EPT
It’s playoffs time! Day 5 at IEM Katowice kicked off with a quartet of tantalising Ro.12 matches, starting with a much-hyped encounter between two TvT masters in
Ryung and INnoVation. What we got instead though was utter domination from the ex-SKT terran. A reaper rush on Honorgrounds and a doom drop on Proxima later, INnoVation was already up 2-0 heading into Cactus Valley. Heavy early cyclone damage allowed his macro to completely overwhelm Ryung, always up on upgrades and supply, and a maxed out push eventually crushed through the TeS terran.Next came the obligatory KT team kill. This was
Zest and TY’s fifth encounter in Bo5+ series in the past couple years, and while many of their previous encounters have been tight affairs, this was again a bit more one-sided. Newkirk Precinct saw TY’s love of multitasking and mines mesh perfectly with Zest’s phoenix-adept standard play, as well as his refusal to build a robo. Mine after mine detonated on his probe lines and army, and while Zest continually found damage to stay in the game, eventually TY’s upgrade lead allowed him to take a decisive engagement.Zest equalised with another strong demonstration of phoenix-adept on Abyssal Reef, but TY’s superior late-game compositions made the difference on Proxima, and once ghosts came out it was all but GG. Zest attempted to mix it up, opting for a distinctly HotS-esque stalker / colossus core, but he threw away his whole army with an awful engagement into a liberator / viking line, and TY quickly converted it into a series victory.
The bops continued in the lower half of the bracket.
Dark smashed Solar 3-0 with aggressive ling / bane play to claim revenge after the latter’s 4-3 victory in the SSL Finals last year, commenting that his opponent played far below his usual standard, while Polish hope Nerchio suffered a similar fate against Stats. Stats’ win in particular was one of the most technically precise series of the tournament so far, tearing apart Nerchio’s trademark lurker style in game 1 with storm and immortals. Game 2 ended swiftly after a huge adept attack inflicted game-ending damage on the zerg, but game 3 on Newkirk went long as well. Zealot harass was a constant throughout the series, with Stats constantly attacking across multiple fronts, and with Nerchio’s economy stymied throughout the game, he was forced to tap out when a large fight left him unable to remax.With a wholly terran upper half of the bracket, it was time to settle in for a couple of blockbuster TvTs. INnoVation came into the quarterfinals fresh off his swift 3-0 of Ryung, but
aLive was a whole different prospect as we were treated to the best TvT series of Legacy of the Void (VOD HERE). Game 1 immediately ramped up the tension, with aLive pulling off some of the positional moves that characterised his play throughout the series, dealing heavy damage to INnoVation’s economy and production. INnoVation meanwhile marched straight onto aLive’s side of the map, trying to initiate a basetrade. Clutch defence by the skin of his teeth left him with a working CC and a bigger army, and INnoVation was forced to concede. This being LotV TvT, we couldn’t have too much of a good thing; aLive took a 2-0 advantage with a cloaked banshee rush that caught INnoVation without detection, while a doom drop allowed INnoVation to pull it back to 2-1. A viking patrol on Cactus Valley for INnoVation caught 3 of his opponent’s full medivacs attempting a drop, and suddenly the scores were level, despite an admirable fight from aLive, battling on despite INnoVation’s huge lead. All was up for grabs on Abyssal Reef, and what we got was the best TvT we’ve seen in years. aLive took his game to the next level, dropping and harassing INnoVation across the map. Constant multi-pronged attacks chipped away at the economy and production in an absolute masterclass of TvT, and a dispirited INnoVation allowed himself to drop to 2 supply before finally tapping out.
Next up was
GuMiho vs TY, and it couldn’t have been more different. Where aLive and INnoVation had been clean and precise, GuMiho and TY were messy, chaotic, and downright dirty. The series is best encapsulated by a series of mistakes from GuMiho, who threw away a great opportunity to make his first top 4 since Dreamhack Tours 2015. A basetrade scenario on Newkirk was bungled; GuMiho 1a-ing liberators and tanks into a tank line, bleeding out his army advantage. Messy wins followed on Bel’Shir and Proxima Station, but the errors continued on Cactus Valley and Abyssal Reef—throwing away drop after drop in advantageous positions with non-stop aggression.For many,
Serral vs Dark was the tie of the round, but what seemed a dream tournament for the young Finn quickly fell apart to Korean zerg power as Dark extended his unbeaten streak against foreigners to #29, stretching back to 2012. Heavy ling / bane aggression gave him a swift 2-0 lead, before a masterful display of positioning and harassment completed the 3-0 sweep and a 1-9 record for the qualifiers from Group C. Still, making the Round of 8 should still be viewed as an exceptional performance given Serral’s matches in the group stages, and it’ll be very interesting indeed to see how he plays going forwards in 2017.Finally, it was time for the third and final non-mirror of the day. There are certain landmark performances in a player’s career, where they seem to kick it up to a whole new level, and Stats’ games here were among the best we’ve ever seen from him. In a day of bops and scrappiness, Stats was clinically perfect; harassing
ByuN to death with constant adept runbys while defending at home with perfect positioning. Stats was fully in control practically throughout his four games of absolute domination over ByuN, with his sole loss coming from a brilliant ByuN move to snipe a nexus and forges seconds before 2-2 and steal a game.Recommended games
- Stats vs Nerchio Set 1
- aLive vs INnoVation Sets 1, 4, & 5
- GuMiho vs TY Set 2
- Dark vs Serral Set 3 (or Sets 1 and 2 if you’re a sadist)
- Stats vs ByuN (All four games)
Join us tomorrow as we conclude IEM Katowice.
Written by: munch.
