WCS Korea Season 3
GSL Code S

Ro16 - Group D Recap
PartinG and Maru advance

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PartinG and Maru advance to Ro16, Flash and Kangho eliminated

by Waxangel

The Code S group of death lived up to expectations, with all four participants displaying high-caliber play in an action packed night. Each of the five series went the full three games, but the five-hour long session of games rarely felt dull. Some may even say it was a perfect night of Code S—well, except for fans of Flash and KangHo.

While PartinG and defending champion Maru silenced their doubters by reaching the quarter-finals, the bigger story of the night (you might even call it an elephant in the room) was Flash's third consecutive elimination in the Ro16. Despite his excellent, MVP-level play in the Proleague, Flash has so far been unable recreate that form in individual tournaments. Last night's elimination may have been the most painful of all, as he came within one map of making the Ro8 twice in the same night.


Flash began the night with a match against LG-IM's KangHo, who had been oddly keen on facing Flash during the group selections. His confidence seemed unfounded in game one, as he bungled his roach-hydra-baneling defense against Flash's Mvp-esque mech timing.

Shaking off the loss, KangHo hit his stride in following game, fending off Flash's blue flame hellion opener with ease and then crushing the follow-up mech transition with hydras, roaches, and vipers. However, Flash would not KangHo get in a rhythm, and switched over to a more standard marine-medivac-mine composition to close the series out 2 - 1.

Over on the other side of the bracket, Maru and PartinG were embroiled in their own close series. PartinG opened up with a blinker-stalker all-in to try and take a fast point, but was brutally denied by Maru's airtight defenses.

Game two on Akilon Wastes allowed both players to showcase their strengths, with Maru starting off by dizzying PartinG with powerful early-mid game drop tactics. However, PartinG was able to stabilize and show off his great late game management, tying up Maru's main army with threatening troop movements and using crippling warp-prism tactics to seal the deal.

Despite his game one failure, PartinG decided to return to blink stalker tactics in game three. Though PartinG looked destined to lose after Maru hunkered down on defense, the Prime Terran slipped up and attempted to push forward a little too quickly. A devastating time warp combined with brilliant blink micro allowed PartinG to annihilate Maru's army, after which he continue to chip away until the final surrender.

Part man, part train, all soul

Flash and PartinG then headed into the winner's match to decide the first place finisher in the group. The first game on Bel'Shir ended in an easy win for PartinG, as he rushed to templars unhindered and fried Flash in his first major attack. PartinG then went for a bit of trickery on the next map with DT drops, but Flash was well aware of the danger and held it off. Despite the early setback, PartinG was almost able to transition into a standard 3-base late game, but a ruthless Flash battered him into submission before he could fully stabilize.

With the series tied 1-1, the two players headed to Akilon Wastes to decide who would be the first player to advance to the Ro16. Unlike the previous two games, both players were content to sit back and reach the late game, though staying active with drops to see where they might eke out an advantage. Flash was the first to draw his sword and go for a kill-move with a near-max army, and after the storms dissipated both players were left at almost dead even.

After another period of building up, the two players entered into an almost accidental base trade, with giant armies razing buildings left and right. The situation seemed neck and neck as the dust settled, with PartinG holding onto one mining base while Flash preserved his main buildings through the use of cloaked ghosts. Unfortunately for Flash, ghosts need energy to cloak and dark templars don't. Catching ghosts uncloaking at a very fortunate time, PartinG annihilated them with templars and stalkers while using dark templars to cleaned up the rest of Flash's army at home. Down on both army and income, Flash was forced to GG out of the series.

Don't forget Maru!

Down in the loser's match, Maru seemed to have an easy warm-up match against KangHo on his hands as his marine-mine-medivac army went on a rampage in game one. However, KangHo was able to show much better play in game two, droning up heavily and barely holding out against Maru's attacks before overwhelming him with massive amounts of muta-ling-bane. With elimination on the line in game three, Maru decided to pull out an aggressive build by going reaper-hellion-banshee. Despite opening with several queens, KangHo was unable to deal with Maru's early harassment and GG'd out of the tournament.

That left Flash and Maru, the two youngest OSL champions of Brood War and StarCraft 2, to face off for the final ticket to the quarter-finals. Maru opened up game one with one of his specialty builds, proxying a starport to go for fast hellion-marine-medivac harassment. While he did a small amount of damage, it was not enough to offset Flash's fast expansion and he headed into the mid-game with a small disadvantage. The game seemed to be flowing in Flash's favor as he slowly built up a dangerous mech army, but one brilliant bio engagement from Maru was enough to turn everything around. With a part of his force dropping in via medivac and the rest coming in by ground, Maru smashed the mech army to go up 1 - 0.

Maru kept up with the one base builds in game two, this time opting for cloak banshees into a 1/1/1 timing. But once more, Flash was able to deflect Maru's aggression without much trouble, and this time he headed into the mid-game with an even greater lead. Flash very nearly threw that lead away after a semi-suicidal attack into Maru's entrenched position, but he was far ahead enough that he was able to recover and finish Maru off with a sky-Terran transition.

With the series tied 1-1, Maru went for his third consecutive one base build: a 2-rax proxy reaper rush. And for the third game in a row, Flash was able to defend against it with ease, scouting out the proxied buildings and responding accordingly. However, instead of playing out a macro game, Flash changed things up and went for an aggressive one-base tank push to attempt to punish Maru. It looked like Maru would certainly lose as he had followed up with not one but two orbitals, but great delaying tactics allowed him to get out a siege tank in time to avoid certain death.

Instead of taking his own natural and transitioning, Flash made the fateful decision to commit to his one-base pressure. Though Maru teetered on the brink of elimination, the great use of reapers and dropped marines in backdoor attacks crippled Flash's economy and put him on a timer. Maru held on tight in his main base, dropping mules while amassing vikings, tanks, and marines. Once he had a sufficient lead in army, Maru pushed down his ramp, broke Flash's containment, and accepted the final GG of the night.

Writers: Waxangel.
Graphics: wo1fwood.
Editor: Waxangel.