EPT
The first series was a PvT between
Stats and 
jjakji. After killing Stats’ oracle on Bel'Shir, jjakji cancelled Stats’ third as well while Stats was teching into adept/phoenix, before a follow-up push at the third gave him an unexpected 1-0 lead. Down a game, Stats turned to quick robotics tech. He defended jjakji’s multi-pronged harass and, despite losing all his colossi, assembled a ground force that evened the series, taking us to Cactus Valley for the decider. After scouting with an oracle, Stats found and shut down jjakji’s proxy banshee. From then on jjakji lost his workers to adept harass and his army to blink stalker/colossus, dropping him into the losers' match.Next up were
Impact and Trust, who traded largely ineffective harassment attempts in game one. Impact teched into roaches behind his solid economy and was able to build a sizable army that easily overwhelmed Trust’s gateway and immortal force at his third. Trust struck first in game two with a proxy oracle and adepts, but it was all Impact after that. Ling drops, baneling drops and killing Trust’s third contributed to an ever-growing lead that allowed him to tech to mutalisks and ling/bane/ravager on four bases. This was enough to set up a winner’s match between Stats and Impact.Games one and two of Stats against Impact started the same way. Impact delayed Stats’ third and defended against dark templars while taking a third of his own. On Cactus Valley, Impact tried to tech into mutas and, while they did some damage, he was forced out of the game by Stats' chargelot-archon core. The second time around Impact opted for roaches at the cost of a slow fourth. He tried to pin Stats down with his characteristic mutalisk flock, but Stats counterattacked with an almost exclusively immortal archon army. He killed Impact’s base and army to become the first one to make it out of the group.
jjakji once more found himself behind on workers and bases in the first game against Trust after suffering early damage to oracle and adept harass. While Trust pushing jjakji’s natural with adept/phoenix, jjakji’s doom drop gutted Trust’s main. The attack was cleaned up, but another one on Trust’s third was enough to close the game. Instead of phoenix/adept it was oracles and blink from Trust in game two. Trust took an empty third and built a gateway at his proxy pylon which jjakji spotted. He attacked, but jjakji held firm, putting Trust at a large army disadvantage. Trust would hang on for a while, but his pure gateway army just couldn’t keep up with jjakji’s bio/mine supplemented by liberators.
This pitted Impact and jjakji against each other for the final quarterfinal spot. The game started with standard ling/hellion skirmishes. Impact worked towards mutalisks before a baneling nest, while jjakji established his third. The game appeared to be even for a time, but things came an abrupt end as a ling/muta run by pierced jjakji’s main while Impact successfully defended jjakji’s push over creep towards his natural. In game two jjakji’s attempted hellbat push scouted a roach/ravager timing from Impact. Ling and roach drops tested jjakji but he held with cyclones. That wasn’t the end of it, though. Impact droned up before coming back with an army that dwarfed jjakji’s. Jjakji made a stand outside his natural, but it was to no avail and Impact took the series 2-0.
This completes the Round of 16 for the VSL Individual League. Join us tomorrow for the first pair of Quarterfinals.
