GOMTV Hot6ix Cup

Brackets and standings on
Liquipedia

by Christelle and Waxangel

SKT_Rain ended 2012 as one of the best Protoss players in the world. The journey has been anything but easy, but he is in the same position at the end of 2013. With a 4-2 victory over Woongjin_Soulkey in the finals of the Hot6ix Cup, Rain claimed his first championship in a year that saw him both struggle and thrive in the new HotS expansion.

The first half of 2013 was forgettable for Rain, as he failed to make it past the Ro32 in Code S and flopped in his one overseas opportunity of MLG Winter. However, he made a run from out of nowhere in the only OnGameNet Starleague of the year, looking dominant as he reached the finals. However, he was unable to cap it all off with a victory, instead falling 2-4 to Maru. Rain only achieved middling results after, finishing in the top eight of Code S and missing out on qualification for BlizzCon. Rain attributed his decline in form to a loss of interest in the game, his long hours of practice meaningless without the right mindset to go behind it.


But with newly regained passion, the Rain of old returned in time for the Hot6ix Cup, to which he had earned an invitation for his OSL run. During his slump, his safety-first style had made him predictable and weak. In the Hot6ix Cup, it made him solid as a rock, once again the living, breathing embodiment of textbook Protoss play.

Going up against the Zerg equivalent of textbook perfection in Soulkey, Rain seemed to have found an equally capable opponent as the first four maps were split 2-2. However, the series tilted in Rain's favor on the fifth map of Bel'Shir Vestige, where an all-or-nothing Dark Templar gambit saw Rain overcome what had seemed like an unwinnable position and take an unlikely victory. Soulkey was unable to recover from the mental blow of such a devastating loss and gave up the sixth and final map easily.

As 2013 ends, Rain has regained his old prestige and standing. He knows from experience that his position is anything but secure, and he'll need to keep his focus to keep being a dominant player in 2014. He has all the talent required to do it, the rest is just up to him.



Game 1 – Yeonsu

Rain opened up the series with the first fake-cannon rush of many, but failed to fool Soulkey who went straight on to 1/1 speedlings. This seemed to be a good choice for Soulkey early on as Rain went for a standard third expansion after opening phoenixes, but things quickly took a turn for the worse as his ling force was shattered by zealots and forcefields in spite of the upgrade difference.

Being faced with such a heavy zealot defense, Soulkey quickly opted for swarm hosts, hoping to be able to use their cost-efficiency to catch up with Rain with whom he was on equal bases. Although it was another idea that seemed good at the time, Soulkey's economy was not strong enough to adequately support his expensive units, especially in the face of Rain's dogged phoenix harassment. Soulkey did manage to hold off the Rain's initial push at his third base with 9 corruptors spawning just in time to fight off the 4 colossi with blink-stalker support. However, an attack on another front dealt Soulkey a crippling blow, with a zealot warp-in resulting in the destruction of both Soulkey's lair and spawning pool. Rain kept up the pressure until the end of the game, sending consistent Zealot runbyes to finish Soulkey off. Soulkey could not fight off the approaching Colossus/Templar/Void Ray-army while defending his naked expansions at the same time, and he was forced to waive the white flag.

Game 2 – Star Station

Game 2 was a tale of scouting, tech-countering and more tech-countering. Rain would once again open up with his fake cannon-rush, which was seen through by Soulkey who casually went up to three bases early on, not overreacting to proxy-pylons or MSC/stalker-aggression. After that, the game appeared to enter an uneventful lull as the players built up their forces, but there were plenty of machinations going on inside the players' heads.

It began with Soulkey scouting Rain's colossus tech so quickly that he was able to start his hive and viper-production before any actual colossi were on the field. This was in turn was scouted by the hallucinated phoenixes of Rain, who was able to switch tech-paths accordingly to immortals and high templar. Subsequently, when Rain finally launched his attack at Soulkey’s fourth base, hydralisks, roaches and vipers faced a superior force of stalkers, immortals and high templar. Despite some decent blinding clouds from Soulkey, it was Rain's psi storms that dominated the battlefield as Rain took another victory.

Game 3 – Frost

It’s a cannon rush! After having faked it for two games in a row, we finally saw Rain open up with a forge in game 3, hoping to find a naked natural expansion on Soulkey's side of the map. Unfortunately for Rain, it was as if Soulkey knew all along that Frost was the map where the true cannon rush would be brought out, and thus his natural expansion was guarded by drones ready to repel the initial probe.

