solid player back him up I have a hard time imagining the foreigners taking this one. 4-2 NSH.



Though Zenex did sweep its match last week, I'm sure they'll find IM to be a far more formidable opponent. I'm a big fan of upsets but I have a hard time imagining a world in which Zenex can take out a team that has arguably the best players at terran and zerg on the planet in their line up. But here's to Hack trying to keep his win streak alive! 4-1 IM.