MaxPax's domination of the early off-season continued in mid-August, with the mysterious Dane recording a trio of cup wins in back-to-back weeks. With MaxPax's PvP seeming to be restored to its peak level, Clem might be the only one able to challenge his reign in the weeklies.
MaxPax picked up his first cup win of the week in WardiTV Mondays, cutting down ReBellioN, Ryung, Cure, and herO on his way to victory. His 3-1 finals win against herO was notable in how it demonstrated his total PvP transformation over the past few weeks. After gradually weaning himself off his old signature build in the Void Ray fast-expansion, this week he abandoned it completely to play some variant of 2-Gate opener in every game.
Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that MaxPax is dominating PvP once again, now that he's not stubbornly fast expanding every game. Instead of his games being a binary of survive-the-all-in/die-to-the-all-in, now he gets to show off the skills that made him the #1 undisputed PvP player in the past: the best micro, mind-games, and overall strategizing in the match-up (VOD).
MaxPax then proceeded to win his second WardiTV cup of the week, as Wardi held back-to-back, same-day tournaments as a presumed make-up for skipping the week of EWC.
A finals rematch between MaxPax and herO seemed to be in the cards, but Cure upended the tournament with a 2-1 upset against herO in the semifinals. While Cure's TvP calling card over the last few months has been two-base all-ins, he reminded us he's still a very strong macro player by taking down herO in largely straight-up games.
Those macro skills continued to serve Cure well in the finals against MaxPax, as he went up 2-1 with standard-ish play. Ironically, Cure decision to try and surprise MaxPax with all-ins in the final two games backfired horribly, as MaxPax fended off both attempts to score a 3-2 comeback victory (VOD).
With Clem, MaxPax, and herO all sitting out, Cure and ByuN advanced to the finals to contend for the PiGosaur Cup title.
The series began with Cure defeating ByuN in a protracted mech vs bio game, hinting at a classic macro macro-TvT series to come. However, the remaining four games ended up being decided rather quickly by early-game tactics and timings, concluding with ByuN narrowly taking a 3-2 victory (VOD).
MaxPax closed out his week by clinching a triple in the LiuLi Cup, going on a perfect run (no map losses) with wins against ReBellioN, Creator, Rogue, and HeroMarine.
However, the true standout player may have been HeroMarine, who scored a massive 2-0 upset against Classic on his way to a runner-up finish. Classic's first loss was on the 'understandable' side, as HeroMarine's 2-base push was able to pierce through the Protoss defenses. But game two was pure clutch-instinct from HeroMarine, as he took heavy damage from Classic's Storm timing, but somehow immediately turned the game around with an all-or-nothing counterattack supported by Ghosts (VOD).
On August 18 2025 15:16 MJG wrote: I didn't get to watch all of the LiuLi Cup, but I did see the series between Creator and Lambo.
Creator went with a Twilight or Robo opening in all three games, which I found a little strange.
Great series though, one to check out.
Interesting ill go watch those games! So going twilight or robo in PvZ IS possible? Even if you can't go them as standard, that's cool
Tastosis was right ! - they argued maybe it was time for classic to bring out a robo first build since that was smth he didn't do yet for the finals against serral. Players\casters have given them flack for saying that.
Maxpax is gonna do worse when everyone is upping their skill for ewc, and he's gonna do better now that they're back to slacking.
On August 18 2025 15:16 MJG wrote: I didn't get to watch all of the LiuLi Cup, but I did see the series between Creator and Lambo.
Creator went with a Twilight or Robo opening in all three games, which I found a little strange.
Great series though, one to check out.
Interesting ill go watch those games! So going twilight or robo in PvZ IS possible? Even if you can't go them as standard, that's cool
I’m interested to check it out, I mean off-meta doesn’t have to be bad, I’m intrigued to see how it all works.
And I mean even if it’s not super solid, should still be quite strong as an off-meta thing.
Even if they’re sub-optimal perhaps, if you have some good Robo or Twilight builds they should be stronger than they’d otherwise be given how prevalent SG PvZ is
On August 19 2025 07:39 jimminy_kriket wrote: He's peaking. This is what top protoss looks like.
He’s no herO or Classic. He’s bloody good, he may even have more latent skill but until he routinely delivers on that in higher stakes tournaments it’ll always be a ‘maybe’
On August 18 2025 15:16 MJG wrote: I didn't get to watch all of the LiuLi Cup, but I did see the series between Creator and Lambo.
Creator went with a Twilight or Robo opening in all three games, which I found a little strange.
Great series though, one to check out.
Interesting ill go watch those games! So going twilight or robo in PvZ IS possible? Even if you can't go them as standard, that's cool
I’m interested to check it out, I mean off-meta doesn’t have to be bad, I’m intrigued to see how it all works.
And I mean even if it’s not super solid, should still be quite strong as an off-meta thing.
Even if they’re sub-optimal perhaps, if you have some good Robo or Twilight builds they should be stronger than they’d otherwise be given how prevalent SG PvZ is
I wouldn't read too deeply into it.
Creator has always liked to vary it up, whether it's robo first gateway pressure or doing 'outdated' DT/archon drop harass openers. I don't think it's very good in a general sense, but it works well enough for him
EPT
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![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/misc/weeklies/wardimon047.png)
MaxPax picked up his first cup win of the week in WardiTV Mondays, cutting down ReBellioN, Ryung, Cure, and herO on his way to victory. His 3-1 finals win against herO was notable in how it demonstrated his total PvP transformation over the past few weeks. After gradually weaning himself off his old signature build in the Void Ray fast-expansion, this week he abandoned it completely to play some variant of 2-Gate opener in every game.![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/misc/weeklies/wardimon047_2.png)
![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/misc/weeklies/pig044.png)
![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/misc/weeklies/newliuli02.png)
