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Soulkey vs. sOs
Semi-Final 1 Recap
Code A & S Preview
Code A Final Round &
Code S placement matches
Brackets and standings on Liquipedia
Soulkey vs. sOs
Semi-Final 1 Recap
Code A & S Preview
Code A Final Round &
Code S placement matches
Brackets and standings on Liquipedia
Soulkey vs. sOs Recap
The Un-Magnificent Seven
Going into this series, sOs was inspired. He could take on Soulkey. He knew he was the better player. With his diverse repertoire of strategies, talent for deception and overall StarCraft II ability, he would prove that he was Woongjin Star's true ace. He would be the one carrying his team's banner into the grand finals. Then Soulkey made mutas three games in a row and sOs was down 0-3.
Soulkey <Star Station> 
sOsSoulkey<Atlas> sOsSoulkey <Daybreak> sOsSoulkey <Akilon Wastes> sOsSoulkey <Whirlwind> sOsSoulkey <Bel'Shir Vestige> sOsSoulkey<Red City> sOs3
sOs
Three times sOs thought he could go for greedy, mass void ray-colossus strategies with quick triple-nexus builds, and three times his execution failed him as Soulkey punished him with early attacks. sOs's force-fields were comically late and his unit control was poor, and he found himself slumped back in his chair after Soulkey inevitably applied the killing blow with mutalisks each game.
Perhaps the Woongjin Stars players and staff really didn't care who reached the finals, happy just at the prospect of having their first champion in nearly six years. However, it seemed like no one wanted to deal with the awkwardness of having to deal with Soulkey sweeping sOs. With all of their power and all of their prayers, they sent a spirit bomb to sOs, which he dumped on top of Soulkey's head.
The plan worked splendidly, and Soulkey performed a game four throw worthy of Bomber to give sOs a lifeline back into the series. After Soulkey spent the entire game pounding sOs with runbyes, drops, and all sorts of annoying tactics, he managed to let a Protoss deathball comeback against him for the second time in a week. His swarm hosts were hopelessly clumped and refused to move, getting fried by sOs' well placed storms. While PartinG's comeback seemed entirely to the Protoss player's credit, sOs' left one wondering what was wrong with the Zerg player.
With sOs pulling back one game, the series entered a strange zone where anything seemed possible. sOs started to hit his groove, while Soulkey seemed shaken from losing a game that was in the bag. sOs started with a failed cannon rush into a failed 4-gate, but mass void rays, then phoenixes and high templars crushed his opponent nonetheless. Game six was a tribute to Wannabecool, Gaulzi, and all other heroic cheesers, as sOs succeeded in cannon rushing with the assist from some horrid defense from Soulkey.
sOs had done it. He had overcome a huge deficit and had reached the final game. With everything coming down to the wire, sOs must have been able to feel it, the soul of PartinG inhabiting him and telling him to go all-in in the most important game. sOs served Soulkey a precisely tailored all-in: a phoenix opener to draw out hydralisks and deny scouting, followed by a rush to two colossi supported by gateway units. The timings, deception, and mind-games all seemed to work in sOs's favor... but the execution failed him. Soulkey pushed back the first rush, delaying desperately until his corruptors were out (units sOs seemed largely uninterested in shooting at).
But sOs refused to die, and got right back up for one more try with an even larger serving of cheese. Bulking up on two bases, sOs looked to get the perfect engagement on teh Zerg army, using the narrow paths of Red City to dissect the Zerg army with force-fields. However, sOs played too tentatively, and crucially missed the fact that he had a hatchery down to a few dozen hitpoints before hightailing it out. On the other side, Soulkey went for a crippling back-door attack, which meant sOs was all-in in the truest sense of the word. With sOs having nothing to fall back on, he had to go for a desperate attack on Soulkey's final base. However, Soulkey had the superior position, and with infestors and corruptors, he was able to overcome the enemy army for good to take the series.
All-in-all, it was a better series than if Soulkey had taken the 4 - 0, which would have made it comparable to famously one-sided matches such as InCa vs. Nestea. However, Soulkey's semi-collapse made it just slightly better, and a heck of a lot weirder. It was a rare series where both the winner AND the loser came out looking worse. But with the series being ZvP, and Soulkey potentially facing Terran or Zerg in the finals, it shouldn't have too much of a bearing on the outlook.
Code A Final Round & Code S Placements Preview
Code A Final Round
The final Code A matches will be played tonight before we move onto the Up/Downs. The winners will go directly to Code S, while the others must brave the treacherous up/downs.
LG-IM_RagnaroK vs. 
FXOGuMihoRagnarok is the hipster version of Life around a year ago. He doesn't get the same amount of hype, but you hear a lot of outspoken people say that he is the next big Zerg on the horizon. Only sixteen years of age, Ragnarok is the best prospect LG-IM has, helping them win the preseason GSTL tournament. He's performed well so far in the Challenger division, beating GSTL all-killer Sound in the first round, and then following it up with an equally strong win vs. CJ Entus' own prospect Bunny in the second.
Gumiho stands of the edge of being a very, very, very, very good Terran player or being an Elite, top end Terran player. He was able to get to the round of sixteen of Code S this season, but wasn't able to overcome another LG-IM Zerg, Kangho, in the second round and fell all the way down to where he is now. Gumiho's TvP might be currently the strongest in the entire scene, having an 8-1 record and beating Rain twice, but he's been so-so vs. Zerg in his HotS campaign so far.
