by stuchiu

Results via Live Report Thread by opterown.
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Creator came blazing out of the gates in the elimination match between FXOpen and Prime, but in the end it was the Leenock hot continued his weeks long hot-streak to crush the Prime's hopes and dreams. Leenock lived up to his status as ace of the defending champions FXOpen, taking four victories off Prime, including against their top Terran trio in Maru, Byun, and MKP.

The unstoppable force meets the immovable object.

Both teams started the match guns blazing, with the FXOGuMiho taking on CreatorPrime. When Gumiho is on top of his game, he is an unstoppable force of multi-tasking and aggression that runs his opponent into the ground while getting further ahead in economy and upgrades until the advantage becomes a landslide. Conversely, when Creator is on top of his game, he is an immovable object, a defensive juggernaut that kills and deflects all harassment while getting ahead in economy and upgrades until he assembles a perfect army to smash his enemy underfoot. From minute five, it was on with Gumiho starting the harassment in twio different areas using hellions and a medivac drop. As the game went on, the harassment would get heavier with a raven mixed in and viking hunting down observers, a roving pack of hellions poking at any weak points of Creator and dropships threatening a backstab if Creator was out of place for one moment. This all culminated in a massive runby with the hellions into the natural and a pdd drop into the main which would then meet up and do kills probes and pick off an errant colossus.

However, when it was all said and done, Creator’s defenses were like an iron wall, and while Gumiho certainly brought a lot of flash, Creator made sure there was no substance. Gumiho yanked Creator around on a leash, but he could not stop him from growing into a rampaging beast. It was a game of clashing ideologies between Gumiho’s attack and Creator’s defense that ended with Creator’s timing push on Gumiho’s 4th. It was a heroic defense as Gumiho sniped all of Creator’s collosus before they did major damage. Unfortunately, Gumiho had lost too many medivacs in harass attempts and Creator had an observer on hand to kill the cloaked ghosts. With no staying power, Creator’s constant gateway reinforcements would win him the game.

Creator continued his momentum with two more kills, both coming against the weaker Zergs from the FXO bench. Lucky tried to do some muta pressure, but couldn’t get anything going before dying to a horde of +3 blink stalkers. JKS actually got ahead early with an odd 2 base build as he caught all of Creator’s sentries out in the open. Unfortunately for JKS, he was too indecisive with what he wanted to do. He looked like he wanted to bust by making more units, but then stopped and made drones and teched. He kept wavering between heavy pressure and building up his economy, eventually leaving him with just corruptors and infestors to fend off Creator’s 3 base attack.

The Immovable objects meets his match, the coin flip.

With FXO down three games, they sent out their best protoss player, Tear. It was a quick game as Creator went for a risky build and did a very fast 3 gateway attack to try to kill Tear. When a zealot, stalker, and proxy pylon coming early, Tear quickly realized what was happening and reacted quickly to kill the pylon. Creator kept trying to force his way up the ramp into Tear's base, but sentries and stalkers were able to hold easily.

However, Tear’s moment in the sun was short lived as MaruPrime quickly cleaned him up in the set afterwards. Maru opened up with hellions and medivacs, and with some amazingly narrow observer dodging, was able to do a ton of damage with his simultaneous drop and runby tactics. Tear used a cute warp prism gateway attack to hit back, but Maru was just too far ahead and closed out his victory with drop harass and a gigantic bio attack.

The Prince of War

From there, the main event started. With 4 players left, Prime would send player after player trying to stop the monster that is Leenock. Leenock was in strong form on the night as he tore through almost the entire Prime roster by himself. His first victim was Maru. Maru tried a 2 rax. It was denied and after that, everything went downhill for Maru as Leenock made a counter attack with speedlings that killed every marine, broke down Maru’s wall and forced a lift on the natural. By the time Maru was able to take it back, Leenock had burrowed some banes and killed even more scvs. With all of that damage, Maru could do nothing as Leenock rolled him over with broodlords.

