EPT
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2015 StarCraft II StarLeague Season 1/ChallengeToday was a brutal lesson to fans of international players everywhere. Although most of the matches looked even or at least competitive on paper, those that permanently resided in Korea largely crushed players on foreign teams.
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Jim's first time competing in Korea—and the continuation of a resurgence from the young and talented 
Maru. While there was a sliver of hope that Jim could pull off a huge upset against the Korean prodigy, the series initially looked exactly like what we expected. Jim played exceptionally greedy with a nexus first and Maru did an unusual amount of damage with his reaper opening. He eventually managed to destroy his Protoss opponent before he could get his desired phoenix/colossus army out in a critical mass. Similarly, in the second game, Maru’s initial harass did a fair amount of damage and allowed him to potentially take a mid-game advantage. However, he somehow failed to see Jim’s two immortals as a threat, and the counter immortal bust allowed Jim to take a game. However, this was the beginning of the end for Jim. In the third game, after Jim failed a DT drop in spectacular fashion (dropping it in a corner of the main that was blocked by a depot), Maru repeatedly doom dropped the same area of Jim’s main base, which Jim did not seem to realize in time. Maru followed this up with a weird 2 base tank build in game 4, but Jim shut it down and counterattacked with phoenixes and colossi. However, he repeatedly blundered and allowed Maru to crawl back into the game with a botched attack. Maru eventually countered with drops, and exceptionally poor colossus control allowed him to kill almost all of them for free with his vikings. A followup attack allowed Maru to clinch the series 3-1.Although the first series was generally expected to be the most one-sided, the next match made it look competitive by comparison. From the start,
PartinG was completely crushed by 
Dark after he attempted an aggressive style and got methodically dismantled. Dark opened with an aggressive 14/14 against PartinG’s nexus first, and bought time with his zerglings to be greedy enough to hold PartinG’s 7 gateway all in. While he did need to pull drones, Dark did so before it was too late to stop PartinG’s attack and eventually managed to clean up the all in with a zergling flood and some roaches. In the second game, PartinG tried to secure an early gold base on Foxtrot Labs while convincing Dark that he was going for another all in. However, Dark eventually scouted the gold base and denied mining while taking his own gold. From that point, he easily won the game with burrowed roaches. PartinG, down 2-0 heading into game 3, attempted to play greedily with a fast third base, but Dark quickly discovered PartinG’s plans and simply busted him with masses of roaches and zerglings, securing a quick 3-0.Nobody was initially sure what to expect from
MyuNgSiK vs San, especially after the second series was so one-sided. In addition to the usual randomness expected from PvP, there was also the mystery surrounding these players. Neither of them had played a particularly telling PvP series in months and they played players from different regions, making it difficult to determine their skill levels relative to each other. However, MyuNgSiK displayed a clear tactical and psychological superiority in the series. In the opening game, San opened phoenixes against what he believed to be an identical stargate opening. However, MyuNgSiK actually cancelled the stargate and 4 gate rushed San, who was caught with only four phoenixes, a mothership core and a void ray beginning production. After this one-sided game, both players opted to open with a twilight council. MyuNgSiK ended the game quickly with a hidden dark shrine when San failed to realize that his opponent’s twilight council was not researching anything, and MyuNgSiK was suddenly ahead 2-0 after barely 15 minutes of game time. San, afraid of his opponent’s shenanigans at this point, opened with an oracle and ran into a 1 gate expand. While San quickly destroyed this expansion with a gateway attack, MyuNgSiK easily broke the followup contain with immortals and both players opted to play on two bases. MyuNgSiK proxied two stargates, however, and took his opponent by surprise with four phoenixes before immediately reverting to colossus play. Upon seeing a third base from his opponent, San tried attacking MyuNgSiK’s natural, but the Prime Protoss player patiently crushed San’s attack and completed the sweep.
Happy with all the results in fact! 