[b]Prediction: Ragnarok 2 - 1 Gumiho
SKT_soO vs. SKT_ParalyzE1. Paralyze is 4-1 vs. Zerg in HotS
2. sOo is 0-5 vs. Protoss in HotS
3. Paralyze has an afro
4. It's a team kill, so I'm going with the guy who has Bisu and Rain behind him, and not the guy with the Zerg brain trust of...s2 and Hyuk.
Prediction: Paralyze 2 - 0 sOo
FXOLeenock vs. CJ_BbyongIn what could be a complete mismatch, we have the Dreamhack Stockholm champion going up against the next player in the Ensnare line, Bbyong. What is the Ensnare line, you might ask? Well, while there is a Kong line for people who get second place over and over, the Ensnare line is given to Terran players who continue to produce mediocre, vanilla results, but are still able to hang in the GSL for whatever reason. Bbyong, with a HotS record of 7-7 and a career SC2 record of 33-38, is the perfect candidate to take over the spot of Virus, the last player in the Ensnare line, who finally retired from SC2 after somehow hanging in GSL for months without anyone noticing.
Not to rain on the new Ensnare's parade, but Leenock is a player that his mediocre results will not let him get past. 2-3 in HotS vs. Zerg, Bbyong's only victories came from beating Pet, a rather inexperienced Zerg from the Startale line-up. Leenock, holding the title of best player to never win a GSL, should make short work of our new Virus, giving us the chance to see Bbyong somehow slip through the Up-and-Downs, making it into Code S while people are still trying to figure out what race he plays.
Prediction: Leenock 2 - 0 Bbyong
SKT_Rain vs. ByuNPrimeI'm not saying that Prime is dead or anything, but they desperately need some good results sooner rather than later. 1-4 in GSTL, only playing the same four players every single week, while their rookies sit on the sidelines wondering why they were even invited to come to the studio, Byun is Prime's best chance at succeeding in the current HotS meta. Creator, who was looking like a future GSL winner, has been hit hardest by the changing of games, not finding a comfort zone like he did in Wings, and having a difficulty playing the laid back, upgrade style that led him to such fame in 2012. MarineKing will always be in talks of being one of the top five Terran players in the world, but it's now been more than two years since he's been in a GSL semifinal.
Rain, well. He really should be in Code S. He did have some mishaps in qualifying. and in Code A against Dream a few seasons ago, but it's hard to argue that he isn't one of the best seven players in the world alongside Innovation, Life, Soulkey, Symbol, sOs and Flash. His play in Proleague has kept SKT in the playoff picture, picking up crucial wins when Parting and Fantasy cannot, becoming the ace that Bisu was known for back in Brood War. Already having an OSL under his belt, he might be able to make it two with the next WCS Korea season being conducted as an OSL event.
This is the match to watch of the night, but Rain is the clear favorite to get through. Byun's TvP style of pulling SCV's at the 15 minute mark and going for a kill-or-bust type strategy can still work in most cases, but Rain's PvT has looked on point of late, even beating Innovation in their last meeting in an ace match of Proleague.
Prediction: Rain 2 - 1 Byun
Code S Placement Matches / WCS Season One Finals qualifiers
Welcome to the part of the show where I have no clue what is going on. With Korea being the host of the WCS Season 1 finals, they get an extra spot for their region, with six of their players competing instead of the other regions' five. These two matches are supposed to show which of the players eliminated in the Ro8 will make the season finals in 5th and 6th place, Sorry Leenock, your points only apply the year end Blizzcon final - until then enjoy your time in Code A.
SKT_PartinG vs. Samsung_RorOParting, who has reportedly gained ten plus pounds since becoming a member of SKT, will try to get even more money to feed himself with when he faces up against our reigning GSL champion, Roro. Quickly becoming the most underrated champion in the history of the GSL, Roro went through the entire season with not any hype behind him, being the massive underdog against Innovation in the Ro8. Of course, Innovation did maul him, but it still seems quite weird that Roro, a player who dominated last season and looked very good this season, was treated like canon fodder against the likes of Innovation and the other top players in the Ro8.
On SKT's side, Parting is having an equally weird season, having defeated his rival Life in the Ro16, but really not having beaten him, news coming out that the game speed in their first map of the deciding match was actually on "faster" speed instead of "fastest", giving the Protoss a better chance of holding Life's ling all-in. Now, with even his Ro16 victory in doubt, he has to come off a heavy loss to now finalist Soulkey in the quarterfinals and try to prove he's still good against Zerg when facing Roro.
Prediction: Roro 3 - 2 Parting
ST_Bomber vs. LG-IM_KangHoOh, hi, Bomber. Nice to see you here again. Yeah, didn't make it to the semifinals, huh? Won the first game, got everyone excited, and then got run over three straight games against Symbol? Yeah, that sucks. Maybe next season, right? I'm sure you'll finally breakthrough to the finals and win it all. Now, in this placement match, you can at least salvage some success from this season, advancing to the Season 1 finals and get a chance at winning something even larger, right?
Kangho, who was inches away from making the semifinals and knocking off sOs, is the player who people kind of just brush aside when discussing. Maybe because he changed his name from Losira, or because he is an eSF player who vanished for a year before finally becoming relevant again, but Kangho wasn't given much of a chance to beat sOs or even make it as far as he did in the quarterfinals. Truth is, Kangho is an extremely good player, and is just returning to the stage of his career he was back in the summer of 2011, getting to the GSL finals before getting slapped around by his mentor Nestea.
Equally skilled when they are both at their best, I'm still going with Kangho on this one. Why? Because if you break my heart once, shame on you. Break my heart the twentieth time, still shame on you. Break my heart for the thousandth time, and I am finally just going to pick against you in any match that is beyond the Ro32.
Kangho 3 - 1 Bomber
