EPT
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Weekly Cup Competitions
Week of August 11 - 17
by Wax
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.
*Partial brackets may be shown.
August 11: WardiTV Mondays #46
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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).
*****
August 11: WardiTV Mondays #47.5
![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/misc/weeklies/wardimon047_2.png)
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).
*****
August 12: PiGosaur Cup #44
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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). *****
August 15: LiuLi Cup August Weekly #2
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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).
