by: Kollin and Waxangel


For the first time, SK Telecom T1's top Terran and top Protoss faced off against each other in tournament match. While it wasn't a live match, it would be the first 'official' tournament match between the teammates, and the first HotS match featuring KeSPA players as well.

It was fair to say that for all the special circumstances, the matches themselves were anticlimactic. In game one, Parting utilized the new and improved void rays to great effect, going for an all-in with two of the prismatically aligned fliers and a small ground army. Fantasy's two bunkers fell in record time, as did the rest of his army soon after. Game two also saw PartinG go for stargate play, this time choosing to devastate Fantasy's economy with oracles. Despite doing his best, Fantasy couldn't come back from his early deficit, and GG'd out to PartinG's mid game chargelot-templar army.


With Fantasy on the brink of losing and losing out on a potential MLG Dallas spot, he decided to finally build one of the new units Terran units in HotS. However, fate was not on his side, and even though his widow mine drop pulverized Parting's worker line, the single widow mine he had left at home was not enough to stop the blink stalker-mothership core all in. After a tense sequence, Parting killed off Fantasy's final command center, winning himself a spot in the first offline HotS event.

PartinG thoughts: It was hard to tell if PartinG really knew what he was doing with his HotS units or if he was just destroying Fantasy due to being a better player in general. His void ray all-in might have worked even without the prismatic alignment, while his proxy-oracle didn't decide the game so much as his great management behind it. In any case, another solid win for PartinG, who seems to be on a roll whether he's playing WoL or HotS.




The second match of the MLG Winter Season Showdowns proved to be more interesting than the first. As with Parting vs. Fantasy, it looked like one player had tried out HotS to some degree while the other had barely touched it. However, in this case, it didn't lead to a one-sided defeat for the player who tried to play a more WoL centered game.

In this case, the luddite was the famous anti-team killer Roro. At no point in any of the games did he even attempt to build a HotS unit, instead sticking to entirely WoL compositions. RorO did manage to benefit unintentionally, however, with his mutalisk based play getting a boost from the speed buff. herO didn't seem very HotS inclined either, but he at least made more than one HotS unit.

Game one saw RorO open with an early pool into two base mutalisks, both of which were deftly deflected by herO. The CJ Entus’ Protoss then proceeded to attack with colossi off two bases, crushing an opponent who had vainly sacrificed economy for early aggression. The next game started out more traditionally, both players building up their economies off three bases. Roro began to mass a huge amount of mutalisks, upwards of forty, and as soon as herO chose to move out he immediately swung in and forced an impromptu base trade scenario. A huge amount of spine crawlers guarded the Zerg player’s last base, and herO GG'd out as soon as he realized he could not rebuild nearly as fast.

Game three was where we got to see the difference between the two players, with Roro showing that he had barely practiced HotS, whereas herO showed that he at least knew the new units existed. The game looked exactly like a WoL game in terms of how it progressed, right until it got to the point where Roro had massed an almost undefeatable brood lord infestor army. HerO realized his army without vortex could not possibly contest it, so transitioned into 'skytoss.' However, just mixing in a handful of tempests does not make a successful skytoss composition, and herO was forced to GG out to swarms of corruptors.

The fourth game went back to following WoL patterns, with herO winning with a two base blink-stalker all-in. Roro seemed to have the game in the bag after defending well initially, but a momentary lapse allowed herO to take the game with sheer force of micro.

The final game was played in a familiar setting on the ProLeague map Bifrost. The backdoor entrance moved herO to open with an unorthodox gateway expand and Roro went forth normally, getting 3 bases and infestor tech. After a brief period of mutalisk harass, which was nicely shut down by herO’s beloved phoenix play, the game transitioned into a late game stalemate. Roro hid behind an Amazon Rainforest of spine crawler walls (incidentally, he happened to be on the icy half of the map), which made any sort of attack daunting for herO. The game was decided when RorO went in to herO's natural with his brood lords, only to be crushed by a combined force of stalkers, colossi, void rays (herO did not even realize prismatic alignment existed), and templar. HerO quickly capitalized with a counter-attack, cutting through the spine crawlers in record time and forcing RorO's surrender.

Rolling along: Despite this being a HotS match, it might be better to think of this as a pretty entertaining WoL series. HerO[join] was impressive in taking out a GSL Ro16 player in RorO, re-affirming himself as one of the KeSPA's top players. It's a shame we never got to see him play in a WoL GSL, but it will be exciting to see what he can do once he starts playing the expansion more seriously.




The first big broadcast of Korean TvT in HotS had a lot riding on its shoulders. At a GSL level, TvT was generally considered one of the best, if not the best match-up to watch, and people hoped the new units would enhance the experience. However, Innovation failed to innovate and Ty failed to...innovate, as both chose builds that every single Terran under the sun was doing in every single TvT, for all of the games. Yes, it was hellbat drops galore, the Brood War equivalent of being able to drop scarabs directly into the enemy mineral line.


