As I predicted in the LR thread the day opened up with a Skyhigh vs Flash TvT extravaganza. Flash opened up and got away with a 14cc to give him the economic lead over Skyhigh’s more standard opening. Flash then went for a 2 port wraith build while Skyhigh was going 3 fac. Flash’s wraiths did almost no damage and while defending well against this harass Skyhigh managed to secure a fairly good economic lead with a faster third base. Unfortunately for Skyhigh, God Young Ho was in the house, and he proactively set up a giant tank contain, trapping Skyhigh on 4 bases and securing ¾ of the map for himself. After many attempts to break the contain, Skyhigh eventually unsieged all his tanks and went for a final bust, but was unsuccessful and was forced to type out.


As is so often seen in TvZ’s on Icarus, we were treated to a 12 pool 2 hatch muta against 2 port wraith. Leta, being the master of wraiths was extremely solid, and after successfully denying Crazy-Hydra’s Muta harass while building up a giant army of wraith and Bio, he was able to Push out and destroy Crazy-Hydras hopes of a win. The game was incredibly entertaining to watch but it was clear that Crazy-Hydra was outclassed, but he attempted to win using ensnare to tame the wraith flock, so he deserves at least some props for trying.


After a relatively standard opening exchange of build orders, Action vs Movie evolved into an extremely exciting PvZ. Action managed to do a fair amount of damage with his mutalisks, but movie held on for an amazing amount of time. Movie almost managed to win the game near the end, with the game almost always in the balance, but with excellent use of lurker egg blocks Action managed to shut down Movies mining and hold on for the win. All in all a fantastic game played by both players, with Action pulling out an important win for his team when they needed a lift.


I’m not gonna lie, some people might have found this game really dumb, but watching this for me was just amazingly exciting. After Hoejja executed a cute 3 hatch before pool by utilizing a drone block on his ramp with a proxy hatchery at his third, He transitioned into 4 hatch hydra which only managed to kill Horang2’s wall. In the meantime, Horang2 was making a Dark Archon and waiting for the inevitable Mutalisk follow-up. Horang2 managed to kill almost all the mutas with a fantastic maelstrom and his 2 base goon based push destroyed most of Hoejja’s production. Hoejja managed to hold on utilizing hidden expos, observer snipes, and at the end almost managed to snatch victory from behind with some hilarious nydus shenanigans. Another game people should really see if they missed it.


Perfective scored a quick and easy win for his team in this game. After killing Snow’s scouting probe he dropped a hydra den and went for a quick 3 hatch hydra build. Snow had no idea it was coming and when the hydras came he had no answer and Perfective made mince meat of his defense putting KT in the pole position going into the 6th set.


Looking at this matchup, it seems like an easy win for CJ to take the match into a 7th set with Hydra playing in his best matchup and Stats in his worst. However, Stats wasn’t going to just roll over and lose like Snow did in the previous set. After a relatively standard opening of Mutalisks against +1 sair/zealot, both players came out relatively unscathed, with Hydra on the slight losing end of the equation. After this Stats managed to get a DT into Hydras main with no overlords in sight, and he managed to take a quick third and utilizing the true power of protoss he combined excellent storms, good macro and this precipitated Hydra falling apart until Stats took the victory, giving KT the victory 4 games to 2. This match really exposed some weaknesses in CJ’s lineup, with some of their senior players being unable to perform when their team really needed them. Conversely KT’s regular power houses combined with the entirely unexpected Perfective to give them a good solid win.


Oh Alternative. Why are you such a terrible map for ZvP. For some reason, when they made this hunk of shit of a map, they decided to include some interesting little blocking points for protoss buildings against a zerg. As a result, Tempest attempted this dumb cheese that we’ve seen so many times during proleague, and it ended up even worse than usual. After failing to contain Hydra, he was swiftly countered by mass Hydras to put CJ up 1-0.


If you ever want a good example of why 99% of PvZ games feature a forge fast expand, watch this game. Horang2 went for an in base 2 gate opening which was indirectly countered by him spawning cross positions. Instead of going for a bust he expanded quickly and managed to barely hold off Actions zerglings. Unfortunately his tech was set sufficiently behind that Action’s mutalisks that came out as a follow-up were far too much for him to handle, forcing Horang2 to tap out of the game. A fairly disappointing game from one of CJ’s premier players.


Once again Hoejja got to play a ZvP on an imba ZvP map, demonstrating an excellent showing from the KT coach. Movie opened gateway then nexus, and Hoejja did the common sense thing and took 5 lings and killed about 30 million(5) of Movie’s probes, setting Movie extremely behind. While Movie attempted to find a way back into the game with a creative 2 stargate sair/reaver build, Hoejja’s advantage was far too much and he played around with some cute drop tactics before finally taking the game easily. A poor showing again from Movie, losing in his best matchup when his team really needed him to stand up and take a victory.


Once again Stats stood up for his team in the playoffs and took an exciting victory over Bbyong. With the interesting map features on Icarus, Bbyong decided to do some cute drop play, utilizing the cliff over the natural as well as insistent vulture drops. Stats took as little damage as he could, while taking a third base and teching to carriers. Bbyong came out with a 6 factory push and managed to break Stats’s natural while Stats was building up his carrier numbers. Luckily for Stats he managed to hold on long enough that Bbyong ran out of steam and couldn’t hold off the sheer interceptor count and was forced to GG.


With CJ down 1 to 3, it seemed like they would be able to take a easy win with Flash’s incredible TvT form of late, and for a long time in this game, it seemed like that was going to happen. I’ll spare you the intimate details, as every single one of you who haven’t seen this should go and watch it, but I’ll do my best to summarize. The game was fairly standard, with a map split coming up in favor of Flash. However, unlike recent TvT’s, instead of the regular midgame wraith shenanigans turning into mass wraith wars, both players opted for the good old fashioned battle cruisers. At some point in the game it almost seemed like Flash would eventually win, but after a favorable engagement, Leta tipped the game back in his flavor, eventually winning the game and keeping CJ in the playoffs.
Then this happened

When going into the most important game of the year for your team, playing an extremely volatile matchup against a second string player, why on earth would you 12 hatch. Unfortunately this is exactly what Where did. Perfective was lucky enough to have chosen a 9 pool build order, and the victory was crushing and swift. Where held on valiantly for much longer than he should have, but Perfective’s advantage was far too much and he easily took the game to seal the playoffs for KT. Unluckily for KT now they have to play against SKT, meaning that while they may have won the battle, they will most certainly lose the war.