Prime tried to get lucky with Terius in a ZvZ. It seemed like a pretty good choice considering how well Terius did in the beginning as he canceled Leenock’s third and kept his own while he stopped the muta harass. But as the game went on, Leenock seemed to get farther ahead as he double expanded, got a superior infestor count and traded his mutas for a good amount of drones. From there, Leenock would keep building on his infestor count and stay cost effective the rest of the game until Terius ran out of steam.

In the third game, Leenock would play against ByuN in one of the closer games of the night. He would go mutalisk ling/bane to keep Byun pinned on his three base. Byun held off the harass and moved out with a 2/2 timing. Leenock would counter-attack while holding off the timing, but would lose a base in the process. This would happen again and again until both players were left on 2 base as Leenock threaded the needle and transitioned to brood lords without dying.

From there the hectic tempo of the game slowed down to a standstill as both players rebuilt their armies and tried to secure resources as their mains and naturals ran out. The overall exchanges left Byun in worse shape as he had lost too many orbitals, and Leenock's creep spread meant he wasn't taking a new base any time soon. There was some tense posturing as Byun's final death-ball army tried to get pick at the fringes of Leenock’s army while Leenock would try to kill the vikings and ghosts of Byun. It all came crashing down, however, as it took only one moment of weakness for Byun's entire army to get fungaled - including double digit vikings stacked onto one spot.

The last victim and player for Prime was MKP. MKP looked like he fell into a time slip as he played his TvZ as if it the queen patch had never happened, going for mass marine-marauder-medivac off three bases. Leenock happily abused MKP as he ran lings into MKP’s undefended third over and over while killing MKP’s army in the middle with great creep spread and mass ling/banes. MKP would keep trying, but after the first major battle Leenock was too good to let such an advantage fall out of his hands.

Future Outlook:

With FXO’s win here, they will meet Startale in the semi-finals. Startale is the strongest looking team in the entire league, having the deepest bench in the world. FXO on the other hand has one of the strongest triple threats with Gumiho, Tear and Leenock. While FXO has denied us the grudge match between ST and Prime, it will be the perfect stage for a new age rivalry.

The Two Young Stars of Zerg

Life has firmly established himself as the single best player in the world after winning both GSL and MLG. He has won both finals in a clutch fashion, being down both series 3-1 before making a comeback. His play has transcended the Zerg race and he is so dominant that it feels like Life can do any build and still come out ahead with just his unit control. His understanding of the Zerg race is so advanced that other top end players like Symbol and Nestea have tried to emulate his style in practice, but failed as it was too unique and hard to execute.

At the very beginning of SC2, Leenock was projected to be the very future zerg in SC2. With his age and talent, it seemed inevitable that someday Leenock would be standing on the podium holding a GSL trophy. Instead, Life beat him to it as GSL’s first royal roader. Life then met Leenock at MLG, where he won the final series 4-3. While he lost, Leenock has the distinct honor of being the second player to ever put fear in the heart of Life. Leenock has shown himself to the zerg with the most amount of builds of anyone in ZvT and ZvP. Like Life, Leenock can play any style perfectly and gives off an aura of invincibility when he plays against other players not named Life. With his ro8 in gsl, runner-up in MLG, and now 4-kill of Prime, Leenock is easily the second strongest zerg player in the world and arguably the second best player in the world.

Their genesis started in MLG with both of them heads and shoulders above the rest of the competition at that tournament. However, the rest of this month, Leenock will continue to challenge Life for the number 1 spot as they will each other in the Group of Death in GSL, the semi-finals in the GSTL and if both make it out they could very well be playing at the GSL finals in Las Vegas on top of a possible meeting in IPL 5. While Life is on top now, if he flinches or missteps even once, Leenock can and will take the throne away from him. With both players being so young, this will just be the start of a long fought rivalry between the two that will be fought until the end of their careers.