In the opening game, both players went for identical hellbat drops, and after some intense micro which resulted in the two Terrans losing all their workers, Innovation's decision to go for a viking as opposed a banshee for TY allowed him to re-establish an economy and win the game. Game two saw Ty attempt to use the new and improved reapers to his advantage, but Innovation showed him he probably should have gone hellbat drops again. Despite defending as best he could against the hellbat drops with a bunker and widow mines, it wasn’t enough for BaBy to avoid severe economic damage, and he went down 0 - 2 in the series. The hellbat drop wars continued to evolve in game three, with TY defending far better with a viking and a bunker, while doing irrecoverable damage to Innovation with his own drop.

By game four, it looked like hellbat drop supremacy had finally run its course, with Ty finally maximizing the defensive potential of widow mines to perfectly stuff Innovation's drops. However, the widow mines also ended up delaying Ty’s tech, while Innovation just transitioned into an expansion and standard mech composition. After building up off two bases, Innovation was able to crush through his opponent’s inadequate mech force with a more powerful hellion-siege tank army of his own.

Negative innovation: Hopefully, hellbat drop vs hellbat drop doesn't become the norm for HotS TvT. It was a bit reminiscent of the horror days of WoL TvT, where both players would rush cloaked banshees and the better multi-tasker would end up winning. While it was certainly a test of skill, few can say it was particularly interesting to watch past a few games. On a side note, it was hard to tell if TY and Innovation had played a lot of HotS, or just brought a hellbat drop build.



Last vs. Soulkey was another duel between players with differing levels of familiarity with WoL. It wasn't surprising that Soulkey, a mainstay in his team's Proleague line-up and a player with a shot at winning this current GSL, didn't make any HotS units at all. On the other hand, STX rotation player Last had apparently been playing a decent amount of HotS in his free time, or at least enough to bring expansion specific builds to the table.

Game one saw Last start out with a bunker-widow mine contain outside of Soulkey's natural, hoping to deny scouting and delay a third base. However, this ended up backfiring on Last, as Soulkey went for a quick lair and a huge two base roach attack once he had overseers and roach speed. Last was caught off guard trying to go for both hellbat drops and a third CC at the same time, and was woefully unprepared on defense.

Last opened with a proxy reaper bunker-rush build in game two, and managed to deny mining time for a few minutes and pick off some drones. Last then went for a similar window mine containment from game one, and this time he managed to successfully follow-up into his hellbat drop. The drop massacred most of Soulkey's workers, forcing the GG out of Soulkey after his roach counter was easily blocked.

Last decided there was no need to fix what wasn't broke, and went for another proxy-reaper widow mine build in game three. Soulkey made an adjustment by going for mass speedlings to counter, but Last simply used his widow mines to defend instead of contain and proceeded right up to more hellbat drops. Fortunately Soulkey, he recognized the reaper - widow mine - hellbat drop pattern, and researched burrow to avoid taking too much damage from drops. However, persistent hellion/hellbat harass still got Last a decent amount of drone kills, and Soulkey decided to GG out quickly after his mutalisk switch was met by thors.


The final game of the series was the one that most resembled a WoL game the most, with both players going up to three bases almost completely unpressured, and Soulkey reached 80 drones by the ten minute mark. However, Soulkey failed to properly account for hellbat drops for one last game and had his drone line completely devastated. When the final big mech push came, Soulkey just did not have enough, and Last took the series 3-1.

Early adopter: Last showed the most HotS centered play of anyone in week one, using the new reapers, widow mines, and hellbat drops to great effect. While Soulkey made some slight adjustments from game to game, it was always going to be hard for him to figure things out on the fly. After this series, you could tell what sparked Soulkey's comment about HotS ZvT being impossible in his post-GSL match interview.




Despite this being a mirror match-up, there was still a bit of asymmetry involved in the area of HotS knowledge. More specifically, Rain knew that void rays are good in HotS, and Flying did not. It proved to be all the difference in deciding who would get a spot at MLG Dallas.

Game one ended up being the most mundane match of the series, with Flying taking a 1 - 0 lead by taking down Rain with chargelots and archons. Things started to heat up in game two, with Flying going for a proxy-stargate oracle strategy. However, Rain reacted quickly with his warp-ins to minimize the amount of damage taken, and both players moved on to build up on two bases. The game ended up being decided by a strong two base timing from Rain, with Flying unable to get down a full force-field wall down in time save himself.

While Rain tried to mix in a couple of void rays in both game one and two, game three was the first time he was able to truly start massing them. With both players allowed to take three bases and max-out, Flying opted for an entirely ground based composition while Rain opted to mix-in upward of ten void rays as heavy fire support. The ensuing 200 vs. 200 battle served as a vivid demonstration as to which was the better composition: Rain burned through Flying's army with over sixty more supply left over. Flying tapped out quickly after that battle, but it wasn't long before he equalized the series, taking game four with a DT-4gate attack.


The deciding game on Daybreak ended up being yet another battle of maxed-out army compositions, with Rain once again going the void ray route while Flying went entirely for ground units again. While Flying did a great job at harassing Rain and making his life difficult, it didn't really matter as he still didn't have an answer to Rain's mass air composition. When the two armies inevitable clashed, Flying lost even more horribly than before, and was forced to surrender the Dallas spot to Rain.

Flying refuses to fly: Unfortunately, we missed out on a lot of puns when it was revealed that it was actually Rain who crushed Flying with Void Rays, and not the other way around.