With Soulkey's defense being established so early, Rain ditched his plan and went for a simple Forge Fast Expand. As the third hatchery of Soulkey was getting saturated and the signature phoenix harassment of Rain was being initiated, the SK Telecom 1 Protoss revealed his back-up plan to the viewers – a proxy-pylon hidden right under Soulkey's nose that allowed for two rounds of +1 zealot’s to be warped in mere inches away from Soulkey's third base. However, in spite of being caught utterly off guard, Soulkey managed to repel the attack with nothing but a handful of roaches, drones and flawless micro, proving why his defense is known as the best in world.

Having defended against both of Rain's initial attacks, Soulkey found himself at an economic advantage, which he was able to ride all the way to victory. Rain had followed up by going for blink stalkers, which were no answer to Soulkey's composition of swarm hosts, hydras and roaches. With locusts creeping deeper and deeper into his territory, Rain GG'd out.

Game 4 – Whirlwind:

Game four provided the late-game slugfest between heavyweights that everyone had been waiting for. Once again Rain opened up the game by attempting a cannon rush, which was again converted into a forge FE after Soulkey shut it down with drones. However, this time around Rain opted for an oracle as the first unit out of his quick stargate, which safely made its way to Soulkey's third base and killed off eight drones before being chased off. Brushing off the early blow, Soulkey stockpiled his resources for mutalisk tech, hoping to surprise Rain with 13 mutalisks. However, not only did Rain scout the spire, but had already blindly been going for blink tech in the meanwhile.

While that meant Soulkey would fail to deal the devastating damage he had hoped to do, the investment still payed off as he bought himself more than enough time to establish his economy and transition to swarm hosts before Rain could keep up with the tech switch. Rain then managed to buy himself precious time with Warp Prism harass in Soulkey's main base, temporarily stopping the onslaught of locusts and giving himself the breathing room to put together a late game army.

With gas heavy units finally at his disposal, Rain finally began moving outside of his 4th base, and after feeling each other out, the two armies finally clashed in a skirmish between brood lords, corruptors, infestors and swarm hosts, and tempests, void rays and colossi. At first, Rain seemed to come out on top as he temporarily pushed Soulkey back, but a lack of anti-air firepower allowed Soulkey's mass corruptors to overpower Rain's force. With the colossi and void rays wiped out, the swarm hosts were left to raze Rain's bases uncontested. After some desperation zealot warp-ins, Rain conceded defeat to tie up the series at two games a piece.

Game 5 – Bel’Shir Vestige

After a one-sided start, game five turned out to be one of the greatest comebacks of 2013. Soulkey managed to yet again see right through yet another fake cannon rush, going for an early zergling rush to punish Rain's greedy gateway expansion. After Soulkey successfully killed off Rain's expansion and several of his defending units, the SKT Protoss seemed all but done for with nothing going for him except a higher probe count.

However, it Rain would make all the right moves as the game went on while Soulkey would end up making the mistakes he absolutely could not afford to make. After having his third canceled by a roach runby, Rain decided it was time go all or nothing, teching up to dark templars and sending one each to three different bases while zealots went to a fourth. While splitting his forces up would have meant doing no damage against a prepared opponent, Rain hit a grand slam as Soulkey was caught completely unprepared. The DTs brought Soulkey's drone count down into the 30's while the zealots killed off Soulkey's fourth base. In less than a minute, Rain had taken the lead.

Against all odds, Rain found himself in a situation where he could successfully engage the swarm hosts and corruptors of Soulkey with an even greater number of stalkers and colossi, moving out on the map without restriction. A second warp in of three dark templars put Soulkey even further behind before Rain finally closed the game out with his superior army.

Game 6 – Polar Night

With Soulkey shaken up after taking such a demoralizing loss, the sixth and final game ended up being all about Rain. After easily repelling the initial zerglings from Soulkey and establishing his Stargate, Rain started some phoenix-harassment that would go on all game long. Meanwhile, Soulkey went for a strange 2-base hydralisk build, failing to accomplish much except stunting his own economy.

After establishing himself on two bases, Rain embarked on some relentless warp prism harassment, killing off key structures as Soulkey started to crack on defense. Soulkey failed to keep up with Rain who kept pressuring him on multiple fronts, his units constantly out of position as Rain slowly extended his advantage. At the end of the game, there was no great final battle, but rather a slow but steady Colossi-push moving its way closer and closer to the heart of Soulkey's base, eventually breaking the front lines and earning Rain the victory at the Hot6ix Cup Grand Finals.

Writers: Christelle, Waxangel.
Graphics: shiroiusagi.
Photos: GomTV, Silverfire and ThisIsGame.
Editor: Waxangel.